The Queen's Fool

Summer 1554

In the middle of May, the proposed month of the queen’s wedding, as the weather grew warmer, still the scaffold was not built for Elizabeth, still Philip of Spain did not come. Then, one day, there was a sudden change at the Tower. A Norfolk squire and his blue-liveried men marched into the Tower to make it their own. Elizabeth went from door to window, in a frenzy of fear, craning her head at the arrow-slit, peering through the keyhole of the door trying to see what was happening. Finally, she sent me out to ask if he had come to oversee her execution, and she asked the guard on the door if the scaffold was being built on the green. They swore it was not, but she sent me to look. She could trust nobody, she could never be at peace until she saw with her own eyes, and she would not be allowed to see.

“Trust me,” I said briefly.

She caught my hands in her own. “Swear you won’t lie to me,” she said. “I have to know if it is to be today. I have to prepare, I am not ready.” She bit her lip, which was already chapped and sore from a hundred nips. “I’m only twenty, Hannah, I am not ready to die tomorrow.”

I nodded, and went out. The green was empty, there were no sawn planks awaiting a carpenter. She was safe for another day. I stopped at the watergate and fell into conversation with one of the blue-liveried men. The gossip he told me sent me flying back to the princess.

“You’re saved,” I said briefly, coming in through the door of her cramped room. Kat Ashley looked up and made the sign of a cross, the old habit forced out of her by her fear.

Elizabeth, who had been kneeling up at the window, looking out at the circling seagulls, turned around, her face pale, her eyelids red. “What?”

“You’re to be released to Sir Henry Bedingfield,” I said. “And to go with him to Woodstock Palace.”

There was no leap of hope in her face. “And what then?”

“House arrest,” I said.

“I am not declared innocent? I am not received at court?”

“You’re not on trial and you’re not executed,” I pointed out. “And you’re away from the Tower. There are other prisoners still left here, in a worse state.”

“They will bury me at Woodstock,” she said. “This is a trick to get me away from the city so I can be forgotten. They will poison me when I am out of sight and bury me far from court.”

“If the queen wanted you dead she could have sent for a swordsman,” I said. “This is your freedom, or at least a part-freedom. I should have thought you would be glad.”

Elizabeth’s face was dull. “D’you know what my mother did to her mother?” she asked in a whisper. “She sent her to a house in the country, and then to another – a smaller meaner place, and then to another, even worse – until the poor woman was in a damp ruin at the end of the world and she died ill, without a physician, starving, with no money to buy food, and crying for her daughter who was not allowed to come to her. Queen Katherine died in poverty and hardship while her daughter was a servant in my nursery, waiting on me. Don’t you think that daughter remembers that? Isn’t that what will happen to me? Don’t you see this is Mary’s revenge? Don’t you see the absolute precision of it?”

“You’re young,” I said. “Anything could happen.”

“You know I get ill, you know that I never sleep. You know that I have lived my life on the edge of a knife ever since they accused me of bastardy when I was just two years old. I can’t survive neglect. I can’t survive poison, I can’t survive the assassin’s knife in the night. I don’t think I can survive loneliness and fear for much longer.”

“But Lady Elizabeth,” I pleaded with her. “You said to me, every moment you have is a moment you have won. When you leave here, you have won yourself another moment.”

“When I leave here I go to a secret and shameful death,” she said flatly. She turned from the window and went to her bed and knelt before it, putting her face in her hands against the embroidered coverlet. “If they killed me here at least I should have a name as a martyred princess, I would be remembered as another greater Jane. But they do not even have the courage to send me to the scaffold. They will come at me in secret and I will die in hiding.”

I knew I could not leave the Tower without trying to see Lord Robert. He was in the same quarters, tucked opposite the tower, with his family crest carved by his father and his brother in the mantelpiece. I thought it a melancholy room for him to live in, overlooking the green where they had been executed, his death place.

His guard had been doubled. I was searched before I was allowed to his door, and for the first time I was not left alone with him. My service to Elizabeth had tainted my reputation of loyalty to the queen.

When they swung open the door he was at his desk at the window, the evening sun was streaming hot in the window. He was reading, the pages of the little book tipped to the light. He turned in his seat as the door opened and looked to see who was coming in. When he saw me he smiled, a world-weary smile. I stepped into the room and took in the difference in him. He was heavier, his face puffed up with fatigue and boredom, his skin pale from his months of imprisonment, but his dark eyes were steady and his mouth twisted upward in what had once been his merry smile.

“It is Mistress Boy,” he said. “I sent you away for your own good, child. What are you doing disobeying me by coming back?”

“I went away,” I said, coming into the room, awkwardly conscious of the guard behind me. “But the queen commanded me to bear the Lady Elizabeth company, so I have been in the Tower with you all this time, but they did not allow me to come to you.”

His dark glance flared with interest. “And is she well?” he asked, his voice deliberately neutral.

“She has been ill and very anxious,” I said. “I came to see you now because tomorrow we leave. She is to be released under house arrest to Sir Henry Bedingfield and we are to go to Woodstock Palace.”

Lord Robert rose from his seat and went to the window to look out. Only I could have guessed that his heart was hammering with hope. “Released,” he said quietly. “Why would Mary be merciful?”

I shrugged my shoulders. It was against the queen’s interest, but it was typical of her nature. “She has a tenderness for Elizabeth even now,” I volunteered. “She thinks of her still as her little sister. Not even to please her new husband can she send her sister to the scaffold.”

“Elizabeth was always lucky,” he said.

“And you, my lord?” I could not keep the love from my voice.

