The Queen's Fool

Winter 1558

Lord Robert came to court with the queen’s council to press her to sign her will and name her heir. Every man in the council had been at Hatfield the previous month, all their advice for Queen Mary had been dictated by the queen in waiting.

“She is too sick to see anyone,” Jane Dormer said truculently.

She and I stood shoulder to shoulder in the doorway to the queen’s apartments. Lord Robert winked at me but I did not smile back.

“This is her duty,” said the Lord Chancellor gently. “She has to make a will.”

“She made one,” Jane said abruptly. “Before she went into confinement last time.”

He shook his head and looked embarrassed. “She named her child as heir, and the king as regent,” he said. “But there was no child. She has to name the Princess Elizabeth now, and no regent.”

Jane hesitated, but I stood firm. “She is too ill,” I maintained. It was true, the queen was coughing up black bile, unable to lie down as her mouth filled with the stuff. Also, I did not want them to see her on her sickbed, still weeping for her husband, for the ruin that Elizabeth had made of her hopes.

Lord Robert smiled at me, as if he understood all of this. “Mistress Carpenter,” he said. “You know. She is queen. She cannot have the peace and seclusion of a normal woman. She knows that, we know that. She has a duty to her country and you should not stand in her way.”

I wavered, and they saw it. “Stand aside,” said the duke, and Jane and I stood unwillingly back and let them walk in to the queen.

They did not take very long, and when they were gone I went in to see her. She was lying propped up on her pillows, a bowl at her side to catch the black bile which spewed from her mouth when she coughed, a jug of squeezed lemons and sugar to take the taste from her lips, a maid in attendance but no one else. She was as lonely as any beggar coughing out her life on a stranger’s doorstep.

“Your Grace, I sent your letter to your husband,” I said quietly. “Pray God he reads it and comes home to you and you have a merry Christmas with him after all.”

Queen Mary did not even smile at the picture I painted. “He will not,” she said dully. “And I would rather not see him ride past me to Hatfield.” She coughed and held a cloth to her mouth. The maid stepped forward and took it from her, offered her the bowl, and then took it away.

“I have another task for you,” she said when she could speak again. “I want you to go with Jane Dormer to Hatfield.”

I waited.

“Ask Elizabeth to swear on her immortal soul that if she inherits the kingdom she will keep the true faith,” she said, her voice a tiny thread but the conviction behind the words as strong as ever.

I hesitated. “She will not swear,” I said, knowing Elizabeth.

“Then I will not name her my heir,” she said flatly. “Mary Stuart in France would claim the throne with French blessing. Elizabeth has the choice. She can fight her way to the throne if she can find enough fools to follow her, or she can come to it with my blessing. But she has to swear to uphold the faith. And she has to mean it.”

“How will I know that she means it?” I asked.

She was too weary to turn her head to me. “Look at her with your gift, Hannah,” she said. “This is the last time I will ask you to see for me. Look at her with your gift and tell me what is the best thing for my England.”

I would have argued but simple pity for her made me hold my tongue. This was a woman clinging on to life by the thinnest thread. Only her desire to do her duty to God, to her mother’s God, and to her father’s country was keeping her alive. If she could secure Elizabeth’s promise then she could die knowing that she had done the best she could to keep England safe inside the Holy See.

I bowed and went from the room.

Jane Dormer, still recovering from her own fever and exhausted from nursing the queen, riding in a litter, and I, with Danny astride before me, made our way north to Hatfield and noted sourly the number of fine horses who were going in the same direction as us, from the ailing queen to the thriving heir.

The old palace was ablaze with lights. There was some sort of banquet in progress as we arrived. “I cannot break bread with her,” Jane said shortly. “Let us ask to see her, and leave.”

“Of course we can dine,” I said practically. “You must be starving, I am, and Danny needs to eat.”

She was white-faced and trembling with emotion. “I will not eat with that woman,” she hissed. “Who d’you think is in there? Half the nobility of England clamoring for a place, her greatest friends now, the very ones who sneered at her and despised her and named her as a bastard when our queen was in her power.”

“Yes,” I said flatly. “And the man you love, Count Feria, the Spanish ambassador, who once demanded her death, among them. Now he brings love letters from the queen’s own husband. Betrayal is no new thing in England. If you won’t break bread with men with false hearts you will starve to death, Jane.”

