The Queen's Fool Part 16

I slid down from my stool. "May we talk privately?" I asked.

"Go into the printing room," my father recommended to Daniel. "Your mother and I will take a gla.s.s of wine out here."

He poured more wine for her and I caught her amused smile as Daniel and I went into the inside room where the big press stood.

"Mr. Dee tells me that I will lose the Sight if I marry," I said earnestly. "He believes it is a gift from G.o.d, I cannot throw it away."

"It is guesswork and waking dreams," Daniel said roundly.

It was so close to my own opinion that I could hardly argue. "It is beyond our understanding," I said stoutly. "Mr. Dee wants me to be his scryer. He is an alchemist and he says..."

"It sounds like witchcraft. When Prince Philip of Spain comes to England, John Dee will be tried for a witch."

"He won't. It's holy work. He prays before and after scrying. It's a holy spiritual task."

"And what have you learned, so far?" he asked sarcastically.

I thought of all the secrets I had known already, the child who would not be a child, the virgin but not queen, the queen but no virgin, and the safety and glory which would come to my lord. "There are secrets I cannot tell you," I said, and then I added: "And that is another reason that I cannot be your wife. There should not be secrets between man and wife."

He turned away with an exclamation of irritation. "Don't be clever with me," he said. "You have insulted me before my mother and before your father by saying you don't want to marry at all. Don't come in here with me and try to be clever about going back on your word. You are so full of trickery that you will talk yourself out of happiness and into heartbreak."

"How should I be happy if I have to be a nothing?" I asked. "I am the favorite of Queen Mary, I am highly paid. I could take bribes and favors to the value of hundreds of pounds. I am trusted by the queen herself. The greatest philosopher in the land thinks I have a gift from G.o.d to foretell the future. And you think my happiness lies in walking away from all this to marry an apprentice physician!"

He caught my hands, which were twisting together, and pulled me toward him. His breath was coming as quickly as my own. "Enough," he said angrily. "You have insulted me enough, I think. You need not marry an apprentice physician. You can be Robert Dudley's wh.o.r.e or his tutor's adept. You can think yourself the queen's companion but everyone knows you as the fool. You make yourself less than what I would offer you. You could be the wife of an honorable man who would love you and instead you throw yourself into the gutter for any pa.s.serby to pick up."

"I do not!" I gasped, trying to pull my hands away.

Suddenly he pulled me toward him and wrapped his arms around my waist. His dark head came down, his mouth close to mine. I could smell the pomade in his hair and the heat of the skin of his cheek. I shrank back even as I felt the desire to go forward.

"Do you love another man?" he demanded urgently.

"No," I lied.

"Do you swear, on all you believe, whatever that is, that you are free to marry me?"

"I am free to marry you," I said, honestly enough, for G.o.d knew as well as I did that no one else wanted me.

"With honor," he specified.

I felt my lips part, I could have spat at him in my temper. "Of course, with honor," I said. "Have I not told you that my gift is dependent on my virginity? Have I not said that I will not risk that?" I pulled away from him but his grip on me tightened. Despite myself, my body took in the sense of him: the strength of his arms, the power of his thighs which pressed against me, the scent of him, and for some odd reason, the feeling of absolute safety that he gave me. I had to pull away from him to stop myself from yielding. I realized that I wanted to mold myself around him, put my head on his shoulder, let him hold me against him and know that I was safe - if only I would let him love me, if only I would let myself love him.

"If they bring in the Inquisition, we will have to leave, you know that." His grip was as hard as ever, I felt his hips against my belly and had to stop myself rising on my toes to lean against him.

"Yes, I know that," I said, only half hearing him, feeling him with every inch of my body.

"If we leave, you will have to come with me as my wife, I will take you and your father to safety under no other condition."

"Yes."

"Then we are agreed?"

"If we have to leave England then I will marry you," I said.

"And in any case we will marry when you are sixteen."

I nodded, my eyes closed. Then I felt his mouth come down on to mine and I felt his kiss melt every argument away.

He released me and I leaned back against the printing press to steady myself. He smiled as if he knew that I was dizzy with desire. "As to Lord Robert, it is my request that you serve him no longer," he said. "He is a convicted traitor, he is imprisoned, and you endanger yourself and us all by seeking his company." His look darkened. "And he is not a man I would trust with my betrothed."

"He thinks of me as a child and a fool," I corrected him.