He turned and smiled at me. “I am more settled,” he said. “Whether I live or die is beyond my command, and I understand that now. But I have been wondering about my future. You told me once that I should die in my bed. D’you still think so?”

I glanced awkwardly at the guard. “I do,” I said. “I think that, and more. I think you will be the beloved of a queen.”

He tried to laugh but there was no joy in that little room. “Do you, Mistress Boy?”

I nodded. “And the making of a prince who will change the history of the world.”

He frowned. “Are you sure? What d’you mean?”

The guard cleared his throat. “Beg pardon,” he said, embarrassed. “Nothing in code.”

Lord Robert shook his head at the idiocy of the man but curbed his impatience. “Well,” he said, smiling at me. “It’s good to know that you think I will not follow my father out there.” He nodded at the green beyond the window. “And I am becoming reconciled to prison life. I have my books, I have my visitors, I am served well enough, I have learned to mourn my father and my brother.” He reached out to the fireplace and touched their carved crest. “I regret their treason, but I pray that they are at peace.”

There was a tap on the door behind us. “I can’t go yet!” I exclaimed, turning, but it was not another guard who stood there, it was a woman. She was a pretty brown-haired woman with a creamy lovely skin and soft brown eyes. She was dressed richly, my quick survey took in the embroidery on her gown and the slashing of velvet and silk on her sleeves. She held the ribbons of her hat casually in one hand, and a basket of fresh salad leaves in the other. She took in the scene, me with my cheeks flushed and my eyes filled with tears, my master Lord Robert smiling in his chair, and then she stepped across the room and he rose to greet her. She kissed him coolly on both cheeks, and turned to me with her hand tucked into his arm as if to say: “Who are you?”

“And who is this?” she asked. “Ah! You must be the queen’s fool.”

There was a moment before I replied. I had never before minded my title. But the way she said it gave me pause. I waited for Lord Robert to say that I was a holy fool, that I saw angels in Fleet Street, that I had been Mr. Dee’s scryer, but he said nothing.

“And you must be Lady Dudley,” I said bluntly, taking the fool’s prerogative since I had to take the name.

She nodded. “You can go,” she said quietly, and turned to her husband.

He stopped her. “I have not yet finished my business with Hannah Green.” He seated her in his chair at his desk and drew me to the other window, out of earshot.

“Hannah, I cannot take you back into my service and you are already released from your oath to love me, but I would be glad if you would remember me,” he said quietly.

“I always remember you,” I whispered.

“And put my case before the queen.”

“My lord, I do. She will hear nothing of anyone in the Tower but I will try again. I will never stop trying.”

“And if anything changes between the princess and the queen, if you should chance to meet with our friend John Dee, I should be glad to know of everything.”

I smiled at his touch on my hand, at his words that told me that he was alive and yearning for life again.

“I shall write to you,” I promised him. “I shall tell you everything that I can. I cannot be disloyal to the queen-”

“Nor now to Elizabeth either?” he suggested with a smile.

“She is a wonderful young woman,” I said. “You could not be in her service and not admire her.”

He laughed. “Child, you want to love and be loved so much that you are always on all sides at once.”

I shook my head. “Nobody could blame me. The queen’s servants all love her, and Elizabeth… She is Elizabeth.”

“I’ve known her all her life,” he said. “I taught her to jump with her first pony. She was then a most impressive child, and when she grew older, a little queen in the making.”

“Princess,” I reminded him.

“Princess,” he corrected himself. “Give her my best of wishes, my love and my loyalty. Tell her that if I could have dined with her I would have done.”

I nodded.

“She is her father’s daughter,” he said fondly. “By God, I pity Henry Bedingfield. Once she has recovered from her fright she will lead him a merry dance. He’s not the man to command Elizabeth, not even with the whole council to support him. She will outwit and outman him and he will be driven to distraction.”

“Husband?” Amy rose from her seat at the table.

“My lady?” He let go my hand and stepped back toward her.

“I would be alone with you,” she said simply.

I had a sudden rush of absolute hatred toward her and with it came a momentary vision so dark that I stepped back and hissed, like a cat will suddenly spit at a strange dog.

“What is it?” Lord Robert asked me.

“Nothing,” I said. I shook my head to dispel the picture. It was nothing: nothing I could see clearly, nothing I could tell. It was Amy thrown down, pushed clear away from Robert Dudley, and I knew it was my vision clouded by jealousy and a woman’s spite that gave me a picture of her flung away, pushed into a darkness as black as death. “Nothing,” I said again.

He looked at me quizzically but he did not challenge me. “You had better go,” he said quietly. “Do not forget me, Hannah.”

I nodded, and went to the door. The guard swung it open for me, I bowed to Lady Dudley and she gave me a brief dismissive nod. She was too anxious to be alone with her husband to care for being polite to someone who was little more than a servant.

“Good day to you, your ladyship,” I said, just to force her to speak to me.

I could not make her acknowledge me. She had turned her back to me; as far as she was concerned, I had gone.

Elizabeth’s gloom and fear did not lift until the litter came to the gateway of the Tower and she went out under the dark portcullis into the city of London. Once we were through the city I, and a handful of ladies, rode behind, and the further we went west the more the march turned into a triumphal procession. At the small villages when they heard the rattle of the horses’ bits and the clatter of the hooves, they came running out and skipped and danced along the road, the children crying to be lifted up to see the Protestant princess. At the little town of Windsor, in the very shadow of the queen’s castle, at Eton and then Wycombe, the people poured out of their houses to smile and wave at her, and Elizabeth, who could never resist an audience, had her pillows plumped up so that she could sit up to see and be seen.

