The Queen's Fool Read online

  I leaned toward her. “Princess, if the queen had seen you and her husband today, as I saw you, she would banish you to Woodstock in a moment.”

  Elizabeth gave a dizzy laugh. “Oh no, for he would not let her.”

  “He? He does not give the orders here.”

  “He is king,” she pointed out. “He told her I should be treated with respect, and I am. He told her that I should be free to come and go as I wish, and I am. He will tell her that I am to stay at court, and I will. And, he will tell her that I am not to be coerced or ill-treated or accused of anything at all. I shall be free to meet who I choose, and talk with who I choose, and, in short, do anything at all that I choose.”

  I gasped that she could leap so far in her confidence. “You will always be under suspicion.”

  “Not I,” she said. “Not any more. I could be caught with a dozen pikes in my laundry basket tomorrow, and I would not be charged. He will protect me.”

  I was stunned into silence.

  “And he is a handsome man.” She almost purred with pleasure. “The most powerful man in Christendom.”

  “Princess, this is the most dangerous game you are playing,” I warned her. “I have never heard you so reckless before. Where is your caution gone?”

  “If he loves me then nothing can touch me,” she said, her voice very low. “And I can make him love me.”

  “He cannot intend anything but your dishonor, and her heartbreak,” I said fiercely.

  “Oh, he intends nothing at all.” She was gleaming with pleasure. “He is far beyond intentions. I have him on the run. He intends nothing, he thinks nothing, I daresay he can barely eat or sleep. D’you not know the pleasure of turning a man’s head, Hannah? Let me tell you it is better than anything. And when the man is the most powerful man in Christendom, the King of England and Prince of Spain, and the husband of your icy, arrogant, tyrannical ugly old sister, then it is the greatest joy that can be had!”

  A few days later I was out riding. I had outgrown the pony that the Dudleys had given me, and I now rode one of the queen’s own beautiful hunters from the royal stables. I was desperate to be out. Hampton Court, for all its beauty, for all its healthful position, was like a prison this summer, and when I rode out in the morning I always had a sense of escape on parole. The queen’s anxiety and the waiting for the baby preyed on everyone till we were all like bitches penned up in the kennel, ready to snap at our own paws.

  I usually rode west along the river, with the bright morning sunshine on my back, past the gardens and the little farms and on to where the countryside became more wild and the farmhouses more infrequent. I could set the hunter to jump the low hedges, and she would splash through streams in a headlong canter. I would ride for more than an hour and I always turned for home reluctantly.

  This warm morning I was glad to be out early, it would be too hot for riding later. I could feel the heat of the sun on my face and pulled my cap down lower to shield my face from the burning light. I turned back toward the palace and saw another horseman on the road ahead of me. If he had headed for the stable yard or stayed on the high road, I would hardly have noticed him; but he turned off the road toward the palace and took a little lane which ran alongside the walls of the garden. His discreet approach alerted me, and I turned to look more closely. At once I recognized the scholarly stoop of his shoulders. I called out, without thinking: “Mr. Dee.”

  He reined in his horse and turned and smiled at me, quite composed. “How glad I am to see you, Hannah Verde,” he said. “I hoped that we might meet. Are you well?”

  I nodded. “Very well, I thank you. I thought you were in Italy. My betrothed wrote to me that he heard you lecture in Venice.”

  He nodded. “I have been home for some time. I am working on a map of the coastline, and I needed to be in London for the maps and sailors’ charts. Have you received a book for me? I had it delivered to your father in Calais for safety, and he said he would send it on.”

  “I have not been to the shop for some days, sir,” I said.

  “When it comes I shall be glad of it,” he said casually.

  “Has the queen summoned you, sir?”

  He shook his head. “No, I am here privately to visit the Princess Elizabeth. She asked me to bring her some manuscripts. She is studying Italian and I have brought some very interesting old texts from Venice.”

  Still I was not warned. “Shall I take you to her?” I offered. “This is not the way to the palace. We can go to the stable yard by the high road.”

  Even as he was about to reply, the little gate in the wall opened silently, and Kat Ashley stood in the doorway.

  “Ah, the fool,” she said pleasantly. “And the magician.”

  “You miscall us both,” he said with quiet dignity, and got down from his saddle. A pageboy ducked out from under Kat Ashley’s arm to hold John Dee’s horse. I realized that he was expected, that they had planned he should enter the palace in secrecy, and — sometimes I was a fool indeed — I realized that it would have been better for me if I had not seen him or, if I had, better to have turned my head and ridden blindly past.

  “Take her horse too,” Kat Ashley told the lad.

  “I’ll take her back to the stable,” I said. “And go about my business.”

  “This is your business,” she said bluntly. “Now you are here you will have to come with us.”

  “I don’t have to do anything but what the queen commands me,” I said abruptly.

  John Dee put his hand gently on my arm. “Hannah, I could use your gift in the work I have to do here. And your lord would want you to help me.”

  I hesitated, and while I paused, Kat took hold of my hand and fairly dragged me into the walled garden. “Come in now,” she said. “You can scurry off once you’re inside, but you are putting Mr. Dee and me in danger while you argue out here in the open. Come now, and leave later if you must.”

  As ever, the thought of being watched frightened me. I tossed my reins to the lad and followed Kat, who went to a little doorway, hidden by ivy, which despite all my time in the palace I had never noticed before. She led us up a winding stair, and came out through another hidden doorway, shielded by a tapestry, opposite the princess’s rooms.

  She knocked on the door with a special rhythm and it opened at once. John Dee and I went quickly inside. No one had seen us.

  Elizabeth was seated on a stool in the window, a lute across her knees, her new Italian lute master a few paces away setting out music on a stand. They looked as innocent as stage players enacting innocence. Indeed they looked so very innocent that the short hairs on the back of my cropped neck prickled as if I were a frightened dog.

  Elizabeth looked up and saw me. “Oh, Hannah.”

  “Kat dragged me in,” I said. “I think I should go.”

  “Wait a moment,” she replied.

  Kat Ashley planted her big bottom against the wooden door and leaned back.

  “Would you see better if Hannah were to help you?” Elizabeth demanded of John Dee.

  “I cannot see without her,” he said frankly. “I don’t have the gift. I was only going to prepare the astrological tables for you; that is all I can do without a seer. I did not know that Hannah would be here today.”

  “If she would look for you, what might we see?”

  He shrugged. “Everything. Nothing. How would I know? But we might be able to tell the date of the birth of the queen’s baby. We might be able to know if it is a boy or a girl, and how healthy, and what its future might hold.”

  Elizabeth came toward me, her eyes very bright. “Do this for us, Hannah,” she whispered, almost pleading with me. “We all want to know. You, as much as anybody.”

  I said nothing. My knowledge of the queen’s growing despair in that darkened room was not one that I wanted to share with her flirtatious half sister.

  “I dare not do it,” I said flatly. “Mr. Dee, I am afraid. These are forbidden studies.”

  “It is all for