She shook her head. “You have no sense of what is right and wrong, Hannah. You are faithless.”

“I don’t think faith can be measured in what you eat,” I said, thinking of the bacon and shellfish I had eaten contrary to my people’s law. “I think faith is in your heart. And I love the queen and I admire the princess, and as for the rest, these false men and women, they will have to find their own ways to their own truths. You go and eat in the kitchen if it pleases you. I am going in to dine.”

I could have laughed at her astounded face. I lifted Danny up on to my hip and, braced against his weight, I walked into the dining hall at Hatfield.

Elizabeth had the trappings of queenship already, as if she were an actor practicing a part in the full costume. She had a gold canopy over a wooden chair so thickly carved and heavy that it might almost have been a throne. On her right hand she had the Spanish ambassador, as if to flaunt that connection; on her left hand was seated the most favored lord at this court, my Lord Robert. Beside him was the right-hand man of the Grand Inquisitor of London, the scourge of Protestantism, Dr. John Dee, on the other side of the Spanish ambassador was the princess’s cousin, who had once arrested her, now dearly beloved to his kin. Beyond him was a quietly ambitious man, a staunch Protestant: William Cecil. I looked at Elizabeth’s table and smiled. Nobody would be able to guess which way this cat might jump judging by those honored with seats beside her. She had put Spanish and English, Catholic and Protestant advisors side by side, who could deduce what was in her mind?

John Dee, looking down the hall, caught my smile and raised his hand to me in greeting. Lord Robert followed the direction of his gaze, saw me, and beckoned me forward. I threaded my way through the court and dropped a curtsey to the princess, who shot me a gleaming smile from her eyes like a jet arrow.

“Ah, it is the girl who was so afraid of being a woman that she first became a fool, and then became a widow,” she said acidly.

“Princess Elizabeth,” I said, curtseying as the words hit home.

“Have you come to see me?”

“Yes, Princess.”

“Have you a message for me from the queen?”

“Yes, Princess.”

There was a little ripple of attention all along the table.

“Is Her Majesty in good health?” The Spanish ambassador, Count Feria, leaned forward, taking the heat from the exchange.

“You would surely know better than I,” I said with a sourness which came easily to me, seeing him at Elizabeth’s table. “Since she writes intimately to only one person, since she loves one man in all the world, and he is your master.”

Elizabeth and my lord exchanged a hidden smile at my rudeness. The count turned his head away.

“You may take a seat with my ladies and see me privately after dinner,” the princess ruled. “Did you come alone with your son?”

I shook my head. “Jane Dormer came with me, and we were escorted by two gentlemen from the queen’s household.”

The count turned quickly back. “Mistress Dormer is here?”

“She is dining alone,” I said, my face insolently blank. “She did not want to keep this company.”

Elizabeth bit her lip to hide another smile, and waved me to the table. “I see you are not so choosy,” she taunted me.

I met her bright black gaze without shrinking. “Dinner is dinner, Princess. And both of us have gone hungry in the past.”

She laughed at that and nodded at them to make a space for me. “She has become a witty fool,” she said to Lord Robert. “I am glad of it. I never had much faith in seeings and predictions.”

“Once she told me a pretty vision,” he said, his voice very low, his eyes on me but his smile for her.

“Oh?”

“She told me I would be adored by a queen.”

They both laughed, that low-voiced chuckle of conspiring lovers, and he smiled down the hall at me. I met his gaze with a face like flint.

“What is the matter with you?” Elizabeth demanded of me after dinner. We were standing in an alcove in the gallery at Hatfield. Elizabeth’s court was at a distance, our words hidden by the playing of a lute nearby.

“I don’t like Count Feria,” I said bluntly.

“You made that clear enough. Do you really think I will allow you to come into my dinner and insult my guests? You took off a fool’s livery, you will have to behave like a lady.”

I smiled. “Since I carry a message that you want to hear I think you will listen to it before you have me thrown out of the gates, whether I am a fool or a lady.”

She laughed at my impertinence.

“And I doubt that you like him either,” I said boldly. “First he was your enemy, now he is your friend. There are many such as him around you now, I should imagine.”