They brought her gifts of food and wines and soon we were all laden with cakes and sweetmeats and posies of the roadside flowers. They cut boughs of hawthorn and may and cast them down on the road before her litter. They thrust little nosegays of primroses and daisies toward her. Sir Henry, riding up and down the little train, desperately tried to stop people crowding forward, tried to prevent the calls of love and loyalty, but it was like riding against a rising river. The people adored her, and when he sent soldiers ahead into the village to ban them from coming to their doorways, they leaned out of their windows instead, and called out her name. And Elizabeth, her copper hair brushed down over her shoulders, her pale face flushed, turned to left and right and waved her long-fingered hand and looked – as only Elizabeth could – at one and the same time like a martyr being taken to execution and like a princess rejoicing in the love of her people.

The next day, and the next, word of the princess’s progress spread ahead of us, and they were ringing the bells of the parish church in the villages as we passed through. There was many a priest whose bells pealed out for the Protestant princess who wondered what his bishop would make of it, but there were too many bell ringers to be resisted, and all that Sir Henry could do was order his soldiers to ride closer to the litter and ensure that at least no one attempted a rescue.

All this flattery was meat and drink to Elizabeth. Already her swollen fingers and ankles were returning to their normal size, her face blushed rosy, her eyes came alive, and her wit sharpened. At night she dined and slept in houses where she was welcomed as the heir to the throne, and she laughed and let them entertain her royally. In the day she woke early and was happy enough to travel. The sunshine was like wine to her and her skin soon glowed in the light. She had her hair brushed with hundreds of strokes every morning so that it flowed and crackled around her shoulders, and she wore her hat rakishly to one side with a Tudor green ribbon. Every man at arms had a smile from her, everyone who wished her well had a wave in reply. Elizabeth going through an England ablaze with early summer flowers, even on her way to prison, was in her element.

Woodstock turned out to be a crumbling old palace which had been neglected for years. They had fitted up the gatehouse for Elizabeth in a bodged job that still left draughts howling through the windows and underneath the broken floorboards. It was better than the Tower but she was still undoubtedly a prisoner. At first she was allowed access to only the four rooms of the gatehouse; but then, Elizabeth-like, she extended her parole until she could walk in the gardens, and then into the great orchard.

At first she had to request every piece of paper and pen, one at a time, but as time wore on and she made more and more demands of the harassed Sir Henry she obtained more and more liberties. She insisted on writing to the queen, she demanded the right to appeal to the queen’s council. As the weather warmed, she demanded the right to walk out beyond the grounds.

She became increasingly confident that she would not be assassinated by Sir Henry, and instead of fearing him she became utterly contemptuous of him. He, poor man, just as my lord had predicted, was worn gray and thin by the peremptory demands of the queen’s most disgraced prisoner, the heir to the throne of England.

Then, one day in early summer, a messenger came from London, with a bundle of business for Elizabeth and a letter for me. It was addressed to “Hannah Green, with Lady Elizabeth at the Tower of London,” and it was not a hand that I recognized.

Dear Hannah,

This is to tell you that your father is safely arrived in Calais. We have rented a house and a shop and he is buying and selling books and papers. My mother is keeping house for him and my sisters are working, one at a milliner’s, one for a glover and one as a housekeeper. I am working for a surgeon, which is hard work but he is a skilled man and I am learning much from him.

I am sorry that you did not come with us, and I am sorry that I spoke to you in such a way that did not convince you. You find me abrupt and perhaps demanding. You must remember that I have been the head of my family for some time now and I am accustomed to my sisters and my mother doing as they are bid. You have been the indulged daughter of two parents and are used to having your own way. Your later life gave you dangerous experiences of the world and now you are quite without a master. I understand that you will not do as I command, I understand that you do not see why I should command. It is unmaidenly; but it is the truth of you.

Let me try to be clear with you. I cannot become a cat’s-paw. I cannot do as you desire and set you up as the master of our home. I have to be man and master at my own bed and board and I cannot imagine any other way, and I believe that I should not imagine any other way. God has given me the rule of your sex. It is up to me to apply that rule with compassion and kindness and to protect you from your mistakes and from mine own. But I am ordained to be your master. I cannot hand over the mastery of our family; it is my duty and responsibility, it cannot be yours.

Let me try to make you an offer. I will be a good husband to you. You can ask my sisters – I do not have an ill-kept temper, I am not a man of moods. I have never raised my hand to any of them, I am always kind to them. I can find it in me to be kind to you, far kinder than you imagine at the moment, I think. Indeed, I want to be kind to you, Hannah.

To be brief, I regret that I released you from our betrothal and this letter is to ask you to promise yourself to me once more. I wish to marry you, Hannah.

I think about you all of the time, I want to see you, I want to touch you. When I kissed you good-bye I am afraid I was rough with you and you did not want my kiss. I did not mean to repel you. I felt anger and desire, all mixed up at that moment, and had no care what you might be feeling. I hope to God that the kiss did not frighten you. You see, Hannah, I think I am in love with you.

I tell you this because I don’t know what else to do with this hot stir of feelings in my heart and in my body. I cannot sleep and I cannot eat. I am doing everything I should do and yet I cannot settle to anything. Forgive me if this offends you, but what am I to do? Surely I should tell you? If we were married we would share this secret in the marriage bed – but I cannot even think about being wedded and bedded with you, it heats my blood even to think of you as my wife.

Please write back to me as soon as you read this and tell me what you want. I would tear this up rather than have you laugh at it. Perhaps it would be better if I did not send it. It can join the other letters that I have written to you but never sent. There are dozens of them. I cannot tell you what I feel. I cannot tell you in a letter what I want. I cannot tell you how much I feel, how much I want you.

