The Queen's Fool

  “Do you not know the Grey sisters?”

  “Hardly at all,” I said. “They are the king’s cousins. They say that Lady Jane does not want to marry, she lives only to study her books. But her mother and her father have beaten her till she agreed.”

  My father nodded, the forcible ordering of a daughter was no surprise. “And what else?” he asked. “What of Lord Robert’s father, the Duke of Northumberland?”

  “He’s very much disliked.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “But he is like a king himself. He goes in and out of the king’s bedroom and says that this or that is the king’s own wish. What can anyone do against him?”

  “They took up our neighbor the portrait painter only last week,” my father remarked. “Mr. Tuller. They said he was a Catholic and a heretic. Took him off for questioning, and he has not come back. He had copied a picture of Our Lady some years ago, and someone searched a house and found it hidden, with his name signed at the foot.” My father shook his head. “It makes no sense in law,” he complained. “Whatever their conviction, it makes no sense. When he painted the picture it was allowed. Now it is heresy. When he painted the picture it was a work of art. Now it is a crime. The picture has not changed, it is the law which has changed and they apply the law to the years when it did not exist, before it was written. These people are barbarians. They lack all reason.”

  We both glanced toward the door. The street was quiet, the door locked.

  “D’you think we should leave?” I asked, very low. I realized for the first time that now I wanted to stay.

  He chewed his bread, thinking. “Not yet,” he said cautiously. “Besides, where could we go that was safe? I’d rather be in Protestant England than Catholic France. We are good reformed Christians now. You go to church, don’t you?”

  “Twice, sometimes three times a day,” I assured him. “It’s a very observant court.”

  “I make sure I am seen to go. And I give to charity, and I pay my parish dues. We can do nothing more. We’ve both been baptized. What can any man say against us?”

  I said nothing. We both knew that anyone could say anything against anyone. In the countries that had turned the ritual of the church into a burning matter no one could be sure that they would not offend by the way they prayed, even by which direction they faced when they prayed.

  “If the king falls ill and dies,” my father whispered, “then Lady Mary takes the throne, and she is a Roman Catholic. Will she make the whole country become Roman Catholic again?”

  “Who knows what will happen?” I asked, thinking of my naming the next heir as “Jane” and Robert Dudley’s lack of surprise. “I wouldn’t put a groat wager on Lady Mary coming to the throne. There are bigger players in this game than you and I, Father. And I don’t know what they are planning.”

  “If Lady Mary inherits and the country becomes Roman Catholic again then there are some books I shall have to be rid of,” my father said anxiously. “And we are known as good Lutheran booksellers.”

  I put my hand up and rubbed my cheek, as if I would brush smuts away. At once he touched my hand. “Don’t do that, querida. Don’t worry. Everyone in the country will have to change, not just us. Everyone will be the same.”

  I glanced over to where the Sabbath candle burned under the upended pitcher, its light hidden but its flame burning for our God. “But we’re not the same,” I said simply.

  John Dee and I read together every morning like devoted scholars. Mostly he commanded me to read the Bible in Greek and then the same passage in Latin so that he might compare the translations. He was working on the oldest parts of the Bible, trying to unravel the secrets of the real making of the world from the flowery speech. He sat with his head resting in his hand, jotting notes as I wrote, sometimes raising his hand to ask me to pause as a thought struck him. It was easy work for me, I could read without comprehension, and when I did not know how to pronounce a word (and there were many such words) I just spelled it out, and Mr. Dee would recognize it. I could not help but like him, he was such a kind and gentle man; and I had a growing admiration for his immense ability. He seemed to me to be a man of almost inspired understanding. When he was alone he read mathematics, he played games with codes and numbers, he created acrostics and riddles of intense complexity. He exchanged letters and theories with the greatest thinkers of Christendom, forever staying just ahead of the Papal Inquisitions, which forbade the very questions that everyone’s work suggested.