"You are neither," he said gently. "And neither am I. You are half in love with him, Hannah, and I won't tolerate it."

I hesitated, ready to argue, and then I felt the most curious sensation of my life: the desire to tell the truth to someone. I had never before felt the desire to be honest, I had spent all my life enmeshed in lies: a Jew in a Christian country, a girl in boy's clothing, a pa.s.sionate young woman dressed as a Holy Fool, and now a young woman betrothed to one man and in love with another.

"If I tell you the truth about something, will you help me?" I asked.

"I will give you the best help I can," he said.

"Daniel, talking with you is like bargaining with a Pharisee."

"Hannah, talking with you is like catching fish in the Sea of Galilee. What is it you would tell me?"

I would have turned away but he caught me and drew me back close to him. His body pressed against me, I felt his hardness and I suddenly understood - an older girl would have understood long before - that this was the currency of desire. He was my betrothed. He desired me. I desired him. All I had to do was to tell him the truth.

"Daniel, this is the truth. I saw that the king would die, I named the day. I saw that Jane would be crowned queen. I saw that Queen Mary would be queen, and I have seen a glimpse of her future, which is heartbreak, and the future of England, which is unclear to me. John Dee says I have a gift of Sight. He tells me it comes in part from me being a virgin and I want to honor the gift. And I want to marry you. And I desire you. And I cannot help but love Lord Robert. All those things. All at once." I had my forehead pressed against his chest, I could feel the b.u.t.tons of his jerkin against my forehead and I had the uncomfortable thought that when I looked up he would see the mark of his b.u.t.tons printed on my skin and I would look, not desirable, but foolish. Nonetheless I stayed, holding him close, while he considered the rush of truths I had told him. Moments later he eased me back from him and looked into my eyes.

"Is it an honorable love, as a servant to a master?" he asked.

He saw my eyes s.h.i.+ft away from his serious gaze and he put his hand under my chin to hold my face up to him. "Tell me, Hannah. You are to be my wife. I have a right to know. Is it an honorable love?"

I felt my lip quiver and the tears come to my eyes. "It's all muddled up," I said weakly. "I love him for what he is..." I was silenced by the impossibility of conveying to Daniel the desirability of Robert Dudley; his looks, his clothes, his wealth, his boots, his horses were all beyond my vocabulary. "He is... wonderful." I did not dare look into his eyes. "I love him for what he might become - he will be freed, he will be a great man, a great man, Daniel. He will be the maker of a Prince of England. And tonight he is in the Tower, waiting for the sentence of death, and I think of him, and I think of my mother waiting, like he is waiting, for the morning when they took her out..." I lost my voice, I shook my head. "He is a prisoner as she was. He is on the edge of death, as she was. Of course I love him."

He held me for a few more seconds and then he coldly put me from him. I could almost feel the icy air of the quiet printing room rush between us. "This is not your mother. He is not a prisoner of faith," he said quietly. "He is not being tried by the Inquisition but by a queen whom you a.s.sure me is merciful and wise. There is no reason to love a man who has plotted and intrigued his way to treason. He would have put Lady Jane on the throne and beheaded the mistress that you say you love: Queen Mary. He is not an honorable man."

I opened my mouth to argue but there was nothing I could say.

"And you are all mixed up with him, with his train, with his treasonous plans, and with your feeling for him. I won't call it love because if I thought for one moment it was anything more than a girl's fancy I would go out now to your father and break our betrothal. But I tell you this. You have to leave the service of Robert Dudley, whatever future you have seen for him. You have to avoid John Dee and you have to surrender your gift. You can serve the queen until you are sixteen but you have to be my betrothed in word and in every act you take. And in eighteen months' time from now, when you are sixteen, we will marry and you will leave court."

"Eighteen months?" I said, very low.

He took my hand to his mouth and he bit the fat mons veneris at the root of my thumb, where the plumpness of the flesh tells hucksters and fairground fortune-tellers that the woman is ready for love.

"Eighteen months," he said flatly. "Or I swear I will take another girl to be my wife and throw you away to whatever future the soothsayer, the traitor, and the queen make up for you."

It was a cold winter, and not even Christmas brought any joy to the people. Every day brought the queen news of more petty complainings and uprisings in every county in the land. Every incident was small, hardly worth regarding, s...o...b..a.l.l.s were thrown at the Spanish amba.s.sador, a dead cat was slung into the aisle of a church, there were some insulting words scrawled on a wall, a woman prophesied doom in a churchyard - nothing to frighten the priests or the lords of the counties individually; but put together, they were unmistakable signs of widespread unease.

