The Queen's Fool Read online

  “Will they…?” I could not bear to ask him if it was his own death that he was facing with this indomitable smile.

  “Oh, I should think so,” he said cheerfully. “Very soon. I would, if I were the queen. Now tell me the news. We don’t have much time.”

  I pulled my stool a little closer, marshaling my thoughts. I did not want to tell him the news, which was all bad, I wanted to look into his drawn face, and touch his hand. I wanted to tell him that I had longed to see him, and that I had written him letter after letter in the code which I knew he would have lost, and sent them all into the flames of the fire.

  “Come on,” he said eagerly. “Tell me everything.”

  “The queen is considering if she should marry, you’ll know that, I suppose,” I said, low-voiced. “And she has been ill. They have proposed one man after another. The best choice is Philip of Spain. The Spanish ambassador tells her that it will be a good marriage but she is afraid. She knows she cannot rule alone but she is afraid of a man ruling over her.”

  “But she will go ahead?”

  “She might withdraw. I can’t tell. She is half sick with fear at the thought of it. She is afraid of having a man in her bed, and afraid for her throne without one.”

  “And Lady Elizabeth?”

  I glanced at the thick wooden door and dropped my low voice to an even quieter murmur. “She and the queen cannot agree these days,” I said. “They started very warmly, Lady Mary wanted Elizabeth at her side all the time, acknowledged her as her heir; but they cannot live happily together now. Lady Elizabeth is no longer the little girl of the queen’s teaching, and in debate she is her master. She is as quick-witted as an alchemist. The queen hates argument about sacred things and Lady Elizabeth has ready arguments for everything and accepts nothing. She looks at everything with hard eyes…” I broke off.

  “Hard eyes?” he queried. “She has beautiful eyes.”

  “I mean she looks hard at things,” I explained. “She has no faith, she never closes her eyes in awe. She is not like my lady, you never see her amazed at the raising of the Host. She wants to know everything as a fact, she trusts nothing.”

  Lord Robert nodded at the accuracy of the description. “Aye. She was always one to take nothing on trust.”

  “The queen forced her to Mass and Lady Elizabeth went with her hand on her belly, sighing for pain. Then, when the queen pressed her again, she said that she had converted. The queen wanted the truth from her. She asked her to tell the secrets of her heart: if she believed in the Holy Sacrament or no.”

  “The secrets of Elizabeth’s heart!” he exclaimed, laughing. “What can the queen be thinking of? Elizabeth allows no one near the secrets of her heart. Even when she was a child in the nursery she would barely whisper them to herself.”

  “Well, she said she would give out in public that she is convinced of the merits of the old religion,” I said. “But she doesn’t do so. And she goes to Mass only when she has to. And everyone says…”

  “What do they say, my little spy?”

  “That she is sending out letters to true Protestants, that she has a network of supporters. That the French will pay for an uprising against the queen. And that, at the very least, she only has to wait until the queen dies and then the throne is all hers anyway, and she can throw off all disguise and be a Protestant queen as she is now a Protestant princess.”

  “Oho.” He paused, taking all this in. “And the queen believes all this slander?”

  I looked up at him, hoping that he would understand. “She thought that Elizabeth would be a sister to her,” I said. “She went with her into London at the very moment of her greatest triumph. She took Elizabeth at her side then, and again at the day of her coronation. What more could she do to show that she loved her and trusted her and saw her as the next heir? And since then, every day, she hears that Elizabeth has done this, or said that, and she sees Elizabeth avoiding Mass, and pretending that she will go, and sliding in her conscience forward and back as she wishes. And Elizabeth…” I broke off.

  “Elizabeth what?”

  “She was there at the coronation, she was placed second only to the queen at the queen’s own request. She rode in a chariot behind the queen’s,” I said in a fierce whisper. “She carried her train at the coronation, she was first to kneel before the new queen and put her hands in hers and swear to be a true and faithful subject. She swore fidelity before God. How can she now plot against her?”

  He sat back in his chair and observed my heat with interest. “Is the queen angry with Elizabeth?”

  I shook my head. “No. It’s worse than anger. She is disappointed in her. She is lonely, Lord Robert. She wanted her little sister at her side. She singled her out for love and respect. She can hardly believe now that Elizabeth does not love her; to find that Elizabeth would plot against her is very painful. And she is assured that she is plotting. Someone comes with a new story every day.”

  “Do they bring any evidence?”

  “Enough to have her arrested a dozen times over, I think. There are too many rumors for her to be as innocent as she looks.”

  “And still the queen does nothing against her?”

  “She wants to bring peace,” I said. “She won’t act against Elizabeth unless she has to. She says that she won’t execute Lady Jane, or your brother…” I did not say “or you” but we were both thinking of the sentence of death hanging over him. “She wants to bring peace to this country.”

  “Well, amen to that,” Lord Robert said. “And will Elizabeth stay at court for Christmas?”

  “She has asked to leave. She says she is ill again and needs the peace of the country.”

  “And is she ill?”

  I shrugged. “Who can say? She was very bloated and ill-looking when I saw her the other day. But nobody ever really sees her. She keeps to her rooms. She comes out only when she has to. No one speaks to her, the women are unkind to her. Everyone says there is nothing wrong with her but envy.”

  He shook his head at the petty spite of women. “All this and the poor girl has to carry a rosary and a missal and go to Mass!”

  “She’s not a poor girl,” I said, stung. “She is poorly treated by the ladies of the queen’s court, but she can blame herself for that. It is only when there are people to see that she speaks very softly and walks with her head drooping. And as for Mass, everyone has to go, all the time. They sing a Mass in the queen’s chapel seven times a day. Everyone goes at least twice a day.”

  He half smiled at the rapid turn of the court to piety. “And Lady Jane? Is she truly not to die for her treason?”

  “The queen will never kill her own cousin, a young woman,” I assured him. “She’s to live here for a while as a prisoner in the Tower, and then be released, when the country is quiet.”

  He made a little grimace. “A great risk for the queen. If I were her advisor I would tell her to make an end of it, to make an end of all of us.”

  “She knows it was not Lady Jane’s choice. It would be cruel of the queen to punish Lady Jane; and she is never cruel.”

  “And the girl was only sixteen,” he said, half to himself. He rose to his feet, hardly aware of me. “I should have stopped it,” he said. “I should have kept Jane safely out of it, whatever plots my father made…”

  He looked out of the window at the dark courtyard below where his own father had been executed, begging for mercy, offering evidence against Jane, against his sons, anyone, if he could be spared. When he had knelt before the block, the blindfold over his eyes had slipped down and he had pulled it up and then groped about on his hands and knees, pleading with the headsman to wait until he was ready. It was a miserable end; but not as miserable as the death he had given to the young king in his charge, who had been innocent of everything.

  “I was a fool,” Robert said bitterly. “Blinded by my own ambition. I am surprised you did not foresee it, child, I would have thought the heavens would have been rocking with laughter over th