The Queen's Fool Part 10

I did not contradict her, but I knew that John Dee would send my note on to him this very day, and that thanks to me, he would know exactly where to look for us.

Her concern was all for her sister. "And Lady Elizabeth?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. She may be arrested already. They were going to her home too."

"Where is Robert Dudley now?"

"I don't know that either. It has taken me the whole day to find you myself. I traced you from Sawston Hall because I heard of the fire and guessed you had been there. I am sorry, my l... Your Grace."

"And when was the king's death announced? And Lady Jane falsely proclaimed?"

"Not when I left."

She took a moment to understand, and then she was angry. "He has died, and it has not been announced? My brother is lying dead, unwatched? Without the rites of the church? Without any honors done to him at all?"

"His death was still a secret when I left."

She nodded, her lips biting back anything she might have said, her eyes suddenly veiled and cautious. "I thank you for coming to me," she said. "Thank Sir Nicholas for his services to me which I had no cause to antic.i.p.ate."

The sarcasm in this was rather sharp, even for the man on his knees. "He told me you are the true queen now," he volunteered. "And that he and all his household are to serve you."

"I am the true queen," she said. "I always was the true princess. And I will have my kingdom. You can sleep here tonight. The porter will find you a bed. Go back to London in the morning and convey my thanks to him. He has done the right thing to inform me. I am queen, and I will have my throne."

She turned on her heel and swept up the stair. I hesitated for only one moment.

"Did you say the sixth?" I asked the London man. "The sixth of July, that the king died?"

"Yes."

I dropped him a curtsey and followed Lady Mary upstairs. As soon as we got into her room she closed the door behind us, and threw aside her regal dignity. "Get me the clothes of a serving girl, and wake John Huddlestone's groom," she said urgently. "Then go to the stables and get two horses ready, one with a pillion saddle for me and the groom, one for you."

"My lady?"

"You call me Your Grace now," she said grimly. "I am Queen of England. Now hurry."

"What am I to tell the groom?"

"Tell him that we have to get to Kenninghall today. That I will ride behind him, we will leave the rest of them here. You come with me."

I nodded and hurried from the room. The serving maid who had waited on us last night was sleeping with half a dozen others in the attic bedrooms. I went up the stairs and peeped in the door. I found her in the half darkness and shook her awake, put my hand over her mouth and hissed in her ear: "I've had enough of this, I'm running away. I'll give you a silver shilling for your clothes. You can say I stole them and no one will be the wiser."

"Two shillings," she said instantly.

"Agreed," I said. "Give them me, and I'll bring you the money."

She fumbled under her pillow for her shift and her smock. "Just the gown and cape," I ordered, shrinking from the thought of putting the Queen of England in louse-ridden linen. She bundled them up for me with her cap and I went light-footed downstairs to Lady Mary's room.

"Here," I said. "They cost me two shillings."

She found the coins in her purse. "No boots."

"Please wear your own boots," I said fervently. "I've run away before, I know what it's like. You'll never get anywhere in borrowed boots."

She smiled at that. "Hurry," was all she said.

I ran back upstairs with the two shillings and then I found Tom, John Huddlestone's groom, and sent him down to the stables to get the horses ready. I crept down to the bakery just outside the kitchen door, and found, as I had hoped, a batch of bread rolls baked in the warmth of the oven last night. I stuffed my breeches pockets and my jacket pockets with half a dozen of them so that I looked like a donkey with panniers, and then I went back to the hall.

Lady Mary was there, dressed as a serving maid, her hood pulled over her face. The porter was arguing, reluctant to open the door to the stable yard for a maidservant. She turned with relief when she heard me approach light-footed on the stone flags.

"Come on," I said reasonably to the man. "She is a servant of John Huddlestone, his groom is waiting. He told us to leave at first light. We're to go back to Sawston Hall and we shall be whipped if we are late."

He complained about visitors in the night disturbing a Christian household's sleep, and then people leaving early; but he opened the door and Lady Mary and I slipped through. Tom was in the yard, holding one big hunter with a pillion saddle on its back and a smaller horse for me. I would have to leave my little pony behind, this was going to be a hard ride.

He got into the saddle and took the hunter to the mounting block. I helped the Lady Mary scramble up behind him. She took a tight grip around his waist and kept her hood pulled forward to hide her face. I had to take my horse to the mounting block too, the stirrup was too high for me to mount without help. When I was up on him, the ground seemed a long way away. He sidestepped nervously and I jerked on the reins too tightly and made him toss his head and sidle. I had never ridden such a big horse before, and I was frightened of him; but no smaller animal could manage the hard ride we must make today.

