One morning, as we were coming out of Mass, the queen leading the way, her ladies behind her, one of the queen’s newest maids in waiting fell into step beside me. I was watching the queen. She was walking slowly, her head drooped, her shoulders bowed as if grief were a weight that she had to carry.
“Have you heard? Have you heard?” the girl whispered to me as we turned into the queen’s presence chamber. The gallery was crowded with people who had come to see the queen, most of them to ask for clemency for people on trial for heresy.
“Heard what?” I said crossly. I pulled my sleeve from the grip of an old lady who was trying to waylay me. “Dame, I can do nothing for you.”
“It is not for me, it is my son,” she said. “My boy.”
Despite myself, I paused.
“I have money saved, he could go abroad if the queen would be so good as to send him into exile.”
“You are pleading for exile for your son?”
“Bishop Bonner has him.” She needed to say nothing more.
I pulled back from her as if she had the plague. “I am sorry,” I said. “I can do nothing.”
“If you would intercede for him? His name is Joseph Woods?”
“Dame, if I asked for mercy for him my own life would be forfeit,” I told her. “You are at risk in even speaking to me. Go home and pray for his soul.”
She looked at me as if I were a savage. “You tell a mother to pray for her son’s soul when he is innocent of anything?”
“Yes,” I said bleakly.
The maid in waiting drew me away impatiently. “The news!” she reminded me.
“Yes, what?” I turned from the uncomprehending pain on the old woman’s face, knowing that the best advice to her would be to take the money she had saved for her son’s release and buy instead a purse of gunpowder to hang around his neck so that he did not suffer for hours in the fire but blew up as soon as the flames were lit.
“The Princess Elizabeth is accused of treason!” the maid in waiting hissed at me, desperate to tell her news. “Her servants are all arrested. They’re tearing her London house apart, searching it.”
Despite the heat of the crowd, I felt myself freeze, right down to my toes in my boots. “Elizabeth? What treason?” I whispered.
“A plot to kill the queen,” the girl said in a breath of ice.
“Who else with her?”
“I don’t know! Nobody knows! Kat Ashley, for certain, perhaps all of them.”
I nodded, I knew somebody who would know. I extricated myself from the train that was following the queen into her presence chamber. She would be in there for at least two hours, listening to one claim after another, people asking her for favors, for mercy, for places, for money. At every plea she would look more weary, older by far than her forty years. But she would not miss me while I ran down the gallery to the great hall.
Will was not there, a soldier directed me to the stable yard and I found him in a loose box, playing with one of the deerhound puppies. The animal, all long legs and excitement, clambered all over him.
“Will, they’re searching the Princess Elizabeth’s London house.”
“Aye, I know,” he said, lifting his face away from the puppy, which was enthusiastically licking his neck.
“What are they looking for?”
“Doesn’t matter what they were looking for, what matters is what they found.”
“What did they find?”
“What you would expect,” he said unhelpfully.
“I expect nothing,” I snapped. “Just tell me. What did they find?”
“Letters and pamphlets and all sorts of seditious nonsense in Kat Ashley’s box. A May-day plot cooked up between her and the princess’s new Italian lute player and Dudley—” He broke off as he saw my aghast face. “Oh, not your lord. His cousin, Sir Henry.”
“Lord Robert is not under suspicion?” I demanded.
“Should he be?”
“No,” I lied instantly. “How could he do anything? And anyway, he is loyal to Queen Mary.”
“As are we all,” Will said smartly. “Even Tobias the hound, here. Well, Tobias is more loyal because he can’t say one thing and think another. He gives his love where he eats his dinner which is more than others I could mention.”
I flushed. “If you mean me, I love the queen and I always have done.”
His face softened. “I know you do. I meant her pretty little sister who has not the patience to wait her turn; but has been plotting again.”
“She’s guilty of nothing,” I said at once, my loyalty to Elizabeth as reliable as my love of the queen.
Will laughed shortly. “She’s an heir in waiting. She’d attract trouble like a tall tree attracts lightning. And so Kat Ashley and Signor the lute player are for the Tower, half a dozen of the Dudley household with them. There’s a warrant out for Sir William Pickering, her old ally. I didn’t even know he was in England. Did you?”
I said nothing, my throat tightening with fear. “No.”
“Better not to know.”
I nodded, then I felt my head nodding and nodding again, in trying to look normal I was looking ridiculous. I felt that my face was a folio of fear that anyone could read.
“What’s the matter, child?” Will’s tone was kindly. “You’re white as snow. Are you enmeshed in this, little one? Are you seeking a charge of treason to match your charge of heresy? Have you been a fool indeed?”
“No,” I said, my voice coming out harshly. “I would not plot against the queen. I have not been well this last week. I am sick. A touch of fever.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t spread,” Will said wryly.
I held to my lie of fever and took to my bed. I thought of Elizabeth who seemed to be able to summon ill health as an alibi when she needed one, and I knew the pangs of a terror which made me sweat so much that I would have passed for a sick girl indeed.