“Most of this court. And you among them.”

I shook my head. “I have always admired you both.”

“You love her more than you love me,” she insisted jealously.

I laughed aloud at her childishness; and Lord Robert, standing near, turned to look at me with a smile. “But Princess, she loves me, and you have never done anything but abuse me and accuse me of being her spy.”

Elizabeth laughed too. “Yes. But I don’t forget that you came to serve me in the Tower. And I don’t forget that you brought me a true vision. When you smelled the smoke from the burnings I knew then that I must become queen and bring peace to this country.”

“Well, amen to that,” I said.

“And what is your message?” she asked more soberly.

“Can we talk in your privy chamber? And can I bring Jane Dormer to you?”

“With Lord Robert,” she stipulated. “And John Dee.”

I bowed my head and followed her as she walked down the gallery to her chamber. The court billowed into bows as she went past as if she were queen already. I smiled, remembering a day when she had limped with her shoe in her hand and no one had offered her an arm. Now they would lay down their cloaks in the mud to keep her feet dry.

We went into her chamber and Elizabeth took a small wooden chair by the fireside. She gestured that I could pull up a stool and I took it to the other side of the fire, put Danny on my knee, and leaned back against the wooden paneling. I had a sense that I should be quiet and listen. The queen wanted me to advise her if Elizabeth would keep the true faith. I had to listen through the words to the meaning behind them. I had to look through the mask of her smiling face and into her heart.

The door opened, and Jane came into the room. She swept Elizabeth the scantest of curtseys and stood before her. Elizabeth gestured her to sit.

“I will stand, if it please you,” Jane said stiffly.

“You have business with me.” Elizabeth invited her to begin.

“The queen has asked Hannah and me to come to you and put a question to you. The queen requires you to make your answer in very truth. She would want you to swear on your soul that the answer you give is the truth and the whole truth.”

“And what is this question?”

Danny squirmed in my lap and I shifted him in a little closer, putting his small head against my cheek, so that I could look over him to the princess’s pale face.

“The queen bid me tell you that she will name you as her heir, her one true heir, and you will be queen on the throne of England without a word of dissent if you will promise her that you will cleave to the true faith,” Jane said quietly.

John Dee drew in a sharp breath, but the princess was absolutely still.

“And if I do not?”

“Then she will name another heir.”

“Mary Stuart?”

“I do not know and I will not speculate,” Jane replied.

The princess nodded. “Am I to swear on a Bible?” she asked.

“On your soul,” Jane said. “On your immortal soul before God.”

It was a solemn moment. Elizabeth glanced toward Lord Robert and he took a little step toward her, as if he would protect her.

“And does she swear to name me as heir in return?”

Jane Dormer nodded. “If you are of the true faith.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “I will swear,” she said.

She rose to her feet. Robert Dudley started forward as if he would stop her but she did not even look at him. I did not rise as I should have done, I stayed completely still, my eyes fixed on her pale face as if I would read her like a clean page of text, fresh off the press, with the ink still drying.

Elizabeth raised her hand. “I swear, on my immortal soul, that I shall keep this country in the true faith,” she said. Her hand trembled slightly. She brought it down and clasped her hands together before her, and turned to Jane Dormer.

“Did she ask for anything more?”

“No more,” Jane said, her voice very thin.

“So you can tell her I have done it?”

Jane’s eyes slid toward me, and the princess was on to her at once.

“Ah, so that is what you are here for.” She rounded on me. “My little seer-spy. You are to make a window into my soul and see into my heart and tell the queen what you think you know, what you imagine you saw.”

I said nothing.

“You will tell her that I raised my hand and I swore her oath,” she commanded me. “You will tell her that I am her true heir.”

I rose to my feet, Danny’s little head lolled sleepily against my shoulder. “If we may, we will stay here tonight, and return to the queen tomorrow,” I said, avoiding answering.

“There was one other thing,” Jane Dormer said. “Her Grace requires you to pay her debts and take care of her trusted servants.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Of course. Assure my sister that I will honor her wishes as any true heir would do.”