Tom turned his horse's head and led the way out of the yard. I turned after him and heard my heart pounding and knew that I was on the run, once again, and afraid, once again, and that this time I was perhaps in a worse case than I had been when we had run from Spain, or when we had run from Portugal, even when we had run from France. Because this time I was running with the pretender to the throne of England, with Lord Robert Dudley and his army in pursuit, and I was his va.s.sal sworn; her trusted servant, and a Jew; but a practicing Christian, serving a Papist princess in a country sworn to be Protestant. Little wonder that my heart was in my mouth and beating louder than the clopping of the hooves of the big horses as we went down the road to the east, pushing them into a canter toward the rising sun.

When we reached Kenninghall at midday, I saw why we had ridden till the horses foundered to get here. The sun was high in the sky and it made the fortified manor house look squat and indomitable in the flat uncompromising landscape. It was a solid moated house, and as we drew closer I saw that it was no pretty play castle; this had a drawbridge that could be raised, and a portcullis above it that could be dropped down to seal the only entrance. It was built in warm red brick, a deceptively beautiful house that could nonetheless be held in a siege.

Lady Mary was not expected, and the few servants who lived at the house to keep it in order came tumbling out of the doors in a flurry of surprise and greeting. After a nod from Lady Mary I quickly told them of the astounding news from London as they took our horses into the stable yard. A ragged cheer went up at the news of her accession to the throne and they pulled me down from the saddle and clapped me on the back like the lad I appeared to be. I let out a yelp of pain. The inner part of my legs from my ankles to my thighs had been skinned raw from three days in the saddle, and my back and shoulders and wrists were locked tight from the jolting ride from Hunsdon to Hoddesdon, to Sawston to Thetford to here.

Lady Mary must have been near-dead with exhaustion, sitting pillion for all that long time, a woman of nearly forty years and in poor health, but only I saw the grimace of pain as they lifted her down to the ground; everyone else saw the tilt of her chin as she heard them shout for her, and the charm of the Tudor smile as she welcomed them all into the great hall and bid them good cheer. She took a moment to pray for the soul of her dead brother and then she raised her head and promised them that just as she had been a fair landlord and mistress to them, she would be a good queen.

That earned her another cheer and the hall started to fill with people, workers from the fields and woods and villagers from their homes, and the servants ran about with flagons of ale and cups of wine and loaves of bread and meat. The Lady Mary took her seat at the head of the hall and smiled on everyone as if she had never been ill in her life, then after an hour of good company, she laughed out loud and said she must get out of this cloak and this poor gown, and went to her rooms.

The few house servants had flung themselves into getting her rooms ready and her bed was made with linen. It was only the second-best bedding, but if she was as weary as I then she would have slept on homespun. They brought in a bathtub, lined it with sheets to protect her from splinters, and filled it with hot water. And they found some old gowns, which she had left behind when she was last at this house, and laid them out on the bed for her to choose.

"You can go," she said to me, as she threw the servant girl's cloak from her shoulders to the floor, and turned her back to the maid to be unlaced. "Find something to eat and go straight to bed. You must be tired out."

"Thank you," I said, hobbling for the door with my painful bowlegged stride.

"And, Hannah?"

"Yes, lady... Yes, Your Grace?"

"Whoever it is who has paid your wages while you have been in my household, and whatever they hoped to gain from that - you have been a good friend to me this day. I will not forget it."

I paused, thinking of the two letters I had written to Lord Robert that would bring him hard on our heels, thinking what would happen to this determined, ambitious woman when he caught us, thinking that he was certain to catch us here, since I had told him exactly where to come; and then it would be the Tower for her, and probably her death for treason. I had been a spy in her household and the falsest of friends. I had been a byword for dishonor and she had known some of it; but she could not have dreamed of the falseness that had become second nature to me.

If I could have confessed to her then, I would have done. The words were on my tongue, I wanted to tell her that I had been put into her household to work against her; but that now that I knew her, and loved her, I would do anything to serve her. I wanted to tell her that Robert Dudley was my lord and I would always be bound to do anything he asked me. I wanted to tell her that everything I did seemed to be always full of contradictions: black and white, love and fear, all at once.

But I could say nothing, and I had been brought up to hold secrets under my lying tongue, so I just dropped to one knee before her and bowed my head.

She did not give me her hand to kiss, like a queen would have done. She put her hand on my head like my own mother used to do and she said, "G.o.d bless you, Hannah, and keep you safe from sin."

