The Queen's Fool

Spring 1558

I waited for news from court, but I could hear nothing except common gossip. The baby which was due in March was late, and by April people were starting to say that the queen had made a mistake again, and there was no child. I found myself on my knees in the Philipses’ little chapel every morning and evening, praying before a statue of Our Lady that the queen might be with child and that she might be, even now, in childbirth. I could not imagine how she would be able to bear it if she were to be once more disappointed. I knew her for a courageous woman, no woman braver in the world, but to come out of the confinement chamber for the second time and tell the world that once again it had been a ten-month mistake and there was no baby – I could not see how any woman could bear the humiliation of it, least of all the Queen of England with every eye in Europe on her.

The gossip about her was all malice. People said that she had pretended to be pregnant on purpose to try to bring her husband home, people said that she had plans to smuggle in a secret baby and pass him off as a Roman Catholic prince for England. I did not even defend her against the spiteful whispers that I heard every day. I knew her, as none of them did, and I knew that she was utterly incapable of lying to her husband, or lying to her people. She was utterly determined to do right by her God, and that would always come first for her. The queen adored Philip and would have done almost anything in the world to have him by her side. But she would never have sinned for him nor for any man. She would never deny her God.

But as the weather warmed, and the baby did not come, I thought that her God must be a harsh deity indeed if he could take the prayers and the suffering of such a queen and not give her a child to love.

Mistress Boy,

The queen is to come out of her confinement soon, and I need you here to advise me. You may bring me my blue velvet missal which I left in the chapel at my seat and come at once.

Robt.

I went to the chapel, with Danny walking before me. I had to stoop low so that he could hold my fingers with both his hands, and walk with my support. My back ached by the time we got to the chapel and I sat in Robert’s chair and let Danny make his way down one of the pews, steadying himself on the seat. I would never have believed that I would have stooped till my back ached for the amusement of a small boy, and yet when I had the missal and we walked back to our chamber I bent low again to let Danny hold on to my fingers. I prayed in silence that perhaps even now, the queen might have a son and might know joy like this, such a strange, unexpected joy – the happiness of caring for a child whose whole life was in my hands.

He was not an ordinary child. Even I, who knew so little about children, could tell that. Like a house with shuttered windows the child had shielded himself, and in closing doors and windows, had shut himself away from the life of the world outside. I felt that I was standing outside, calling for a response that might never come. But I was determined to go on calling to him.

The court was at Richmond and the moment I arrived I knew that something had happened. There was an air of suppressed excitement in the stables, everyone was gossiping in corners and there was no one to take our horses, not even the Dudley grooms.

I threw the reins to the nearest young man, and with Danny on my hip strode up the flagged path to the garden entrance of the palace. There were more people whispering in groups and I felt a clutch of fear at my heart. What if one of Elizabeth’s many plots had brought a rebellion right here to the heart of a royal palace and she had the queen under arrest? Or what if the queen had gone into labor with this late-conceived baby, and it had been the death of her as so many people had warned her that it would be?

I did not dare to ask a stranger, for fear of the reply I might get, so I pushed on, walking faster and faster, through the entrance to the inner hall, looking for a friendly face. Looking for someone to ask, someone that I could trust. At the back of the hall was Will Somers, sitting all alone, very isolated from the other whispering groups of people. I went up to him and touched him gently on the shoulder.

His dull gaze went first to Danny and then to me. He did not recognize me. “Mistress, I can do nothing for you,” he said shortly, and turned his head away. “I have no spirits for jests today, I could only manage the lowest of humor, for I am very low myself.”

“Will, it’s me.”

At my voice he paused and looked at me more closely. “Hannah? Hannah the Fool? Hannah, the Invisible Fool?”

I nodded at the implied reproach. “Will, what has happened?”

He did not remark on my clothes, on my child, on anything. “It’s the queen,” he said.

“Oh, Will, she’s not dead?”

He shook his head. “Not yet. But it can only be a matter of time.”

“The baby?” I asked with a swift sure painful knowledge.

