The Girl in the Mirror Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Sarah Gristwood
noisier for the football match every Accession Day. Maybe, as I started to find myself among squabbling families, and carts full of people as cheery as on market day, it was the look I saw on the faces of those others who were flocking that way.
In the end I never even reached Tyburn. Just as well, maybe. I heard later that Dr Lopez died shouting out that he loved her majesty better than Christ, and that one of the men who died with him tried to fight off the executioner, and they had to hold him down to slash his belly open. Up until now, I’d only half understood things Jacob tried to teach me – about quarrel, and dispute, and the passion of belief. About how it made men do things in God’s name that in fact the Creator would weep to see. I hadn’t understood why – when Mrs Allen nagged him into getting me ordinary school books – he’d snatched the discourse on rhetoric back at once, having caught me showing off for her admiring eyes, imitating the kind of rhetoric class real schoolboys had every day. At the time, I felt reproved for my vanity, but later I came to understand more clearly what Jacob had muttered under his breath about convincing and convicting, and about the wrong-headedness of teaching children that the important thing in the world was to prove their point, however blunted it might be.
Now I did understand, as I saw citizens’ kindly faces alight with a brutal glee. I stood there in the muddy track for a moment, cursing myself for folly. Then I turned back, and half ran towards the familiar streets. At the empty house I bent over the desk, trying to ignore the chill sickness inside, and took care not to look up when Jacob returned, his tread slower and heavier than when he had gone away.
I had other things to concern me, as I grew older. In my mind and in Jacob’s I was a boy, but my growing body heard a different 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
In the end I never even reached Tyburn. Just as well, maybe. I heard later that Dr Lopez died shouting out that he loved her majesty better than Christ, and that one of the men who died with him tried to fight off the executioner, and they had to hold him down to slash his belly open. Up until now, I’d only half understood things Jacob tried to teach me – about quarrel, and dispute, and the passion of belief. About how it made men do things in God’s name that in fact the Creator would weep to see. I hadn’t understood why – when Mrs Allen nagged him into getting me ordinary school books – he’d snatched the discourse on rhetoric back at once, having caught me showing off for her admiring eyes, imitating the kind of rhetoric class real schoolboys had every day. At the time, I felt reproved for my vanity, but later I came to understand more clearly what Jacob had muttered under his breath about convincing and convicting, and about the wrong-headedness of teaching children that the important thing in the world was to prove their point, however blunted it might be.
Now I did understand, as I saw citizens’ kindly faces alight with a brutal glee. I stood there in the muddy track for a moment, cursing myself for folly. Then I turned back, and half ran towards the familiar streets. At the empty house I bent over the desk, trying to ignore the chill sickness inside, and took care not to look up when Jacob returned, his tread slower and heavier than when he had gone away.
I had other things to concern me, as I grew older. In my mind and in Jacob’s I was a boy, but my growing body heard a different 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