The Queen's Fool Read online

  “I will think about what you have told me,” she said, following her usual instinct to buy time. “Are you to stay with me? Or take an answer back to her?”

  “I am not to go back to court until Christmas,” I said. Temptingly, I added: “If you were to beg her forgiveness perhaps you could be at the court for Christmas. It’s very gay now, Princess, the court is filled with handsome grandees and there is dancing every night and the queen is merry.”

  She turned her head away from me. “I should not dance with a Spaniard even if I were to go.” She considered the picture for a moment. “They could throng around me and beg me to dance and I would not get to my feet.”

  “And you would be the only princess,” I reminded her persuasively. “The only princess in court. If you refused to dance they would all gather round you. And there would be new gowns. You would be the only virgin princess in England, at the greatest court in the world.”

  “I’m not a child to tempt with toys,” she said with quiet dignity. “And I am not a fool. You can go now, Hannah, you have served her and done her bidding. But for the rest of your stay here you shall serve me.”

  I nodded and rose to my feet. For a moment I hesitated; she did look so very sick as she lay on her bed facing the prospect of either a confession to treason or an unending imprisonment and disgrace. “God guide your ladyship,” I said with sudden compassion. “God guide you, Princess Elizabeth, and bring you safely out of here.”

  She closed her eyes and I saw her eyelashes were darkened with tears. “Amen,” she whispered.

  She did not do it. She would not confess. She knew that her stubbornness would condemn her to stay at Woodstock perhaps forever, and she feared that her health would not outlast the queen’s resentment. But to confess was to throw herself into the queen’s power absolutely, and she would not do that. She mistrusted Mary’s mercy, and the relentless Tudor stubbornness drove both sisters. Mary had been named as heir, and then named as bastard, and then made heir again. Exactly the same ordeal had been endured by Elizabeth. Both of them had decided never to surrender, always to claim their birthright, never to despair that the crown would come. Elizabeth would not relinquish the habit of a lifetime, not even for a chance to shine at a wealthy happy court and be received with honor. She might or might not be guilty, but she would never confess.

  “What am I to tell the queen?” I asked her at the end of a long week. The physicians had declared her on the way to health once more, they could take a message back to court for me. If Elizabeth continued to mend she could have ridden in triumph to court for Christmas, if only she would confess.

  “You can tell her a riddle,” Elizabeth said with feeble malice. She was seated in a chair, a pillow thrust behind her back to support her, a blanket wrapped around a hot brick under her cold feet.

  I waited.

  “You are a rhyming fool, are you not?”

  “No, Princess,” I said quietly. “As you know, I have no fooling skills.”

  “Then I will teach you a rhyme,” she said savagely. “You can write it to the queen if you wish. You can engrave it on every damned window in this hellhole if you wish.” She smiled grimly at me. “It goes like this:

  “Much suspected of me Nothing proved can be Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner.

  “Don’t you think that is neat?”

  I bowed and went to write my letter to the queen.

  Winter 1554–1555

  We waited, Christmas came and went and there was no joy for me either as I was ordered to stay with Elizabeth until she begged for forgiveness. It was freezing cold at Woodstock, there was not a window that did not direct a draft into the room, there was not a fire that did not smoke. The linen on the beds was always damp, the very floorboards underfoot were wet to the touch. It was a malevolent house in winter. I had been in good health when I arrived, and yet even I could feel myself growing weak from the relentless cold and the darkness, late dawns and early twilights. For Elizabeth, already exhausted by her ordeal in the Tower, always quick to go from anxiety to illness, the house was a killer.

  She was too ill to take any pleasure in the festivities, and they were scanty and mean. She was too weak to do more than look out of the window at the mummers who came to the door. She raised her hand to wave at them, Elizabeth would never fail an audience, but after they had gone she sank back on the daybed and lay still. Kat Ashley threw another log on the fire and it hissed as the frost in the grain of the wood started to melt and it smoked most miserably.

  I wrote to my father to wish him a merry Christmastide and to tell him that I missed him and hoped to see him soon. I enclosed a note for Daniel in which I sent him my best wishes. A few weeks later, in the cold snows of January when the drafty palace of Woodstock was a nightmare of coldness and darkness from gray dawn to early dusk, I had a letter from each of them. My father’s was brief and affectionate, saying that business was good in Calais, and would I please go to check on the shop in London when I was next in the city. Then I opened my letter from Daniel.

  Dear wife-to-be, I am writing to you from the city of Padua to wish you the compliments of the season and hope that this finds you well, as it leaves me. Your father and my family are in good health at Calais and looking for you every day as we hear that matters are quite settled in England now with the queen with child and Lady Elizabeth to leave England and live with Queen Mary of Hungary. When she leaves England I trust you will come to Calais where my mother and sisters await you.I am here to study at the great university of medicine. My master suggested that I should come here to learn the art of surgery, at which the Italians and especially the Padua university has excelled, also the pharmacopeia. I will not trouble you with my studies — but Hannah! These men are unfolding the very secrets of life, they are tracing the flow of the humors around the body and in Venice, which is nearby, they see how the tides and the rivers flow around the body of the world also. I cannot tell you what it is like to be here and to feel that every day we are coming a little closer to understanding everything — from the rise and fall of the tides to the beat of the heart, from the distillation of an essence to the ingredients of the philosopher’s stone.You will be surprised to hear that I came upon John Dee in Venice last month when I was listening to a lecture by a very learned friar who is skilled in the use of poisons to kill the disease and yet save the patient. Mr. Dee is much respected here for his reputation for learning. He lectured on Euclid and I attended, though I did not understand more than one word in ten. But I think the better of him now that I have seen him in this company with these men who are forging a new sense of the world and one which will transform what we know about everything — from the smallest grain to the greatest planet. He has a most brilliant mind, I understand much better why you think so highly of him.I was glad to get your letter and to know that you think that you will finish your service with the princess soon, I trust then you will ask the queen to release you. I am considering now whether we could live away from England for some years. Hannah, my love, Venice is such an exciting city to be in, and the weather so bright and fine, and the men and women so prosperous and the doctors so learned — you cannot blame me for wanting to stay here and for wanting you to share it with me. It is a city of tremendous wealth and beauty, there are no roads at all but canals and the lagoon everywhere, and everyone takes a boat to their doorstep. The study and the scholars here are quite extraordinary and anything can be asked and answered.I keep your first letter in my doublet against my heart. Now I put your Christmas note beside it and wish you had written more. I think of you daily and dream of you every night.This is a new world that we are making, with new understandings of the movements of the planets and of the tides. Of course it must be possible that a man and a wife could be married in a new way also. I do not want you as my servant, I want you as my love. I assure you that you shall have the freedom to be your own sweet self. Write to me again and tell me you will come to me soon. I am yours in thought and word and deed and even th