The Queen's Fool Read online

  He tried to laugh but there was no joy in that little room. “Do you, Mistress Boy?”

  I nodded. “And the making of a prince who will change the history of the world.”

  He frowned. “Are you sure? What d’you mean?”

  The guard cleared his throat. “Beg pardon,” he said, embarrassed. “Nothing in code.”

  Lord Robert shook his head at the idiocy of the man but curbed his impatience. “Well,” he said, smiling at me. “It’s good to know that you think I will not follow my father out there.” He nodded at the green beyond the window. “And I am becoming reconciled to prison life. I have my books, I have my visitors, I am served well enough, I have learned to mourn my father and my brother.” He reached out to the fireplace and touched their carved crest. “I regret their treason, but I pray that they are at peace.”

  There was a tap on the door behind us. “I can’t go yet!” I exclaimed, turning, but it was not another guard who stood there, it was a woman. She was a pretty brown-haired woman with a creamy lovely skin and soft brown eyes. She was dressed richly, my quick survey took in the embroidery on her gown and the slashing of velvet and silk on her sleeves. She held the ribbons of her hat casually in one hand, and a basket of fresh salad leaves in the other. She took in the scene, me with my cheeks flushed and my eyes filled with tears, my master Lord Robert smiling in his chair, and then she stepped across the room and he rose to greet her. She kissed him coolly on both cheeks, and turned to me with her hand tucked into his arm as if to say: “Who are you?”

  “And who is this?” she asked. “Ah! You must be the queen’s fool.”

  There was a moment before I replied. I had never before minded my title. But the way she said it gave me pause. I waited for Lord Robert to say that I was a holy fool, that I saw angels in Fleet Street, that I had been Mr. Dee’s scryer, but he said nothing.

  “And you must be Lady Dudley,” I said bluntly, taking the fool’s prerogative since I had to take the name.

  She nodded. “You can go,” she said quietly, and turned to her husband.

  He stopped her. “I have not yet finished my business with Hannah Green.” He seated her in his chair at his desk and drew me to the other window, out of earshot.

  “Hannah, I cannot take you back into my service and you are already released from your oath to love me, but I would be glad if you would remember me,” he said quietly.

  “I always remember you,” I whispered.

  “And put my case before the queen.”

  “My lord, I do. She will hear nothing of anyone in the Tower but I will try again. I will never stop trying.”

  “And if anything changes between the princess and the queen, if you should chance to meet with our friend John Dee, I should be glad to know of everything.”

  I smiled at his touch on my hand, at his words that told me that he was alive and yearning for life again.

  “I shall write to you,” I promised him. “I shall tell you everything that I can. I cannot be disloyal to the queen—”

  “Nor now to Elizabeth either?” he suggested with a smile.

  “She is a wonderful young woman,” I said. “You could not be in her service and not admire her.”

  He laughed. “Child, you want to love and be loved so much that you are always on all sides at once.”

  I shook my head. “Nobody could blame me. The queen’s servants all love her, and Elizabeth… She is Elizabeth.”

  “I’ve known her all her life,” he said. “I taught her to jump with her first pony. She was then a most impressive child, and when she grew older, a little queen in the making.”

  “Princess,” I reminded him.

  “Princess,” he corrected himself. “Give her my best of wishes, my love and my loyalty. Tell her that if I could have dined with her I would have done.”

  I nodded.

  “She is her father’s daughter,” he said fondly. “By God, I pity Henry Bedingfield. Once she has recovered from her fright she will lead him a merry dance. He’s not the man to command Elizabeth, not even with the whole council to support him. She will outwit and outman him and he will be driven to distraction.”

  “Husband?” Amy rose from her seat at the table.

  “My lady?” He let go my hand and stepped back toward her.

  “I would be alone with you,” she said simply.

  I had a sudden rush of absolute hatred toward her and with it came a momentary vision so dark that I stepped back and hissed, like a cat will suddenly spit at a strange dog.

  “What is it?” Lord Robert asked me.

  “Nothing,” I said. I shook my head to dispel the picture. It was nothing: nothing I could see clearly, nothing I could tell. It was Amy thrown down, pushed clear away from Robert Dudley, and I knew it was my vision clouded by jealousy and a woman’s spite that gave me a picture of her flung away, pushed into a darkness as black as death. “Nothing,” I said again.

  He looked at me quizzically but he did not challenge me. “You had better go,” he said quietly. “Do not forget me, Hannah.”

  I nodded, and went to the door. The guard swung it open for me, I bowed to Lady Dudley and she gave me a brief dismissive nod. She was too anxious to be alone with her husband to care for being polite to someone who was little more than a servant.

  “Good day to you, your ladyship,” I said, just to force her to speak to me.

  I could not make her acknowledge me. She had turned her back to me; as far as she was concerned, I had gone.

  Elizabeth’s gloom and fear did not lift until the litter came to the gateway of the Tower and she went out under the dark portcullis into the city of London. Once we were through the city I, and a handful of ladies, rode behind, and the further we went west the more the march turned into a triumphal procession. At the small villages when they heard the rattle of the horses’ bits and the clatter of the hooves, they came running out and skipped and danced along the road, the children crying to be lifted up to see the Protestant princess. At the little town of Windsor, in the very shadow of the queen’s castle, at Eton and then Wycombe, the people poured out of their houses to smile and wave at her, and Elizabeth, who could never resist an audience, had her pillows plumped up so that she could sit up to see and be seen.

  They brought her gifts of food and wines and soon we were all laden with cakes and sweetmeats and posies of the roadside flowers. They cut boughs of hawthorn and may and cast them down on the road before her litter. They thrust little nosegays of primroses and daisies toward her. Sir Henry, riding up and down the little train, desperately tried to stop people crowding forward, tried to prevent the calls of love and loyalty, but it was like riding against a rising river. The people adored her, and when he sent soldiers ahead into the village to ban them from coming to their doorways, they leaned out of their windows instead, and called out her name. And Elizabeth, her copper hair brushed down over her shoulders, her pale face flushed, turned to left and right and waved her long-fingered hand and looked — as only Elizabeth could — at one and the same time like a martyr being taken to execution and like a princess rejoicing in the love of her people.

  The next day, and the next, word of the princess’s progress spread ahead of us, and they were ringing the bells of the parish church in the villages as we passed through. There was many a priest whose bells pealed out for the Protestant princess who wondered what his bishop would make of it, but there were too many bell ringers to be resisted, and all that Sir Henry could do was order his soldiers to ride closer to the litter and ensure that at least no one attempted a rescue.

  All this flattery was meat and drink to Elizabeth. Already her swollen fingers and ankles were returning to their normal size, her face blushed rosy, her eyes came alive, and her wit sharpened. At night she dined and slept in houses where she was welcomed as the heir to the throne, and she laughed and let them entertain her royally. In the day she woke early and was happy enough to travel. The sunshine was like wine to her and her skin soon gl