I wish to God you would write to me. I wish to God I could make you understand the fever that I am in.

Daniel

A woman ready for love would have replied at once, a girl ready for womanhood would have at least sent some sort of reply. I read it through very carefully, and then I put it at the back of a fire and burned it, as if I would burn my desire to ashes, along with his letter. At least I had the honesty to recognize my desire. I had felt it when he had held me in the shadowy press room, it had blazed up when he had crushed me to him when we parted at the wagon. But I knew that if I replied to him, he would come to fetch me, and then I would be his wife and a woman tamed. This was a man who believed that God had ordained him to be my natural master. A woman who loved him would have to learn obedience, and I was not yet ready to be an obedient wife.

Besides, I had no time to think about Daniel, or about my future. The messenger from London had brought papers for Elizabeth as well as me. When I entered her rooms I found her wound up to breaking pitch at the prospect of her sister’s marriage, and her own disinheritance. She was stalking the room like a furious cat. She had received a cold message from the queen’s chamberlain that Philip of Spain had left his country and was sailing for his new home of England, that the court would meet him at Winchester – but Elizabeth herself was not invited. And – as if to add insult to Elizabeth’s hurt pride – she was to send me to join the queen and the court at once, on receipt of these orders. The fool was valued more than the princess. My service to Elizabeth was to be put aside, I imagined that it would be forgotten as Elizabeth was currently forgotten.

“This is to insult me,” she spat.

“It will not be the queen’s doing,” I said, soothingly. “It will just be the gathering of her court.”

“I am part of her court!”

I said nothing, diplomatically silent about the numbers of times that Elizabeth had refused to join the court, feigning ill health or demanding a delay, because she had her own reasons to stay at her home.

“She does not dare to meet Philip of Spain with me at her side!” she said crudely. “She knows he will look from the old queen to the young princess and prefer me!”

I did not correct her. No one would have looked at Elizabeth with desire at the moment, she was bloated with her illness again, and her eyes were raw and red. Only anger was keeping her on her feet.

“He is betrothed to her,” I said quietly. “It’s not a matter of desire.”

“She cannot leave me here to rot my life away! I will die here, Hannah! I have been sick near to death and there is no one to care for me, she won’t send me doctors, she is hoping I will die!”

“I am sure she will not…”

“Then why am I not summoned to court?”

I shook my head. The argument was as circular as Elizabeth’s furious pace around the room. Suddenly she stopped, put her hand to her heart.

“I am ill,” she said, her voice very low. “My heart flutters with anxiety and I have been so sick I cannot get out of bed in the morning. Really, Hannah, even when there is no one watching. I cannot endure this, I cannot go on like this. Every day I think to have the news that she has decided to have me executed. Every morning I wake thinking that the soldiers will come for me. How long can I live like this, d’you think, Hannah? I am a young woman, I am only twenty! I should be looking forward to a feast at court to celebrate my coming of age, I should have presents and gifts. I should have been betrothed by now! How can I be expected to bear such continuous fear? Nobody knows what it is like.”

I nodded. The only one who could have understood was the queen; for she too had once been the heir that everyone hated. But Elizabeth had thrown away the love of the queen and she would have trouble in finding it again.

“Sit down,” I said gently. “I will fetch you some small ale.”

“I don’t want small ale,” she said crossly, though her legs buckled beneath her. “I want my place at court. I want my freedom.”

“It will come.” I fetched a jug and a cup from the sideboard and poured her a drink. She sipped it and then looked at me.

“It’s all right for you,” she said nastily. “You’re not a prisoner. You’re not even my servant. You can come and go as you please. She wants you at her side. You will be able to see all your grand friends again when you meet them at Winchester for the wedding feast. No doubt they will have a new doublet and hose for you – the pet hermaphrodite. No doubt you will be in the queen’s train.”

“Perhaps.”

“Hannah, you can’t leave me,” she said flatly.

“Lady Elizabeth, I have to go, the queen commands me.”

“She said you were to be my companion.”

“And now she says I am to leave.”

“Hannah!” She broke off, near to tears.

Slowly, I knelt at her feet and looked up into her face. Elizabeth was always such a mixture of raging emotion and calculation that I could rarely take her measure. “My lady?”

“Hannah, I have no one here but you and Kat and that idiot Sir Henry. I am a young woman, I am at my peak of beauty and wit and I live alone, a prisoner, with no companion but a nursemaid, a fool and an idiot.”

“Then you will hardly miss the fool,” I said dryly.

I meant to make her laugh but when she looked at me her eyes were filled with tears. “I will miss the fool,” she said. “I have no one to be my friend, I have no one to talk to. I have no one to care for me.”

She rose to her feet. “Walk with me,” she commanded.

We went through the ramshackle palace and through the door which hung, half off its hinges, into the garden. She leaned on me and I felt her weakness. The grass was sprawled over the path, there were nettles thrusting up in all the ditches. Elizabeth and I made our way through the ruin of the garden like two old women, clinging to each other. For a moment I thought that her fears were true: that this imprisonment would be the death of her, even if the queen did not send for the executioner and his ax. We went through the swinging gate and into the orchard. The petals from the blossom were spilled over the grass like snow, the boughs leaned down with their creamy weight. Elizabeth looked around the orchard before she put her hand in my arm and drew me to her.

