The Queen's Fool Read online

  I waited, I knew what was coming next. “And we will marry,” he said. “We will marry as soon as we arrive in France.”

  “And your mother and your sisters?” I asked. It was living with them that I dreaded as much as marriage.

  “They are packing now,” he said.

  “When do we leave?”

  “In two days’ time, at dawn. Palm Sunday.”

  “Why so soon?” I gasped.

  “Because they have come asking questions already.”

  I stared at Daniel, unable to take in the words, but already filled with horror as my worst fears started to take shape. “They came for my father?”

  “They came to my shop looking for John Dee,” my father said quietly. “They knew that he sent books to Lord Robert. They knew that he had seen the princess. They knew that he had foretold the young king’s death, and that is treason. They wanted to see the books that he asked me to store here.”

  I was twisting my hands together. “Books? What books? Are they hidden?”

  “I have them safe in the cellar,” he said. “But they will find them if they take up the floorboards.”

  “Why are you storing forbidden books?” I cried out in frustrated anger. “Why store John Dee’s books for him?”

  His face was gentle. “Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror. The scaffolds on the corners, the list of things you may not read. These things always go together. John Dee and Lord Robert and even Daniel here and I, even you, my child, are all scholars steeped in knowledge that has suddenly become against the law. To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.”

  “We are not guilty of treason,” I said stubbornly. “Lord Robert is still alive, John Dee too. And the charges are treason, not heretical thinking. The queen is merciful…”

  “And what happens when Elizabeth confesses?” Daniel snapped at me. “When she names her fellow traitors, not just Thomas Wyatt but Robert Dudley, John Dee, perhaps even you. Have you never taken a message or run an errand for her? Could you swear to it?”

  I hesitated. “She would never confess. She knows the price of confession.”

  “She is a woman.” He dismissed her. “They will frighten her and then promise her forgiveness, and she will confess to anything.”

  “You know nothing about her, you know nothing about this!” I flared up. “I know her. This is not a young woman who is easily frightened, and more than that, her fear does not lead her to tears. If she is afraid she will fight like a bated cat. She is not a girl who gives up and weeps.”

  “She is a woman,” he said again. “And she is enmeshed with Dudley and Dee and Wyatt and the rest of them. I warned you of this. I told you that if you played a double game at court you would bring danger on yourself and danger to us all, and now you have led danger to our door.”

  I was breathless with rage. “What door?” I demanded. “We have no door. We have the open road, we have the sea between us and France and then we have to cross France like a family of beggars because you, like a coward, are afraid of your own shadow.”

  For a moment I thought Daniel would strike me. His hand flew up and then he froze. “I am sorry you call me a coward before your father’s face.” He spat out the words. “I am sorry you think so lowly of me, your husband-to-be, and the man trying to save you and your father from a traitor’s death. But whatever you think of me, I am commanding you to help your father pack and be ready.”

  I took a breath, my heart still hammering with rage. “I am not coming,” I said flatly.

  “Daughter!” my father started.

  I turned to him. “You go, Father, if you wish. But I am not running away from a danger that I don’t see. I am a favorite at the palace with the queen and I am in no danger from her, and too small a person to attract the attention of the council. I don’t believe you are in any danger either. Please don’t throw away what we have started here. Please don’t make us run away again.”

  My father took me into his arms and held my head against his shoulder. I felt myself rest against him and for a moment I longed to be the little girl who went to him for help, who had known that his judgment was always right. “You said we would stay here,” I whispered. “You told me this was to be my home.”

  “Querida, we have to go,” he said quietly. “I truly believe they will come: first for the rebels, and then for the Protestants, and then for us.”

  I lifted my head and I stepped back from him. “Father, I cannot spend my life running away. I want a home.”

  “My daughter, we are the people who have no home.”

  There was a silence. “I don’t want to be one of the people without a home,” I said. “I have a home at court, and friends at court, and my place there. I don’t want to go to France and then Italy.”

  He paused. “I was afraid you would say that. I don’t want to force you. You are free to take your own decision, my daughter. But it is my wish that you come with me.”

  Daniel walked the few paces to the attic window, then he turned and looked at me. “Hannah Verde, you are my betrothed wife and I order you to come with me.”

  I drew myself up and faced him. “I will not come.”

  “Then our betrothal will be ended.”

  My father raised a hand in dissent, but he said nothing.

  “So be it,” I said. I felt cold.

  “It is your wish that our betrothal is ended?” he asked again, as if he could not believe that I would reject him. That hint of arrogance helped me to my decision.

  “It is my wish that our betrothal is ended,” I said, my voice as steady as his own. “I release you from your promise to me, and I ask you to release me.”

  “That’s easily done,” he flared. “I release you, Hannah, and I hope that you never have cause to regret this decision.” He turned on his heel and went to the stair. He paused. “But nonetheless, you will help your father,” he said, still commanding me, I noticed. “And if you change your mind you may come with us. I would not be vengeful. You can come as his daughter and as a stranger to me.”

  “I shan’t change my mind,” I said fiercely. “And I don’t need you to tell me to help my father. I am a good daughter to him and I would be a good wife to the right man.”

  “And who would the right man be?” Daniel sneered. “A married man and a convicted traitor?”

  “Now, now,” my father said gently. “You have agreed to part.”

  “I am sorry you think so badly of me,” I said icily. “I shall care for my father and I will help him leave when you bring the wagon.”

  Daniel clattered down the stairs and then we heard the shop door bang, and he was gone.

  Over the next two days we worked in an almost unbroken silence. I helped my father tie his books together, the manuscripts we rolled into scrolls and packed in barrels, and pushed them behind the press in the printing room. He could take only the core of his library; the rest of the books would have to follow later.

  “I wish you would come too,” he said earnestly. “You’re too young to be left here on your own.”

  “I’m under the protection of the queen,” I said. “And hundreds of people at court are the same age as me.”

  “You are one of the chosen to bear witness,” he said in a fierce whisper. “You should be with your people.”

  “Chosen to witness?” I demanded bitterly. “More like chosen never to have a home. Chosen to be always packing our most precious things and leaving the rest behind? Chosen to be always one skip ahead of the fire or the hangman’s noose?”

  “Better one skip ahead,” my father said wryly.

  We worked all through the last night, and when he would not stop to eat, I knew that he was mourning for me as a daughter that he had lost. At dawn I heard the creaking of wheels in the street and I looked out of the downstairs window, and there was the dark shape of the wagon lumbering toward u