The Queen's Fool Part 15

"You had better go back to court," he said. "You will be missed."

"Will you not come, and see Lady Elizabeth?"

He looked thoughtful. "Yes, when I am sure it is safe. You can tell Lord Robert that I will serve him, and I will serve the cause, and that I too think the time is ripe now. I'll advise her and be her intelligencer during these days of change. But I have to take care."

"Are you not afraid?" I asked, thinking of my own terror of being observed, my own fear of the knock on the door in darkness.

"Not very," he said slowly. "I have friends in powerful places. I have plans to complete. The queen is restoring the monasteries and their libraries must be restored too. It is my G.o.d-given duty to find and restore the books to their shelves, the ma.n.u.scripts and the scholarship. And I hope to see base metal turn to gold."

"The philosopher's stone?" I asked.

He smiled. "This time it is a riddle."

"What shall I tell Lord Robert when I go back to see him in the Tower?" I asked.

John Dee looked thoughtful. "Tell him nothing more than he will die in his bed beloved of a queen," he said. "You saw it, though you did not know what you could see. That's the truth, though it seems impossible now."

"And are you sure?" I asked. "Are you sure that he will not be executed?"

He nodded. "I'm sure. There is much for him to do, and the time of a queen of gold will come. Lord Robert is not a man to die young with his work unfinished. And I foresee a great love for him, the greatest love he has ever known."

I waited, hardly breathing. "Do you know who he will love?" I whispered.

Not for a moment did I think it would be me. How could it be? I was his va.s.sal, he called me Mistress Boy, he laughed at the girl's adoration that he saw in my face and offered to release me. Not even at that moment when John Dee predicted a great love for him did I think that it would be me.

"A queen will love him," John Dee said. "He will be the greatest love of her life."

"But she is to marry Philip of Spain," I observed.

He shook his head. "I can't see a Spaniard on the throne of England," he predicted. "And neither can many others."

It was hard to find a way to speak with the Lady Elizabeth without half the court remarking on it. Although she had no friends at court and only a small circle of her own household, she seemed to be continually surrounded by apparently casual pa.s.sersby, half of whom were paid to spy on her. The French king had his spies in England, the Spanish emperor had his network. All the great men had maids and men in other households to keep watch for any signs of change or of treason, and the queen herself was creating and paying a network of informers. For all I knew, someone was paid to report on me, and the very thought of it made me sick with fear. It was a tense world of continual suspicion and pretend friendship. I was reminded of John Dee's model of the earth with all the planets going around it. This princess was like the earth, at the very center of everything, except all the stars in her firmament watched her with envious eyes and wished her ill. I thought it no wonder that she was paler and paler and the shadows under her eyes were turning from the blue to the dark violet of bruises, as the Christmas feast approached and there was no goodwill from anyone for her.

The queen's enmity grew every day that Elizabeth walked through the court with her head high, and her nose in the air, every time she turned away from the statue of Our Lady in the chapel, every time she left off her rosary and wore instead a miniature prayer book on a chain at her waist. Everyone knew that the prayer book contained her brother's dying prayer: "Oh my lord G.o.d, defend this realm from Papistry and maintain thy true religion." To wear this, in preference to the coral rosary that the queen had given her, was more than a public act of defiance, it was a living tableau of disobedience.

To Elizabeth, it was perhaps little more than a showy rebellion; but to our queen it was an insult that went straight to her heart. When Elizabeth rode out dressed in rich colors and smiling and waving, people would cheer her and doff their hats for her; when she stayed home in plain black and white people came to Whitehall Palace to see her dine at the queen's table and remark on her fragile beauty and the plain Protestant piety of her dress.

The queen could see that although Elizabeth never openly defied her, she continually gave the gossipmongers material to take outside the court and to spread among those who kept to their Protestant ways: "The Protestant princess was pale today, and did not touch the stoop of holy water."

"The Protestant princess begged to be excused from evening Ma.s.s because she was unwell again."

"The Protestant princess, all but prisoner in the Papist court, is keeping to her faith as best as she can, and biding her time in the very jaws of the Antichrist."

"The Protestant princess is a very martyr to her faith and her plain-faced sister is as dogged as a pack of bear-baiters, hounding the young woman's pure conscience."