“I am ruined,” she said softly. “If she bears a son to him, I am ruined.” She turned from me and walked across the grass, her shabby black gown brushing the damp petals which clung to the hem. “A son,” she muttered, cautious even in her chagrin to keep her voice low. “A damned Spanish son. A damned Catholic Spanish son. And England an outpost of the Spanish empire, England, my England, a cat’s-paw of Spanish policy. And the priests back, and the burnings beginning, and my father’s faith and my father’s legacy torn out of English earth before it has time to flower. Damn her. Damn her to hell and her misconceived child with her.”

“Lady Elizabeth!” I exclaimed. “Don’t say that!”

She rounded on me, her hands up, her fists clenched. If I had been closer, she would have hit me. She was in such a passion she was beyond knowing what she was doing. “Damn her, and damn you too for standing her friend.”

“You must have thought it might happen,” I started. “The marriage was agreed, he would not delay for ever…”

“Why would I think that she would marry?” she snapped. “Who would have her? Old and plain, named as a bastard for half her life, half the princes of Europe have refused her already. If it was not for her damned Spanish blood, Philip would never have had her. He must have begged to be excused. He must have gone down on his knees and prayed for any fate rather than to be forced to stick it up that old dried-up virgin.”

“Elizabeth!” I exclaimed, I was genuinely shocked.

“What?” Her eyes were blazing with temper. For a moment I believed that she did not know what she was saying. “What’s wrong with telling the truth? He is a young handsome man who will inherit half of Europe, she is a woman old before her time and old enough anyway. It is disgusting to think of them rutting together like a young piglet on an old sow. It is an abomination. And if she is like her mother she will bear nothing but dead babies.”

I put my hands over my ears. “You are offensive,” I said frankly.

Elizabeth whirled on me. “And you are unfaithful!” she shouted. “You should be my friend, and stand my friend whatever else happens, whatever I say. You were begged to me as a fool, you should be mine. And I say nothing but the truth. I would be ashamed to chase after a young man like her. I would rather die than court a man young enough to be my son. I would rather die now than get to her age and be an unwanted old maid, good for nothing, pleasing to nobody, useless!”

“I am not unfaithful,” I said steadily. “And I am your companion, she did not beg me as a fool to you. I would be your friend. But I cannot listen to you cursing her like a Billingsgate fishwife.”

She let out a wail at that and dropped to the ground, her face as white as apple blossom, her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her hands clamped over her mouth.

I knelt beside her and took her hands. They were icy, she looked near to collapse. “Lady Elizabeth,” I said soothingly. “Be calm. It is a marriage which is bound to take place and there is nothing you can do about it.”

“But not even invited…” She gave a little wail.

“Is hard. But she has been merciful to you.” I paused. “Remember, he would have had you beheaded.”

“And I am to be grateful for that?”

“You could be calm. And wait.”

The face she turned up to me was suddenly glacial. “If she bears him a son then I will have nothing to wait for but a forced marriage to some Papist prince, or death.”

“You said to me that any day you could stay alive was a victory,” I reminded her.

She did not smile in reply. She shook her head. “Staying alive is not important,” she said quietly. “It never was. I was staying alive for England. Staying alive to be England’s princess. Staying alive to inherit.”

I did not correct her, the words were true for her now, though I thought I knew Elizabeth too well to see her as a woman only staying alive for her country. But I did not want to launch her into one of her passionate tantrums. “You must do that,” I said soothingly. “Stay alive for England. Wait.”

She let me go the next day though her resentment was as powerful as that of a child excluded from a treat. I did not know what upset her more: the gravity of her situation as the only Protestant princess in Roman Catholic England, or not being invited to the greatest event in Christendom since the Field of the Cloth of Gold. When she waved me away without a word and with a sulky turn of her head I thought that missing the party was probably the worst thing for her that morning.

If Sir Henry’s men had not known the road to Winchester we could have found it by following the crowds. It seemed that every man, woman and child wanted to see the queen take her husband at last, and the roads were crowded with farmers bringing their produce into the greatest market in the country, entertainers setting up their pitches all along the way, whores and mountebanks and peddlers with cures, goose girls and washerwomen, carters and riders leading strings of spare horses. Then there was all the panoply and organization of the royal court on the move: the messengers coming and going, the men in livery, the men at arms, the outriders and those galloping desperately to catch up.

Sir Henry’s men carried reports of Elizabeth for the queen’s council, so we parted at the entrance of Wolvesey Palace, the bishop’s great house where the queen was staying. I went straight to the queen’s rooms and found a crowd of people at every doorway pushing their way forward with petitions that she might grant. I slid under elbows, between shoulders, sneaking between paneled walls and bulky squires till I reached the guards on the door and stood before their crossed halberds.

“The queen’s fool,” I announced myself. One man recognized me. He and his fellow stepped forward and let me dart in behind them and open the door while they held back the weight of the crowd.

Inside the presence chamber it was scarcely less crowded but the clothes were more silks and embroidered leather, and the altercations were taking place in French and Spanish as well as English. Here were the ambitious and rising men and women of the kingdom jockeying for a place and anxious to be seen by the new king who would be creating a court which must – surely to God! – include at least some true-born Englishmen as well as the hundreds of Spaniards he had insisted on bringing over as his personal retinue.

I skirted the perimeter of the hall, overhearing the snatches of conversation, which was mostly scandalous, often speculating on what the handsome young prince would make of the old queen, and I found that my cheeks were blazing with temper and my teeth gritted by the time I got to the door of her private rooms.

The guard let me through with a nod of recognition but even inside the queen’s privy chamber there was no peace. There were more ladies and attendants, musicians, singers, escorts and general hangers-on than I had ever seen with her before. I looked around for her, still she was not there, the chair which served as her throne by the fireside was empty. Jane Dormer was in the window seat sewing, looking as determinedly unimpressed as she had been on the day I had first met her when the queen had been a sick woman, in a court of shadows with no chance of the throne.

