The Queen's Fool Read online

  She, in her turn, was far away in the past. “I used to sit like this when Elizabeth took her afternoon nap,” she said. “She would rest her head in my lap and I would plait her hair while she slept. She had hair of bronze and copper and gold, all the colors of gold in one curl. She was such a pretty child, she had that shining innocence of children. And I was only twenty. I used to pretend to myself that she was my baby, and that I was happily married to a man who loved me, and that soon we would have another baby — a son.”

  We sat in silence for long moments, and then I heard the door of the house bang open. I sat up and saw one of Lady Mary’s ladies burst out of the shadowy interior and look wildly around for her. Lady Mary waved and the girl ran over. It was Lady Margaret. As she came close I felt Lady Mary’s posture rise, her back straighten, she steadied herself for the news I had foretold. She would let her companion find her here, seated simply in the English garden, her fool dozing beside her, and she would greet the news of her inheritance with words from the Psalms that she had prepared. She whispered them now: “This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvellous in our eyes.”

  “Lady Mary! Oh!”

  The girl was almost speechless with her desire to tell, and breathless from her run. “At church just now…”

  “What?”

  “They didn’t pray for you.”

  “Pray for me?”

  “No. They prayed for the king and his advisors, same as always, but where the prayer says ‘and for the king’s sisters,’ they missed you out.”

  Lady Mary’s bright gaze swept the girl’s face. “Both of us? Elizabeth too?”

  “Yes!”

  “You are sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Lady Mary rose to her feet, her eyes narrowed with anxiety. “Send out Mr. Tomlinson into Ware, tell him to go on to Bishop Stortford if need be, tell him to get reports from other churches. See if this is happening everywhere.”

  The girl bobbed a curtsey, picked up her skirts and ran back into the house.

  “What does it mean?” I asked, scrambling to my feet.

  She looked at me without seeing me. “It means that Northumberland has started to move against me. First, he does not warn me how ill my brother is. Then, he commands the priests to leave Elizabeth and me from the prayers; next, he will command them to mention another, the king’s new heir. Then, when my poor brother is dead, they will arrest me, arrest Elizabeth, and put their false prince on the throne.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Edward Courtenay,” she said decisively. “My cousin. He is the only one Northumberland would choose, since he cannot put himself or his sons on the throne.”

  I suddenly saw it. The wedding feast, the white face of Lady Jane Grey, the bruises at her throat as if someone had taken her by the neck to shake their ambition into her. “Oh, but he can: Lady Jane Grey,” I said.

  “Newly wed to Northumberland’s son Guilford,” Lady Mary agreed. She paused for a moment. “I would not have thought they would have dared. Her mother, my cousin, would have to step aside, she would have to resign her claim for her daughter. But Jane is a Protestant, and Dudley’s father commands the keys to the kingdom.” She gave a harsh laugh. “My God! She is such a Protestant. She has out-Protestanted Elizabeth, and that must have taken some doing. She has Protestanted her way into my brother’s will. She has Protestanted her way into treason, God forgive her, the poor little fool. They will take her and destroy her, poor girl. But first, they will destroy me. They have to. Robbing me of the prayers of my people is only the first thing. Next, they will arrest me, then there will be some charge and I will be executed.”

  Her pale face suddenly drained even paler and I saw her stagger. “My God, what of Elizabeth? He will kill us both,” she whispered. “He will have to. Otherwise there will be rebellions against him from both Protestant and Catholic. He has to be rid of me to be rid of men of courage of the true faith. But he has to be rid of Elizabeth too. Why would a Protestant follow Queen Jane and a cat’s-paw like Guilford Dudley if they could have Elizabeth for queen? If I am dead, she is the next heir, a Protestant heir. He must be planning to forge some charge of treason against us both; one of us is not enough. Elizabeth and I will be dead within three months.”

  She strode away from me by a couple of paces, and then she turned and came back again. “I must save Elizabeth,” she said. “Whatever else happens. I must warn her not to go to London. She must come here. They shall not take my throne from me. I have not come so far and borne so much for them to rob me of my country, and plunge my country into sin. I will not fail now.”

  She turned toward the house. “Come, Hannah!” she threw over her shoulder. “Come quickly!”

  She wrote to warn Elizabeth, she wrote for advice. I did not see either letter; but that night I took the manuscript Lord Robert had given to me, and using my father’s letter as the base of the code I carefully wrote out the message. “M is much alarmed that she is left out of the prayers. She believes that Lady J will be named heir. She has written to Eliz to warn her. And to the Sp ambassador for advice.” I paused then. It was arduous work, translating every letter into another, but I wanted to write something, a line, a word, to remind him of me, to prompt him to recall me to court. Some line, some simple thing that he would read and think of me, not as his spy, not as a fool, but as me, myself, a girl who had promised to serve him heart and soul, for love.

  “I miss you,” I wrote, and then I scratched it out, not even troubling to translate it into code.

  “When can I come home?” went the same way.

  “I am frightened,” was the most honest of all the confessions.

  In the end I wrote nothing, there was nothing I could think of that would turn Lord Robert’s attention to me, while the boy king was dying and his own young white-faced sister-in-law was stepping up to the throne of England and bringing the Dudley family to absolute greatness.

  Then there was nothing to do but to wait for news of the death of the king to come from London. Lady Mary had her own private messages coming and going. But every three days or so she received a letter from the duke to tell her that the fine weather was doing its business and the king was on the mend, that his fever had broken, that his chest pains were better, that a new doctor had been appointed who had high hopes that the king would be well by midsummer. I watched Lady Mary read these optimistic notes through once, saw her eyes narrow slightly in disbelief; and then she folded them and put them away in a drawer in her writing desk, and never looked at them again.

  Then, in the first days of July, one letter made her snatch her breath and put a hand to her heart.

  “How is the king, my lady?” I asked her. “Not worse?”

  Her color burned in her cheeks. “The duke says that he is better, that he has rallied and that he wants to see me.” She rose to her feet and paced to the window. “Please God he is indeed better,” she said quietly to herself. “Better, and wanting to restore me to our old affection, better, and seeing through his false advisors. Perhaps God has given him strength to get well and to come to a right understanding at last. Or at least well enough to put a stop to this plot. Oh, Mother of God, guide me in what I should do.”

  “Shall we go?” I asked. I was on my feet already at the thought of returning to London, to court, to see Lord Robert again, to see my father, and Daniel, back to the relative safety of the men who would protect me.

  I saw her shoulders straighten as she took the decision. “If he asks for me, of course I have to go. Tell them to get the horses ready. We’ll leave tomorrow.”

  She went from the room with a rustle of her thick skirts, and I heard her calling to her ladies to pack their clothes, we were all going to London. I heard her run upstairs, her feet pattering on the bare wooden treads like those of a young girl, and then her voice, light and excited, as she called back down to Jane Dormer to take especial care to pack her finest jewels for if the king was indeed well then there would be dancing and f