At the House of the Magician

by Mary Hooper

  He stopped close to where Isabelle and I were standing. He wore a belled cap and a spangled mask across his upper face, but I could still see his eyes, which were a pure and silvery grey.

  ‘Tom-fool!’ I breathed.

  The jester gave no indication that he’d heard me, but turned away, extending his arm towards Her Majesty. ‘How now, Mistress Queen,’ he said. ‘You have missed two very pretty maids here!’

  And Queen Elizabeth turned to look back at her petitioners, saw me and Isabelle and smilingly beckoned to us to join the train behind her …

  Chapter Seventeen

  My legs were shaking as, holding tightly to each other’s hands, Isabelle and I joined in the wake of the queen’s train as it moved forwards a short way, then stopped so that she could address someone. People in the crowd stared at us with envy and curiosity, no doubt wondering why we were there, and I began to try and work out the answer to this question myself, ready for when I was spoken to by Her Grace.

  Isabelle looked at me in wonder. ‘Why ever did the jester pick us out?’ she asked in a low voice.

  ‘That jester is Tom-fool!’ I replied.

  ‘But that’s the name of the children’s monkey.’

  ‘It is. And the monkey was named after the real fellow, the queen’s fool, whose name is actually Tomas. And it was he – remember my tale? – who discovered me in the fireplace at Dr Dee’s house.’

  ‘Yes!’ Isabelle smiled at me, delighted.

  The queen and her train moved on a few steps and then stopped again. ‘What shall I say to Her Grace?’ I whispered to Isabelle. ‘How can I begin to explain? I don’t want anyone to think that I have the Sight and condemn me for a wi—’

  ‘Don’t say that word here!’ Isabelle said swiftly. She thought for a moment. ‘You must inform Her Grace that you’ve dreamed that she’s in danger.’

  ‘And not say anything about the occurrence in the churchyard?’

  Isabelle shook her head. ‘No. I think not.’

  I began to rehearse the words in my mind. Your Grace, I’ve been having certain dreams … It sounded so insignificant! How could I convey how important I believed my message was?

  When Her Grace and her queue of followers had reached the very top of the Presence Chamber, a pair of doors were opened by two guards and we all proceeded into another room. This was smaller than the first, with many portraits and several windowed alcoves, each having a semicircle of cushioned seats. At the back of this room an ornate gilt chair was raised up on a dais, and a little to the right of this was an open door, with two guards in ornate red livery holding their halberds diagonally across the opening. Through this I could see a third chamber, seemingly smaller and more intimate than the one we now stood in.

  Without any prompting, people began forming themselves into little groups. Some of the queen’s ladies sat down on cushions and began embroidering, playing games or singing a roundel. There was a harp standing in one of the alcoves, which a lady (named for us as Kat Ashley, Her Grace’s most trusted and intimate maid of honour) began playing very sweet and low. Isabelle and I were standing beside an old couple who seemed quite as overawed to be there as we were, and I believe he was petitioning for something, because he had a parchment in his hands and was nervously rolling and unrolling it.

  Her Grace moved about the room, listening to what people had to say or introducing them to one or other of the ministers who surrounded her. I looked at these men, wondering if one of them was Robert Dudley, whom everyone spoke of as being remarkably handsome, but although each gentleman was magnificently dressed, I was not sure that one was a deal more comely than the others, for to me they all seemed quite old and venerable. A clerk brought Her Grace a pen and ink and she smilingly signed one or two documents, but other papers she shook her head at, leaving the petitioners to go away, despondent.

  I looked anxiously around the room for Tomas and, seeing him juggling a trio of coloured balls at the far end of the room, hoped very much that he would come over; that he hadn’t picked me out just to ignore me.

  Some moments went by and Her Grace left the side of two petitioners and lifted her hand for the harpist to be silent. She then approached the man in the feathered hat, who stooped so low in his formal bow to her that his nose practically swept the floor. ‘You may sing for us,’ she said when he straightened up, and he began immediately without any musical accompaniment, kneeling in front of the queen and singing to her with many flourishes and grand gestures. So out of tune was he, though, and so hackneyed the sentiments he conveyed, that it was all everyone could do not to laugh.

