Read Online The Girl in the Mirror by Sarah Gristwood - Free Book Online Page B

while a poorhouse camped in the wreckage. The rich, odorous stew that was a London crowd grew even thicker and more exotic as one drew near, for all that the Strand held the palaces of the nobility. Deep-water sailors from distant countries eyeing liveried men at arms, cutpurses skirting the ordinary citizens just trying to get through the working day. No wonder Burghley House showed the street a long line of thick brick walls, with only three small windows to break their solidity. The Cecils were still near the people – of them, in a way – and this was a bustling place of business as much as a gentleman’s private residence, but that didn’t mean they took stupid risks.
    A porter’s lodge stood in the middle of the wall, but Master Pointer’s men turned into another gateway. To the west of the house, the palace side, lay the service quarters and the vegetable beds, and the back way up to another arched gate which led out to the north and the open spaces of Convent Garden, where the monks or their servants used to tend their own beds and orchards in the old days. I walked and I wondered, along clipped hedges and gravelled pathways. I was on Master Pointer’s business, wasn’t I? And in any case, the afternoon would have encouraged an anchorite to linger.
    The grass had its brightness back, after the summer drought, and the soft warm light brought out the reds and greens, making a little miracle out of the trees. In its plan perhaps the garden wasn’t as modern as it might be. I could feel the taste of old Lord Burghley. But it had still its element of fantasy. A mound rose up from a sunken garden, a man-made hollow and a man-made hill, and the winding path up to the summit guided your feet clearly. The plants themselves were extraordinary. One great flower had been left to form a seed head more than the spread of my hand across, and I was drawing it for Master Pointer when I sensed a presence beside me.
    He was alone, but he must have moved lightly – his feet on the gravel made no sound as he approached. He was dressed in black – we’d heard that his wife had died recently, for I remember eager talk about whether it would be appropriate for the Pointers to send a gift in sympathy.
    Perhaps that accounted for the lines that already showed on his face, but I suspect they came there naturally. It was the eyes that struck me, cool and grey under high arched brows.
    He held out his hand. ‘May I see?’
    Dumbly, I passed over my sheaf of drawings, barely remembering to jerk down into a bow, and he leafed through the pages, those brows raising slightly.
    ‘Impressive. Do you work for Master Pointer? In what capacity?’ He gestured me to fall in with him as he walked on. ‘My constitutional. If I’m taking you from your art, you must forgive me.’ He knew I’d come in his way on purpose, of course, but he was a polite man – polite in his soul – and he didn’t let the knowledge intrude.
    As he walked he questioned me – my skills, my situation – and I answered him with a sense of inevitability, so completely had it fallen out as I had dreamed it. Though it was my penman-ship first caught his eye, it was my languages that seemed to interest him most. He’d ask me for the names of plants in French and Flemish, as well as Latin, as we passed by. He spoke to me of the great plant hunters from earlier in the century, of Turner and Gesner and of Mattioli before them, and of who was like to take up the mantle of Plantin in Antwerp, now that his great printing centre under the sign of the golden compasses had passed away. He spoke of his own commission to John Gerard, the surgeon and collector who’d had the ordering of the Cecil gardens, to produce the first great English Herbal in almost half a century. I was devoutly thankful to Jacob, and to all the evenings, since his death, I’d spent in solitary study.
    ‘I may be able to find a use for you, Master – de Musset?’ Of course he pronounced it