The queen held Christmas at Whitehall and appointed a Lord of Misrule and demanded a merry court in the old ways, but it was no good. The missing places at the Christmas feast told their own story: Lady Elizabeth did not even visit her sister, but stayed at Ashridge, her house on the great north road, ideally placed to advance on London as soon as someone gave the word. Half a dozen of the queen's council were unaccountably missing; the French amba.s.sador was busier than any good Christian should be at Christmastide. It was clear that there was trouble brewing right up to the very throne, and the queen knew it, we all of us knew it.

She was advised by her Lord Chancellor, Bishop Gardiner, and by the Spanish amba.s.sador that she should move to the Tower and put the country on a war footing, or move right away from London and prepare Windsor Castle for a siege. But the grit I had seen in her in the days when she and I had ridden cross-country with only a stable groom to guide us came to her again, and she swore that she would not run from her palace in the very first Christmas of her reign. She had been England's anointed queen for less than three months, was she to be another queen as Jane? Should she too lock herself and her dwindling court into the Tower, as another more popular princess gathered her army about her and prepared to march on London? Mary swore she would stay in Whitehall from Christmas until Easter and defy the rumors of her own defeat.

"But it's not very merry, is it, Hannah?" she asked me sadly. "I have waited for this Christmas all my life, and now it seems that people have forgotten how to be happy."

We were all but alone in her rooms. Jane Dormer was seated in the bay window to catch the last of the gray unhelpful afternoon light on her sewing. One lady was playing at a lute, a mournful wail of a song, and another was laying out embroidery threads and winding them off the skein. It was anything but merry. You would have thought that this was the court of a queen on the brink of death, not one about to marry.

"Next year it will be better," I said. "When you are married and Prince Philip is here."

At the very mention of his name the color rose up in her pale cheeks. "Hush," she said, gleaming. "I would be wrong to expect it of him. He will have to be often in his other kingdoms. There is no greater empire in the world than the one he will inherit, you know."

"Yes," I said, thinking of the fires of the auto-da-fe. "I know how powerful the Spanish empire is."

"Of course you do," she said, recalling my nationality. "And we must speak Spanish all the time to improve my accent. We'll speak Spanish now."

Jane Dormer looked up and laughed. "Ah, we must all speak Spanish soon."

"He won't impose it," the queen said quickly, always conscious of spies even here, in her private rooms. "He wants nothing but what is best for Englishmen."

"I know that," Jane said soothingly. "I was only joking, Your Grace."

The queen nodded, but the frown did not leave her face. "I have written to Lady Elizabeth to tell her to return to court," she said. "She must come back for the Christmas feast, I should not have allowed her to leave."

"Well, it's not as if she adds much to the merriment," Jane remarked comfortably.

"I do not require her presence for the merriment she brings me," the queen said sharply, "but for the greater pleasure of knowing where she is."

"You may have to excuse her, if she is too ill to travel..." Jane remarked.

"Yes," said the queen. "If she is. But, if she is too ill to travel, then why would she move from Ashridge to Donnington Castle? Why would a sick girl, too ill to come to London where she might be cared for, instead plan a journey to a castle ideally placed for siege, at the very heart of England?"

There was a diplomatic silence.

"The country will come round to Prince Philip," Jane Dormer said gently. "And all this worry will be forgotten."

Suddenly, there was a sharp knock from the guards outside and the double doors were thrown open. The noise startled me and I was on my feet in an instant, my heart pounding. A messenger stood in the doorway, the Lord Chancellor with him, and the veteran soldier Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk beside him, their faces grim.

I fell back, as if I would hide behind her. I had an immediate certainty that they had come for me, they somehow had discovered who I was, and had a warrant for my arrest as a heretic Jew.

Then I saw they were not looking at me. They were looking at the queen and their jaws were set and their eyes cold.

"Oh, no," I whispered.

She must have thought it was the end for her, as she rose slowly to her feet and looked from one stern face to another. She knew that the duke could turn his coat in a moment, the council could have mustered a swift plot; they had done it before against Jane, they could do it again. But she did not blench, the face she turned to them was as serene as if they had come to invite her to dine. In that moment I loved her for her courage, for her absolute queenly determination never to show fear. "How now, my lords?" she said pleasantly, her voice steady though they walked into the center of the room and looked at her with hard eyes. "I hope you bring me good news for all you seem so severe."