I heard the news from my roommates. Cardinal Pole headed the inquiry into the conspiracy and every day another man was arrested and taken for questioning. First Sir Henry Dudley, who had been betraying his own country to the French in return for their help. He had pockets full of French gold and the promise of a small army of mercenaries and French volunteers. From then they followed the trail to a traitor at the court of the Exchequer who had promised to steal money to pay for the army and the weapons. Under questioning he revealed that they were planning to send the queen to her husband in the Low Countries, and put Elizabeth on the throne. Then the cardinal discovered that Kat Ashley and William Pickering were old friends, and had met at the very heart of the court, Sir William had been smuggled into the country, into the Hampton Court itself.
Kat Ashley’s box in Elizabeth’s London house held the first draft of a pamphlet urging Englishmen to rise up against the Catholic queen and put the Protestant princess on the throne.
Cardinal Pole started to look around Elizabeth’s friends and acquaintances for who might have a press that would have printed such a pamphlet in secret. I thought of the sheeted press in the printer’s shop off Fleet Street and wondered how soon it would be before they came for me.
The cardinal, inspired by God, determined and intelligent, was following a trail which would take in many English Protestants, many friends and servants to Elizabeth, and would lead him inevitably to me, as to many others. Whenever one man was arrested and taken for questioning there was another man who might mention that the queen’s fool was always with the princess. That someone had told someone that the queen’s fool would run an errand or take a message, that she was known by sight to Sir William Pickering, that she was a trusted retainer of the Dudley family for all that she was said to serve the queen.
If Cardinal Pole took me to his quiet thickly curtained room and made me stand before his dark polished table and tell him of my history I knew he would pick it apart in a moment. Our flight from Spain, our arrival in England, my father’s disappearance leaving his press behind: everything pointed to our guilt
as Marranos, Jews trying to pass as Christians, and we could be burned for heresy in Smithfield as well as we could have been burned in Aragon. If he went to my father’s shop he would find texts which were forbidden and heretical. Some of them were illegal because they questioned the word of God, even suggesting that the earth moved around the sun, or that animals now lived which had not been made by God in six days at the beginning of the world. Some of them were illegal because they challenged the translation of the Word of God, saying that the apple of knowledge was an apricot. And some of them were illegal simply because they could not be understood. They dealt in mysteries, and the cardinal’s church was one that insisted on control of all the mysteries of the world.
The books in the shop would see us hanged for heresy, the printing press see us hanged for treason, and if ever the cardinal made a connection between my father’s best customers, John Dee and Robert Dudley, and me, then I would be on the scaffold for treason with the noose around my neck in a moment.
I spent three days in bed, staring at the white ceiling, shivering with fear though the sunshine was bright on the lime-washed walls and bees bumbled against the glass of the window. Then in the evening of the third day, I got up from my bed. I knew the queen would be preparing to walk into the great hall and sit before a dinner that she could not bear to eat. I got myself to her rooms as she rose from her prie-dieu.
“Hannah, are you better now?” The words were kind but her eyes were dead, she was trapped in her own world of grief. One of her ladies bent and straightened the train behind her but she did not turn her head, it was as if she did not feel it.
“I am better, but I have been much distressed by a letter which came to me this day,” I said. The strain on my white face supported my story. “My father is ill, near to death, and I would like to go to him.”
“Is he in London?”
“In Calais, Your Grace. He has a shop in Calais, and lives with my betrothed and his family.”
She nodded. “You can go to him, of course. And come back when he is well again, Hannah. You can go to the Household Exchequer and get your wages to date, you will need money.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” I felt my throat tighten at the thought of her kindness to me when I was running from her. But then I remembered the cinders which were always warm at Smithfield and the woman with the bloody hands in St. Paul’s, and I kept my eyes down, and held my peace.
She reached out to me and I knelt and kissed her fingers. For the last time, her gentle touch came on my head. “God bless you, Hannah, and keep you safe,” she said warmly, not knowing that it was her own trusted cardinal and his inquiry which was making me tremble as I knelt before her.
The queen stepped back and I rose to my feet. “Come back to me soon,” she commanded.
“As soon as I can.”
“When will you set out?” she asked.
“At dawn tomorrow,” I said.
“Then God speed and safe return,” she said with all her old sweetness. She gave me a weary little smile as she went to the double doors and they threw them open for her, and then she went out, her head high, her face drained, her eyes dark with sadness, to face the court which no longer respected her though they would bow as she walked in and eat well and drink deep at her cost.
I did not wait for dawn. As soon as I heard the court settle to their dinner, I put on my dark green livery, my new riding boots, my cape and my cap. I took my little knapsack from my box and put in it the missal the queen had once given me, and the wages I had from the Exchequer, in their little purse. I owned nothing else, not even after three years of service at court — I had not lined my pockets as I could have done.
