The Queen's Fool Read online

  My father climbed out of the wagon and Daniel’s sister Mary tumbled out after him, her face bright with excitement.

  “What is happening?” my father asked.

  “The Lady Elizabeth has just been taken to the Tower,” I explained. “We saw the royal barge go in by the watergate. I am certain she was on board. I promised I would go back to her. I was going to break that promise to come with you. But now she is in the Tower and under sentence of death. I cannot leave her. I am honor bound to go to her and I will go.”

  My father turned to Daniel, waiting for his decision.

  “It is nothing to do with Daniel,” I went on, trying to keep the rage from my voice. “There is no need to look to him. This is my decision.”

  “We will go to France as we planned,” Daniel said steadily. “But we will wait at Calais for you. We will wait for Elizabeth’s execution, and then you will come to us.”

  I hesitated. Calais was an English town, part of the English settlement which was all that remained of the great English kingdom in France. “Don’t you fear the Inquisition in Calais?” I asked. “If they come here, their writ will run there too.”

  “If it comes we can get away to France,” he said. “And we should have warning. Do you promise you will join us?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling my rage and my fear roll away from me. “Yes, I can promise I will come when it is over, when Elizabeth is safe or dead I will come to you.”

  “I shall come back for you when I hear that she is dead,” he said. “And then we can fetch the printing press and the rest of the papers at the same time.”

  My father took my hands in his. “You will come, querida?” he asked gently. “You won’t fail?”

  “I love you, Father,” I whispered. “Of course I will come to you. But I love Lady Elizabeth too, and she is afraid, and I promised to stay near her.”

  “You love her?” he asked, surprised. “A Protestant princess?”

  “She is the bravest cleverest woman I have ever known, she is like a quick-witted lion,” I said. “I love the queen, no one could help loving the queen, but the princess is like a flame of fire, no one could help wanting to be near her. And now she will be afraid, and facing death, and I must be with her.”

  “What is she doing now?” one of Daniel’s sisters demanded in a delighted hiss from the rear of the wagon. Mary stepped up to the side, and I heard their scandalized whispers.

  “Give me my bag and let me go,” I said shortly to Daniel. I stepped up to the rear of the wagon and said “Good-bye” to the lot of them.

  Daniel dropped my bag on the cobbles. “I will come for you,” he reminded me.

  “Yes, I know,” I said, with as little warmth in my voice as his.

  My father kissed my forehead, and put his hand on my head to bless me, then he turned without another word and got back into the wagon. Daniel waited till he was seated inside, and then he reached for me. I would have pulled away, but he pulled me close and he kissed me fiercely on the mouth, a kiss so full of desire and anger that I flinched away from him and only realized, when he abruptly let me go and swung on to the driver’s box, that I wanted that kiss from him, and that I wanted more. But it was too late to say anything, too late to do anything. Daniel flicked the reins and the wagon rolled past me, and I was left in the cold London morning with nothing but a small bag at my feet, a hot bruised mouth, and a promised duty to a traitor.

  Those days and then weeks in the Tower with the princess were the worst ones of my life in England, the worst days for Elizabeth too. She went into a sort of trance of unhappiness and fear which nothing could lift. She knew that she was going to die, and in the very same spot where they had beheaded her mother Anne Boleyn, her aunt Jane Rochford, her cousin Catherine Howard, and her cousin Jane Grey. There was a lot of family blood already soaked into that earth, and soon hers would join it. That spot, unmarked by any stone on the green inside the walls of the Tower, overshadowed by the White Tower, was the dying ground for the women of her family. She felt doomed the moment she came close to it, she was certain that her red-rimmed eyes were looking on the place of her death.

  The warder of the Tower, first frightened by the drama of her arrival — which Elizabeth had milked to its utmost, seating herself on the watergate steps and refusing to go in out of the rain — became yet more alarmed when she sank into a fear-filled despair, which was even more convincing than her theatrics. They allowed her to walk in the warder’s garden, inside the safety of the great walls, but then a little lad peeped through the gate with a posy of flowers and the second day he was there again. By the third day the queen’s councillors in their fear and their malice decided that it was not safe to allow her even the relief of that exercise, and she was returned to her rooms. She prowled up and down like the lion that I had named her for, and then she lay on her bed and looked up at the tester for long dull hours, saying nothing.

  I thought she was preparing herself for death and I asked if she would want to see a priest. She gave me a look that had no life in it at all, she looked as if she was dying from her eyes downward. All her sparkle was drained from her, all that was left was dread.

  “Did they tell you to ask me?” she whispered. “Is he to give me extreme unction? Is it to be tomorrow?”

  “No!” I said hastily, cursing myself for making matters worse. “No! I just thought you might want to pray for your safe deliverance from here.”

  She turned her head to the arrow-slit window, which showed her a glimpse of grey sky and allowed a breath of cold air. “No,” she said shortly. “Not with the priest that she would send me. She tortured Jane with the prospect of forgiveness, didn’t she?”

  “She hoped she would convert,” I said, trying to be fair.

  “She offered her life in return for her faith.” Her mouth twisted in contempt. “What a bargain to make with a young girl. Serve her right that Jane had the courage to refuse.” Her eyes darkened again and she turned her face to the counterpane on the bed. “I don’t have that courage. I don’t think like that. I have to live.”

  Twice in the time that she was awaiting her trial I went to court, to collect my clothes and to gather news. The first time I briefly saw the queen, who asked me coldly how the prisoner was faring.

  “See if you can bring her to a sense of penitence. Only that can save her. Tell her if she confesses I will pardon her and she will escape the block.”

  “I will,” I promised. “But can you forgive her, Your Grace?”

  She raised her eyes to me and they were filled with tears. “Not in my heart,” she said softly. “But if I can save her from a traitor’s death I will. I would not see my father’s daughter die as a criminal. But she has to confess.”

  On my second visit to court the queen was engaged with the council, but I found Will petting a dog on a bench in the great hall.

  “Are you not asleep?” I asked.

  “Are you not beheaded?” he replied.

  “I had to go with her,” I said shortly. “She asked for me.”

  “Let’s hope you’re not her last request,” he said dryly. “Happen she’ll eat you for her last meal.”

  “Is she to die?” I whispered.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Wyatt denied her guilt from his scaffold, but all the evidence convicts her.”

  “But he cleared her?” I asked hopefully.

  Will laughed. “He cleared all of them. Turns out it was a rebellion of one and we must all have imagined the army. He even cleared Courtenay, who had already confessed! I don’t think Wyatt’s voice will make much odds. And we won’t hear it again. He won’t be repeating himself.”

  “Has the queen decided against her?”

  “The evidence has decided against her,” he said. “She can’t hang a hundred men and spare their leader. Elizabeth breeds treason like old meat breeds maggots. Not much point swatting flies and leaving the meat rotting in the open.”

  “Soon?” I asked, aghast.

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