The Queen's Fool Read online

“I questioned you in English and you answered in Spanish,” he said. He saw the alarm in my face. “It’s all right,” he said. “Whatever secrets you have, they are safe. You said nothing that could not be heard by anyone. But you told me about the queen and the princess.”

  “What did I say?” I demanded.

  He hesitated. “Child, if the angel who guides you wanted you to know what words were spoken then he would have let you speak them in your waking state.”

  I nodded.

  “He did not. Perhaps it is better that you do not know.”

  “But what am I to tell Lord Robert when I see him?” I demanded. “And what can I say to the queen about her baby?”

  “You can tell Lord Robert that he will be free within two years,” John Dee said firmly. “And there will be a moment when he thinks everything is lost, once more, at the very moment everything is just starting for him. He must not despair then. And you must bid the queen to hope. If any woman in the world could be granted a baby because she would be a good mother, because she loved the father, and because she desired a child, it would be this queen. But whether she will have a son in her womb as well as her heart, I cannot tell you. Whether she will have a child from this birth or not, I cannot tell you.”

  I got to my feet. “I shall go then,” I said. “I have to take the horse back. But, Mr. Dee—”

  “Yes?”

  “What about the Princess Elizabeth? Will she inherit the throne as her own?”

  He smiled at me. “Do you remember what we saw when we first scried?”

  I nodded.

  “You said that there will be a child but no child, I think that is the queen’s first baby which should have been born but still has not come. You said that there will be a king, but no king — I think that is this Philip of Spain whom we call king but who is not and never will be king of England. Then you said there will be a virgin queen all-forgotten, and a queen but no virgin.”

  “Is that Queen Jane, who was a virgin queen and now everyone has forgotten her, and now Mary who called herself a virgin and is now a married queen?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Perhaps. I think the princess’s hour will come. There was more, but I cannot reveal it to you. Go now.”

  I nodded and went from the room. As I closed the door behind me I saw his dark absorbed face in the mirror as he leaned forward to blow out the candles and I wondered what else he had heard me say when I had been in my tranced sleep.

  “What did you see?” Elizabeth demanded impatiently the moment I closed the door.

  “Nothing!” I said. I could almost have laughed at the expression on her face. “You will have to ask Mr. Dee. I saw nothing, it was just like falling asleep.”

  “But did you speak, or did he see anything?”

  “Princess, I cannot tell,” I said, moving toward the door and pausing only to drop her a little bow. “I have to take my horse back to the stable or they will miss her, and start to look for me.”

  Elizabeth nodded my dismissal and just as I was about to open the door there was a knock on it from the outside, in the same rhythm that Kat Ashley had used earlier. In a moment Kat was at the door and had opened it. A man swung into the room and she shut the door smartly behind him. I shrank back as I recognized Sir William Pickering, Elizabeth’s friend of old, and fellow-conspirator from the time of the Wyatt rebellion. I had not even known that Sir William was forgiven and back at court — then I realized that he was probably neither forgiven, nor allowed at court. This was a secret visit.

  “My lady, I must go,” I said firmly.

  Kat Ashley stopped me. “You will be asked to take some books to Mr. Dee. He will have some papers for you to take to Sir William at a house I will tell you,” she said. “Take a look at him now so that he remembers you again. Sir William, this is the queen’s fool, she will bring you the papers you need.”

  If it had not come from Kat Ashley, I might not have remembered Lord Robert’s warning; but my lord had been very clear with me, and his words confirmed my own sense of terror at whatever they were brewing here.

  “I am sorry,” I said simply to Kat Ashley, avoiding even looking at Sir William, and wishing that he had never seen me. “But my Lord Robert told me to take no messages for anyone. It was his order. I was to tell you about the ribbons and to run no errands after that. You must excuse me, Princess, sir, Mrs. Ashley, I cannot assist you.”

  I went quickly to the door and let myself out before they could protest. When I was safely away and down the corridor I drew breath and realized then that my heart was pounding as if I had run from some danger. When I saw that the door stayed shut and I heard the quiet shooting of the well-oiled bolt and the thud of Kat Ashley’s bottom on the wooden panels, I knew that there was danger there indeed.

  It was June and Queen Mary’s baby was more than a month overdue, a time when anyone might start to worry; and the petals falling from the hawthorn in the hedgerows blew across the roads like snow. The meadows were rich with flowers, their perfume heady in the warm air. Still we lingered at Hampton Court, though usually the royal court would have moved on by now to another palace. We waited though the roses came into bloom in the gardens, and every bird in England had a baby in the nest but the queen.

  The king went around with a face like thunder, exposed to sharp wit in the English court and to danger in the English countryside. He had guards posted night and day on the roads to the palace, and soldiers at every pier on the river. It was thought that if the queen died in childbirth there would be a thousand men at the gate of the palace to tear the Spanish apart. The only thing that could keep him safe then would be the goodwill of the new queen, Elizabeth. No wonder the princess swished around the court in her dark gown as if she were a black cat, the favored resident of a dairy, overfed on cream.

  The Spanish noblemen of the king’s court grew more irritable, as if their own manhood had been impugned by the slowness of this baby. They were frightened of the ill will of the people of England. They were a small band under siege with no hope of relief. Only the arrival of the baby would have guaranteed their safety, and the baby was dangerously late in coming.

  The ladies in the queen’s train became sulky; they felt as if they were being made to look like fools, sitting around with little pieces of sewing in their hands, making napkins and bibs and gowns for a baby that did not come. The younger girls, who had been hoping for a merry spring at court with May balls and picnics and masques and hunting, begrudged sitting with the queen in the stuffiness of a darkened room while she prayed for long hours in silence. They emerged from her confinement chamber with faces like spoiled children to say that nothing had happened again today, all day; and the queen seemed no nearer to her time than when she had entered her confinement two months ago.

  Only Elizabeth seemed unaffected by the anxious atmosphere of the palace as she walked briskly around the gardens with her long stride, her copper hair flying behind her, a book in her hands. No one walked with her, no one publicly befriended her, no one risked being closely identified with this most problematic princess, but everyone was more aware than ever that as matters now stood, she was the heir to the throne. The birth of a son, would mean that Elizabeth was again unwanted, a threat to everyone’s peace. But while there was no son, then she was the next queen. And whether she was the next monarch, or whether she was an unwanted princess, the king could not take his eyes off her.

  At dinner every night, King Philip bowed his head to her before he closed his eyes for grace, in the morning he smiled at her and wished her good day. Sometimes, when there was dancing, she took to the floor with the young ladies of the court, and he sat back in his chair and watched her, his eyes veiled, his face revealing nothing of his thoughts. She never returned his look directly these days, she shot him a cool dark gaze from under lowered eyelids and moved carefully in the paces of the dance, her neck poised, her slim waist shifting from side to side, in time to the music. When she curtsied toward the empty throne of her