At that moment, at that particular tenderness, at the very touch of my mother's hand, I felt the tears well up in my eyes; and I got myself out of the room and into my own small attic bedchamber and into my bed without bath or dinner, before anybody should see me cry like the little girl I still was.

We were at Kenninghall for three days on siege alert, but still Lord Robert and his company of cavalry did not come. The gentlemen from the country all around the manor came pouring in with their servants and their kinsmen, some of them armed, some of them bringing blacksmiths to hammer out spears and lances from the pruning hooks, spades and scythes that they brought with them. The Lady Mary proclaimed herself as queen in the great hall, despite the advice of more cautious men, and flying in the face of a pleading letter from the Spanish amba.s.sador. He had written to tell her that her brother was dead, that Northumberland was unbeatable, and that she should set about negotiating with him while her uncle in Spain would do his best to save her from the trumped-up charge of treason and sentence of death which was certain to come. That part of his letter made her look grim, but there was worse.

He warned her that Northumberland had sent warships into the French seas off Norfolk, specially to prevent the Spanish ships from rescuing her and taking her to safety. There could be no escape for her, the emperor could not even attempt to save her. She must surrender to the duke and give up her claim to the crown, and throw herself on his mercy.

"What can you see, Hannah?" she asked me. It was early morning, and she had just come from Ma.s.s, her rosary beads still in her fingers, her forehead still damp with holy water. It was a bad morning for her, her face, sometimes so illuminated and merry with hope, was gray and tired. She looked sick of fear itself.

I shook my head. "I have only seen for you once, Your Grace, and I was certain then that you would be queen. And now you are. I have seen nothing since."

"I am queen indeed now," she said wryly. "I am proclaimed queen by myself at least. I wish you had told me how long it would last, and if anyone else would agree with me."

"I wish I could," I said sincerely. "What are we going to do?"

"They tell me to surrender," she said simply. "The advisors I have trusted all my life, my Spanish kinsmen, my mother's only friends. They all tell me that I will be executed if I continue with this course, that it's a battle I can't win. The duke has the Tower, he has London, he has the country, he has the warships at sea and an army of followers and the royal guard. He has all the coin of the realm at the Mint, he has all the weapons of the nation at the Tower. I have this one castle, this one village, these few loyal men and their pitchforks. And somewhere out there is Lord Robert and his troop coming toward us."

"Can't we get away?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not fast enough, not far enough. If I could have got on a Spanish warship then, perhaps... but the duke has the sea between here and France held down by English warships, he was ready for this, and I was unprepared. I am trapped."

I remembered John Dee's map spread out in the duke's study and the little counters which signified soldiers and sailors on ships all around Norfolk, and Lady Mary trapped in the middle of them.

"Will you have to surrender?" I whispered.

I had thought she was frightened; but at my question the color rushed into her cheeks, and she smiled as if I had suggested a challenge, a great gamble. "You know, I'm d.a.m.ned if I will!" she swore. She laughed aloud as if it was a bet for a joust rather than her life on the table. "I have spent my life running and lying and hiding. Just once, just once I should be glad to ride out under my own standard and defy the men who have denied me, and denied my right and denied the authority of the church and G.o.d himself."

I felt my own spirits leap up at her enthusiasm. "My la... Your Grace!" I stumbled.

She turned a brilliant smile on me. "Why not?" she said. "Why should I not, just once, fight like a man and defy them?"

"But can you win?" I asked blankly.

She shrugged, an absolutely Spanish gesture. "Oh! It's not likely!" She smiled at me as if she were truly merry at the desperate choice before her. "Ah, but Hannah, I have been humbled to dust by these men who would now put a commoner such as Lady Jane before me. They once put Elizabeth before me. They made me wait on her as if I were her maid in her nursery. And now I have my chance. I can fight them instead of bowing to them. I can die fighting them instead of crawling to them, begging for my life. When I see it like this, I have no choice. And I thank G.o.d, there is no better choice for me than to raise my standard and to fight for my father's throne and my mother's honor, my inheritance. And I have Elizabeth to think of, too. I have her safety to secure. I have her inheritance to pa.s.s on to her. She is my sister, she is my responsibility. I have written to her to bid her come here, so that she can be safe. I have promised her a refuge, and I will fight for our inheritance."

Lady Mary gathered her rosary beads in her short workmanlike fingers, tucked them into the pocket of her gown and strode toward the door of the great hall where her armies of gentlemen and soldiers were breaking their fast. She entered the head of the hall and mounted the dais. "Today we move out," she announced, loud and clear enough for the least man at the back of the hall to hear her. "We go to Framlingham, a day's ride, no more than that. I shall raise my standard there. If we can get there before Lord Robert we can hold him off in a siege. We can hold him off for months. I can fight a battle from there. I can collect troops."