I think only I could have heard the ripple of Elizabeth’s joy under her grave voice. I did not condemn her for it. Like Mary she had waited all her life for the moment when she might hear the news that she was queen, and now she thought that it would come to her, without dissent, tomorrow, or the day after.

“We will leave at dawn,” I said, thinking of the frailty of the queen’s health. I knew she would be hanging on to hear that England was safe within the true faith, that whatever else was lost, she had restored England into grace.

“Then I will bid you goodnight and God speed now,” Elizabeth said sweetly.

She let us get to the door and Jane Dormer to go through ahead of me, before she said, so quietly that only I, listening for her summons, could have heard it: “Hannah.”

I turned.

“I know you are her loyal friend as well as mine,” she said gently. “Do this last service for your mistress and take my word as true, and let her go to her God with some comfort. Give her peace, and give peace to our country.”

I bowed to her and went out.

I thought we would leave Hatfield without another farewell but when I went for my horse on a frosty cold morning with the sun burning red like an ember on the white horizon, there was Lord Robert looking handsome and smiling, wrapped in a dark red velvet cloak with John Dee at his side.

“Is your boy warm enough for the journey?” he asked me. “It’s been a hard frost and the air is bitter.”

I pointed behind me. Danny was laboring along under an extra-thick jerkin of wool, carrying a shawl that I had insisted he bring. He peeped at me from under a heavy woolen cap. “The poor boy is half drowned in clothes,” I said. “He will sweat rather than freeze.”

Robert nodded. “The men are to be released from Calais within a week,” he said. “They will be collected by a ship which will bring them into Gravesend.”

I felt my heart beat a little faster.

“You are blushing like a girl,” Lord Robert said, gently mocking.

“Do you think he will have had my letter, that I sent when I first came home?” I asked.

Lord Robert shrugged. “He may have done. But you can tell him yourself, soon enough.”

I drew a little closer to him. “You see, if he did not receive it then he will not know that I escaped out of Calais. He might think I am dead. He might not come to England, he might go to Italy or somewhere.”

“On the off-chance that you are dead?” Lord Robert asked critically. “With no one ever mentioning it to him? With no proof? And his son?”

“In the confusion of the battle,” I said weakly.

“Someone would have looked for you,” he said. “If you had been killed they would have found your body.”

I shifted awkwardly. Daniel came to me and stretched out his arms. “Dan’l up!” he commanded.

“Wait a moment,” I said absently. I turned back to Lord Robert. “You see, if someone told him that I left with you…”

“Then he would know that you are alive, and where to find you,” he said logically. Then he checked and slapped his forehead. “Mistress Boy, you have played me for an idiot all along. You are estranged from him, aren’t you? And you fear that he will think you ran away with me? And he won’t come for you because he has cast you off? And now you don’t want me; but you’ve lost him, and all you’ve got is his son…” He broke off, struck with sudden doubt. “He is your husband’s son, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said staunchly.

“Is he yours?” he said, some sense warning him that there was a lie hidden away somewhere near.

“Yes,” I said without wavering.

Lord Robert laughed aloud. “My God, girl, you are a fool indeed. You did not love him till you lost him.”

“Yes,” I admitted through gritted teeth.

“Well, more a woman than a fool,” he said fairly. “I would say women love men most when they have lost them, or cannot get them. Well-a-day, my pretty fool. You had best get a ship and set sail for your Daniel as soon as you can. Otherwise he will be out of prison and free as a bird flying away, and you will never find him at all.”

“Can I get a ship to Calais?” I asked blankly.

He thought for a moment. “Not very readily; but you could go over with the ship that is going to fetch my soldiers home. I’ll write you a note.”

He snapped his fingers to a stable boy and sent him running for a clerk with pen and paper. When the lad came he dictated three lines to give me a free pass on the boat for myself and my son.

I curtseyed low to him in genuine gratitude. “Thank you, my lord,” I said. “I do thank you very deeply.”

He smiled his heart-turning smile. “My pleasure, dearest little fool. But the ship sails within a week. Will you be able to leave the queen?”

“She’s sinking fast,” I said slowly. “That’s why I was in such a hurry to leave at once. She was holding on for Elizabeth’s answer.”

“Well, thank you for that information, which you denied me earlier,” he said.

