story. Quietly, as she sat with our mending by the fire, Mrs Allen had made sure I’d know what I needed to know, though always imparting her information with the casual air of one who is talking for the sake of it. Never as if these were things that I might need to know personally. By the time I first bled I knew what to expect, though the pain like a knife grinding in my belly brought the dreams worse than usual, and I was glad that I did not bleed frequently. And that my shape stayed thin and unformed – slim enough in a stripling, but what in a girl you might have called scrawny.
Autumn 1595, Accession Day
Sometimes, when Jacob was out, I’d slip on my cloak and go down to the Thames, and wish the waters could take me … somewhere. To some other destiny. I heard Mrs Allen telling Jacob, in that comfortable way, that all young people were sometimes as wild as March hares, and I suppose it was true.
If I’d been of another disposition, it might have taken me to the bear-baitings, or the executions. If I’d been a proper girl it might have taken me to a boy’s arms. If I’d really been that boy, it might have taken me to the stews. As it was, it took me towards the court, for the jousts on Accession Day. Ascension Day, I almost said, when in the days of the old faith they celebrated the Virgin Mary. But now the altars and the blue robed, sweet-faced statues were gone. We celebrated another virgin queen, and after more than three and a half decades on the throne, in truth she seemed as much a fixture in the sky.
The tiltyard lay to the northwards of most of the palace buildings, though close enough that you could see its yawning doorways, close enough you could feel the beast’s hot breath down your neck. Close enough that the turrets and pennants loom like a fairy-tale castle. Other children heard fairy tales as something delightful, sweet as sugar comfits, but to me they were always frightening, with their world of things that were not as they seemed, of unknown possibilities. I knew you went to the tilt-yard not just for the fights, but for the masques and pageants and stories they used to dress up the fact that times had changed, and knights no longer really fought each other with spear-tipped poles under codes of chivalry. I was scathing of all that; the very young feel scathing easily.
This – I told myself, as I jostled along with the crowd trying to get in at the gates, squeezed by a merchant’s wife with a picnic basket on one side, and on the other by a courting couple who couldn’t even keep their hands off each other until they found a seat – was modern London, where you could buy anything from a Spanish orange tree to a copy of an Italian play, where every householder had by law to hang a light outside, so that the night streets were almost bright like day. Where the queen’s own godson had invented a flushing jakes, so that after you’d evacuated, a stream of water carried your filth away … But it was good, just for the moment, to be swept along with the crowd. To smell the damp sand of the arena, and the farmyard aroma of the horse lines, where the chargers were shitting with eagerness and fear.
The only place I could get was high up in the grandstand, so that what was going on below had an air of unreality, like something seen at the play. But I was happy enough to gaze down at the courtiers who were coming in last of all, to the seats beside the arena, furred and cloaked against the November air. Mulberry and tawny, sulphur yellow and ox-blood red, their very velvets seemed to warm the day.
At one end, the royal gallery still stood empty, fluttering with silks in the Tudor colours, green and white. The crowds were beginning to cheer some arrivals – clearly well-known personalities. The man beside me, a burgher as broad as he was tall, could see my ignorance, and was only too happy to enlighten me.
‘That’s Ralegh,’ he said, ‘see, the tall one? That’s the queen’s cousin, well, kinsman, Lord Howard the Lord Admiral, with the white beard. Look, that’s Master Cecil, Lord Burghley’s son – I daresay the old man will stay away, I doubt he’s got much taste now for a tourney. But Robert Cecil, he’s a rising man – and a sharp one, they say.’ There were no cheers for Robert Cecil, I noticed. In fact there were even some jeers as he took his place. He was a small man, I saw, and almost twisted – hunch-backed? – in some way, though for all that he managed his slight dark figure gracefully.
‘Ah,’ my neighbour said on a grunt of satisfaction, ‘here she comes, the queen’s majesty.’ Now there really was cheering. I peered downwards, hungrily. I hadn’t expected to make anything out, but as the stiff tiny mannequin advanced to show herself, I found I could see quite clearly. See where the blaze of jewels caught the winter sunlight, see the bright red fringe of curls around the white oval of her face. Around her clustered the young maids of honour, with one or two older ladies.
Jacob and his friends, talking of an evening, had nothing but contempt for the court – a nest of carrion crows grown fat, they said, of maggots feasting on decay. But even they would hush their wives when any of the talk – ‘Of course it’s a wig. My sister’s husband’s a perruquier, and he says she’s bald as an egg underneath!’ – came close to touching the queen’s dignity.
‘She may have her vanities as a woman,’ they’d say, ‘and why shouldn’t she? But she’s given us close on four decades of quiet – aye, I know things haven’t been so good this last year or two, but she can’t help the weather and the harvest, can she? Just look across the Channel if you want to see how bad things could be.’ And then they’d break off, with a sidelong glance at Jacob, and at me.
Something was happening, down in the lists. A herald on horseback, dressed in red and white, had trotted into the arena, and was making the circuit of its brightly painted wooden walls with something in his hand held high.
‘It’s a glove – they always do it,’ said my knowledgeable neighbour. ‘They put word out that Lord Essex would be sending early, to get a gage to show he rides in honour of her majesty.’ Indeed, the jewelled figure at the window of the royal gallery was holding up her hand, to acknowledge the tribute graciously. But the play wasn’t over, so it seemed. As the herald left, a good-looking youth in the same bold colours took his place in the arena, and looked around until he could be sure he had all eyes. He struck a pose, and began to declaim, though high up as we were the wind whipped his words away.
Three figures followed him, and knelt at his feet, in dumb show asking him to choose between them. The first, a soldier, was tall and armoured. It could have been anyone. It could have been Ralegh. The second drew a ripple of laughter from the crowd. It was barefoot in a hermit’s robe, but my neighbour hissed in my ear that the long beard and the staff were those of Lord Burghley. The laughter grew louder as the third figure, in a statesman’s dark clothes and waving documents of policy, leant sideways to hump one shoulder high in the air. I couldn’t make out Robert Cecil’s face, but he seemed to be bearing it quietly.
As the actors took their bows, to roars of approval, my eye was drawn to the end of the lists. A knight was watching there, in red-and-white livery. ‘The colours of love,’ said my knowledgeable neighbour and I stared – I wouldn’t have put him down as a man for heraldry – until I saw he had a printed bill, like they might hand out for a play.
The knight’s helmet was still off; I could see his hair and beard were tawny, and that his face was turned not towards the players but to the queen’s majesty. As the actors left the lists, he bowed his head to let the squire put on the metal headpiece, and snapped the visor down. Both knights were ready, their great heavy lances resting on the ground, waiting for the sign. It was the queen who gave it – an arm held up, a glove fluttering down, and the slow thunder of the horses’ hooves making the ground groan in sympathy.
It was Essex’s opponent who fell, and a great sigh went up from the crowd; I knew men were running in from the sides, and that he wasn’t hurt, or not seriously. But my eyes, now, were on the royal gallery. I was too far away to see properly, but in my mind’s eye I saw the tiny figure tense, the hand clench on the window frame as the great metal spikes steadied to hit home. I knew now what I’d come for, and I’d found it in the queen’s majesty.
‘Something more than a man – and something less than a woman,’ Lord Burghley had quipped, famously. Something else, at any rate. Something else, like me.
But I’d learnt another lesson, and one I put aside, uneasily. The queen watching