There was a murmur of surprise and then approbation.

"Trust me!" she commanded them. "I will not fail you. I am your proclaimed queen and you will see me on the throne, and then I will remember who was here today. I will remember and you will be repaid many times over for doing your duty to the true Queen of England."

There was a deep low roar, easily given from men who have just eaten well. I found my knees were shaking at the sight of her courage. She swept to the door at the back of the hall and I jumped unsteadily ahead of her and opened it for her.

"And where is he?" I asked. She did not have to be told who I was asking for.

"Oh, not far," Lady Mary said grimly. "South of King's Lynn, I am told. Something must have delayed him, he could have taken us here if he had come at once. But I cannot get news of him. I don't know where he is for sure."

"Will he guess that we are going to Framlingham?" I asked, thinking of the note that had gone to him, naming her destination here, its spiral on the paper like a curled snake.

She paused at the doorway and looked back at me. "There is bound to be one person in such a gathering who will slip away and tell him. There is always a spy in the camp. Don't you think, Hannah?"

For a moment I thought she had trapped me. I looked up at her, my lies very dry in my throat, my girl's face growing pale.

"A spy?" I quavered. I put my hand to my cheek and rubbed it hard.

She nodded. "I never trust anyone. I always know that there are spies about me. And if you had been the girl I was, you would have learned the same. After my father sent my mother away from me there was no one near me who did not try to persuade me that Anne Boleyn was true queen and her b.a.s.t.a.r.d child the true heir. The Duke of Norfolk shouted into my face that if he were my father he would bang my head against the wall until my brains fell out. They made me deny my mother, they made me deny my faith, they threatened me with death on the scaffold like Thomas More and Bishop Fisher - men I knew and loved. I was a girl of twenty and they made me proclaim myself a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and my faith a heresy.

"Then, all in a summer's day, Anne was dead and all they spoke of was Queen Jane and her child, Edward, and little Elizabeth was no longer my enemy but a motherless child, a forgotten daughter, just like me. Then the other queens..." She almost smiled. "One after another, three other women came to me and I was ordered to curtsey to them as queen and call them Mother, and none of them came close to my heart. In that long time I learned never to trust a word that any man says and never even to listen to a woman. The last woman I loved was my mother. The last man I trusted was my father. And he destroyed her, and she died of heartbreak, so what was I to think? Will I ever be a woman who can trust now?"

She broke off and looked at me. "My heart broke when I was a little more than twenty years old," she said wonderingly. "And d'you know, only now do I begin to think that there might be a life for me."

She smiled. "Oh, Hannah!" she sighed and patted me on the cheek. "Don't look so grave. It was all a long time ago and if we can triumph in this adventure then my story is ended happily. I shall have my mother's throne restored, I shall wear her jewels. I shall see her memory honored and she will look down from heaven and see her daughter on the throne that she bore me to inherit. I shall think myself a happy woman. Don't you see?"

I smiled uncomfortably.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

I swallowed on my dry throat. "I am afraid," I confessed. "I am sorry."

She nodded. "We are all afraid," she said frankly. "Me too. Go down and choose a horse from the stable and get a pair of riding boots. We are an army on the march today. G.o.d save us that we may make Framlingham without running into Lord Robert and his army."

Mary raised her standard at Framlingham Castle, a fortress to match any in England, and unbelievably half the world turned up on horseback and on foot to swear allegiance to her and death to the rebels. I walked beside her as she went down the ma.s.sed ranks of the men and thanked them for coming to her and swore to be a true and honest queen to them.

We had news from London at last. The announcement of King Edward's death had been made shamefully late. After the poor boy had died, the duke had kept the corpse hidden in his room while the ink dried on his will, and the powerful men of the country considered where their best interests lay. Lady Jane Grey had to be dragged on to the throne by her father-in-law. They said she had cried very bitterly and said that she could not be queen, and that the Lady Mary was the rightful heir, as everyone knew. It did not save her from her fate. They unfurled the canopy of state over her bowed head, they served her on bended knee despite her tearful protests, and the Duke of Northumberland proclaimed her as queen and bent his sly head to her.

The country was launched into civil war, directed against us, the traitors. Lady Elizabeth had not replied to the Lady Mary's warnings, nor come to join us at Framlingham. She had taken to her bed when she had heard the news of her brother's death and was too sick even to read her letters. When Lady Mary learned of that, she turned away for a moment to hide the hurt in her face. She had counted on Elizabeth's support, the two princesses together defending their father's will, and she had promised herself that she would keep her young sister safe. To find that Elizabeth was hiding under the bedcovers rather than racing to be with her sister, was a blow to Mary's heart as well as to her cause.