“It’s happened again,” he said. “There was no baby. Again. And again she is the laughingstock of Europe and the mistress of her own humiliation.”

Without thinking I stretched out my hands to him for comfort and he gripped them tightly.

“Is she ill?” I whispered after a moment.

“Her women say that she will not rise up from the floor,” he said. “She sits, hunched on the floorboards, more like a beggar woman than a queen. I don’t know how it can have happened, Hannah. I don’t know how it can have come about. When I think of her as a child, so bright and bonny, when I think of the care her mother gave her, and her father adoring her and calling her his own, his best Princess of Wales, and now this miserable ending… what will happen next?”

“Why? What will happen next?” I repeated, aghast.

He hunched a shoulder and gave me a crooked sad smile. “Nothing much here,” he said dismissively. “It’s at Hatfield that it will all happen. There is the heir, clearly, we can’t make one here. We’ve had two tries at an heir here and all we get is wind. Not the right sort of air at all. But at Hatfield – why, there is half her court already, and the rest rushing to join them. She’ll have her speech ready, I don’t doubt. She’ll be all prepared for the day when they tell her that the queen is dead and she is the new queen. She’ll have it all planned, where she will sit and what she will say.”

“You’re right.” I shared his bitterness. “And she has her speech ready. She’s going to say: ‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.’”

Will gave a bitter crow of laughter. “Good God! She is a marvelous princess. How d’you know that? How d’you know she’s going to say that?”

I could feel a gurgle of laughter in my throat. “Oh, Will! She asked me what the queen was going to say at her accession, and when I told her she thought it so good she would use it herself.”

“Well, why not?” he asked, suddenly bitter again. “She will have taken everything else. Queen Mary’s own husband, the people’s love, the throne, and now the very words out of her sister’s mouth.”

I nodded. “Do you think I can see the queen?”

He smiled. “She won’t recognize you. You have become a beautiful woman, Hannah. Is it just the gown? You should pay your dressmaker well. Was it her that transformed you?”

I shook my head. “Love, I think.”

“For your husband? You found him, did you?”

“I found him, and then I lost him almost at once, Will, because I was a fool, filled with pride and jealousy. But I have his son, and he has taught me to love without thinking of myself. I love him more than I thought possible. More than I knew I could love anyone. This is my son, Danny. And if we ever see his father again I will be able to tell him that I am a woman grown at last, and ready for love.”

Will smiled at Danny, who shyly dipped his head and then looked into Will’s kindly creased face and smiled back.

“Can you hold him for me, while I ask at her door if I may see the queen?”

Will held out his arms and Danny went to him with the easy trust that Will inspired in everyone. I went up the sweep of stairs to the queen’s presence chamber and then to the closed door of her private rooms. My name got me as far as her privy chamber and then I saw Jane Dormer standing at the closed door.

“Jane, it is me,” I said. “Hannah.”

It was a sign of the depth of the queen’s grief and Jane’s despair that she did not remark on my unexpected return, nor on my new costume.

“Perhaps she’ll speak to you,” she said very quietly, alert for eavesdroppers. “Be careful what you say. Don’t mention the king, nor the baby.”

I felt my courage evaporate. “Jane, I don’t know that she would want to see me, can you ask?”

Her hands were in the small of my back pushing me forward. “And don’t mention Calais,” she said. “Nor the burnings. Nor the cardinal.”

“Why not the cardinal?” I demanded, trying to wriggle away. “D’you mean Cardinal Pole?”

“He is sick,” she said. “And disgraced. He’s recalled to Rome. If he dies or if he goes to Rome for punishment, she will be utterly alone.”

“Jane, I can’t go in there and comfort her. There is nothing I can say to comfort her. She has lost everything.”

“There is nothing anyone can say,” she said brutally. “She is as low down as a woman can be driven, and yet she has to rise up. She is still queen. She has to rise up and rule this country, or Elizabeth will push her off the throne within a week. If she does not sit on her throne, Elizabeth will push her into her grave.”

