The Queen's Fool Read online

  “And Robert Dudley?” I asked in as small a voice as I could make.

  She looked around and saw me, seated on the steps before her throne, her greyhound beside me. “Oh are you there, little fool?” she said gently. “Yes, your old master shall be tried for treason but held, not executed, until it is safe to release him. Does that content you?”

  “Whatever Your Grace wishes,” I said obediently, but my heart leaped at the thought of his survival.

  “It won’t content those who want your safety,” Jane Dormer pointed out bluntly. “How can you live in peace when those who would have destroyed you are still walking on this earth? How will you make them stop their plotting? D’you think they would have pardoned and released you if they had won?”

  The Lady Mary smiled and put her hand over the hand of her best friend. “Jane, this throne was given to me by God. No one thought that I would survive Kenninghall, no one thought that I would ride out of Framlingham without a shot being fired. And yet I rode into London with the blessing of the people. God has sent me to be queen. I shall show His mercy whenever I can. Even to those who know it not.”

  I sent a note to my father that I would come on Michaelmas Day, and I collected my wages and walked through the darkening streets to him. I strode out without fear in new good-fitting boots and with a little sword at my side. I wore the livery of a beloved queen, no one would molest me, and if they did, thanks to Will Somers, I could defend myself.

  The door of the bookshop was closed, candlelight showing through the shutters, the street secure and quiet. I tapped on the door and he opened it cautiously. It was Friday night and the Sabbath candle was hidden under a pitcher beneath the counter, burning its holy light into the darkness.

  He was pale as I came into the room and I knew, with the quick understanding of a fellow refugee, that the knock on the door had startled him. Even when he was expecting me, even when there was no cause to fear, his heart missed a beat at the knock in the night. I knew this for him, because it was true for me.

  “Father, it is only me,” I said gently and I knelt before him, and he blessed me and raised me up.

  “So, you are in service to the royal court again,” he said, smiling. “How your fortunes do rise, my daughter.”

  “She is a wonderful woman,” I said. “So it is no thanks to me that my fortunes have risen. I would have escaped her service at the beginning if I could have done, and yet now I would rather serve her than anyone else in the land.”

  “Rather than Lord Robert?”

  I glanced toward the closed door. “There is no serving him,” I said. “Only the Tower guards can serve him and I pray that they do it well.”

  My father shook his head. “I remember him coming here that day, a man you would think who would command half the world, and now…”

  “She won’t execute him,” I said. “She will be merciful to all now that the duke himself is dead.”

  My father nodded. “Dangerous times,” he said. “Mr. Dee remarked the other day that dangerous times are a crucible for change.”

  “You have seen him?”

  My father nodded. “He came to see if I had the last pages of a manuscript in his possession, or if I could find another copy for him. It is a most troubling loss. He bought the book and it is a prescription for an alchemical process, but the last three pages are missing.”

  I smiled. “Was it a recipe for gold? And somehow incomplete?”

  My father smiled back. It was a family joke that we could live like Spanish grandees on the proceeds of the alchemist books that promised to deliver the recipe for the philosopher’s stone: the instructions to change base metal into gold, the elixir of eternal life. My father had dozens of books on the subject and when I was young I had begged him to show me them, so that we might create the stone and become rich. But he had showed me a dazzling collection of mysteries, pictures and poems and spells and prayers, and in the end, no man any the wiser or the richer. Many men, brilliant men, had bought book after book trying to translate the riddles that were traditionally used to hide the secret of alchemy, and none of them had ever come back to us to say that they had found the secret and now would live forever.

  “If any man ever finds it, and can make gold, it will be John Dee,” my father said. “He is a most profound student and thinker.”

  “I know that,” I said, thinking of the afternoons when I had sat on his high stool and read passage after passage of Greek or Latin while he translated as swiftly as I spoke, surrounded by the tools of his craft. “But do you think he can see into the future?”

  “Hannah, this man can see around corners! He has created a machine that can see over buildings or around them. He can predict the course of the stars, he can measure and predict the movements of the tides, he is creating a map of the country that a man can use to navigate the whole coastline.”

  “Yes, I have seen that,” I concurred, thinking that I last saw it on the desk of the queen’s enemies. “He should have a care who uses his work.”

  “His work is pure study,” my father said firmly. “He cannot be blamed for the use that men make of his inventions. This is a great man, the death of his patron means nothing. He will be remembered long after the duke and all of his family are forgotten.”

  “Not Lord Robert,” I stipulated.

  “Even him,” my father asserted. “I tell you, child, I have never met a man who could read and understand words, tables, mechanical diagrams, even codes, more quickly than this John Dee. Oh! And I nearly forgot. He has ordered some books to be delivered to Lord Robert in the Tower.”

  “Has he?” I said, my attention suddenly sharpened. “Shall I take them to Lord Robert for him?”

  “As soon as they arrive,” my father said gently. “And, Hannah, if you see Lord Robert…”

  “Yes?”

  “Querida, you must ask him to release you from your service to him and bid him farewell. He is a traitor sentenced to death. It is time that you said farewell.”

  I would have argued but my father raised his hand. “I command it, daughter,” he insisted. “We live in this country as toads beneath the ploughshare. We cannot increase the risk to our lives. You have to bid him farewell. He is a named traitor. We cannot be associated with him.”

  I bowed my head.

  “Daniel wishes it too.”

  My head came up at that. “Why, whatever would he know about it?”

  My father smiled. “He is not an ignorant boy, Hannah.”

  “He is not at court. He does not know the way of that world.”

  “He is going to be a very great physician,” my father said gently. “Many nights he comes here and reads the books on herbs and medicines. He is studying the Greek texts on health and illness. You should not think that just because he is not a Spaniard, he is ignorant.”

  “But he can know nothing of the skills of the Moorish doctors,” I said. “And you yourself told me that they were the wisest in the world. That they had learned all the Greeks had to teach and gone further.”

  “Yes,” my father conceded. “But he is a thoughtful young man, and a hard worker, and he has a gift for study. He comes here twice a week to read. And he always asks for you.”

  “Does he?”

  My father nodded. “He calls you his princess,” he said.

  I was so surprised for a moment that I could not speak. “His princess?”

  “Yes,” my father said, smiling at my incomprehension. “He speaks like a young man in love. He comes to see me and he asks me, “How is my Princess?” — and he means you, Hannah.”

  The coronation of my mistress, Lady Mary, was set for the first day of October and the whole court, the whole city of London, and the whole country had spent much of the summer preparing for the celebration which would bring Henry’s daughter to his throne at last. There were faces missing from the crowds that lined the London streets. Devoted Protestants, mistrusting the queen’s sincere promise of tolerance, had already frighten