The queen, resplendent in rich gowns and delighting in her mother's jewels, looked tawdry beside the blaze of Elizabeth's hair, the martyr whiteness of her pallor and the extreme modesty of her black dress. However the queen dressed, whatever she wore, Elizabeth, the Protestant princess, gleamed with the radiance of a girl on the edge of womanhood. The queen beside her, old enough to be her mother, looked weary, and overwhelmed by the task she had inherited.

So I could not simply go to Elizabeth's rooms and ask to see her. I might as well have announced myself to the amba.s.sador from Spain who watched Elizabeth's every step, and reported everything to the queen. But one day, as I was walking behind her in the gallery, she stumbled for a moment. I went to help her, and she took my arm.

"I have broken the heel on my shoe, I must send it to the cobbler," she said.

"Let me help you to your rooms," I offered, and added in a whisper, "I have a message for you, from Lord Robert Dudley."

She did not even flicker a sideways glance at me, and in that absolute control I saw at once that she was a consummate plotter and that the queen was right to fear her.

"I can receive no messages without my sister's blessing," Elizabeth said sweetly. "But I would be very glad if you would help me to my chamber, I wrenched my foot when the heel broke."

She bent down and took off her shoe. I could not help but notice the pretty embroidery on her stocking, but I thought it was not the time to ask her for the pattern. Always, everything she owned, everything she did, fascinated me. I gave her my arm. A courtier pa.s.sing looked at us both. "The princess has broken the heel of her shoe," I explained. He nodded, and went on. He, for one, was not going to trouble himself to help her.

Elizabeth kept her eyes straight ahead, she limped slightly on her stockinged foot and it made her walk slowly. She gave me plenty of time to deliver the message that she had said she could not hear without permission.

"Lord Robert asks you to summon John Dee as your tutor," I said quietly. "He said, *without fail.'"

Still, she did not look at me.

"Can I tell him you will do so?"

"You can tell him that I will not do anything that would displease my sister the queen," she said easily. "But I have long wanted to study with Mr. Dee and I was going to ask him to read with me. I am particularly interested in reading the teaching of the early fathers of the Holy Church."

She shot one veiled glance at me.

"I am trying to learn about the Roman Catholic church," she said. "My education has been much neglected until now."

We were at the door of her rooms. A guard stood to attention as we approached and swung the door open. Elizabeth released me. "Thank you for your help," she said coolly, and went inside. As the door shut behind her I saw her bend down and put her shoe back on. The heel was, of course, perfectly sound.

John Dee's prediction that the men of England would rise up to prevent the queen marrying a Spaniard was proved every day in dozens of incidents. There were ballads sung against the marriage, the braver preachers thundered against a match so dangerous to the independence of the country. Crude drawings appeared on every lime-washed wall in the city, chap books were handed out slandering the Spanish prince, abusing the queen for even considering him. It was no help that the Spanish amba.s.sador a.s.sured every n.o.bleman at court that his prince had no interest in taking power in England, that the prince had been persuaded to the match by his father, that indeed Prince Philip, a desirable man of under thirty years might well have sought a bride to bring him more pleasure and profit than the Queen of England, eleven years his senior. Any suggestion that he wanted the match was proof of Spanish greed, any hint that he might have looked elsewhere was an insult.

The queen herself nearly collapsed under the weight of conflicting advice, under her great fear that she would lose the love of the people of England without gaining the support of Spain.

"Why did you say my heart would break?" she feverishly demanded of me, one day. "Was it because you could foresee it would be like this? With all my councillors telling me to refuse the match, and yet all of them telling me to marry and have a child without delay? With all the country dancing at my coronation and then, minutes later, all of them cursing the news of my wedding?"

"No," I said. "I could not have foretold this. I think no one could have foretold such a turnaround in such a little time."

"I have to guard against them," she said, more to herself than to me. "At every turn I have to keep them at my beck and call. The great lords, and every man under them, have to be my loyal servants; but all the time they whisper in corners and set themselves up to judge me."

She rose from her chair and walked the eight steps to the window, turned and walked back again. I remembered the first time I had seen her at Hunsdon, in the little court where she rarely laughed, where she was little more than a prisoner. Now she was Queen of England and still she was imprisoned by the will of the people, and still she did not laugh.