We learned that Windsor Castle had been fortified and provisioned for a siege, the guns of the Tower of London were battle-ready and turned to face inland, and Queen Jane had taken up residence in the royal apartments in the Tower and was said to lock the great gate every night to prevent any of her court slipping away: a coerced queen with a coerced court.

Northumberland himself, the battle-hardened veteran, had raised an army and was coming to root out our Lady Mary, who was now officially named as a traitor to Queen Jane. "Queen Jane indeed!" Jane Dormer exclaimed, irritably. The royal council had ordered Lady Mary's arrest for treason, there was a price on her head as a traitor. She was alone in all of England. She was a rebel against a proclaimed queen, she was beyond the law. Not even her uncle, the Spanish emperor, would support her.

No one knew how many troops Northumberland had under his command, no one knew how long we could last at Framlingham. He would join with Lord Robert's company of horse, and then the two men would come against Lady Mary: well-trained, well-paid men, experienced fighting men up against one woman and a chaotic camp of volunteers.

And yet, every day more men arrived from the surrounding countryside, swearing that they would fight for the rightful queen. The sailors from the warships anch.o.r.ed at Yarmouth who had been ordered to set sail to attack any Spanish ships which might be hanging offsh.o.r.e to rescue her, had mutinied against their commanders, and said that she must not leave the country: not because they had blocked her escape, but because she should be mounting the throne. They left their ships and marched inland to support us: a proper troop, accustomed to fighting. They marched into the castle in ranks, quite unlike our own draggle of farm laborers. At once they started teaching the men gathered at the castle how to fight and the rules of battle: the charge, the swerve, the retreat. I watched them arrive, and I watched them settle in, and for the first time I thought that Lady Mary might have a chance to escape capture.

She appointed an almoner to send out carts to bring in food for the makeshift army, which now camped all around the castle. She appointed building teams to repair the great curtain wall. She sent scouring parties out to beg and borrow weapons. She sent out scouts in every direction every dawn and dusk to see if they could find the duke and Lord Robert's army in their stealthy approach.

Every day she reviewed the troops and promised them her thanks and a more solid reward if they would stand by her, hold the line; and every afternoon she walked on the battlements, along the mighty curtain wall which ran around the impenetrable castle, and looked to the London road for the plume of dust which would tell her that the most powerful man in England was riding at the head of his army against her.

There were very many advisors to tell the Lady Mary that she could not win a pitched battle against the duke. I used to listen to their confident predictions and wonder if it would be safer for me to slip away now, before the encounter which must end in defeat. The duke had seen a dozen actions, he had fought and held power on the battlefield and in the council chamber. He forged an alliance with France and he could bring French troops against us if he did not defeat us at once, and then the lives of Englishmen would be taken by Frenchmen, the French would fight on English soil and it would all be her fault. The horror of the Wars of the Roses, with brother against brother, would be relived once more if Lady Mary would not see reason and surrender.

But then, in the middle of July, it all fell apart for the duke. His alliances, his treaties, could not hold against the sense that every Englishman had that Mary, Henry's daughter, was the rightful queen. Northumberland was hated by many and it was clear that he would rule through Jane as he had ruled through Edward. The people of England, from lords to commoners, muttered and then declared against him.

The accord he had st.i.tched together to darn Queen Jane into the fabric of England all unraveled. More and more men declared in public for Lady Mary, more and more men secretly slipped away from the duke's cause. Lord Robert himself was defeated by an army of outraged citizens, who just sprang up from the ploughed furrows, swearing that they would protect the rightful queen. Lord Robert declared for the Lady Mary and deserted his father but, despite turning his coat, was captured at Bury by citizens who declared him a traitor. The duke himself, trapped at Cambridge, his army disappearing like mist in the morning, announced suddenly that he too was for Lady Mary and sent her a message explaining that he had only ever tried to do his best for the realm.

"What does this mean?" I asked her, seeing the letter shaking so violently in her hand that she could hardly read it.

"It means I have won," she said simply. "Won by right, accepted right and not by battle. I am queen and the people's choice. Despite the duke himself, the people have spoken and I am the queen they want."

"And what will happen to the duke?" I asked, thinking of his son, Lord Robert, somewhere a prisoner.

"He's a traitor," she said, her eyes cold. "What do you think would have happened to me if I had lost?"

I said nothing. I waited for a moment, a heartbeat, a girl's heartbeat. "And what will happen to Lord Robert?" I asked, my voice very small.