Both Anne and I had already learned how to wipe our fingers at the table, to take the precious salt on the tips of our knives, and to count our linens against pilfering by our women. Teaching by her own example as well as by words, Lady Harington now marched on through the long list of other bad habits that we must learn to prevent in our servants.
No serving man ever dared to piss in the corners of her fireplaces. No scullery maid at Combe ever polished a glass on her sleeve or blew her nose in her apron. By constant example, Lady H showed us how to measure respect or insolence in others, to the very finest degree. And how to bring down with an acid word anyone who stepped over any of the invisible lines of rank and place that she taught us to see. She adjusted the angle of my head when I curtsied. For three months, I nodded meekly and accepted her instruction. Any moment, I thought, she might teach me how to make order out of the rest of the tumbling chaos of life.
Sometimes I tried to play again as I had once done, when I still felt like a child. I would make Belle sit up in a miniature gilded carriage in her blue velvet collar whilst Cherami, my most obliging small greyhound, pulled her across the floor, his nails clacking like tiny hoofs. While Anne laughed and clapped, I looked on as if from a great distance.
When the late winter weather allowed, I sometimes sat very still in the gardens and tempted the robins to eat crumbs from my hand. Once, while Anne made a dumb show of being ill, I tasted a worm to try to understand its attractions. I whistled back at the wild birds, trying to speak their language, but caused agitation in the bushes and trees.
‘I think you’ve confused them,’ said Anne.
In truth, birds, with their sharp little eyes and edgy flutter, troubled me.
On the journey south from Scotland, well-wishers had given me six caged birds to join my animal family – two larks, a finch and three paraquettos from the West Indies. I felt thatthe little creatures wished to be friendly but could not trust me, who had the power to thrust them back into their cages. Their fragility terrified me – those tiny bones and trembling heartbeats, so fast that my own heart would crash to a halt at such a speed, or else burst into flame. I feared that I might accidentally crush one of them in my hand. This terrible power alarmed me so much that I avoided handling them. Unobserved, I released a lark and a paraquetto and said that they had escaped.
Then I found the remains of the paraquetto left under a bush by a cat. Staring down at the sodden little bundle of bloody blue and green feathers, I wondered if, after all, even unhappy, they were not safer in their cages. I knew that I was the true assassin.
The paraquetto. Abel White. Clapper. Lord Harington burdened. Digby dead. Because of me.
‘I am dangerous to know,’ I whispered one night to Anne. ‘Even for you.’
‘Why?’
Could she not see why? I thought. She had heard Mrs Hay’s tales.
‘I just am,’ I said.
‘Don’t be absurd!’ She rolled onto her side away from me. ‘Unless you mean the risk of tearing my best gown.’
Winter was clinging on into March, treading heavy-booted on the first green shoots of early spring. My large hunting greyhound, Trey, lifted his head and tested the damp grey air. Then Wainscot, too, lifted her head. Her ears swivelled towards the entrance avenue leading to the main house at Combe. Because Anne had chosen to stay inside by the fire, I was riding with only a groom and six of my hounds.
I held a small bunch of little wild daffodils to inhale their fresh odour while I rode, though I knew better than to curdle the milk by taking them into the house. Then I heard the hoof beats that my dog and horse had already heard. I shivered and threw down the daffodils. I pressed Wainscot forward through a haze of dark leaf buds, still as tight as fingertips while Trey and the other greyhounds sprinted ahead.
As we broke out into the avenue, a riderless horse was trotting down the track towards us. Riderless, like a horse in the tapestries of battlefield scenes, or at a king’s funeral.
Wainscot gave a joyful whinny of welcome.
Clapper. Without Abel White.
I swung my right knee over the saddle head and slid to the ground. When he saw us, Clapper broke into a canter and nearly knocked me over as I ran to meet him. Surroundedby a mêlée of wriggling dog haunches and sniffing noses, I hugged him, rubbed his neck and kissed his nose and breathed in his smell. It really was Clapper, not the ghost horse I had imagined for an instant when I first saw that he had no rider. He was sleek and well fed. He still wore his old tack. I quieted Trey, pushed past Wainscot who had arrived close behind me, and began to search the saddle for a message or some other sign of who had returned him.