"And the council are worse than the ladies of my chamber!" she exclaimed. "They argue ceaselessly in my very presence, there are dozens of them but I cannot get a single sensible word of advice, they all desire something different, and they all - all of them! - lie to me. My spies bring me one set of stories, and the Spanish amba.s.sador tells me others. And all the time I know that they are ma.s.sing against me. They will pull me down from the throne and push Elizabeth on to it out of sheer madness. They will s.n.a.t.c.h themselves from the certainty of heaven and throw themselves into h.e.l.l because they have studied heresy, and now they cannot hear the true word when it is given to them."

"People like to think for themselves..." I suggested.

She rounded on me. "No, they don't. They like to follow a man who is prepared to think for them. And now they think they have found him. They have found Thomas Wyatt. Oh yes, I know of him. The son of Anne Boleyn's lover, whose side d'you think he is on? They have men like Robert Dudley, waiting on his chance in the Tower, and they have a princess like Elizabeth: a foolish girl, too young to know her own mind, too vain to take care, and too greedy to wait, as I had to wait, as I had to wait honorably, for all those long testing years. I waited in a wilderness, Hannah. But she will not wait at all."

"You need not fear Robert Dudley," I said quickly. "D'you not remember that he declared for you? Against his own father? But who is this Wyatt?"

She walked to the wall and back to the window again. "He has sworn he will be faithful to me but deny me my husband," she said. "As if such a thing could be done! He says he will pull me from the throne, and then put me back again."

"Does he have many on his side?"

"Half of Kent," she whispered. "And that sly devil Edward Courtenay as king in waiting, if I know him, and Elizabeth hoping to be his queen. And there will be money coming from somewhere to pay him for his crime, I don't doubt."

"Money?"

Her voice was bitter. "Francs. The enemies of England are always paid in francs."

"Can't you arrest him?"

"When I find him, I can," she said. "He's a traitor ten times over. But I don't know where he is nor when he plans to make his move." She walked to the window and looked out, as if she would see beyond the garden at the foot of the palace walls, over the silver Thames, cold in the winter sunlight, all the way to Kent and the men who kept their plans hidden.

I was struck by the contrast between our hopes on the road to London and how it was, now that she was queen crowned. "D'you know, I thought when we rode into London that all your struggles would be over."

The look she turned to me was haunted, her eyes shadowed with brown, her skin as thick as candle wax. She looked years older than she had done that day when we had ridden in to cheering crowds at the head of a cheering army. "I thought so too," she said. "I thought that my unhappiness was over. The fear that I felt all through my childhood: the nightmares at night, and the terrible waking every day to find that they were true. I thought that if I was proclaimed queen and crowned queen then I would feel safe. But now it is worse than before. Every day I hear of another plot against me, every day I see someone look askance when I go to Ma.s.s, every day I hear someone admire Lady Elizabeth's learning or her dignity or her grace. Every day I know that another man has whispered with the French amba.s.sador, spread a little gossip, told a little lie, suggested that I would throw my kingdom into the lap of Spain; as if I had not spent my life, my whole life, waiting for the throne! As if my mother did not sacrifice herself, refuse any agreement with the king so that she might keep me as the heir! She died without me at her side, without a kind word from him, in a cold damp ruin, far away from her friends, so that I might one day be queen. As though I would throw away her inheritance for a mere fancy for a portrait! Are they mad that they think I might so forget myself?

"There is nothing, nothing, more precious to me than this throne. There is nothing more precious to me than these people; and yet they cannot see it and they will not trust me!"

She was shaking, I had never seen her so distressed. "Your Grace," I said. "You must be calm. You have to seem serene, even when you are not."

"I have to have someone on my side," she whispered, as if she had not heard me. "Someone who cares about me, someone who understands the danger I am in. Someone to protect me."

"Prince Philip of Spain will not..." I began but she raised her hand to silence me.

"Hannah, I have nothing else to hope for but him. I hope that he comes to me, despite all the wicked slander against him, despite the danger to us both. Despite the threats that they will kill him the moment he sets foot in this kingdom. I hope to G.o.d that he has the courage to come to me and make me his wife and keep me safe. For as G.o.d is my witness, I cannot rule this kingdom without him."

"You said you would be a virgin queen," I reminded her. "You said you would live as a nun for your people and have no husband but them and no children but them."

