The Queen's Fool

by Philippa Gregory

  “And Robert Dudley?” I asked in as small a voice as I could make.

  She looked around and saw me, seated on the steps before her throne, her greyhound beside me. “Oh are you there, little fool?” she said gently. “Yes, your old master shall be tried for treason but held, not executed, until it is safe to release him. Does that content you?”

  “Whatever Your Grace wishes,” I said obediently, but my heart leaped at the thought of his survival.

  “It won’t content those who want your safety,” Jane Dormer pointed out bluntly. “How can you live in peace when those who would have destroyed you are still walking on this earth? How will you make them stop their plotting? D’you think they would have pardoned and released you if they had won?”

  The Lady Mary smiled and put her hand over the hand of her best friend. “Jane, this throne was given to me by God. No one thought that I would survive Kenninghall, no one thought that I would ride out of Framlingham without a shot being fired. And yet I rode into London with the blessing of the people. God has sent me to be queen. I shall show His mercy whenever I can. Even to those who know it not.”

  I sent a note to my father that I would come on Michaelmas Day, and I collected my wages and walked through the darkening streets to him. I strode out without fear in new good-fitting boots and with a little sword at my side. I wore the livery of a beloved queen, no one would molest me, and if they did, thanks to Will Somers, I could defend myself.

  The door of the bookshop was closed, candlelight showing through the shutters, the street secure and quiet. I tapped on the door and he opened it cautiously. It was Friday night and the Sabbath candle was hidden under a pitcher beneath the counter, burning its holy light into the darkness.

  He was pale as I came into the room and I knew, with the quick understanding of a fellow refugee, that the knock on the door had startled him. Even when he was expecting me, even when there was no cause to fear, his heart missed a beat at the knock in the night. I knew this for him, because it was true for me.

  “Father, it is only me,” I said gently and I knelt before him, and he blessed me and raised me up.

  “So, you are in service to the royal court again,” he said, smiling. “How your fortunes do rise, my daughter.”

  “She is a wonderful woman,” I said. “So it is no thanks to me that my fortunes have risen. I would have escaped her service at the beginning if I could have done, and yet now I would rather serve her than anyone else in the land.”

  “Rather than Lord Robert?”

  I glanced toward the closed door. “There is no serving him,” I said. “Only the Tower guards can serve him and I pray that they do it well.”

  My father shook his head. “I remember him coming here that day, a man you would think who would command half the world, and now…”

  “She won’t execute him,” I said. “She will be merciful to all now that the duke himself is dead.”

  My father nodded. “Dangerous times,” he said. “Mr. Dee remarked the other day that dangerous times are a crucible for change.”

  “You have seen him?”

  My father nodded. “He came to see if I had the last pages of a manuscript in his possession, or if I could find another copy for him. It is a most troubling loss. He bought the book and it is a prescription for an alchemical process, but the last three pages are missing.”

  I smiled. “Was it a recipe for gold? And somehow incomplete?”

  My father smiled back. It was a family joke that we could live like Spanish grandees on the proceeds of the alchemist books that promised to deliver the recipe for the philosopher’s stone: the instructions to change base metal into gold, the elixir of eternal life. My father had dozens of books on the subject and when I was young I had begged him to show me them, so that we might create the stone and become rich. But he had showed me a dazzling collection of mysteries, pictures and poems and spells and prayers, and in the end, no man any the wiser or the richer. Many men, brilliant men, had bought book after book trying to translate the riddles that were traditionally used to hide the secret of alchemy, and none of them had ever come back to us to say that they had found the secret and now would live forever.

  “If any man ever finds it, and can make gold, it will be John Dee,” my father said. “He is a most profound student and thinker.”

  “I know that,” I said, thinking of the afternoons when I had sat on his high stool and read passage after passage of Greek or Latin while he translated as swiftly as I spoke, surrounded by the tools of his craft. “But do you think he can see into the future?”

  “Hannah, this man can see around corners! He has created a machine that can see over buildings or around them. He can predict the course of the stars, he can measure and predict the movements of the tides, he is creating a map of the country that a man can use to navigate the whole coastline.”

  “Yes, I have seen that,” I concurred, thinking that I last saw it on the desk of the queen’s enemies. “He should have a care who uses his work.”

  “His work is pure study,” my father said firmly. “He cannot be blamed for the use that men make of his inventions. This is a great man, the death of his patron means nothing. He will be remembered long after the duke and all of his family are forgotten.”

  “Not Lord Robert,” I stipulated.

  “Even him,” my father asserted. “I tell you, child, I have never met a man who could read and understand words, tables, mechanical diagrams, even codes, more quickly than this John Dee. Oh! And I nearly forgot. He has ordered some books to be delivered to Lord Robert in the Tower.”

  “Has he?” I said, my attention suddenly sharpened. “Shall I take them to Lord Robert for him?”

  “As soon as they arrive,” my father said gently. “And, Hannah, if you see Lord Robert…”

  “Yes?”

  “Querida, you must ask him to release you from your service to him and bid him farewell. He is a traitor sentenced to death. It is time that you said farewell.”