I crept down the side stairs and hesitated at the entrance to the great hall. I could hear the familiar sound of the household at dinner, the buzz of conversation and the occasional shout of laughter, the higher voices of the women seated at the far end of the hall, the scrape of knife on trencher, the clink of bottle on cup. They were the sounds of my life for the past three years, I could not believe that this was no longer my home, my haven. I could not believe that this was increasingly the most dangerous place for me to be.
I closed my eyes for a moment, longing for the gift of Sight, that I might know what I should do for my own safety. But it was not the Sight that decided me, it was my oldest fear. Someone had burned something in the kitchen and the scent of scorched meat suddenly blew into the hall with a running servant. For a moment I was not at the queen’s dinner hall, smelling roasted meat, I was in the town square of Aragon, and the scent of a burning woman was making the air stink as she screamed in horror at the sight of her own blackening legs.
I turned on my heel and dashed out of the door, careless of who saw me. I headed for the river, as my quickest and least noticeable route into the city. I went down to the landing stage and waited for a boat to come by.
I had forgotten the fears of Mary’s court, now that the Spanish were openly hated and Mary had lost the love of her people. There were four soldiers on the landing stage and another dozen of them on guard along the riverbank. I had to smile and pretend I was sneaking out for a secret meeting with a lover.
“But what’s your fancy?” one of the young soldiers jeered. “Dressed like a boy but a voice like a maid? How d’you choose, my pet? What sort of a thing d’you like?”
I was spared having to find an answer by a boat swinging across the current and bringing a group of London citizens to court.
“Are we too late? Is she still dining?” a fat woman at the front of the boat demanded as they helped her on to the landing stage.
“She’s still dining,” I said.
“Under the canopy of state and all?” she specified.
“As she should be,” I confirmed.
She smiled with satisfaction. “I’ve never seen it before, though I’ve often promised myself the pleasure of seeing her,” she said. “Do we just walk in?”
“There is the entrance to the great hall,” I directed her. “There are soldiers on the door but they will let you and your family pass. May I take your boat? I want to go to the city.”
She waved the boatman away. “But come back for us,” she said to him.
I stepped into the rocking boat and waited till we were out of earshot before directing him to the steps at The Fleet. I did not want the court guards to know where I was going.
Once again I came down the road to our shop at a reluctant dawdle. I wanted to see that the place was untouched before I approached it. Suddenly, I came to an abrupt standstill. To my horror, as I turned the corner I could see that it had been broken and entered. The door was thrown wide open, the dark entrance was lit with a flickering light as two men, three men moved about inside. Outside waited a great wagon with two horses. The men were taking away great barrels of goods, I recognized the packed manuscripts that we had stored away when my father left, and I knew they would be evidence enough to hang me twice over.
I shrank back into a dark doorway and pulled my cap down low over my face. If they had found the barrels of manuscripts then they would also have found the boxes of forbidden books. We would be named as purveyors of heresy. There would be a price on our heads. I had better turn and head back for the river and get myself on a ship to Calais as soon as I could, for my father and I were baked meats if we were found in London.
I was just about to slide backward into the alley when one of the shadows inside the shop came out with a big box and loaded it into the back of the wagon. I paused, waiting for him to go back into the shop and leave the street clear for me to make my escape when something about him made me pause. Something about the profile was familiar, the scholar’s bend of the shoulders, the thinness of his frame below his worn cape.
I felt my heart thud with hope and fear but I did not step out until I was sure. Then the two other men came out, carrying a well-wrapped piece of the printing press. The man in front was our next-door neighbor, and the man carrying the other end was my
betrothed, Daniel. At once I realized that they were packing up the shop and we were not yet discovered.
“Father! My father!” I cried out softly, and sprang from the dark doorway into the shadowy street.
His head jerked up at the sound of my voice and his arms opened wide. I was in his embrace in a moment, feeling his warm strong arms wrapped around me, hugging me as if he would never let me go again.
“Hannah, my daughter, my girl,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Hannah, my daughter, mi querida!”
I looked up into his face, worn and older than I remembered, and saw him too tracing my features. We both spoke at once:
“I got your letter, are you in danger?”
“Father, are you well? I am so glad…”
We laughed. “Tell me first,” he said. “Are you in danger? We have come for you.”
I shook my head. “Thank God,” I said. “They arrested me for heresy, but I was released.”
At my words, he glanced quickly around. I thought anyone in England would have known him for a Jew now, that furtive ever-guilty glance of the People with no home and no welcome among strangers.
Daniel crossed the cobbled street, strode over the drain and came to an abrupt halt before us.
“Hannah,” he said awkwardly.
I did not know what to reply. The last time we had met I had freed him from his betrothal to me with a burst of venom, and he had kissed me as if he wanted to bite me. Then he had written the most passionate letter imaginable and we were engaged to marry once more. I had summoned him to save me, by rights he should have something more from me than a downturned face and a mumbled: “Hello, Daniel.”
“Hello,” he said, equally inadequate.
“Let’s go into the shop,” my father said, casting another cautious glance up and down the street. He led me over the threshold and shut the door behind us. “We were packing up here and then Daniel was going to fetch you. Why are you here?”
The Queen's Fool Page 39
