The Queen's Fool Read online

  I meant to make her laugh but when she looked at me her eyes were filled with tears. “I will miss the fool,” she said. “I have no one to be my friend, I have no one to talk to. I have no one to care for me.”

  She rose to her feet. “Walk with me,” she commanded.

  We went through the ramshackle palace and through the door which hung, half off its hinges, into the garden. She leaned on me and I felt her weakness. The grass was sprawled over the path, there were nettles thrusting up in all the ditches. Elizabeth and I made our way through the ruin of the garden like two old women, clinging to each other. For a moment I thought that her fears were true: that this imprisonment would be the death of her, even if the queen did not send for the executioner and his ax. We went through the swinging gate and into the orchard. The petals from the blossom were spilled over the grass like snow, the boughs leaned down with their creamy weight. Elizabeth looked around the orchard before she put her hand in my arm and drew me to her.

  “I am ruined,” she said softly. “If she bears a son to him, I am ruined.” She turned from me and walked across the grass, her shabby black gown brushing the damp petals which clung to the hem. “A son,” she muttered, cautious even in her chagrin to keep her voice low. “A damned Spanish son. A damned Catholic Spanish son. And England an outpost of the Spanish empire, England, my England, a cat’s-paw of Spanish policy. And the priests back, and the burnings beginning, and my father’s faith and my father’s legacy torn out of English earth before it has time to flower. Damn her. Damn her to hell and her misconceived child with her.”

  “Lady Elizabeth!” I exclaimed. “Don’t say that!”

  She rounded on me, her hands up, her fists clenched. If I had been closer, she would have hit me. She was in such a passion she was beyond knowing what she was doing. “Damn her, and damn you too for standing her friend.”

  “You must have thought it might happen,” I started. “The marriage was agreed, he would not delay for ever…”

  “Why would I think that she would marry?” she snapped. “Who would have her? Old and plain, named as a bastard for half her life, half the princes of Europe have refused her already. If it was not for her damned Spanish blood, Philip would never have had her. He must have begged to be excused. He must have gone down on his knees and prayed for any fate rather than to be forced to stick it up that old dried-up virgin.”

  “Elizabeth!” I exclaimed, I was genuinely shocked.

  “What?” Her eyes were blazing with temper. For a moment I believed that she did not know what she was saying. “What’s wrong with telling the truth? He is a young handsome man who will inherit half of Europe, she is a woman old before her time and old enough anyway. It is disgusting to think of them rutting together like a young piglet on an old sow. It is an abomination. And if she is like her mother she will bear nothing but dead babies.”

  I put my hands over my ears. “You are offensive,” I said frankly.

  Elizabeth whirled on me. “And you are unfaithful!” she shouted. “You should be my friend, and stand my friend whatever else happens, whatever I say. You were begged to me as a fool, you should be mine. And I say nothing but the truth. I would be ashamed to chase after a young man like her. I would rather die than court a man young enough to be my son. I would rather die now than get to her age and be an unwanted old maid, good for nothing, pleasing to nobody, useless!”

  “I am not unfaithful,” I said steadily. “And I am your companion, she did not beg me as a fool to you. I would be your friend. But I cannot listen to you cursing her like a Billingsgate fishwife.”

  She let out a wail at that and dropped to the ground, her face as white as apple blossom, her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her hands clamped over her mouth.

  I knelt beside her and took her hands. They were icy, she looked near to collapse. “Lady Elizabeth,” I said soothingly. “Be calm. It is a marriage which is bound to take place and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  “But not even invited…” She gave a little wail.

  “Is hard. But she has been merciful to you.” I paused. “Remember, he would have had you beheaded.”

  “And I am to be grateful for that?”

  “You could be calm. And wait.”

  The face she turned up to me was suddenly glacial. “If she bears him a son then I will have nothing to wait for but a forced marriage to some Papist prince, or death.”

  “You said to me that any day you could stay alive was a victory,” I reminded her.

  She did not smile in reply. She shook her head. “Staying alive is not important,” she said quietly. “It never was. I was staying alive for England. Staying alive to be England’s princess. Staying alive to inherit.”

  I did not correct her, the words were true for her now, though I thought I knew Elizabeth too well to see her as a woman only staying alive for her country. But I did not want to launch her into one of her passionate tantrums. “You must do that,” I said soothingly. “Stay alive for England. Wait.”

  She let me go the next day though her resentment was as powerful as that of a child excluded from a treat. I did not know what upset her more: the gravity of her situation as the only Protestant princess in Roman Catholic England, or not being invited to the greatest event in Christendom since the Field of the Cloth of Gold. When she waved me away without a word and with a sulky turn of her head I thought that missing the party was probably the worst thing for her that morning.

  If Sir Henry’s men had not known the road to Winchester we could have found it by following the crowds. It seemed that every man, woman and child wanted to see the queen take her husband at last, and the roads were crowded with farmers bringing their produce into the greatest market in the country, entertainers setting up their pitches all along the way, whores and mountebanks and peddlers with cures, goose girls and washerwomen, carters and riders leading strings of spare horses. Then there was all the panoply and organization of the royal court on the move: the messengers coming and going, the men in livery, the men at arms, the outriders and those galloping desperately to catch up.

  Sir Henry’s men carried reports of Elizabeth for the queen’s council, so we parted at the entrance of Wolvesey Palace, the bishop’s great house where the queen was staying. I went straight to the queen’s rooms and found a crowd of people at every doorway pushing their way forward with petitions that she might grant. I slid under elbows, between shoulders, sneaking between paneled walls and bulky squires till I reached the guards on the door and stood before their crossed halberds.

  “The queen’s fool,” I announced myself. One man recognized me. He and his fellow stepped forward and let me dart in behind them and open the door while they held back the weight of the crowd.

  Inside the presence chamber it was scarcely less crowded but the clothes were more silks and embroidered leather, and the altercations were taking place in French and Spanish as well as English. Here were the ambitious and rising men and women of the kingdom jockeying for a place and anxious to be seen by the new king who would be creating a court which must — surely to God! — include at least some true-born Englishmen as well as the hundreds of Spaniards he had insisted on bringing over as his personal retinue.

  I skirted the perimeter of the hall, overhearing the snatches of conversation, which was mostly scandalous, often speculating on what the handsome young prince would make of the old queen, and I found that my cheeks were blazing with temper and my teeth gritted by the time I got to the door of her private rooms.

  The guard let me through with a nod of recognition but even inside the queen’s privy chamber there was no peace. There were more ladies and attendants, musicians, singers, escorts and general hangers-on than I had ever seen with her before. I looked around for her, still she was not there, the chair which served as her throne by the fireside was empty. Jane Dormer was in the window seat sewing, looking as determinedly unimpressed as she had been on the day I had first met her when the queen had been a sic