"Your Grace, it is not good news," Bishop Gardiner said flatly. "The rebels are marching against you. My young friend Edward Courtenay has seen the wisdom to confess to me and throw himself on your mercy."

I saw her eyes flicker away, to one side, as her swift intelligence a.s.sessed this information; but her expression did not otherwise alter at all, she was still smiling. "And Edward tells you?"

"That a plot is in train to march on London, to put you in the Tower and to set the Lady Elizabeth on the throne in your place. We have the names of some of them: Sir William Pickering, Sir Peter Carew in Devon, Sir Thomas Wyatt in Kent, and Sir James Crofts."

For the first time she looked shaken. "Peter Carew, who turned out for me in my time of need, in the autumn? Who raised the men of Devon for me?"

"Yes."

"And Sir James Crofts, my good friend?"

"Yes, Your Grace."

I kept back behind her. These were the very men that my lord had named to me, that he had asked me to name to John Dee. These were the men who were to make a chemical wedding and to pull down silver and replace it with gold. Now I thought I knew what he meant. I thought I knew which queen was silver and which was gold in his metaphor. And I thought that I had again betrayed the queen while taking her wage, and that it would not be long before someone discovered who had been the catalyst in this plot.

She took a breath to steady herself. "Any others?"

Bishop Gardiner looked at me. I flinched back from his gaze but it went on past me. He did not even see me, he had to give her the worst news. "The Duke of Suffolk is not at his house in Sheen, and no one knows where he has gone."

I saw Jane Dormer stiffen in the window seat. If the Duke of Suffolk had disappeared then it could mean only one thing: he was raising his hundreds of tenants and retainers to restore the throne to his daughter Jane. We were faced with an uprising for Elizabeth and a rebellion for Queen Jane. Those two names could turn out more than half of the country, and all the courage and determination that Queen Mary had shown before could come to nothing now.

"And Lady Elizabeth? Does she know of this? Is she at Ashridge still?"

"Courtenay says that she was on the brink of marriage with him, and the two of them were to take your throne and rule together. Thank G.o.d the lad has seen sense and come over to us in time. She knows of everything, she is waiting in readiness. The King of France will support her claim and send a French army to put her on the throne. She may even now be riding to head the rebel army."

I saw the queen's color drain from her face. "Are you sure of this? My Elizabeth would have marched to my execution?"

"Yes," the duke said flatly. "She is up to her pretty ears in it."

"Thank G.o.d Courtenay has told us of this now," the bishop interrupted. "There may still be time for us to get you safely away."

"I would have thanked Courtenay more if he had the sense never to engage in it," my queen countered sharply. "Your young friend is a fool, my lord, and a weak disloyal fool at that." She did not wait for his defense. "So what must we do?"

The duke stepped forward. "You must go to Framlingham at once, Your Grace. And we will put a wars.h.i.+p on standby to take you out of the country to Spain. This is a battle you cannot win. Once you're safe in Spain perhaps you can regroup, perhaps Prince Philip..."

I saw her grip on the back of her chair tighten. "It is a mere six months since I rode into London from Framlingham," she said. "The people wanted me as queen then."

"You were their choice in preference to the Duke of Northumberland with Queen Jane as his puppet," he brutally reminded her. "Not instead of Elizabeth. The people want the Protestant religion and the Protestant princess. Indeed, they may be prepared to die for it. They won't have you with Prince Philip of Spain as king."

"I won't leave London," she said. "I have waited all my life for my mother's throne, I shan't abandon it now."

"You have no choice," he warned her. "They will be at the gates of the city within days."

"I will wait till that moment."

"Your Grace," Bishop Gardiner said. "You could withdraw to Windsor at least..."

Queen Mary rounded on him. "Not to Windsor, not to the Tower, not to anywhere but here! I am England's princess and I will stay here in my palace until they tell me that they want me as England's princess no more. Don't speak to me of leaving, my lords, for I will not consider it."

The bishop retreated from her pa.s.sion. "As you wish, Your Grace. But these are troubled times and you are risking your life..."

"The times may be troubled, but I am not troubled," she said fiercely.

"You are gambling with your life as well as your throne," the duke almost shouted at her.