No pouch. No saddle bag. No sheathe for a sword nor a lance-holder where a paper might be hidden. No letter tied to the bridle. I flipped up the saddlecloth. Nothing there. Nothing under the quilted leather pad of the seat. Nor fastened to the back of the cantle, nor under the saddle flaps.
‘Did you escape and find your own way back here alone?’ I asked him.
Then, under the small buckle guard at the top of the girth straps, I found something. Not a letter, a small blue-grey spring of rue, threaded through the steel buckles. I extracted the sprig carefully and held it to my nose.
Clapper nudged me hard. I put a calming hand on his neck. I needed to think.
A fresh-cut evergreen herb, not dried, still sharply musky with its odd animal smell. It had to be a message. It had not found its way into the buckle by itself. It had been put there by someone who knew that I would search.
Evergreen. I looked at the sprig in my hand. Surely that was the message – evergreen. Perhaps Abel was still alive after all
But rue? My first surge of joy turned sour. Even in this wintry weather, there were other plant choices. He… whoever it was… I wanted the messenger to be Abel White but tried not jump to conclusions… might instead have chosen the evergreen bay to signify victory, honour and success. Bay protected. But he had not sent a victor’s bay.
Or he could have sent protective rush. Or round-leafedbox, or a mottled heart leaf of the little sowbread cyclamen, to ward off evil spells. Or even a feathery stem of grey mugwort that is tucked into a traveller’s shoes to give him strength for his journey. I could have read a happier story in any of those.
Rue spoke of repentance and sorrow. Rue spoke of regret. Rue could heal but also curse.
He dared not write but sent this vegetable messenger instead.
I could read only one conclusion. Abel had failed in his mission for me.
After supper that night, I sat beside my fire holding the sprig of rue between my palms willing it to tell me more.
The reappearance of Clapper cracked open the door holding back the future. It told me that, like the warmth of a morning bed, this life was going to end. Just as someone elsewhere had chosen to send back my horse, my true life elsewhere would begin whenever my father willed it. I could not let Combe and its people take root in my heart. I had merely borrowed this world and would soon have to give it back. I had no colours, or tastes, or smells for what awaited me.
I begged my tutors to tell me about Italy, France, Spain and the German states, in any of which I might, or might not, find myself living for the rest of my life.
I coaxed Mrs Hay to visit me at bedtime as she had once done. While Anne lay goggle-eyed beside me, my old nurse told me yet again the tales of my family’s past, carrying the seeds of my future.
I watched the Haringtons together. I listened to the tone of their voices, watched what distances they kept between them, noted their exchange of glances, trying to sniff out the dark truth about this mysterious thing, marriage that made my father threaten me with it as the alternative to execution.
A perverse impatience began to press like a belch in my gullet. I hated my own helplessness and the false safety of Combe. Knowing the worst would be better than knowing nothing. At least then, I could try to think what to do.
I would fall asleep each night holding the fragment of stone from the crags in one hand, cradling the smuggled Belle with my other arm. I was a creature of marsh and granite, temporarily asleep, buried in a green, green forest. But I could hear hoof beats in the distance, drawing closer.
‘We might have been given more warning!’ Lady Harington sawed at her roast meat so fiercely that her ear-drops flashed and her lace collar quivered. She gave up and slammed down her knife. Her small hands made fists on the table.
‘One would think a shell had exploded in the forecourt,’ said her husband mildly. ‘It’s only a summons to London for a short time.’ He tugged unhappily at his moustaches, so hard that the end of his long bony nose was moved from side to side.
Lady Harington snorted. ‘Do you imagine that duration makes any difference to her grace’s needs? If she’s to be presented to a king, it matters not one whit whether she stands there for an hour or for five days.’
‘It might matter to her,’ my guardian murmured
My Uncle Christian, who was my mother’s brother and King of Denmark, was coming to England. I must join the English court in London to be presented to my visiting uncle.
‘His majesty could land in England at any time,’ said Lady Harington. ‘We must all pray for contrary winds. Not tempests,’ she added hastily. ‘Merely winds from the wrong direction, and strong enough to delay his arrival until I can arrange what is needed.’
