The Queen's Fool Part 17

"I know that!" she exclaimed.

He took a breath. "Do I have your command to muster the royal guard, and the city's trained bands and lead them out against Wyatt in Kent?" he asked.

"Yes," she said. "But there must be no sieges of towns and no sacking of villages."

"It cannot be done!" he protested. "In battle, one cannot protect the battle ground."

"These are your orders," she insisted icily. "I will not have a civil war fought over my wheat fields, especially in these starving times. These rebels must be put down like vermin. I won't have innocent people hurt by the hunt."

For a moment he looked as if he would argue. Then she leaned toward him. "Trust me in this," she said persuasively. "I know. I am a virgin queen, my only children are my people. They have to see that I love them and care for them. I cannot get married on a tide of their innocent blood. This has to be gently done, and firmly done, and done only once. Can you do it for me?"

He shook his head. "No," he said. He was too afraid to waste time in flattery. "n.o.body can do it. They are gathering in their hundreds, in their thousands. These people understand only one thing and that is force. They understand gibbets at the crossroads and heads on pikes. You cannot rule Englishmen and be merciful, Your Grace."

"You are mistaken," she said, going head to head with him, as determined as he was. "I came to this throne by a miracle and G.o.d does not change his mind. We will win these men back by the love of G.o.d. You have to do it as I command. It has to be done as G.o.d would have it, or His miracle cannot take place."

The duke looked as if he would have argued.

"It is my command," she said flatly.

He shrugged and bowed. "As you command then," he said. "Whatever the consequences."

She looked over his head to me, her face quizzical, as if to ask what I thought. I made a little bow, I did not want her to know the sense of immense dread that I felt.

Winter 1554 I came to wish that I had warned her in that moment. The Duke of Norfolk took the apprentice boys from London and the queen's own guard, and marched them down to Kent to meet Wyatt's force in a set-piece battle, which should have routed the men from Kent in a day. But the moment the royal army faced Wyatt's men and saw their honest faces and their determination, our forces, who had sworn to protect the queen, threw their caps in the air and shouted, "We are all Englishmen!"

Not a shot was fired. They embraced each other as brothers and turned against their commander, united against the queen. The duke, desperate to escape with his life, hared back to London, having done nothing but add a trained force to Wyatt's raggle-taggle army who came onward, even more quickly, even more determined than they were before, right up to the gates of London.

The sailors on the warships on the Medway, always a powerful bellwether of opinion, deserted to Wyatt in a body, abandoning the queen's cause, united by their hatred of Spain, and determined to have a Protestant English queen. They took the small arms from the ships, the stores, and their skill as fighting men. I remembered how the arrival of the ships' companies from Yarmouth had changed everything for us at Framlingham. We had known then, when the sailors had joined us to fight on land, that it was a battle by the people, and that the people united could not be defeated. Now they were united once more, but this time against us. When she heard the news from the Medway, I thought that the queen must realize she had lost.

She sat down with a much diminished council in a room filled with the acrid smell of fear.

"Half of them have fled to their homes in the country," she told Jane Dormer as she looked at the empty seats around the table. "And they will be writing letters to Elizabeth now, trying to balance their scales, trying to join the winning side."

She was hara.s.sed by advice. Those who had stayed at court were divided between men who said that she should cancel the marriage, and promise to choose a Protestant prince for a husband, and those who were begging her to call in the Spanish to help put down the rebellion with exemplary savagery.

"And thus prove to everyone that I cannot rule alone!" the queen exclaimed.

Thomas Wyatt's army, swelled by recruits from every village on the London road, reached the south bank of the Thames on a wave of enthusiasm, and found London Bridge raised against them, and the guns of the Tower trained on the southern bank ready for them.

"They are not to open fire," the queen ruled.

"Your Grace, for the love of G.o.d..."

She shook her head. "You want me to open fire on Southwark, a village that greeted me so kindly as queen? I will not fire on the people of London."

"The rebels are encamped within range now. We could open fire and destroy them in one cannonade."

"They will have to stay there until we can raise an army to drive them away."

"Your Grace, you have no army. There are no men who will fight for you."

She was pale but she did not waver for a moment. "I have no army yet," she emphasized. "But I will raise one from the good men of London."

Against her council's advice, and with the enemy force growing stronger every day that they camped, unchallenged, on the south bank of the city, the queen put on her great gown of state and went to the Guildhall to meet the Mayor and the people. Jane Dormer, her other ladies and I went in her train, dressed as grandly as we could and looking confident, though we knew we were proceeding to disaster.