Jane opened the door for me with one hand and thrust me into the room with the other. I stumbled in and dropped to a curtsey and heard the door close softly behind me.

The room was in deep shade, still shuttered for confinement. I looked around. The queen was not seated on any of the looming chairs nor crumpled in the great bed. She was not on her knees before her prie-dieu. I could not see her anywhere.

Then I heard a little noise, a tiny sound, like a child catching her breath after a bout of sobbing. A sound so small and so thin and so poignant that it was like a child who has cried for so long that she has forgotten to cry, and despaired of the grief ever going away.

“Mary,” I whispered. “Where are you?”

As my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness I finally made her out. She was lying on the floor amid the rushes, face turned toward the skirting board, hunched like a starving woman will hunch over her empty belly. I crawled on my hands and knees across the floor toward her, sweeping aside the strewing herbs as I went, their scent billowing around me as I approached her and gently touched her shoulders.

She did not respond. I don’t think she even knew I was there. She was locked in a grief so deep and so impenetrable that I thought she would be trapped in that inner darkness for the rest of her life.

I stroked her shoulder as one might stroke a dying animal. Since words could do nothing, a gentle touch might help; but I did not know if she could even feel that. Then, I lifted her shoulders gently from the floor, put her head in my lap and took her hood from her poor weary head and wiped the tears as they poured from her closed eyelids down her tired lined face. I sat with her in silence until her deeper breathing told me that she had fallen asleep. Even in her sleep the tears still welled up from her closed eyelids and ran down her wet cheeks.

When I came out of the queen’s rooms, Lord Robert was there.

“You,” I said, without much pleasure.

“Aye, me,” he said. “And no need to look so sour. I am not to blame.”

“You’re a man,” I observed. “And men are mostly to blame for the sorrow that women suffer.”

He gave a short laugh. “I am guilty of being a man, I admit it. You can come and dine in my rooms. I had them make you some broth and some bread and some fruit. Your boy is there too. Will has him.”

I went with him, his arm around my waist.

“Is she ill?” he asked, his mouth to my ear.

“I have never seen anyone in a worse state,” I said.

“Bleeding? Sick?”

“Brokenhearted,” I said shortly.

He nodded at that and swept me into his rooms. They were not the grand Dudley rooms that he used to command at court. They were a modest set of three rooms but he had them arranged very neat with a couple of beds for his servants, and a privy chamber for himself and a fire with a pot of broth sitting beside it, and a table laid for the three of us. As we went in Danny looked up from Will’s lap and made a little crow, the greatest noise he ever made, and stretched up for me. I took him in my arms.

“Thank you,” I said to Will.

“He was a comfort to me,” he said frankly.

“You can stay, Will,” Robert said. “Hannah is going to dine with me.”

“I have no appetite,” Will said. “I have seen so much sorrow in this country that my belly is full of it. I am sick of sorrow. I wish I could have a little joy for seasoning.”

“Times will change,” Robert said encouragingly. “Changing already.”

“You’d be ready for new times, for one,” Will said, his spirit rising up. “Since in the last reign you were one of the greatest lords and in this one you were a traitor waiting for the ax. I imagine change would be very welcome to you. What d’you hope from the next, my lord? What has the next queen promised you?”

I felt a little shiver sweep over me. It was the very question that Robert Dudley’s servant had posed, the very question that everyone was asking. What might not come to Robert, if Elizabeth adored him?

“Nothing but good for the country,” Robert said easily with a pleasant smile. “Come and dine with us, Will. You’re among friends.”

“All right,” he said, seating himself at the table and drawing a bowl toward him. I hitched Danny on to the chair beside me so that he could eat from my bowl and I took a glass of wine that Lord Robert poured for me.

“Here’s to us,” Robert said, raising his glass in an ironic toast. “A heartbroken queen, an absent king, a lost baby, a queen in waiting and two fools and a reformed traitor. Here’s health.”

“Two fools and an old traitor,” Will said, raising his glass. “Three fools together.”