The Queen's Fool

Winter 1554-1555

We waited, Christmas came and went and there was no joy for me either as I was ordered to stay with Elizabeth until she begged for forgiveness. It was freezing cold at Woodstock, there was not a window that did not direct a draft into the room, there was not a fire that did not smoke. The linen on the beds was always damp, the very floorboards underfoot were wet to the touch. It was a malevolent house in winter. I had been in good health when I arrived, and yet even I could feel myself growing weak from the relentless cold and the darkness, late dawns and early twilights. For Elizabeth, already exhausted by her ordeal in the Tower, always quick to go from anxiety to illness, the house was a killer.

She was too ill to take any pleasure in the festivities, and they were scanty and mean. She was too weak to do more than look out of the window at the mummers who came to the door. She raised her hand to wave at them, Elizabeth would never fail an audience, but after they had gone she sank back on the daybed and lay still. Kat Ashley threw another log on the fire and it hissed as the frost in the grain of the wood started to melt and it smoked most miserably.

I wrote to my father to wish him a merry Christmastide and to tell him that I missed him and hoped to see him soon. I enclosed a note for Daniel in which I sent him my best wishes. A few weeks later, in the cold snows of January when the drafty palace of Woodstock was a nightmare of coldness and darkness from gray dawn to early dusk, I had a letter from each of them. My father’s was brief and affectionate, saying that business was good in Calais, and would I please go to check on the shop in London when I was next in the city. Then I opened my letter from Daniel.

Dear wife-to-be,

I am writing to you from the city of Padua to wish you the compliments of the season and hope that this finds you well, as it leaves me. Your father and my family are in good health at Calais and looking for you every day as we hear that matters are quite settled in England now with the queen with child and Lady Elizabeth to leave England and live with Queen Mary of Hungary. When she leaves England I trust you will come to Calais where my mother and sisters await you.

I am here to study at the great university of medicine. My master suggested that I should come here to learn the art of surgery, at which the Italians and especially the Padua university has excelled, also the pharmacopeia. I will not trouble you with my studies – but Hannah! These men are unfolding the very secrets of life, they are tracing the flow of the humors around the body and in Venice, which is nearby, they see how the tides and the rivers flow around the body of the world also. I cannot tell you what it is like to be here and to feel that every day we are coming a little closer to understanding everything – from the rise and fall of the tides to the beat of the heart, from the distillation of an essence to the ingredients of the philosopher’s stone.

You will be surprised to hear that I came upon John Dee in Venice last month when I was listening to a lecture by a very learned friar who is skilled in the use of poisons to kill the disease and yet save the patient. Mr. Dee is much respected here for his reputation for learning. He lectured on Euclid and I attended, though I did not understand more than one word in ten. But I think the better of him now that I have seen him in this company with these men who are forging a new sense of the world and one which will transform what we know about everything – from the smallest grain to the greatest planet. He has a most brilliant mind, I understand much better why you think so highly of him.

I was glad to get your letter and to know that you think that you will finish your service with the princess soon, I trust then you will ask the queen to release you. I am considering now whether we could live away from England for some years. Hannah, my love, Venice is such an exciting city to be in, and the weather so bright and fine, and the men and women so prosperous and the doctors so learned – you cannot blame me for wanting to stay here and for wanting you to share it with me. It is a city of tremendous wealth and beauty, there are no roads at all but canals and the lagoon everywhere, and everyone takes a boat to their doorstep. The study and the scholars here are quite extraordinary and anything can be asked and answered.

I keep your first letter in my doublet against my heart. Now I put your Christmas note beside it and wish you had written more. I think of you daily and dream of you every night.

This is a new world that we are making, with new understandings of the movements of the planets and of the tides. Of course it must be possible that a man and a wife could be married in a new way also. I do not want you as my servant, I want you as my love. I assure you that you shall have the freedom to be your own sweet self. Write to me again and tell me you will come to me soon. I am yours in thought and word and deed and even these studies of mine which fill me with such hope and excitement would mean nothing if I did not think that one day I could share them with you.

Daniel

Daniel’s second letter promising love to me went the way of the first, into the fire; but not until I had read it half a dozen times. It had to be destroyed, it was filled with heretical notions that would have trapped me into an inquiry if it had been read by anyone else. But I burned this second letter with regret. I thought that in it I heard the true voice of a young man growing into wisdom, of a betrothed man planning his marriage, of a passionate man looking toward his life with a woman of his choice, of a man I could trust.

It was a long and cold winter and Elizabeth grew no better. The news from the court that the queen was healthy and growing stout did not make her half sister any merrier as she lay, wrapped in furs, her nose red from cold, looking out of a window of cracked glass over a garden blasted by icy winds and neglect.

We heard that the parliament had restored the Roman Catholic religion and the members had wept for joy to be received once more into the body of the church. There had been a service of thanksgiving that they should once again receive the papal rule that they had once thrown off. On that day Elizabeth looked very bleak as she saw her father’s inheritance and her brother’s greatest pride thrown away in her sister’s victory. From that day on, Elizabeth observed the Mass three times a day with her head obediently bowed. There was no more sliding away from observance. The stakes had gone up.

As the light grew brighter in the morning and the snow melted and drained away into standing puddles of cold water Elizabeth grew a little stronger and started to walk in the garden once more, me running alongside her in my thin-soled riding boots, wrapped against the cold in a blanket, blowing on my icy hands, complaining of the icy wind.

“It would be colder in Hungary,” she said shortly.

I did not remark that everyone seemed to know the queen’s private plans for her. “You would be an honored guest in Hungary,” I replied. “There would be a warm fire to come back to.”

“There is only one fire the queen would build for me,” Elizabeth said grimly. “And if I once went to Hungary you would see it would become such a home for me that I would never be allowed to see England again. I won’t go. I won’t ever leave England. You can tell her that, when she asks you. I will never leave England willingly, and English men and women will never let me be bundled away as a prisoner. I am not without friends even though I am without a sister.”

I nodded and kept diplomatically silent.

“But if not Hungary, which she has never yet had the courage to propose to me direct, then what?” she asked aloud. “And God – when?”