  He had invented a game of his own that only Lord Robert and he could play, called Chess on Many Floors, for which Mr. Dee had invented a chessboard on three levels made of thick beveled glass, where the players could go up and down as well as along. It made a game of such difficulty that he and Lord Robert would play the same round for weeks at a time. Other times he would retreat into his inner study and be silent for all the afternoon or all the morning and I knew that he was gazing in the scrying mirror and trying to see what might exist in the world just beyond our own, the world of the spirits which he knew must be there, but which he glimpsed only occasionally.

  In his inner chamber he had a small stone bench, with a little fireplace hollowed out of the stone. He would light a charcoal fire, and suspend above it great glass vessels filled with herbs in water. A complicated network of glass tubes would drain liquor from one bottle to the other and then would stand and cool. Sometimes he would be in there for hours and all I would hear, as I copied page after page of numbers for him, was the quiet clink of one flask against another as he poured liquid into a vessel, or the hiss of the bellows as he heated the little fire.

  In the afternoons Will Somers and I practiced our sword fighting, leaving aside the comical tricks and concentrating on proper fighting, until he told me that I was a commendable swordsman for a fool, and that if I ever found myself in trouble I might use a sword to fight my way out: “Like a proud hidalgo,” he said.

  Although I was glad to learn a useful skill, we thought that the lessons would have been for nothing since the king continued to be so sick; until in May we were commanded to the great wedding feasts at Durham House in the Strand. The duke wanted a memorable wedding for his family and Will and I were part of an elaborate dinner entertainment.

  “You would think it a royal wedding,” Will said slyly to me.

  “How, royal?” I asked.

  He put his finger to his lips. “Jane’s mother, Frances Brandon, is King Henry’s niece, the daughter of his sister. Jane and Katherine are royal cousins.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And so?”

  “And Jane is to marry a Dudley.”

  “Yes,” I said, following this not at all.

  “Who more royal than the Dudleys?” he demanded.

  “The king’s sisters,” I pointed out. “Jane’s own mother. And others too.”

  “Not if you measure in terms of desire,” Will explained sweetly. “In terms of desire there is no one more royal than the duke. He loves the throne so much he practically tastes it. He almost gobbles it up.”

  Will had gone too far for me. I got to my feet. “I don’t understand,” I said flatly.

  “You are a wise child to be so dense,” he said and patted my head.

  Our sword fight was preceded by dancers and a masque and followed by jugglers, and we acquitted ourselves well. The guests roared with laughter at Will’s tumbles and my triumphant skill, and the contrast between our looks: Will so tall and gangling, thrusting his sword wildly this way and that; and me, neat and determined, dancing around him and stabbing with my little sword, and parrying his blows.

  The chief bride was as white as the pearls embroidered on her gold gown. Her bridegroom sat closer to his mother than to his new bride and neither bride nor groom spoke so much as one word to each other. Jane’s sister had been married to her betrothed in the same ceremony and she and he toasted each other and drank amorously from the same loving cup. But when the shout went up for a toast for Jane and Guilford, I could see that it cost Lad
y Jane an effort to raise her golden goblet to her new husband. Her eyes were red and raw, and the shadows under her eyes were dark with fatigue; there were marks on either side of her neck that looked like thumbprints. It looked very much as if someone had shaken the bride by the neck till she agreed to take her vows. She barely touched the bridal ale with her lips, I did not see her swallow.

  “What d’you think, Hannah the Fool?” the Duke of Northumberland shouted down the hall to me. “Shall she be a lucky bride?”

  My neighbors turned to me, and I felt the old swimming sensation that was a sign of the Sight coming. I tried to fight it off, this court would be the worst place in the world to tell the truth. I could not stop the words coming. “Never more lucky than today,” I said.