I bit my lip as I realized that to tell him, was to tell Elizabeth, and those planning her campaign, when she should be ready to call out her army to claim her throne.

“No harm done,” he said. “Half of her doctors are paid by us to let us know how she is.”

John Dee drew closer. “And could you see into the princess’s heart?” he asked gently. “Could you tell if she was sincere in her oath for keeping the true faith? Do you believe she will be a Catholic queen?”

“I don’t know,” I said simply. “I shall pray for guidance on the way home.”

Robert would have said something but John Dee put a hand on his arm. “Hannah will say the right thing to the queen,” he said. “She knows that it is not one queen or another that matters, it is not one name of God or another, what matters most is to bring peace to this country so that a man or woman in danger of cruelty or persecution can come here and be certain of a fair hearing.” He paused, and I thought of my father and I, coming to this England and hoping for a safe haven.

“What matters is that a man or woman can believe what they wish, and worship how they wish, to a God whom they name as they wish. What matters is that we make a strong country here which can be a force for good in the world, where men and women can question and learn freely. This country’s destiny is to be a place where men and women can know that they are free.”

He stopped. Lord Robert was smiling down at me.

“I know what she will do,” Lord Robert said sweetly. “Because she is my tenderhearted Mistress Boy still. She will say whatever she has to say to comfort the queen in her final hours, God bless her, the poor lady. No queen ever came to the throne with higher hopes and died in such sadness.”

I leaned down and scooped Daniel up into my arms. The grooms brought my horse from the stables and Jane Dormer came from the house and got into the litter without a word to either man.

“Good luck in Calais,” Robert Dudley said, smiling. “Few women succeed in finding the love of their life. I hope you do, little Mistress Boy.”

Then he waved and stepped back, and let me go.

It was a cold long ride back to St. James’s palace but Danny’s little body was warm as he rode before me, and every now and then I could hear a delighted little carol of song from him.

I rode in silence, thoughtful. The end of my journey when I would see the queen loomed very large ahead of me. I did not yet know what I would say to her. I did not yet know what I had seen, nor what to report. Elizabeth raised her right hand and took the oath she had been asked to do, her part was done. Now it was for me to judge whether or not she meant it.

When we got to the palace the hall was subdued, the few guards playing cards, the firelight flickering, the torches burning low. Will Somers was in the queen’s presence chamber, with half a dozen others, mostly paid court officials and physicians. There were no friends or beloved kin waiting to see the queen, praying for her in her illness. She was not England’s darling any more, and the chamber rang with emptiness.

Danny spotted Will and sprang toward him. “You go in,” Will said. “She has been asking for you.”

“Is she any better?” I asked hopefully.

He shook his head. “No.”

Cautiously I opened the door to her privy chamber and went in. Two of her women were seated at the fireside, enjoying a gossip when they should have been watching her. They jumped up guiltily as we came in. “She did not want company,” one of them said defensively to Jane Dormer. “And she would not stop weeping.”

“Well, I hope you lie alone weeping and unwatched one day,” Jane snapped at her, and the two of us went past them and into the queen’s bedchamber.

She had curled up in the bed like a little girl, her hair in a cloud around her face. She did not turn her head at the sound of the opening door, she was deep in her grief.

“Your Grace?” Jane Dormer said, her voice cracking.

The queen did not move, but we heard the quiet occasional sob go on, as regular as a heartbeat, as if weeping had become a sign of life, like a pulse.

“It is I,” Jane said. “And Hannah the Fool. We have come back from Princess Elizabeth.”

The queen sighed very deeply and turned her head wearily toward us.

“She took the oath,” Jane said. “She swore she would keep the country in the true faith.”

I stepped to the bedside and took Queen Mary’s hand. It was as small and as light as a child’s, there was nothing left of her. Sadness had worn her away to dust that could blow away on the wind. I thought of her riding into London in her shabby red costume, her face bright with hope, and her courage when she took on the great men of the kingdom and beat them at their own game. I thought of her joy in her husband and her longing for a child to love, a son for England. I thought of her absolute devotion to the memory of her mother and her love of God.

Her little hand fluttered in mine like a dying bird.