“I have come to the queen,” I said to her with a little bow.

“You’re among many,” she said dourly.

“I’ve seen them,” I said. “Has it been like this since you came from London?”

“Every day there are more people,” she said. “They must think her soft in the head as well as the heart. If she gave her kingdom away three times over she would not be able to satisfy their demands.”

“Shall I go in?”

“She’s praying,” she said. “But she’ll want to see you.”

She rose from the window seat and I saw that she had positioned herself so that no one could enter the queen’s narrow doorway without first going past Jane. She opened the door and peeped in, then she waved me through.

The queen had been praying before an exquisite gold and mother-of-pearl icon, but now she was sitting back on her heels, her face calm and shining. She radiated joy as she knelt there, so calm and sweet in her happiness that anyone looking at her would have known her for a bride on her wedding day; a woman preparing herself for love.

When she heard the door close behind me she slowly turned her head and smiled. “Ah, Hannah! How glad I am you have come, you are just in time.”

I crossed the room and knelt before her. “God bless Your Grace on this most fortunate day.”

She put her hand on my head in blessing in that affectionate familiar gesture. “It is a fortunate day, isn’t it?”

I looked up, the glow around her was shining as brightly as sunshine. “It is, Your Grace,” I said. I had no doubt of it at all. “I can see that it is a wonderful day for you.”

“This is the start of my new life,” she said gently. “The start of my life as a married woman, as a queen with a prince at my side, with my country at peace and the greatest nation in Christendom, my mother’s home, as our ally.”

I looked up smiling, I was still on my knees before her.

“And shall I have a child?” she asked in a soft whisper. “Can you see that for me, Hannah?”

“I am sure of it,” I said in a voice as quiet as her own.

Joy leaped into her face. “From your heart or from your gift?” she asked me quickly.

“From both,” I said simply. “I am sure of it, Your Grace.”

She closed her eyes for a moment and I knew she was thanking God for my certainty and for the promise of a future for England where there would be peace and an end to religious faction.

“Now I must get ready,” she said, rising to her feet. “Ask Jane to send my maids to me, Hannah. I want to get dressed.”

I could not see much of the actual wedding service. I had a glimpse of Prince Philip as he stepped toward the blaze of gold of the altar of Winchester Cathedral but then the person standing before me, a corpulent squire from Somerset, shifted his position and blocked my view and I could only hear the soaring voices of the queen’s choristers singing the Wedding Mass and then the soft gasp as Bishop Gardiner raised the couple’s clasped hands to show that the wedding was completed and England’s virgin queen was now a married woman.

I thought I would see the prince clearly at the wedding feast but as I was hurrying on my way to the hall, I heard the rattle of the weapons of the Spanish guard and I stepped back into a window embrasure as the men at arms marched down and then came the bustle of his court after them, the prince himself at the center. And then, amid all this hustle of excitement, something happened to me. It was caused by the flurry of silks and velvets, embroidery and diamonds, the dark full richness of the Spanish court. It was caused by the scent of the pomade they wore on their hair and beards, and the perfumed pomander that every man had pinned with a golden buckle to his belt. It was the clink of the priceless inlaid breastplates of the soldiery, the tap of the beautifully forged swords against the stone of the walls. It was the rapid interchange of the language, which was like the coo in a dovecote of home to me who had been a stranger in a strange land for so very long. I smelled the Spaniards and saw them and heard them and sensed them in a way that I had never apprehended anything before, and I stumbled back, feeling for the cold wall behind me to steady me, almost fainting, overwhelmed with a homesickness and a longing for Spain that was so strong that it was almost like a gripe in my belly. I think I even cried out, and one man heard me, one man turned dark familiar eyes and looked toward me.

“What is it, lad?” he asked, seeing my golden pageboy suit.

“It’s the queen’s holy fool,” one of his men remarked in Spanish. “Some toy that she affects. A boy-girl, a hermaphrodite.”

“Good God, a wizened old maid served by no maid at all,” someone quipped, his accent Castilian. The prince said “Hush,” but absent-mindedly, as if he was not defending a new wife but reprimanding a familiar offense.

“Are you sick, child?” he asked me in Spanish.

One of his companions stepped forward and took my hand. “The prince asks are you sick?” he demanded in careful English.

I felt my hand tremble at his touch, the touch of a Spanish lord on my Spanish skin. I expected him to know me at once, to know that I understood every word he said, that my reply in Spanish was readier on my tongue than my English.

“I am not sick,” I said in English, speaking very quietly and hoping that no one would hear the vestiges of my accent. “I was startled by the prince.”

“You startled her only,” he laughed, turning to the prince and speaking in Spanish. “God grant that you may startle her mistress.”

The prince nodded, indifferent to me, as a servant beneath his notice, and walked on.

“She’s more likely to startle him,” someone remarked quietly from the back. “God save us, how are we to put our prince to bed with such an aged dame?”

“And a virgin,” someone else replied. “Not even a warm and willing widow who knows what she’s been missing. This queen will freeze our lord, he’ll wilt at her bedside.”

“And she’s so dull,” the first one persisted.

The prince heard that, he halted and looked back at his retinue. “Enough,” he said clearly, speaking in Spanish, thinking that only they would understand. “It is done. I have wedded her, and I shall bed her, and if you hear that I cannot do it you can speculate then as to the cause. In the meantime let us have peace. It is not fair dealing to the English to come into the country and insult their queen.”