She turned away from the window, from the view of the cold river and the iron sky. "I said it," she concurred. "But I did not know then what it would be like. I did not know then that being a queen would bring me even more pain than being a princess. I did not know that to be a virgin queen, as I am, means to be forever in danger, forever haunted by the fear of the future, and forever alone. And worse than everything else: forever knowing that nothing I do will last."

The queen's dark mood lasted till dinnertime and she took her seat with her head bowed and her face grim. A deadened silence fell over the great hall, no one could be merry with the queen under a cloud, and everyone had their own fears. If the queen could not hold her throne, who could be sure of the safety of his house? If she were to be thrown down and Elizabeth to take her place then the men who had just restored their chapels and were paying for Ma.s.ses to be sung would have to turn their coats again. It was a quiet anxious court, everyone looking around, and then there was a ripple of interest as Will Somers rose up from his seat, straightened his doublet with a foppish flick of his wrists and approached the queen's table. When he knew that all eyes were upon him he dropped elegantly to one knee and flourished a kerchief in a bow.

"What is it, Will?" she asked absently.

"I have come to proposaloh matrimonioh," Will said, as solemn as a bishop, with a ridiculous p.r.o.nunciation of the words. The whole court held its breath.

The queen looked up, the glimmer of a smile in her eyes. "Matrimony? Will?"

"I am a proclaimed bacheloroh," he said, from the back of the hall there was a suppressed giggle. "As everybody knowsohs. But I am prepared to overlookoh it, on this occasionoh."

"What occasion?" The queen's voice trembled with laughter.

"On the occasion of my proposaloh," he said. "To Your Grace, of matrimonioh."

It was dangerous ground, even for Will.

"I am not seeking a husband," the queen said primly.

"Then I will withdraw," he said with immense dignity. He rose to his feet and stepped backward from the throne. The court held its breath for the jest, the queen too. He paused; his timing was that of a musician, a composer of laughter. He turned. "But don't you go thinkingoh," he waved a long bony forefinger at her in warning, "don't you go thinkingoh that you have to throw yourself away on the son of a mere emperororoh. Now you know you could have me, you know."

The court collapsed into a gale of laughter, even the queen laughed as Will, with his comical gangling gait, went back to his seat and poured himself an extra large b.u.mper of wine. I looked across at him and he raised it to me, one fool to another. He had done exactly what he was supposed to do: to take the most difficult and most painful thing and turn it into a jest. But Will could always do more than that, he could take the sting from it, he could make a jest that hurt no one, so that even the queen, who knew that she was tearing her country apart over her determination to be married, could smile and eat her dinner and forget the forces ma.s.sing against her for at least one evening.

I went home to my father leaving a court humming with gossip, walking through a city seething with rebellion. The rumors of a secret army mustering to wage war against the queen were everywhere. Everyone knew of one man or another missing from his home, run off to join the rebels. Lady Elizabeth was said to be ready and willing to marry a good Englishman - Edward Courtenay - and had promised to take the throne as soon as her sister was deposed. The men of Kent would not allow a Spanish prince to conquer and subdue them. England was not some dowry which a princess, a half-Spanish princess, could hand over to Spain. There were good Englishmen that the queen should take if she had a mind to marry. There was handsome young Edward Courtenay with a kinship to the royal line on his own account. There were Protestant princelings all over Europe, there were gentlemen of breeding and education who would make a good king-consort to the queen. a.s.suredly she must marry, and marry at once, for no woman in the world could rule a household, much less a kingdom, without the guidance of a man; a woman's nature was not fitted to the work, her intelligence could not stretch to the decisions, her courage was not great enough for the difficulties, she had no steadfastness in her nature for the long haul. Of course the queen must marry, and give the kingdom a son and heir. But she should not marry, she should never even have thought of marrying a Spanish prince. The very notion was treason to England and she must be mad for love of him, as everyone was saying, even to think of it. And a queen who could set aside common sense for her l.u.s.t was not fit to rule. Better to overthrow a queen maddened by desire in her old age than suffer a Spanish tyrant.

My father had company in the bookshop. Daniel Carpenter's mother was perched on one of the stools at the counter, her son beside her. I knelt for my father's blessing, and then made a little bow to Mrs. Carpenter and to my husband-to-be. The two parents looked at Daniel and I, as p.r.i.c.kly as cats on a garden wall, and tried, without success, to hide their worldly-wise amus.e.m.e.nt at the irritability of a young couple during courtship.