“I saw Elizabeth take the oath,” I started. I was about to tell her the kindest lie that I could form. But gently, irresistibly, I told her the truth, as if the Sight was speaking the truth through me. “Mary, she will not keep it. But she will do better than keep it, I hope you can understand that now. She will become a better queen than she is a woman. She will teach the people of this country that each man and woman must consider his or her own conscience, must find their own way to God. And she will bring this country to peace and prosperity. You did the very best that you could do for the people of this country, and you have a good successor. Elizabeth will never be the woman that you have been; but she will be a good queen to England, I know it.”

She raised her head a little and her eyelids fluttered open. She looked at me with her straight honest gaze once more, and then she closed her eyes and lay still.

I did not stay to watch the rush of servants to Hatfield. I packed my bag and took Danny by the hand and took a boat down the river to Gravesend. I had my lord’s letter to show to the ship’s captain and he promised me a berth as soon as they sailed. We waited a day or two and then Danny and I boarded the little ship and set sail for Calais.

Danny was delighted by the ship, the moving deck beneath his feet, the slap and rush of the waves, the creaking of the sails and the cry of the seagulls. “Sea!” he exclaimed, over and over again. He took my face in both of his little hands and gazed at me with his enormous dark eyes, desperate to tell me the significance of his delight. “Sea. Mamma! Sea!”

“What did you say?” I said, taken aback. He had never spoken my name before, I had expected him to call me Hannah. I had not thought, I suppose I should have thought, but I had never thought he would call me mother.

“Sea,” he repeated obediently, and wriggled to be put down.

Calais was a different place with the walls breached and the sides of the castle smeared with black oil from the siege, the stones darkened with smoke from the fire. The captain’s face was grim when we came into the harbor and saw the English ships, which had been fired where they were moored, at the harbor wall, like so many heretics at the stake. He tied up with military smartness and slapped down the gangplank like a challenge. I took Danny in my arms and walked down the gangplank into the town.

It was dreamlike, to go into the ruins of my old home. I saw streets and houses that I knew; but some of them were missing walls or roofs, and there had been a terrible toll paid by the thatched houses, they were all but destroyed.

I did not want to go down the street where my husband and I once lived, I was afraid of what I might find. If our house was still standing, and his mother and sisters were still there, I did not know how to reconcile with them. If I met his mother and she was angry with me and wanted to take Danny away from me I did not know what I would do or say. But if she was dead, and his house destroyed, it would be even worse.

Instead I went with the captain and the armed guard up to the castle under our white pennant of truce. We were expected; the commander came out civilly enough and spoke to the captain in rapid French. The captain bridled, understanding perhaps one word in three, and then leaned forward and said very loudly and slowly: “I have come for the English men, as has been agreed, as per the terms, and I expect them forthwith.”

When he had no response, he said it again, pitched a little higher.

“Captain, would you like me to speak for you, I can speak French?” I offered.

He turned to me with relief. “Can you? That might help. Why doesn’t the fool answer me?”

I stepped forward a little and said to the commander in French: “Captain Gatting offers his apologies but he cannot speak French. I can translate for you. I am Madame Carpenter. I have come for my husband who has been ransomed and the captain has come for the other men. We have a ship waiting in the harbor.”

He bowed slightly. “Madam, I am obliged to you. The men are mustered and ready. The civilians are to be released first and then the soldiers will march down to the harbor. Their weapons will not be returned. It is agreed?”

I translated for the captain and he scowled at me. “We ought to get the weapons back,” he said.

I shrugged. All I could think of was Daniel, waiting somewhere inside the castle for his release. “We can’t.”

“Tell him very well; but tell him that I’m not best pleased,” the captain said sourly.

“Captain Gatting agrees,” I said smoothly in French.

“Please come inside.” The commander led us over the drawbridge and into the inner courtyard. Another thick curtain wall with a portcullis doorway led to the central courtyard where about two hundred men were mustered, the soldiers in one block, the civilians in another. I raked the ranks for Daniel but I could not see him.

“Commandant, I am seeking my husband, Daniel Carpenter, a civilian,” I said. “I cannot see him, and I am afraid of missing him in the crowd.”

“Daniel Carpenter?” he asked. He turned and snapped an order at the man guarding the civilians.

“Daniel Carpenter!” the man bawled out.