  I would have argued but my father raised his hand. “I command it, daughter,” he insisted. “We live in this country as toads beneath the ploughshare. We cannot increase the risk to our lives. You have to bid him farewell. He is a named traitor. We cannot be associated with him.”

  I bowed my head.

  “Daniel wishes it too.”

  My head came up at that. “Why, whatever would he know about it?”

  My father smiled. “He is not an ignorant boy, Hannah.”

  “He is not at court. He does not know the way of that world.”

  “He is going to be a very great physician,” my father said gently. “Many nights he comes here and reads the books on herbs and medicines. He is studying the Greek texts on health and illness. You should not think that just because he is not a Spaniard, he is ignorant.”

  “But he can know nothing of the skills of the Moorish doctors,” I said. “And you yourself told me that they were the wisest in the world. That they had learned all the Greeks had to teach and gone further.”

  “Yes,” my father conceded. “But he is a thoughtful young man, and a hard worker, and he has a gift for study. He comes here twice a week to read. And he always asks for you.”

  “Does he?”

  My father nodded. “He calls you his princess,” he said.

  I was so surprised for a moment that I could not speak. “His princess?”

  “Yes,” my father said, smiling at my incomprehension. “He speaks like a young man in love. He comes to see me and he asks me, “How is my Princess?” — and he means you, Hannah.”

  The coronation of my mistress, Lady Mary, was set for the first day of October and the whole court, the whole city of London, and the whole country had spent much of the summer preparing for the celebration which would bring Henry’s daughter to his throne at last. There were faces missing from the crowds that lined the London streets. Devoted Protestants, mistrusting the queen’s sincere promise of tolerance, had already frighten
ed themselves into exile, and fled overseas. They found a friendly reception in France; the traditional enemy of England was arming against England again. There were faces missing from the queen’s council; the queen’s father would have wondered where some of his favorites were now. Some were ashamed of their past treatment of her, some Protestants would not serve her, and some had the grace to stay home in their converted abbeys. But the rest of the court, city and country turned out in their thousands to greet the new queen, the queen whose rights they had defended against other, Protestant claimants, the Catholic queen whose enthusiastic faith they knew, and that, nonetheless, they preferred to all others.

  It was a fairy-tale coronation, the first I had ever seen. It was a spectacle like something out of one of my father’s storybooks. A princess in a golden chariot, wearing blue velvet trimmed with white ermine, riding through the streets of her city, which were hung with tapestries, past fountains running with wine so that the very air was heady with the warm scent of it, past crowds who screamed with delight at the sight of their princess, their virgin queen, and pausing by groups of children who sang hymns in praise of the woman who had fought to be queen and was bringing the old religion back home again.

  In the second carriage was the Protestant princess, but the cheers for her were nothing compared to the roar that greeted the diminutive queen every time her chariot rounded a corner. With Princess Elizabeth rode Henry’s neglected queen, Anne of Cleves, fatter than ever, with a ready smile for the crowd, the knowing gleam, I thought, of one survivor to another. And behind that chariot came forty-six ladies of the court and country, on foot and dressed in their best, and flagging a little by the time we had processed from Whitehall to the Tower.

  Behind them, in the procession of officers of the court, came all the minor gentry and officials, me amongst them. Ever since I had come to England I had known myself to be a stranger, a refugee from a terror that I had to pretend I did not fear. But when I walked in the queen’s coronation procession with Will Somers, the witty fool, beside me, and my yellow cap on my head and my fool’s bell on a stick in my hand, I had a sense of coming into my own. I was the queen’s fool, my destiny had led me to be there with her from the first moment of her betrayal, through her flight and to her courageous proclamation. She had earned her throne and I had earned my place at her side.

  I did not care that I was named as a fool. I was the holy fool, known to have the Sight, known to have predicted this day when the queen would come to her own. Some even crossed themselves as I went by, acknowledging the power that was vested in me. So I marched with my head up and I did not fear that all those eyes upon me would see my olive skin and my dark hair and name me for a Spaniard or worse. I thought myself an Englishwoman that day, and a loyal Englishwoman at that, with a proven love for my queen and for my adopted country; and I was glad to be one.

  We slept that night in the Tower and the next day Lady Mary was crowned Queen of England, with her sister Elizabeth carrying her train, and the first to kneel to her and to swear allegiance. I could hardly see the two of them, I was crammed at the back of the Abbey, peering around a gentleman of the court, and in any case, my sight was blinded with tears at the knowledge that my Lady Mary had come to her throne, her sister beside her, and her lifelong battle for recognition and justice was over at last. God (whatever His name might be) had finally blessed her; she had won.

  However united the queen and her sister had appeared when Elizabeth had kneeled before her, the Lady Elizabeth continued to carry her brother’s prayer book on a little chain at her waist, was never seen except in the soberest of gowns, and rarely appeared at Mass. She could not have shown the world more plainly that she was the Protestant alternative to the queen to whom she had just sworn lifelong loyalty. As ever, with Elizabeth, there was nothing that the queen could specifically criticize, it was the very air of her: the way she always set herself slightly apart, the way she always seemed to carry herself as if she, regretfully, could not wholly agree.

