The Queen's Fool Read online

  The queen took their hard-hearted advice to her prie-dieu. “Jane is guilty of nothing but her lineage,” the queen whispered, looking up at the statue of the crucified Christ.

  She waited, as if hoping for the miracle of a reply.

  “And You know, as I do, that Elizabeth is guilty indeed,” she said, very low. “But how can I send my cousin and my sister to the scaffold?”

  Jane Dormer shot me a look and the two of us moved our stools so as to block the view and the hearing of the other ladies in waiting. The queen on her knees should not be overheard. She was consulting the only advisor she truly trusted. She was bringing to the naked stabbed feet of her God the choices she had to make.

  The council looked for evidence of Elizabeth’s conspiracy with the rebels and they found enough to hang her a dozen times over. She had met with both Thomas Wyatt and with Sir William Pickering, even as the rebellion had been launched. On my own account, I knew that she had taken a message from me with all the ease of a practiced conspirator. There was no doubt in my mind, there was no doubt in the queen’s mind, that if the rebellion had succeeded — as it would have done but for the folly of Edward Courtenay — that it would now be Queen Elizabeth sitting at the head of the council and wondering whether she should sign the death warrant for her half sister and her cousin. There was not a doubt in my mind that Queen Elizabeth too would spend hours on her knees. But Elizabeth would sign.

  A guard tapped on the door, and looked into the quiet room.

  “What is it?” Jane Dormer asked very softly.

  “Message for the fool, at the side gate,” the young man said.

  I nodded and crept from the room, crossed the great presence chamber where there was a flurry of interest in the small crowd as I opened the door from the queen’s private apartments, and came out. They were all petitioners, up from the country: from Wales and from Devon and from Kent, the places which had risen against the queen. They would be asking for mercy now, mercy from a queen that they would have destroyed. I saw their hopeful faces as the door opened for me, and did not wonder that she spent hours on her knees, trying to discover the will of God. The queen had been merciful to those who had taken the throne from her once; was she now to show mercy again? And what about the next time, and the time after that?

  I did not have to show these traitors any courtly politeness. I scowled at them and elbowed my way through. I felt absolute uncompromising hatred of them, that they should have set themselves up to destroy the queen not once, but twice, and now came to court with their caps twisted in their hands and their heads bowed down to ask for the chance to go home and plot against her again.

  I pushed past them and down the twisting stone stair to the gate. I found I was hoping that Daniel would be there, and so I was disappointed when I saw a pageboy, a lad I did not know, in homespun, wearing no livery and bearing no badge.

  “What d’you want with me?” I asked, instantly alert.

  “I bring you these to take to Lord Robert,” he said simply and thrust two books, one a book of prayers, one a testament, into my arms.

  “From who?”

  He shook his head. “He wants them,” he said. “I was told you would be glad to take them to him.” Without waiting for my reply he faded away into the darkness, running half stooped along the shelter of the wall, leaving me with the two books in my arms.

  Before I went back into the palace I turned both books upside down, and checked the endpapers for any hidden messages. There was nothing. I could take them to him if I wished. All I did not know was whether or not I wanted to go.

  I chose to go to the Tower in the morning, in broad daylight, as if I had nothing to hide. I showed the guard the books at the door and this time he riffled the pages and looked at the spine as if to make sure that there was nothing hidden. He stared at the print. “What’s this?”

  “Greek,” I said. “And the other is Latin.”

  He looked me up and down. “Show me the inside of your jacket. Turn out your pockets.”

  I did as I was bid. “Are you a lad or a lass then, or something in between?”

  “I am the queen’s fool,” I said. “And it would be better for you if you let me pass.”

  “God bless Her Grace!” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “And whatever oddities she chooses to amuse herself with!” He led the way to a new building, walking across the green. I followed him, keeping my head turned from the place where they usually built the scaffold.

  We went in a handsome double door and up the twisting stone stairs. The guard at the top stood to one side and unlocked the door to let me in.

  Lord Robert was standing by the window, breathing the cold air which blew in from the river. He turned his head at the opening of the door and his pleasure at seeing me was obvious. “Mistress Boy!” he said. “At last!”

  This room was a bigger and better one than he had been in before. It looked out over the dark yard outside, the White Tower glowering against the sky. A big fireplace dominated the room, carved horribly with crests and initials and names of men who had been kept there so long that they had the time to put their names into stone with pocket knives. His own crest was there, carved by his brother and his father, who had worked the stone while waiting for their sentence, and had scratched their names while the scaffold was built outside their window.

  The months in prison were starting to leave a mark on him. His skin was pallid, whiter even than winter-pale, he had not been allowed to walk in the garden since the rebellion. His eyes were set deeper in their sockets than when he had been the favored son of the most powerful man in England. But his linen was clean and his cheeks were shaved and his hair was shiny and silky, and my heart still turned over at the sight of him, even while I hung back and tried to see him for what he was: a traitor and a man condemned to death, waiting for the day of his execution.

  He read my face in one quick glance. “Displeased with me, Mistress Boy?” he demanded. “Have I offended you?”

  I shook my head. “No, my lord.”

  He came closer and though I could smell the clean leather of his boots and the warm perfume of his velvet jacket, I leaned away from him.

  He put his hand under my chin and turned my face up. “You’re unhappy,” he remarked. “What is it? Not the betrothed, surely?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What then? Missing Spain?”

  “No.”

  “Unhappy at court?” he guessed. “Girls catfighting?”

  I shook my head.

  “You don’t want to be here? You didn’t want to come?” Then, quickly spotting the little flicker of emotion that went across my face, he said: “Oho! Faithless! You have been turned, Mistress Boy, as often spies are. You have been turned around and now you are spying on me.”

  “No,” I said flatly. “Never. I would never spy on you.”

  I would have moved away but he put his hands on either side of my face and held me so that I could not get away from him, and he could read my eyes as if I were a broken code.

  “You have despaired of my cause and despaired of me and become her servant and not mine,” he accused me. “You love the queen.”

  “Nobody could help loving the queen,” I said defensively. “She is a most beautiful woman. She is the bravest woman I have ever known and she struggles with her faith and with the world every day. She is halfway to being a saint.”

  He smiled at that. “You’re such a girl,” he said, laughing at me. “You’re always in love with somebody. And so you prefer this queen to me, your true lord.”

  “No,” I said. “For here I am, doing your bidding. As I was told. Though it was a stranger who came to me and I did not know if I was safe.”

  He shrugged at that. “And tell me, you did not betray me?”

  “When?” I demanded, shocked.

  “When I asked you to take a message to Lady Elizabeth and to my tutor?”

  He could see the horror in my face at the very thought of such a