  Her Grace heard him out and allowed him to kiss her hand, however, then bent and whispered something in his ear which made him blush and smile. He went out backwards, bowing at each step, and I thought how kind a woman she must be to send him on his way with something approaching hope.

  It was fully ten minutes more before the queen approached us and as I saw her turn in our direction I froze, terrified that my tongue would cleave to the roof of my mouth again and I’d be unable to speak a word of sense. But it was then that that strange warmth, that odd state of consciousness, came over me, just as it had done in the churchyard, and looking towards the queen as she approached I saw her not as Gloriana, an almost-holy figure, but as a real woman, loved and revered. It was then, also, that I realised that Isabelle was not beside me, and found after that Tomas had led her off to wait in one of the window alcoves.

  Her Grace, Queen Elizabeth, moved to stand before me and I sank into a very deep curtsey. She held out a beringed hand to lift me up and, as I raised my eyes, I took in every exacting detail of her appearance. I saw a woman beyond middle age, with age lines at the eyes and mouth, wearing white ceruse on her face which very nearly hid all traces of smallpox scars. Her lips were rouged red, her hairline was high at the front to show a noble forehead, and this was hung with gold chains and a single, blazing ruby. Her hair was piled high, abundant and glossy auburn with not a trace of grey, and plaited all over with pearls.

  Tomas appeared, still wearing his eye-mask covered with spangles and with his jester’s cap pulled well down and partially covering his face, so I couldn’t discern his true appearance (and was still unable to answer for myself the question I’d asked of the girls concerning his looks).

  ‘My right royal lady queen,’ he addressed Her Grace, bowing to her from the waist and making the bell on his hat jingle.

  The queen turned to regard him. ‘Ah, ’tis our fool,’ she said, smiling at him fondly.

  Tomas dipped his head in acknowledgement. ‘By my troth, it’s certain that I’m wise enough to play the fool.’

  ‘You wished that we should meet this little maidy,’ said the queen.

  Tomas turned to look at me. ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘for I knew that if ever she came to Court she’d have something in particular to say, for it’s certain she has Your Grace’s well-being at heart.’

  I nodded fervently. ‘That’s true, Your Grace.’

  ‘Then speak, child.’

  I took a breath. ‘I’m a maid in your magician’s house …’

  ‘You work for Dr Dee?’

  I nodded. ‘I look after his children.’

  ‘Good Dr Dee!’ She smiled. ‘We are persuaded already that you speak for our benefit, for we trust no man as well as he.’

  I hesitated. ‘I may be speaking of a thing of very little consequence, Your Grace, but feel you should know of a dream which has troubled me of late.’

  But the queen seemed preoccupied and certainly didn’t seem to take stock of what I was saying. ‘As you are of the household of Dr Dee, you must know that he has today sent us a certain elixir,’ she said with some gaiety in her voice.

  ‘Today?’ I asked, startled. ‘He sent something to you today?’

  She nodded and the three of us began to walk towards the door of what I’d rightly perceived to be part of her privy apartments, the guards raising their halberds and bowing their heads as we went
through. This room was much smaller, warm and cosy, with a fire burning in the grate and russet-coloured tapestries on the walls.

  The queen went towards a carved oak box on a table. Dr Dee has one of these containing his most valuable books, but when Her Grace lifted the lid of this I saw that it held just one thing: a flask studded all over with precious blue stones: turquoise, sapphire and pale aquamarine. It was a wondrous object, but when I saw it I shivered in my very heart, because it was the flask I’d seen in the show-stone: the one I’d dreamed about.

  She lifted it up. ‘You will have seen this object before?’

  I nodded, spellbound.

  She spoke in a low and confidential voice. ‘It contains something Dr Dee has long been working on, which we are impatient to take.’ She lifted the flask in the air so that the tiny quantity of liquid in the bottom could be seen. ‘Such a small amount, but so precious …’

  My mouth went dry. ‘Save my lady!’ I heard Alice Vaizey whisper in my ear.