  Lord Robert flashed a cautionary look at me but I could not take back the words. I had spoken as I felt, not with the skill of a courtier. My sense was that Jane’s luck, at a low ebb when she married with a bruise on her throat, would now run ever more swiftly downhill. But the duke took it as a compliment to his son and laughed at me, and raised his goblet. Guilford, little more than a dolt, beamed at his mother, while Lord Robert shook his head, and half closed his eyes, as if he wished he was elsewhere.

  There was dancing, and a bride had to dance at her own wedding, though Lady Jane sat in her chair, as stubborn as a white mule. Lord Robert led her gently to the dance floor. I saw him whisper to her and she found a wan little smile and put her hand in his. I wondered what he was saying to cheer her. In the moments when the dancers paused and awaited their turn in the circle his mouth was so close to her ear that I thought she must feel the warmth of his breath on her bare neck. I watched without envy. I did not long to be her, with his long fingers holding my hand, or his dark eyes on my face. I gazed on them as I might look on a pair of beautiful portraits, his face turned to her as sharp as a hawk’s beak in profile, her pallor warming under his kindness.

  The court danced until late, as if there were great joy from such weddings, and then the three couples were taken to their bedrooms and put to bed with much throwing of rose petals and sprinkling of rosewater. But it was all show, no more real than Will and I fighting with wooden swords. None of the marriages was to be consummated yet, and the next day Lady Jane went home with her parents to Suffolk Place, Guilford Dudley went home with his mother, complaining of stomach ache and bloating, and Lord Robert and the duke were up early to return to the king at Greenwich.

  “Why does your brother not make a house with his wife?” I asked Lord Robert. I met him at the gateway of the stable yard, and he waited beside me while they brought out his great horse.

  “Well, it is not unusual. I do not live with mine,” he remarked.

  I saw the roofs of Durham House tilt against the sky, as I staggered back and held on to the wall till the world steadied again. “You have a wife?”

  “Oho, did you not know that, my little seer? I thought you knew everything?”

  “I did not know…” I began.

  “Oh yes, I have been married since I was a lad. And I thank God for it.”

  “Because you like her so much?” I stammered, feeling an odd pain like sickness under my ribs.

  “Because if I had not been married already, it would have been me married to Jane Grey and dancing to my father’s bidding.”

  “Does your wife never come to court?”

  “Almost never. She will only live in the country, she has no liking for London, we cannot agree… and it is easier for me…” He broke off and glanced toward his father, who was mounting a big black hunter and giving his grooms orders about the rest of the horses. I knew at once that it was easier for Lord Robert to move this way and that, his father’s spy, his father’s agent, if he was not accompanied by a wife whose face might betray them.

  “What’s her name?”

  “Amy,” he said casually. “Why?”

  I had no answer. Numbly, I shook my head. I could feel an intense discomfort in my belly. For a moment I thought I had taken Guilford Dudley’s bloat. It burned me like bile. “Do you have children?”

  If he had said that he had children, if he had said that he had a girl, a beloved daughter, I think I would have doubled up and vomited on the cobbles at his feet.

  But he shook his head. “No,” he said shortly. “You must tell me one day when I shall get a son and an heir. Can you do that?”

  I looked up and tried to smile despite the burning in my throat. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Are you afraid of the mirror?”

  I shook my head. “I’m not afraid, if you are there.”

  He smiled at that. “You have all the cunning of a woman, never mind the skills of a holy fool. You seek me out, don’t you, Mistress Boy?”

  I shook my head. “No, sir.”

  “You didn’t like the thought of me married.”

  “I was surprised, only.”

  Lord Robert put his gloved hand under my chin and turned my face up to him so that I was forced to meet his dark eyes. “Don’t be a woman, a lying woman. Tell me the truth. Are you troubled with the desires of a maid, my little Mistress Boy?”

  I was too young to hide it. I felt the tears come into my eyes and I stayed still, letting him hold me.

  He saw the tears and knew what they meant. “Desire? And for me?”

  Still I said nothing, looking at him dumbly through my blurred vision.

  “I promised your father that I would not let any harm come to you,” he said gently.

  “It has come already,” I said, speaking the inescapable truth.