“They don’t deal fair to us…” someone started.

“A country of idiots…”

“Poor and bad-tempered…”

“And grasping!”

“Enough,” he said.

I followed them down the gallery to the steps leading to the great chamber. I followed them as if drawn on a chain, I could not have parted from them if my life had depended on it. I was back with my own people, hearing them speak, even though every word they said was a slander against the only woman who had been kind to me, or against England, my second home.

It was Will Somers who caught me out of my trance. He took me by the arm as I was about to follow the Spaniards into the great hall and gave me a little shake. “How now, maid? In a dream?”

“Will,” I said and grabbed on to his sleeve as if to steady myself. “Oh, Will!”

“There,” he said, gently patting me on the back as if I were an over-wrought pageboy. “Silly little maid.”

“Will, the Spanish…”

He drew me away from the main doors and put a warm arm around my shoulder.

“Take care, little fool,” he warned me. “The very walls of Winchester have ears and you never know who you are offending.”

“They’re so…” I could not find the words. “They’re so… handsome!” I burst out.

He laughed aloud, released me and clapped his hands. “Handsome, is it? You, besotted with the senors just like Her Grace, God bless her?”

“It’s their…” I paused again. “It’s their perfume,” I said simply. “They smell so wonderful.”

“Oh little maid, it is time you were wed,” he said in mock seriousness. “If you are running after men and sniffing at their spoor like a little bitch on the hunt then one day you will make your kill and you’ll be a holy fool no longer.”

He paused for a moment, measuring me. “Ah, I had forgot. You were from Spain, weren’t you?”

I nodded. There was no point in fooling a fool.

“They make you think of your home,” he predicted. “Is that it?”

I nodded.

“Ah well,” he said. “This is a better day for you than for those Englishmen who have spent their lives hating the Spanish. You will have a Spanish master once more. For the rest of us, it’s like the end of the world.”

He drew me a little closer. “And how is the Princess Elizabeth?” he asked softly.

“Angry,” I said. “Anxious. She was ill in June, you’ll have heard that she wanted the queen’s physicians, and grieved when they did not come.”

“God keep her,” he said. “Who’d have thought that she would be there this day, and that we would be here? Who’d have thought that this day would come?”

“Tell me news in return,” I started.

“Lord Robert?”

I nodded.

“Still imprisoned, and there’s no one to speak for him at court, and no one to listen anyway.”

There was a blast of trumpets, the queen and the prince had entered the hall and taken their seats.

“Time to go,” Will said. He adopted a broad smile and exaggerated his usual gangling gait. “You will be amazed, child, I have learned to juggle.”

“Do you do it well?” I asked, trotting to keep up with him as he strode toward the great open doors. “Skillfully?”

“Very badly indeed,” he said with quiet pleasure. “Very comical.”

There was a roar as he entered the room and I fell back to let him go on.

“You’d not understand being a mere lass,” he said over his shoulder. “All women laugh very meanly.”

I had not forgotten Daniel Carpenter and his letter to me for all that I had thrown it in the fire after one reading. I might as well have folded it and kept it inside my jerkin, close to my heart, for I remembered every word that he had written, as if I reread it like a lovesick girl every night.

I found that I was thinking of him more frequently since the arrival of the Spanish court. No one could have thought badly of marriage who could see the queen; from the morning that she rose from her married bed, she glowed with a warmth that no one had ever seen in her before. There was a confident serenity about her, she looked like a woman who has found a safe haven at last. She was a woman in love, she was a beloved wife, she had a councillor she could trust, a powerful man devoted to her well being. At last, after a childhood and womanhood filled with anxiety and fear, she could rest in the arms of a man who loved her. I watched her and thought that if a woman as fiercely virginal and as intensely spiritual as the queen could find love, then so perhaps could I. It might be that marriage was not the death of a woman and the end of her true self, but the unfolding of her. It might be that a woman could be a wife without having to cut the pride and the spirit out of herself. A woman might blossom into being a wife, not be trimmed down to fit. And this made me think that Daniel might be the man that I could turn to, that I could trust, Daniel, who loved me, who told me he could not sleep for thinking of me, and whose letter I had read once and then thrust into the fire, but never forgot – indeed, I could recite it word for word.

He also came to my mind for his fears and his cautions, even though I had scoffed at them at the time. Though the Spanish court drew me in like a lodestone swings north, I knew that it was my danger and my death. To be sure, Philip in England was not as he had been in Spain. Philip in England was conciliatory, anxious to bring peace, determined not to give offense to his new kingdom and not to stir up trouble about religion. But Philip nonetheless had been brought up in a land dominated equally by the rule of his father and the demands of the Inquisition. They were Philip’s father’s laws that had burned my mother at the stake and would have burned me and my father too, if they had caught us. Daniel had been right to be cautious, I even thought he had been right to take his family and my father out of the country. I could hide behind the identity of the queen’s fool, a holy child, a companion from her days in the shadows, but anyone who did not have such a provenance could expect to be examined at some time in the future. These were early days, but there were signs that the queen’s fabled mercy – so generous to those who challenged her throne – might not extend to those who insulted her faith.

I took great care to go to Mass with the queen and her ladies every day, three times a day, and I was meticulous in those little details of observation that had betrayed so many of my kin in Spain, the turning to the altar at the right moment, the bowing of the head at the raising of the Host, the careful reciting of the prayers. It was not hard for me to do. My belief in the God of my people, the God of the desert and the burning bush, the God of exiles and the oppressed, never very fervent or very strong, was deeply hidden in my heart. I did not think He was forsworn by me performing a little nodding and amening. In truth, I thought that whatever His great purpose in making my people the most miserable outcasts of Christendom, He would forgive the bobbing of such a very unimportant head.

