The Girl in the Glass Tower by Elizabeth Fremantle Page B

person after their trade, it is a different story.
    Ami wonders if censorious Goodwife Stringer from next door has been gossiping about her impoverished circumstances, or worse. She called out from her stoop as Ami passed the previous day, with a load of dirty laundry, andfired off a volley of questions which Ami answered evasively. The women in the field have closed ranks on her, that much is clear. But ignoring the sideways stares and disapproving whispers, she makes an attempt to light her own fire, scrubbing in the undergrowth for kindling and dragging logs from the nearby copse. She takes a light from the big fire under the hard gaze of Dill.
    She labours on in silence, doing her best to ignore the huffs and whispers.
    Once her whites are all laid out, she goes to the bushes to answer a call of nature, coming back to find someone has flicked ash over the lot. She forces back tears of exhausted frustration as she sets to work once more, knowing that if she shows weakness it will be the end of her.
    Concealing her feelings is a lesson Ami had learned among the women at court, who could be every bit as cruel as these washerwomen. She tries not to cast her mind too far into the future, for a day at a time the work and the women are tolerable and the exertion leaves little time to worry about Hal’s continued silence; plus there is satisfaction at least in keeping her creditors at bay.

Hardwick
    ‘Please stand still,’ said Margaret, crouched on the ground, her mouth full of pins. ‘I will never get this hem straight if you keep moving.’
    ‘But I’m so cold. Could we not move closer to the hearth? I know you need the light but …’ It was the sheer size of the windows that made the rooms at Hardwick impossible to heat. I secretly longed to be back at Wingfield, where the windows were of more modest proportions. But Grandmother seemed impervious to the chill and could not hide her delight at her vast shimmering rectangles of glass, fit for a cathedral, the talk of all Derbyshire.
    We had been in the New Hall at Hardwick for three years, living in a cacophony of sound, stonecutters, carpenters, glaziers, plasterers, scaffolders, roofers, welders, all combining to ensure that from dawn to dusk there was never a moment’s peace. A permanent film of white chalky dust sat on every surface, finding its way into even the finest crevice, making our hair tacky and our eyes itch.
    Just as she was resistant to the cold, Grandmother appeared immune to the dust and noise. I always had the impression that Grandmother’s constant building – for there was not a time I could remember when she was not overseeing the construction of one great house or another – was driven by some kind of intangible, transcendent hope, as if those grand edifices would shore her up against her own demise.
    None of us understood why we had moved into the New Hall so soon, though I suspected it was because the garden walls were high, the stable block distant from the house andthe setting, perched as it was atop a high point, offered views into the distance. Anyone approaching could be seen long before they arrived.
    ‘I don’t suppose you will ever be cold at court. Remember the great hearths at Greenwich?’ Margaret’s eyes were bright in anticipation of my return to court, the reason for the new gown, and several others, being tailored for me.
    ‘How many years is it since we were there?’ I was counting back in time but there was so little to distinguish one month from another.
    ‘Nearly ten years,’ she said.
    ‘A decade!’ I felt a sudden sense that time had been stolen from me, all those years, the years of my blossoming, spent out of sight; almost twenty-six years of my life gone and nothing to show for it. But I was to return to court soon and take my place. I allowed myself to imagine the journey there; I would ride Dorcas again, at last, whom I had only seen recently at a distance, riding out with the grooms. Starkey and