  He shook his head, his dark eyes warm. “Oh, this is nothing. This is young love, green-sickness. The mistake I made in my youth was to marry for such a slim cause. But you, you will survive this and go on to marry your betrothed and have a houseful of black-eyed children.”

  I shook my head but my throat was too tight to speak.

  “It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What d’you choose to do with yours?”

  “I could serve you.”

  He took one of my cold hands and took it up to his lips. Entranced, I felt his mouth touch the tips of my fingers, a touch as intimate as any kiss on the lips. My own mouth softened, in a little pursed shape of longing, as if I would have him kiss me, there, in the courtyard before them all.

  “Yes,” he said gently, not raising his head but whispering against my fingers. “You could serve me. A loving servant is a great gift for any man. Will you be mine, Mistress Boy? Heart and soul? And do whatever I ask of you?”

  His moustache brushed against my hand, as soft as the breast feathers of his hawk.

  “Yes,” I said, hardly grasping the enormity of my promise.

  “Whatever I ask of you?”

  “Yes.”

  At once he straightened up, suddenly decisive. “Good. Then I have a new post for you, new work.”

  “Not at court?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “You begged me to the king,” I reminded him. “I am his fool.”

  His mouth twisted in a moment’s pity. “The poor lad won’t miss you,” he said. “I shall tell you all of it. Come to Greenwich tomorrow, with the rest of them, and I’ll tell you then.”

  He laughed at himself as if the future was an adventure that he wanted to start at once. “Come to Greenwich tomorrow,” he threw over his shoulder as he strode toward his horse. His groom cupped his hands for his master’s boot and Lord Robert vaulted up into the high saddle of his hunter. I watched him turn his horse and clatter out of the stable-yard, into the Strand and then toward the cold English morning sun. His father followed behind at a more sober pace, and I saw that as they passed, although all the men pulled off their hats and bent their heads to show the respect that the duke commanded, their faces were sour.

  I clattered into the courtyard of the palace at Greenwich riding astride one of the carthorses pulling the wagon with supplies. It was a beautiful spring day, the fields
running down to the river were a sea of gold and silver daffodils, and they reminded me of Mr. Dee’s desire to turn base metal to gold. As I paused, feeling the warmer breeze against my face, one of the Dudley servants shouted toward me: “Hannah the Fool?”

  “Yes?”

  “To go to Lord Robert and his father in their privy rooms at once. At once, lad!”

  I nodded and went into the palace at a run, past the royal chambers to the ones that were no less grand, guarded by soldiers in the Dudley livery. They swung open the double doors for me and I was in the presence room where the duke would hear the petitions of common people. I went through another set of doors, and another, the rooms getting smaller and more intimate, until the last double doors opened, and there was Lord Robert leaning over a desk with a manuscript scroll spread out before him, his father looking over his shoulder. I recognized at once that it was Mr. Dee’s writing, and that it was a map that he had made partly from ancient maps of Britain borrowed from my father, and partly from calculations of his own based on the sailors’ charts of the coastline. Mr. Dee had prepared the map because he believed that England’s greatest fortune were the seas around the coast; but the duke was using it for a different purpose.

  He had placed little counters in a crowd at London, and more in the painted blue sea. A set of counters of a different color was in the north of the country, Scots, I thought, and another little group like Lord Robert’s chess pawns in the east of the country. I made a deep bow to Lord Robert and to his father.

  “It has to be done at speed,” the duke remarked, scowling. “If it is done at once, before anyone has a chance to protest, then we can deal with the north, with the Spanish, and with those of her tenants who stay loyal, in our own time.”

  “And she?” Lord Robert asked quietly.

  “She can do nothing,” the duke said. “And if she tries to run, your little spy will warn us.” He looked up at me on those words. “Hannah Green, I am sending you to wait upon the Lady Mary. You are to be her fool until I summon you back to court. My son assures me that you can keep your counsel. Is he right?”