"I don't know why you are coming," one of the old men of the council said pointedly to me. "There are fools enough in her train already."

"But I am a holy fool, an innocent fool," I said pertly. "And there are few enough innocent here. You would not be one, I reckon."

"I am a fool to be here at all," he said sourly.

Of all of the queen's council and certainly of all of her ladies in waiting, only Jane and I had any hopes of getting out of London alive; but Jane and I had seen her at Framlingham, and we knew that this was a queen to back against all odds. We saw the sharpness in her dark eyes and the pride in her carriage. We had seen her put her crown on her small dark head and smile at herself in the looking gla.s.s. We had seen a queen, not filled with fear of an unbeatable enemy, but playing for her life as if it were a game of quoits. She was at her very best when she and her G.o.d stood against disaster; with an enemy at the very gates of London you would want no other queen.

But despite all this, I was afraid. I had seen men and women put to violent death, I had smelled the smoke from the burnings of heretics. I knew, as few of her ladies knew, what death meant.

"Are you coming with me, Hannah?" she asked pleasantly as she mounted the steps to the Guildhall.

"Oh yes, Your Grace," I said through cold lips.

They had set up a throne for her in the Guildhall and half of London came from sheer curiosity, crowding to hear the queen argue for her life. When she stood, a small figure under the weighty golden crown, draped in the heavy robes of state, I thought for a moment that she would not be able to convince them to keep their faith with her. She looked too frail, she looked too much like a woman who would indeed be ruled by her husband. She looked like a woman you could not trust.

She opened her mouth to speak and there was no sound. "Dear G.o.d, let her speak." I thought she had lost her voice from fear itself, and Wyatt might as well march into the hall now and claim the throne for the Lady Elizabeth, for the queen could not defend herself. But then her voice boomed out, as loud as if she were shouting every word, but as clear and sweet as if she were singing like a chorister in the chapel on Christmas Day.

She told them everything, it was as simple as that. She told them the story of her inheritance: that she was a king's daughter and she claimed her father's power, and their fealty. She reminded them that she was a virgin without a child of her own and that she loved the people of the country as only a mother can love her child, that she loved them as a mistress, and that, loving them so intensely, she could not doubt but that they loved her in return.

She was seductive. Our Mary, whom we had seen ill, beleaguered, pitifully alone under virtual house arrest, and only once as a commander; stood before them and she blazed with pa.s.sion until they caught her fire and were part of it. She swore to them that she was marrying for their benefit, solely to give them an heir, and if they did not think it was the best choice then she would live and die a virgin for them; that she was their queen - it meant nothing to her whether she had a man or not. What was important was the throne, which was hers, and the inheritance, which should come to her son. Nothing else mattered more. Nothing else could ever matter more. She would be guided by them in her marriage, as in everything else. She would rule them as a queen on her own, whether married or not. She was theirs, they were hers, there was nothing that could change it.

Looking around the hall I saw the people begin to smile, and then nod. These were men who wanted to love a queen, who wanted a sense that the world could be held fast, that a woman could hold her desires, that a country could be made safe, that change could be held back. She swore to them that if they would stay true to her, she would be true to them and then she smiled at them, as if it was all a game. I knew that smile and I knew that tone; it was the same as at Framlingham when she had demanded why should she not take an army out against tremendous odds? Why should she not fight for her throne? And now, once again, there were tremendous odds against her: a popular army encamped at Southwark, a popular princess on the move against her, the greatest power in Europe mobilizing, and her allies nowhere to be seen. Mary tossed her head under the heavy crown and the rays from the diamonds shot around the room in arrows of light. She smiled at the huge crowd of Londoners as if every one of them adored her - and at that moment they did.

"And now, good subjects, pluck up your hearts and like true men face up against these rebels and fear them not, for I a.s.sure you, I fear them nothing at all!"

She was tremendous. They threw their caps in the air, they cheered her as if she were the Virgin Mary herself. And they raced outside and took the news to all those who had not been able to get into the Guildhall, until the whole city was humming with the words of the queen who had sworn that she would be a mother to them, a mistress to them, and that she loved them so much she would marry or not as they pleased, as long as they would love her in return.

