The Queen's Fool Read online

  I nodded. “She is quite determined neither to leave nor marry.”

  “King Philip will keep her at court now, and make her his friend, I should think.”

  “Why?”

  “One baby, as yet unborn, is not enough to secure the throne,” he pointed out. “And next in line is Elizabeth. If the queen were to die in childbirth he would be in a most dangerous position: trapped in England and the new queen and all her people his enemies.”

  I nodded.

  “And if he were to disinherit Elizabeth then the next heir would be Mary, married to the Prince of France. D’you not think that our Spanish King Philip would rather see the devil incarnate on the English throne than the King of France’s son?”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Exactly,” he said with quiet satisfaction. “You can remind Elizabeth that she is in a stronger position now that Philip is on the queen’s council. There’s not many of them that can think straight there; but he certainly can. Is Gardiner still trying to persuade the queen to declare Elizabeth a bastard and disinherit her?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Robert Dudley smiled. “I warrant he is. Actually, I know he is.”

  “You’re very well informed for a friendless prisoner without news or visitors,” I observed tartly.

  He smiled his dark seductive smile. “No friends as dear to me as you, sweetheart.”

  I tried not to smile back but I could feel my face warming at his attention.

  “You have grown into a young woman indeed,” he said. “Time you were out of your pageboy clothes, my bird. Time you were wed.”

  I flushed quickly at the thought of Daniel and what he would make of Lord Robert calling me “sweetheart” and “my bird.”

  “And how is the swain?” Lord Robert asked, dropping into the chair at his desk and putting his boots up on the scattered papers. “Pressing his suit? Passionate? Urgent?”

  “Busy in Padua,” I said with quiet pride. “Studying medicine at the university.”

  “And when does he come home to claim his virgin bride?”

  “When I am released from Elizabeth’s service,” I said. “Then I will join him in France.”

  He nodded, thoughtful. “You know that you are a desirable woman now, Mistress Boy? I would not have known you for the little half lad that you were.”

  I could feel my cheeks burning scarlet but I did not drop my eyes like some pretty servant, overwhelmed by the master’s smile. I kept my head up and I felt his look flicker over me like a lick.

  “I would never have taken you while you were a child,” he said. “It’s a sin not to my taste.”

  I nodded, waiting for what was coming next.

  “And not while you were scrying for my tutor,” he said. “I would not have robbed either of you of your gift.”

  I stayed silent.

  “But when you are a woman grown and another man’s wife you can come to me, if you desire me,” he said. His voice was low, warm, infinitely tempting. “I would like to love you, Hannah. I would like to hold you in my arms and feel your heart beat fast, as I think it is doing now.” He paused. “Am I right? Heart thudding, throat dry, knees weak, desire rising?”

  Silently, honestly, I nodded.

  He smiled. “So I shall stay this side of the table and you shall stay that, and you shall remember when you are a virgin and a girl no longer, that I desire you, and you shall come to me.”

  I should have protested my genuine love and respect for Daniel, I should have raged at Lord Robert’s arrogance. Instead I smiled at him as if I agreed, and stepped slowly backward, one step after another, from the desk until I reached the door.

  “Can I bring you anything when I come again?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Don’t come until I send for you,” he ordered coolly, very far from my own state of arousal. “And stay clear of Kat Ashley and Elizabeth for your own sake, my bird, after you have given your message. Don’t come to me unless I send for you by name.”

  I nodded, felt the wood of the door behind me, and tapped on it with fingers which trembled.

  “But you will send for me?” I persisted in a small voice. “You won’t just forget about me?”

  He put his fingers to his lips and blew me a kiss. “Mistress Boy, look around, do you see a court of men and women who adore me? I have no visitors but my wife and you. Everyone else has slipped away but the two women that love me. I do not send for you often because I do not choose to endanger you. I doubt that you want the attention of the court directed to who you are, and where you come from, and where your loyalties lie, even now. I send for you when I have work for you, or when I cannot go another day without seeing you.”

  The soldier swung open the door behind me but I could not move.

  “You like to see me?” I whispered. “Did you say that sometimes you cannot go another day without seeing me?”

  His smile was as warm as a caress and as lightly given. “The sight of you is one of my greatest pleasures,” he said sweetly. Then the soldier gently put a hand under my elbow, and I went out.

  Spring — Summer 1555

  At Hampton Court they made the room ready for the queen’s confinement. The privy chamber behind her bedroom was hung with the richest of tapestries especially chosen for their holy and encouraging scenes. The windows were bolted shut so that not a breath of air should come into the room. They tied the posts of the bed with formidable and frightening straps that she might cling to, while her labor tore her thirty-nine-year-old body apart. The bed was dressed with a magnificent pillow cover and counterpane which the queen and her ladies had been embroidering since her wedding day. There were great log piles beside the stone fireplace so that the room could be heated to fever pitch. They shrouded the floors with carpets so that every sound should be muffled and they brought in the magnificent royal cradle with a two-hundred-and-forty-piece layette for the boy who would be born within the next six weeks.

  At the head of the magnificent cradle was carved a couplet to welcome the prince:

  The child which Thou to Mary, oh Lord of Might, does sendTo England’s joy: in health preserve, keep, and defend

  In the rooms outside the privy chambers were midwives, rockers, nurses, apothecaries and doctors in a constant stream of coming and going, and everywhere the nursemaids ran with piles of freshly laundered linen to store in the birthing chamber.

  Elizabeth, now free to walk in the palace, stood on the threshold of the confinement room with me. “All those weeks in there,” she said in utter horror. “It would be like being walled up alive.”

  “She needs to rest,” I said. Secretly I was afraid for the queen in that dark room. I thought that she would be ill if she were to be kept from the light and the sunshine for so long. She would not be allowed to see the king, nor to have any company or music or singing or dancing. She would be like a prisoner in her own chamber. And in less than two months’ time, when the baby would come, it would be unendurably hot, locked into that room, curtained in darkness and shrouded in cloth.

  Elizabeth stepped back from the doorway with an ostentatiously virginal shudder, and led the way through the presence chamber and into the gallery. Long solemn portraits of Spanish grandees and princes now lined the walls. Elizabeth went past them without turning her head, as if by ignoring them she could make them disappear.

  “Funny to think of her releasing me from prison just as she goes into her confinement,” she said, hiding her glee as best she could. “If she knew what it was like being trapped inside four walls she would change the tradition. I will never be locked up again.”

  “She will do her duty for the baby,” I said firmly.

  Elizabeth smiled, holding to her own opinion with serene self-confidence. “I hear you went to see Lord Robert in the Tower.” She took my arm and drew me close to her, so that she could whisper.

  “He wanted some writing paper from my father’s old shop,” I replied steadily.