"I waited to see you and hear the news from court," Mrs. Carpenter said. "And Daniel wanted to see you, of course."

The glance that Daniel shot at her made it clear that he did not wish her to explain his doings to me.

"Is the queen's marriage to go ahead?" my father asked. He poured me a gla.s.s of good Spanish red wine and pulled up a stool for me at the counter of the shop. I noted with wry amus.e.m.e.nt that my work as fool had made me a personage worthy of respect, with a seat and my own gla.s.s of wine.

"Without doubt," I said. "The queen is desperate for a helper and a companion, and it is natural she should want a Spanish prince."

I said nothing about the portrait which she had hung in her privy chamber, on the opposite wall from the prie-dieu, and which she consulted with a glance at every difficult moment, turning her head from a statue of G.o.d to a picture of her husband-to-be and back again.

My father glanced at Mrs. Carpenter. "Please G.o.d it makes no difference to us," he said. "Please G.o.d she does not bring in Spanish ways."

She nodded, but she failed to cross herself as she should have done. Instead she leaned forward and patted my father's hand. "Forget the past," she said rea.s.suringly. "We have lived in England for three generations. n.o.body can think that we are anything but good Christians and good Englishmen."

"I cannot stay if it is to become another Spain," my father said in a low voice. "You know, every Sunday, every saint's day, they burned heretics, sometimes hundreds at a time. And those of us who had practiced Christianity for years were put on trial alongside those who had hardly pretended to it. And no one could prove their innocence! Old women who had missed Ma.s.s because they were sick, young women who had been seen to look away when they raised the Host, any excuse, any reason, and you could be informed against. And always, always, it was those who had made money, or those who had advanced in the world and made enemies. And with my books and my business and my reputation for scholarship, I knew they would come for me, and I started to prepare. But I did not think they would take my parents, my wife's sister, my wife before me..." He broke off. "I should have thought of it, we should have gone earlier."

"Papa, we couldn't save her," I said, comforting him with the same words that he had used to me when I had cried that we should have stayed and died beside her.

"Old times," Mrs. Carpenter said briskly. "And they won't come here. Not the Holy Inquisition, not in England."

"Oh yes, they will," Daniel a.s.serted.

It was as if he had said a foul word. A silence fell at once; his mother and my father both turned to look at him.

"A Spanish prince, a half-Spanish queen, she must be determined to restore the church. How better to do it than to bring in the Inquisition to root out heresy? And Prince Philip has long been an enthusiast for the Inquisition."

"She's too merciful to do it," I said. "She has not even executed Lady Jane, though all her advisors say that she should. Lady Elizabeth drags her feet to Ma.s.s and misses it whenever she can and no one says anything. If the Inquisition were to be called in to judge then Elizabeth would be found guilty a dozen times over. But the queen believes that the truth of Holy Writ will become apparent, of its own accord. She will never burn heretics. She knows what it is like to be afraid for her life. She knows what it is like to be wrongly accused.

"She will marry Philip of Spain but she will not hand over the country to him. She will never be his cipher. She wants to be a good queen, as her mother was. I think she will restore this country to the true faith by gentle means; already, half the country is glad to return to the Ma.s.s, the others will follow later."

"I hope so," Daniel said. "But I say again - we should be prepared. I don't want to hear a knock on the door one night and know that we are too late to save ourselves. I won't be taken unawares, I won't go without a fight."

"Why, where would we go?" I asked. I could feel that old feeling of terror in the pit of my belly, the feeling that nowhere would ever be safe for me, that forever I would be waiting for the noise of feet on the stairs, and smelling smoke on the air.

"First Amsterdam, and then Italy," he said firmly. "You and I will marry as soon as we get to Amsterdam and then continue overland. We will travel all together. Your father and my mother and my sisters with us. I can complete my training as a physician in Italy and there are Italian cities that are tolerant of Jews, where we could live openly in our faith. Your father can sell his books, and my sisters could find work. We will live as a family."

"See how he plans ahead," Mrs. Carpenter said in an approving whisper to my father. He too was smiling at Daniel as if this young man was the answer to every question.

"We are not promised to marry till next year," I said. "I'm not ready to marry yet."

"Oh, not again," said my father.

"All girls think that," said Mrs. Carpenter.

Daniel said nothing.