London went mad for Mary. The men volunteered to march against the rebels, the women tore up their best linen into bandages and baked bread for the volunteer soldiers to take in their knapsacks. In their hundreds, the men volunteered; in their thousands, and the battle was won; not when Wyatt's army was cornered and defeated just a few days later, but in that single afternoon, by Mary, standing on her own two feet, head held high, blazing with courage and telling them that as a virgin queen she demanded their love for her as she gave them hers.

Once again the queen learned that holding the throne was harder than winning it. She spent the days after the uprising struggling with her conscience, faced with the agonizing question of what should be done with the rebels who had come against her and been so dramatically defeated. Clearly, G.o.d would protect this Mary on her throne, but G.o.d was not to be mocked. Mary must also protect herself.

Every advisor that she consulted was insistent that the realm would never be at peace until the network of troublemakers was arrested, tried for treason and executed. There could be no more mercy from a tender-hearted queen. Even those who in the past had praised the queen for holding Lady Jane and the Dudley brothers in the Tower for safekeeping were now urging her to make an end to it, and send them to the block. It did not matter that Jane had not led this rebellion, just as it did not matter that she had not commanded the rebellion that had put her on the throne. Hers was the head that they would crown, and so hers was the head that must be struck off the body.

"She would do the same to you, Your Grace," they murmured to her.

"She is a girl of sixteen," the queen replied, her fingers pressed against her aching temples.

"Her father joined the rebels for her cause. The others joined for the Princess Elizabeth. Both young women are your darkest shadows. Both young women were born to be your enemies. Their existence means that your life is in perpetual danger. Both of them must be destroyed."

The queen took their hard-hearted advice to her prie-dieu. "Jane is guilty of nothing but her lineage," the queen whispered, looking up at the statue of the crucified Christ.

She waited, as if hoping for the miracle of a reply.

"And You know, as I do, that Elizabeth is guilty indeed," she said, very low. "But how can I send my cousin and my sister to the scaffold?"

Jane Dormer shot me a look and the two of us moved our stools so as to block the view and the hearing of the other ladies in waiting. The queen on her knees should not be overheard. She was consulting the only advisor she truly trusted. She was bringing to the naked stabbed feet of her G.o.d the choices she had to make.

The council looked for evidence of Elizabeth's conspiracy with the rebels and they found enough to hang her a dozen times over. She had met with both Thomas Wyatt and with Sir William Pickering, even as the rebellion had been launched. On my own account, I knew that she had taken a message from me with all the ease of a practiced conspirator. There was no doubt in my mind, there was no doubt in the queen's mind, that if the rebellion had succeeded - as it would have done but for the folly of Edward Courtenay - that it would now be Queen Elizabeth sitting at the head of the council and wondering whether she should sign the death warrant for her half sister and her cousin. There was not a doubt in my mind that Queen Elizabeth too would spend hours on her knees. But Elizabeth would sign.

A guard tapped on the door, and looked into the quiet room.

"What is it?" Jane Dormer asked very softly.

"Message for the fool, at the side gate," the young man said.

I nodded and crept from the room, crossed the great presence chamber where there was a flurry of interest in the small crowd as I opened the door from the queen's private apartments, and came out. They were all pet.i.tioners, up from the country: from Wales and from Devon and from Kent, the places which had risen against the queen. They would be asking for mercy now, mercy from a queen that they would have destroyed. I saw their hopeful faces as the door opened for me, and did not wonder that she spent hours on her knees, trying to discover the will of G.o.d. The queen had been merciful to those who had taken the throne from her once; was she now to show mercy again? And what about the next time, and the time after that?

I did not have to show these traitors any courtly politeness. I scowled at them and elbowed my way through. I felt absolute uncompromising hatred of them, that they should have set themselves up to destroy the queen not once, but twice, and now came to court with their caps twisted in their hands and their heads bowed down to ask for the chance to go home and plot against her again.

I pushed past them and down the twisting stone stair to the gate. I found I was hoping that Daniel would be there, and so I was disappointed when I saw a pageboy, a lad I did not know, in homespun, wearing no livery and bearing no badge.

"What d'you want with me?" I asked, instantly alert.

"I bring you these to take to Lord Robert," he said simply and thrust two books, one a book of prayers, one a testament, into my arms.

"From who?"

He shook his head. "He wants them," he said. "I was told you would be glad to take them to him." Without waiting for my reply he faded away into the darkness, running half stooped along the shelter of the wall, leaving me with the two books in my arms.

Before I went back into the palace I turned both books upside down, and checked the endpapers for any hidden messages. There was nothing. I could take them to him if I wished. All I did not know was whether or not I wanted to go.