In the middle of one of the ranks a man came forward. “Who asks for him?” said Daniel, my husband.

I closed my eyes for a moment as the world seemed to shift all around me.

“I am Daniel Carpenter,” Daniel said again, not a quaver in his voice, stepping forward on the very brink of freedom, greeting whatever new danger might threaten him without a moment’s hesitation.

The commander beckoned him to come forward and moved to one side so that I could see him. Daniel saw me for the first time and I saw him go very pale. He was older-looking, a little weary, he was thinner, but nothing worse than winter-pale and winter-thin. He was the same. He was my beloved Daniel with his dark curling hair and his dark eyes and his kissable mouth and that particular smile which was my smile; it only ever shone on me, it was at once desiring, steadfast, and amused.

“Daniel,” I whispered. “My Daniel!”

“Ah, Hannah,” he said quietly. “You.”

Behind us, the civilians were signing their names and marching out to freedom. I did not hear the shouted orders or the tramp of their feet. All I could see, all I could know, was Daniel.

“I ran away,” I said. “I am sorry. I was afraid and I did not know what to do. Lord Robert gave me safe passage to England and I went back to Queen Mary. I wrote to you at once. I would not have gone without you if there had been any time to think.”

Gently, he stepped forward and took my hand. “I have dreamed and dreamed of you,” he said quietly. “I thought you had left me for Lord Robert when you had the chance.”

“No! Never. I knew at once that I wanted to be with you. I have been trying to get a letter to you. I have been trying to reach you. I swear it, Daniel. I have thought of nothing and no one but you, ever since I left.”

“Have you come back to be my wife?” he asked simply.

I nodded. At this most important moment I found I lost all my fluency. I could not speak. I could not argue my case, I could not persuade him in any one of my many languages. I could not even whisper. I just nodded emphatically, and Danny on my hip, his arms around my neck, gave a gurgle of laughter and nodded too, copying me.

I had hoped Daniel would be glad and snatch me up into his arms, but he was somber. “I will take you back,” he said solemnly. “And I will not question you, and we will say no more about this time apart. You will never have a word of reproach from me, I swear it; and I will bring this boy up as my son.”

For a moment, I did not understand what he meant, and then I gasped. “Daniel, he is your son! This is your son by your woman. This is her son. We were running from the French horsemen and she fell, she gave him to me as she went down. I am sorry, Daniel. She died at once. And this is your boy, I passed him off as mine. He is my boy now. He is my boy too.”

“He is mine?” he asked wonderingly. He looked at the child for the first time and saw, as anyone would have to see, the dark eyes which were his own, and the brave little smile.

“He is mine too,” I said jealously. “He knows that he is my boy.”

Daniel gave a little half laugh, almost a sob, and put his arms out. Danny reached for his father and went confidingly to him, put his plump little arms around his neck, looked him in the face and leaned back so he could scrutinize him. Then he thumped his little fist on his own chest and said, by way of introduction: “Dan’l.”

Daniel nodded, and pointed to his own chest. “Father,” he said. Danny’s little half-moon eyebrows raised in interest.

“Your father,” Daniel said.

He took my hand and tucked it firmly under his arm, as he held his son tightly with the other. He walked to the dispatching officer and gave his name and was ticked off their list. Then together we walked toward the open portcullis.

“Where are we going?” I asked, although I did not care. As long as I was with him and Danny, we could go anywhere in the world, be it flat or round, be it the center of the heavens or wildly circling around the sun.

“We are going to make a home,” he said firmly. “For you and me and Daniel. We are going to live as the People, you are going to be my wife, and his mother, and one of the Children of Israel.”

“I agree,” I said, surprising him again.

He stopped in his tracks. “You agree?” he repeated comically.

I nodded.

“And Daniel is to be brought up as one of the People?” he confirmed.

I nodded. “He is one already,” I said. “I had him circumcised. You must instruct him, and when he is older he will learn from my father’s Hebrew Bible.”

He drew a breath. “Hannah, in all my dreams, I did not dream of this.”

I pressed against his side. “Daniel, I did not know what I wanted when I was a girl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our other children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don’t want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Carpenter.”

“And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our beliefs without danger,” he insisted.

“Yes,” I said, “in the England that Elizabeth will make.”