Her husband sighed and nodded.
Suddenly, I needed new gowns, embroidered smocks, standing collars, falling collars, and stomachers. To go on show before a foreign king, the First Daughter of England must have embroidered slippers, jewelled sleeves, silk stockings, gloves, purses, handkerchiefs. I overheard orders for pearls by the pound and silver lace by the bale and hoped that my guardian’s cousin had managed to arrange extra money to repay Lord Harington for these expenses.
All at once, there was no time for riding, no escape to stables or garden. I had to stand still for measuring and fittings, while tailors and dress-makers from Coventry shook out stiff rustling taffetas and satins and cooed and knelt with their lips clamped tight on pins and turned me a half inch this way or that.
‘She must take gifts to give to her new people,’ I overheard Lord Harington say to his wife in despair. ‘Surely, she will now be given a full household. Wherever shall I find the money to buy all those necessary scent bottles and pieces of gold and silver plate?’
‘She must have them, all the same,’ replied Lady Harington. ‘We, and our care for her, will be under scrutiny at Whitehall just as much as she.’
As urgently as new gowns, I needed final instruction from Lady H, which she crammed into me like last-minute stockings into a travelling chest.
‘You will become a magnet for the ambitious,’ she warned. ‘All wanting something from you. We’ve protected you from such people here at Combe. But in Whitehall…’ She rolled her eyes just enough to make clear her doubts about the protection I would find in London. ‘These climbers will try to turn your head with flattery, to win your favour. I hope you’ve learned here to be sensible enough to disbelieve them all.’
‘Oh, yes, madam.’
‘Distrust all compliments as flattery.’
‘Yes, madam,’ I said with less fervour. Was it not possible that an occasional compliment might be deserved?
‘Take special care with your new ladies, for I’m certain you will have some, even for a short visit.’ Her eyes narrowed as if assessing these distant figures. ‘Every one of them will be someone’s creature. They will report everything you do. Never forget. Beware, in particular of the rival noble families. The Howards will no doubt insert one of their bitches into the hunting pack. They can’t bear not always to be at the centre. And Northumberland will also buy a place for one of his nieces… Serving you will be a sure step to a good marriage.’
She frowned at a rabbit embroidered in fine red wool on one of my new smocks. ‘I may be only a countrywoman, but I know a thing or two about how things run there in London. And there’s Lord Salisbury to fear, of course, Robert Cecil… the twisted little son of Burleigh. The Chief Secretary has an intelligencer placed in every noble house in England… and in France too, I’ve no doubt. One of your women or grooms will most certainly be reporting to him.’
Anne had been listening with open dismay. ‘Will you not keep me as one of your ladies?’
‘Anne!’ said her aunt. ‘Don’t subject poor Lady Elizabeth to petitions already!’
I tried to imagine being without that placid, agreeable and slightly dull presence beside me, night and day. Warm, breathing, often less amusing than my monkey or dogs, but able to converse, to ask my opinion and able to understand my instructions.
‘But I must have Anne with me!’ I cried. I forgot how tedious I sometimes found her chattering.
Faced with Howards and all those other treacherous creatures described by Lady Harington, I could not imagine doing without Anne. ‘You must be my Lady of Honour!’
‘Yes!’ cried Anne. ‘Thank you, my lady!’ She turned toher aunt. ‘Now I must have some new gowns too! May I have one with satin bows at the waist? I am so fond of bows!’
Lady Harington nodded. Though she had reproved Anne for asking, my lady guardian could not hide her gratification at my choice of her niece. ‘You must keep each other steady,’ she said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t either of you make an enemy of Lady Elizabeth’s steward. You have no idea what petty tyranny that person can exercise over your daily life.’
At that moment, I wanted Lady Harington to come with me too, to guide me in a world that clearly would not be like Combe.
‘I will dine with my mother again, as I did when I visited her at Holyrood Palace,’ I told Anne that night. ‘The two of us together, in her little closet, which had a beautiful red, blue and gold painted ceiling, and a fire, and with only one or two of her ladies.’ Anne would fall asleep while I listed the delicacies we had eaten and the games we had played together after eating.