  After several days of this the queen sent a brisk message to Elizabeth that she was expected to attend Mass, with the rest of the court, in the morning. A reply came as we were preparing to leave the queen’s presence chamber. The queen, putting out her hand for her missal, turned her head to see one of Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting standing in the doorway with a message from Lady Elizabeth.

  “She begs to be excused today, and says she is not well.”

  “Why, what is the matter with her?” the queen asked a little sharply. “She was well enough yesterday.”

  “She is sick in her stomach, she is in much pain,” the lady replied. “Her lady in waiting, Mrs. Ashley, says she is not well enough to go to Mass.”

  “Tell Lady Elizabeth that I expect her at my chapel this morning, without fail,” the Lady Mary said calmly as she turned back to her lady in waiting and took her missal; but I saw her hands shaking as she turned the pages to find the place.

  We were on the threshold of the Lady Mary’s apartments, the guard just about to fling open the door so that we could walk along the gallery filled with well-wishers, spectators and petitioners, when one of Elizabeth’s other ladies slipped in through a side door.

  “Your Grace,” she whispered, poised with a message.

  The queen did not even turn her head. “Tell Lady Elizabeth that I expect to see her at Mass,” she said and nodded to the guard. He flung open the door and we heard the little gasp of awe that greeted the queen wherever she went. The people dropped into curtseys and bows and she went through them, her cheeks blazing with two spots of red which meant that she was angry, and the hand which held her coral rosary beads trembling.

  Lady Elizabeth came late into Mass, we heard her sigh as she crept through the crowded gallery, almost doubled-up with discomfort. There was a mutter of concern for the young girl, crippled with pain. She slipped into the pew behind the queen and we heard her loud whisper to one of her ladies: “Martha, if I faint, can you hold me up?”

  The queen’s attention was on the priest who celebrated the Mass with his back to her, his entire attention focused on the bread and wine before him. To Mary, as to the priest, it was the only moment of the day that had any true significance; all the rest was worldly show. Of course, the rest of us sinners could hardly wait for the worldly show to recommence.

  Lady Elizabeth left the church in the queen’s train, holding her belly and groaning. She could hardly walk, her face was as deathly white as if she had powdered it with rice powder. The queen stalked ahead, her expression grim. When she reached her apartments she ordered the doors shut on the public gallery to close out the murmurs of concern at Lady Elizabeth’s pallor and her enfeebled progress and the cruelty of the queen insisting on such an invalid attending Mass when she was so very ill.

  “That poor girl should be abed,” one woman said clearly to the closing door.

  “Indeed,” the queen said to herself.

  Winter 1553

  It was as dark as midnight, though it was still only six in the evening, the mist peeling like a black shroud off the corpse of the cold river. The smell in my nostrils was the scent of despair from the massive wet weeping walls of the Tower of London, surely the most gloomy palace that any monarch ever built. I presented myself to the postern gate and the guard held up a flaming torch to see my white face.

  “A young lad,” he concluded.

  “I’ve got books to deliver to Lord Robert,” I said.

  He withdrew the torch and the darkness flooded over me, then the creak of the hinges warned me that he was opening the gate outward and I stepped back to let the big wet timbers swing open, and then I stepped forward to go in.

  “Let me see them,” he said.

  I proffered the books readily enough. They were works of theology defending the Papist point of view, licensed by the Vatican and authorized by the queen’s own council.

  “Go through,” the guard said.

  I walked on the slippery cobblestones to t
he guardhouse, and from there along a causeway, the rank mud shining in the moonlight on either side, and then up a flight of wooden steps to the high doorway in the fortress wall of the white tower. If there was an attack or a rescue attempt, the soldiers inside could just kick the outside steps away, and they were unreachable. No one could get my lord out.

  Another soldier was waiting in the doorway. He led me inside and then rapped at an inner door and swung it open to admit me.

  At last I saw him, my Lord Robert, leaning over his papers, a candle at his elbow, the golden light shining on his dark head, on his pale skin, and then the slow-dawning radiance of his smile.

  “Mistress Boy! Oh! My Mistress Boy!”

  I dropped to one knee. “My lord!” was all I could say before I burst into tears.

  He laughed, pulled me to my feet, put his arm around my shoulders, wiped my face, all in one dizzying caress. “Come now, child, come now. What’s wrong?”

  “It’s you!” I gulped. “You being here. And you look so…” I could not bear to say “pale,” “ill,” “tired,” “defeated,” but all those words were true. “Imprisoned,” I found at last. “And your lovely clothes! And… and what’s going to happen now?”

  He laughed as if none of it mattered, and led me over to the fire, seated himself on a chair and pulled up a stool so that I was facing him, like a favorite nephew. Timidly, I reached forward and put my hands on his knees. I wanted to touch him to be sure that he was real. I had dreamed of him so often, and now he was here before me; unchanged but for the deep lines scored on his face by defeat and disappointment.

  “Lord Robert…” I whispered.

  He met my gaze. “Yes, little one,” he said softly. “It was a great gamble and we lost, and the price we will pay is a heavy one. But you’re not a child; you know that it’s not an easy world. I will pay the price when I have to.”