The Girl in the Mirror. Sarah Gristwood

day. Hopeful and fearful, proud and angry. A woman, for all she was queen, and statesman, and old, and majesty.

      Cecil Autumn 1595, Accession Day

      I’ll laugh about it later with Lizzie. I hold on to the thought of her forthright face, I imagine what Lizzie would say if she were here. Lizzie will say anything to anybody – ask her how much she paid for her gown, and she’ll answer you honestly. When I first saw her at court, I asked my cousin to find out whether my disability revolted her, before I asked if she would marry me. She reminds me of it – regularly – and every time she does, I could swear the twist in my shoulders grows slightly less. I know a little of the ache goes away. She says she married a man, not a set of muscles. If she were here, what would she say?

      I do not say, my time will come. I see a future with Lord Essex riding high: I see a future without Lord Essex in it. I plan for all contingencies: that is what my father taught me. If my father were here, if he’d been well enough today, he would be brushing off the mockery as though it were no more than a few drops of rain on his miniver collar. When we meet in the hall tonight he may speak of it, but only if there is need.

      He may say, it’s good that Essex is going too far, the queen doesn’t like her officers mocked too publicly. He may say, one of our men in place should be told to feed his lordship’s vanity. Or he may wear that disapproving look, that puffs out the pouches under his eyes and makes his years hang heavy, and say that we should damp down all comment, a period of quiet would be good for the country.

      On the whole he is unlikely to say anything: as he grows older and his hand starts to shake, he assumes everyone will agree with him and I do, actually. How would I not, when he trained me so thoroughly? The one thing he is certain not to say is, Don’t let it hurt you. Flattery is for fools, vanity is for women, that’s what he’d say.

      Thank God for Lizzie.

      My ruff feels too tight around my neck but I know better than to lift a hand to ease it. There are too many eyes on me, watching for the least sign of discomfiture. I can see Southampton grinning spitefully. I remember him as a child, always trying to keep up with the older boys. I can see Francis Bacon, his profile turned away from me. He’s never forgiven us for that business over the Attorney General’s office, he’s linked his fortune to Essex’s chariot wheels, and it will be like the clever fool he is if he gets dragged the wrong way. But he won’t entirely be enjoying this – the same blood runs in the veins of both our mothers; at rock bottom we are family.

      In the convoluted world of the court, there may even be some who believed we Cecils had a hand in writing Essex’s little story. My father has been painting himself as a hermit for years, asking leave to retire and tend his garden. And one thing we all learn at court, a veil of enmity can cloak allies as easily as a show of friendship cloaks enmity. They may think I have the subtlety, or the courage, to make fun of my own misshapen form, to consider the sting was a price worth paying to have made the queen laugh out loud.

      I should be flattered by their thoughts, probably.

      Essex himself is riding around the ring, that victor’s lap of honour where they hold the horse’s pace down so its oiled hooves flick up the dust contemptuously. As he passes he looks at me with a hot urgent eye. It was always that way, ever since he was young, one of the aristocratic orphans, like Southampton, raised in my father’s house. He’d do something outrageous, and then he’d come to peer at you, in his tall gangling way, looking for – what? Shock? Approval? Envy? Reassurance that you’d forgive him, come what may?

      Perhaps now it is my jealousy he wants, for me to acknowledge that my feeble arm could never even bear the weight of his lance, so I give it to him, dipping my head a little and smiling slightly, like a fencer courteously acknowledging a hit.

      Smiling is easy: my father always taught me to praise in public, and criticise secretly. Sweetness is easy: it is easy, actually, as I look at Essex, but why? Absurd, irrational, but there is something in the sight of that tall, trotting figure that melts some of the sore frozen core in me.

      Perhaps that is something I will not say to Lizzie.

      Jeanne Winter 1595–96

      Around Christmas Mrs Allen’s cousin, the theatre man, sent word he wanted to see her. They’d been given a gift of clothes from some grand lady that needed altering to make players’ costumes, and she was clever that way. She took me along to help carry the bundles, and I went with more than usual alacrity. I was feeling restless since that day at the tourney – as if my little hole in the wainscot were no longer enough for me. It was not to the theatre we were to go today, but to the great lady’s house in Chelsea. The troupe had been hired to put on several shows during the festivities. It was the first time I’d actually been inside such a place and I looked around, wide-eyed, as we stepped inside the high, red-brick walls, welcoming but imposing too. When we mentioned the players, the porter nodded us through, albeit grudgingly.

      ‘Straight through the court and over to the right,’ he said. ‘Don’t go bothering the gentry!’

      They were just ending a rehearsal when we got there, and I left Mrs Allen muttering with pleasure as she pawed through a heap of finery, lifting a scarlet doublet that hadn’t worn too badly. I went in search of old Ben, and found him carefully wiping paint from his face – a face more lined than it used to be. Another, younger, actor stood nearby. I almost said, young actor, but the truth is I found it hard to tell an actor’s age then, and I still do today. All I know is that he was slim, and brown, and pleasant looking and that Ben, who seemed preoccupied, eyed him from time to time almost hungrily.

      ‘Martin Slaughter’ – he made an actor’s gesture, introducing the younger man to me. ‘Take our young guest to see something of the place, why don’t you? It’ll get you out of my way.’

      The slim man made me a light, almost mocking, bow. ‘Shall we?’ As we passed out into court again I asked a shade anxiously if Ben was all right, and before replying he paused slightly.

      ‘More or less all right. All right for this season, anyway. But an actor’s life isn’t easy as you start to age. The best parts are mostly for men in their prime, and the pretending gets harder every day.’ He turned the conversation, gracefully. ‘But, here, I’m being a poor host – even if my ownership is distinctly temporary. It’s too cold outside – let’s take a turn in the long gallery.’

      ‘Are we allowed?’ I was anxious here. It was all strange to me. The room was not so much, compared to some I’ve seen since, but at the time the floor seemed an ocean of polished oak, the walls a glowing forest of oil paint and tapestry.

      ‘Oh, yes. Of course, we bow low and turn tail if her ladyship appears, or any of the family.’

      ‘Who owns this house?’

      ‘Lady Howard, no less – the queen’s own cousin, or at least her father was – and her husband, naturally. You’ll have heard of him – Lord Charles, the Lord Admiral, one of the ones who saved all our bacon in Armada days. Off to save it again, when the spring comes, if it’s true what they say about the Spaniards eyeing the French ports, and another Armada on the way.’ I was dumb. Though I had more cause than most to fear the Spanish, the politics of it all still meant little to me. Martin Slaughter must have seen it.

      ‘Look, here’s a portrait of Lord Howard –’ And we began to walk the length of the painted images in the great gallery.

      As we walked, we talked – or Martin did. It was only later that I wondered, a little, that he hadn’t asked anything about me. At the time, I just accepted it gratefully. He told me how he’d wanted to be an actor, since being taken up to the local great house once as a boy.

      ‘It was her ladyship’s father’s place – old Lord Hunsdon, he is, the Lord Chamberlain, it’s him whose mother was the queen’s aunt – and he’s always been a real patron of the players, licensed his own troupe. They put on a performance, because the queen was come to stay. And my father, he worked in the estate office, wangled us in to watch from the back, and that was it, a few dramatic speeches, and