  ‘Your Grace,’ I said, my voice shaking, ‘before you drink, surely your taster will try it?’

  The queen’s eyes clouded over. ‘We have no elect taster now, child,’ she said, ‘since our own dear girl – sweet Alice – died.’

  ‘Alice Vaizey was your taster?’ I asked, stunned.

  ‘And now dead,’ Tomas said sadly. ‘Ah, ’twas never a merry world.’

  ‘Besides,’ the queen went on, ‘’tis such a tiny amount the good doctor has given, that if ’twas tasted there would be none left!’ She gave me a tiny smile and I dipped my head. How could I contradict her?

  ‘Fool!’ came a sudden cry from outside. ‘Come and tumble for us!’

  Tomas looked at the queen enquiringly.

  ‘Yes, go to and amuse their Lordships,’ she said, waving him off, and Tomas walked backwards out of the room, bowing all the way and turning a somersault at the door.

  I knew I must try again. ‘You say you received the flask today, Your Grace?’

  She looked at me, and nodded.

  ‘For I must tell you that Dr Dee went upriver to Greenwich yesterday and stayed the night. He was not at Mortlake this morning to send you anything.’

  But Her Grace had already taken the cork from the jewelled bottle. ‘Fie!’ she said gaily. ‘Perhaps he sent it before he went.’

  ‘But they left straight after breakfast yesterday. There was no time!’

  She raised the bottle into the air, turning it and admiring the stones as each caught the light, sparkling and flashing in turn. I don’t believe she’d registered what I’d said about Dr Dee’s absence, so rapt was she with the bottle, so anxious to drink its contents. ‘A costly trinket, this flask,’ she said. ‘And full worth the value of the liquid which it contains.’

  As she spoke I stood transfixed before her, waiting for the inevitable, counting the seconds until she drank that which I believed to be poisoned. She raised the flask to her lips. I watched the royal mouth open, saw the bottle tilt and the stones shimmer, and in my head heard Alice Vaizey scream, ‘Save my lady!’

  The words pierced my heart. So insistent was the cry, so anguished, that I could not help but leap forwards and snatch the flask away. ‘No!’ I screamed. ‘Your Grace! It was this flask that I dreamed about!’

  There was a shout from one of the guards at the door and a blur of red and gold as they rushed across the room. ‘Treason!’ one shouted, and the other pushed me so violently from behind that I crashed to the floor, knocking all the air from my body and falling on to my knees so heavily and painfully that I wondered at first if I’d shattered my knee-bones. The flask was snatched from me and I was immediately pulled to my feet again, one guard to each side.

  Terrified, I became aware that those in the outer room had gathered to stare at me in horror and – much worse – the queen herself, that beloved monarch I would have died for, was wearing the same disgusted and shocked expression. She stepped back from me, back again, and sunk on to a cushion as if her legs could no longer support her. ‘Away,’ I heard her say shakily. ‘Take her away …’

  The guards hauled me out one at each arm, dragging me behind them like a market coster dragging a sack of potatoes, and I just had time to see Tomas’s face registering incredulity, and that of Isabelle, her mouth open in a wide ‘O’ of shock. Distressed, weeping, I was bumped down two flights of stairs, hauled across a cellar and pulled in and out of dark spaces, then flung into a wet and cold room, where the door was slammed behind me. I say room, but it had none of the usual comforts of such a place: no furniture, nor window to let in the light, only a small, barred opening too high to see out of. It was, in fact, a dungeon.

  I wept for long minutes, frightened beyond words about what might happen to me. I well knew the penalty for touching the person of the queen, and though I’d committed this offence for a true and honest reason, had heard tales of citizens taken to the Tower and tortured into making confessions that weren’t true, just to have that torture cease. Moreover, I was sorely worried that Her Grace might drink some of that elixir.

  I forced myself to stop weeping and dried my face on my gown, then roused myself sufficiently to hobble to the door (for my knees were paining me) and began banging on it. ‘Let me out!’ I shouted, ‘Let me out!’ over and over again, until my knuckles felt raw and my voice changed to sobs again.