But the attention of the court to such matters made me grateful to Daniel for his caution. In the end, I thought I should write to him, and to my father, and send the letter by some of the many soldiers who were going to Calais to refortify the town against the French, now doubly our enemy since we had a Spanish king. The letter would take some composing: if it fell into the hands of the many spies, English, French, Spanish, Venetian, or even Swedish, it would have to pass as an innocent letter from a lass to her lover. I would have to trust him to read between the lines.

Dear Daniel,

I did not reply to you earlier because I did not know what to say, besides I have been with the princess at Woodstock and could not have got a letter to you. I am now with the queen at Winchester and we will soon go to London when I can send you this letter.

I am very glad that your business took you to Calais, and I propose to join you and my father when matters change here for me, just as we agreed. I think you judged very rightly when you should leave and I am very ready to join you in good time.

I read your letter very carefully, Daniel, and I think of you often. To answer you with honesty, I am not eager for marriage as yet, but when you speak to me as you did in your letter, and when you kissed me on parting I felt, not a moment of fear or repulsion, but a delight that I cannot name, not from an affected modesty, but because I do not know the name. You did not frighten me, Daniel, I liked your kiss. I would have you as my husband, Daniel, when I am released from court, when the time is right and we are both equally ready. I cannot help be a little apprehensive at the thought of becoming a bride, but having seen the queen’s happiness in her marriage it makes me look forward to mine. I accept your proposal that we should be betrothed but I need to see my way clear to marriage.

I do not want to turn you into a cat’s-paw in your own home, you are wrong to fear that and to reproach me with a desire I do not have. I do not want to rule over you, but I do not want you to rule over me. I need to be a woman in my own right, and not only a wife. I know that would not be the view of your mother, and maybe not even the view of my father, but, as you said, I am used to having my own way: this is the woman I have become. I have traveled far and lived according to my own means, and I seem to have adopted a lad’s pride along with breeches. I don’t want to lay aside the pride when I surrender the livery. I hope that your love for me can accommodate the woman that I will grow to be. I would not mislead you in this, Daniel, I cannot be a servant to a husband, I would have to be his friend and comrade. I write to ask you if you could have a wife like this?

I hope this does not distress you, it is so difficult to write these things, but often when we spoke of them we quarreled – so perhaps letters are a way that we may forge an agreement? And I should want to agree with you, if we are to be betrothed it would have to be on terms that we both could trust.

I enclose a letter for my father, he will tell you the rest of my news. I assure you that I am safe and happy at court and if that ever changes I will come to you as I promised. I do not forget that I went from you only to bear the princess company in the Tower. She is now released from the Tower but she is still a prisoner and to tell you the truth, I still feel that I should honor my service to the queen and to the princess and to bear either of them company as I am commanded. Should things change here, should the queen no longer need me, I will come to you. But these are my obligations. I know if I were an ordinary betrothed girl I would have no obligations but to you – but Daniel, I am not a girl like that. I want to complete my service to the queen and then, and only then, come to you. I hope you can understand this.

But I should like to be betrothed to you, if we can agree…

Hannah

I reread the letter and found that even I, the writer, was smiling at its odd mixture of coming forward and then retreating. I could wish to write more clearly, but that would only be possible if I could see more clearly. I folded it up and put it away ready to send to Daniel when the court moved to London in August.

The queen had planned a triumphant entry for her new husband; and the city, always a friend to Mary, and now released from the sight and stench of the gibbets, which had been replaced with triumphal arches, went mad to see her. A Spaniard at her side could never be a popular choice, but to see the queen in her golden gown with her happy smile and to know that at least the deed was done and the country might now settle down to some stability and peace was to please most of the great men of the city. Besides, there were advantages to a match that would open up the Spanish Netherlands to English traders which were very apparent to the rich men who wanted to increase their fortunes.

The queen and her new husband settled into the Palace of Whitehall and started to establish the routines of a joint court.

I was in her chamber early one morning, waiting for her to come to Mass when she emerged in her night gown and knelt in silence before the prie-dieu. Something in her silence told me that she was deeply moved and I knelt behind her, bowed my head, and waited. Jane Dormer came from the queen’s bedroom where she slept when the king was not with his wife and knelt down too, her head bowed. Clearly something very important had happened. After a good half hour of silent prayer, the queen still rapt on her knees, I shuffled cautiously toward Jane and leaned against her shoulder to whisper in a voice so low that it could not disturb the queen. “What’s happening?”

“She’s missed her course,” Jane said, her voice a tiny thread of sound.

“Her course?”

“Her bleeding. She could be with child.”

I felt a lurch in my own belly, like a cold hand laid on the very pit of my stomach. “Could it be so soon?”

“It only takes once,” Jane said crudely. “And God bless them, it has been more than once.”

“And she is with child?” I had foretold it, but I could hardly believe it. And I did not feel the joy I would have expected at the prospect of Mary’s dreams coming true. “Really with child?”

She heard the doubt in my voice and turned a hard gaze on me. “What is it you doubt, fool? My word? Hers? Or d’you think you know something we don’t?”

Jane Dormer only ever called me fool when she was angry with me.

“I doubt no one,” I said quickly. “Please God it is so. And no one could want it more than I.”

Jane shook her head. “No one could want it more than her,” she said, nodding toward the kneeling queen, “for she has prayed for this moment for nearly a year. Truth be told, she has prayed to carry a son for England since she was old enough to pray.”