I chose to go to the Tower in the morning, in broad daylight, as if I had nothing to hide. I showed the guard the books at the door and this time he riffled the pages and looked at the spine as if to make sure that there was nothing hidden. He stared at the print. "What's this?"

"Greek," I said. "And the other is Latin."

He looked me up and down. "Show me the inside of your jacket. Turn out your pockets."

I did as I was bid. "Are you a lad or a la.s.s then, or something in between?"

"I am the queen's fool," I said. "And it would be better for you if you let me pa.s.s."

"G.o.d bless Her Grace!" he said with sudden enthusiasm. "And whatever oddities she chooses to amuse herself with!" He led the way to a new building, walking across the green. I followed him, keeping my head turned from the place where they usually built the scaffold.

We went in a handsome double door and up the twisting stone stairs. The guard at the top stood to one side and unlocked the door to let me in.

Lord Robert was standing by the window, breathing the cold air which blew in from the river. He turned his head at the opening of the door and his pleasure at seeing me was obvious. "Mistress Boy!" he said. "At last!"

This room was a bigger and better one than he had been in before. It looked out over the dark yard outside, the White Tower glowering against the sky. A big fireplace dominated the room, carved horribly with crests and initials and names of men who had been kept there so long that they had the time to put their names into stone with pocket knives. His own crest was there, carved by his brother and his father, who had worked the stone while waiting for their sentence, and had scratched their names while the scaffold was built outside their window.

The months in prison were starting to leave a mark on him. His skin was pallid, whiter even than winter-pale, he had not been allowed to walk in the garden since the rebellion. His eyes were set deeper in their sockets than when he had been the favored son of the most powerful man in England. But his linen was clean and his cheeks were shaved and his hair was shiny and silky, and my heart still turned over at the sight of him, even while I hung back and tried to see him for what he was: a traitor and a man condemned to death, waiting for the day of his execution.

He read my face in one quick glance. "Displeased with me, Mistress Boy?" he demanded. "Have I offended you?"

I shook my head. "No, my lord."

He came closer and though I could smell the clean leather of his boots and the warm perfume of his velvet jacket, I leaned away from him.

He put his hand under my chin and turned my face up. "You're unhappy," he remarked. "What is it? Not the betrothed, surely?"

"No," I said.

"What then? Missing Spain?"

"No."

"Unhappy at court?" he guessed. "Girls catfighting?"

I shook my head.

"You don't want to be here? You didn't want to come?" Then, quickly spotting the little flicker of emotion that went across my face, he said: "Oho! Faithless! You have been turned, Mistress Boy, as often spies are. You have been turned around and now you are spying on me."

"No," I said flatly. "Never. I would never spy on you."

I would have moved away but he put his hands on either side of my face and held me so that I could not get away from him, and he could read my eyes as if I were a broken code.

"You have despaired of my cause and despaired of me and become her servant and not mine," he accused me. "You love the queen."

"n.o.body could help loving the queen," I said defensively. "She is a most beautiful woman. She is the bravest woman I have ever known and she struggles with her faith and with the world every day. She is halfway to being a saint."

He smiled at that. "You're such a girl," he said, laughing at me. "You're always in love with somebody. And so you prefer this queen to me, your true lord."

"No," I said. "For here I am, doing your bidding. As I was told. Though it was a stranger who came to me and I did not know if I was safe."

He shrugged at that. "And tell me, you did not betray me?"

"When?" I demanded, shocked.

"When I asked you to take a message to Lady Elizabeth and to my tutor?"

He could see the horror in my face at the very thought of such a betrayal. "Good G.o.d, no, my lord. I did both errands and I told no one."

"Then how did it all go wrong?" He dropped his hands from my face and turned away. He paced to the window and back to the table that he used for a study desk. He turned at the desk and went to the fireplace. I thought this must be a regular path for him, four steps to his table, four steps to the fireplace, four steps back to the window; no further than this for a man who used to ride out on his horse before he broke his fast, and then hunt all day, and dance with the ladies of the court all night.

"My lord, that's easily answered. It was Edward Courtenay who told Bishop Gardiner and the plot was discovered," I said very quietly. "The bishop brought the news to the queen."

He whirled around. "They let that spineless puppy out of their sight for a moment?"

"The bishop knew that something was being planned. Everyone knew that something was being planned."

He nodded. "Tom Wyatt was always indiscreet."

"He will pay for it. They are questioning him now."