  I slumped on to the floor, momentarily defeated, then heard the skitter of a rat and got up to begin banging again. ‘There are rats!’ I screamed, but heard no reply, just my voice echoing through empty spaces. I began to pace up and down as well as I could, partly to keep myself warm, partly to try and scare off vermin by my continual movements. As I walked, I shouted, so didn’t hear the approach of anyone until a grille in the door was slid across and the red nose and grizzled grey beard of one of the palace guards appeared.

  ‘What is it? You’ll be fed when they thinks of it,’ a gruff voice said.

  ‘I don’t want food!’ I cried, for that was the last thing on my mind. ‘I must speak to someone. I must speak to the queen’s fool!’

  ‘Ho!’ the voice jeered. ‘Must you now?’

  I heard the grille scrape as he began to close it, and spoke up again quickly. ‘Please! I’ve something to give you!’

  ‘What’s that, then?’ he asked, sudden interest in his voice.

  I felt under my bodice, for I’d hidden my groat on entering the palace, knowing how such a thing would look amid all the real gold and silver that we’d see. ‘It’s this,’ I said, lifting off my keepsake. ‘Please take it to the queen’s fool – to Tomas, if you know him – to remind him that I am Her Grace’s most faithful and loving servant and will be for evermore.’ I pushed the groat through the grille as I spoke and saw him look at it with some scorn. ‘I know ’tis only a humble thing, but it stands for much. And would you please also tell Tomas this: that he must have the elixir tested by an apothecary before the queen takes it. He must!’

  ‘Eh?’ said the guard, and I wondered how much of what I’d said he had understood.

  ‘Please!’ I implored him. ‘Tomas will see that you’re rewarded!’

  This he did seem to understand, and he took the groat and closed the window without saying any more. ‘He must have the elixir tried!’ I called after, praying that he’d somehow sense the urgency of what I was saying and not just steal the groat for the paltry sum it was worth.

  I waited longer then, alternately pacing and weeping as before, and after what seemed an age heard footsteps outside and the bolt being drawn across.

  When the door opened it was Tomas who stood there, and so thankful was I to see him that it was all I could do to stop myself flinging my arms about him and hanging on his neck. ‘What is it? What’s happened?’ I asked urgently.

  He smiled at me gravely. ‘We have discovered that the flask contained hemlock.’

  I gasped.

  ‘Hemlock,’ he repeated, ‘with its pretty flowers of white lace and its power to stop the heart.’
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  ‘But the queen did not … ?’

  ‘She did not.’

  My eyes filled with tears and my relief was so great that I sagged against the wall.

  ‘She was still thinking on it, but I was against it. And when I received your token I persuaded Her Grace to try the elixir first on someone who was rather more expendable than the Queen of England.’

  ‘And was there such a person?’ I asked, rather shocked.

  ‘Not a person, but a yellow canary owned by one of the ladies-in-waiting.’

  ‘It died?’

  ‘It did. One sip and it fell down with its claws in the air.’

  ‘I knew it,’ I said, my voice shaking.

  ‘But how did you know?’

  I looked at him, suddenly embarrassed. ‘I dreamed it.’

  ‘Ah,’ he nodded.

  ‘And what did Her Grace do then – when it became clear that the flask did contain poison?’

  ‘She went exceeding pale and had to be revived from a faint.’

  I gasped again.

  ‘But – thanks be – she has the stamina and heart of a lion and recovered quickly, thanks to the ministrations of her ladies and a little oil of lavender applied to her temples.’ He smiled. ‘And thanks be to you, of course.’ He delved in a pocket, then held out my groat to me, looking at it with some amusement. ‘And here is your precious coin back again.’

  He held it up ready to tie about my neck, and as his fingers touched my skin, I shivered.

  ‘Are my hands cold?’ he asked.

  I was about to say no, but then in case he realised I was shivering for quite another reason, mumbled, ‘A little,’ and felt myself blush. To cover my confusion, I asked if they’d discovered where the elixir had really come from.

  He nodded. ‘It was delivered to Her Grace by a girl named Cicily, a new lady-in-waiting, who announced that it had been handed to her by a trusted servant of Dr Dee.’