The Queen's Fool Read online

“He winked at me.” I leaned back against the cold stone and drew my warm new cloak around my shoulders.

  “The king?”

  “He was not even at dinner. He was sick, they sent his food to his rooms. They served a great dinner as if he were at the table but they sent a little plate to his rooms for him. The duke took his place at the head of the table, all but sitting on the throne.”

  “And does the duke have his eye on you?”

  “He did not seem to see me at all.”

  “Has he forgotten you?”

  “Ah, he doesn’t have to look to know who is where, and what they are doing. He will not have forgotten me. He is not a man who forgets anything.”

  The duke had decided that there was to be a masque at Candlemas and gave it out as the king’s command, so we all had to wear special costumes and learn our lines. Will Somers, the king’s fool who had come to court twenty years ago when he was a boy the same age as me, was to introduce the piece and recite a rhyme, the king’s choristers were to sing, and I was to recite a poem, specially composed for the occasion. My costume was to be a new livery, specially made for me in the fool’s color of yellow. My hand-me-down livery was too tight on my chest. I was that odd androgynous thing, a girl on the threshold of being a woman. One day, in a certain light, as I turned my head before the mirror I could see the glimpse of a stranger, a beauty. Another day I was as plain as a slate.

  The Master of the Revels gave me a little sword and ordered that Will and I should prepare for a fight, which would fit somewhere into the story of the masque.

  We met for our first practice in one of the antechambers off the great hall. I was awkward and unwilling, I did not want to learn to fight with swords like a boy, I did not want to be the butt of jokes by taking a public beating. No man at court but Will Somers could have persuaded me to it, but he treated our lesson as if he had been hired to improve my understanding of Greek. He behaved as if it was a skill I needed to learn, and he wanted me to learn well.

  He started with my stance. Resting his hands on my shoulders, he gently smoothed them down, took my chin and raised it up. “Hold your head high, like a princess,” he said. “Have you ever seen Lady Mary slouch? Ever seen Lady Elizabeth drop her head? No. They walk as if they are princesses born and bred; dainty like a pair of goats.”

  “Goats?” I asked, trying to raise my head without hunching up my shoulders.

  Will Somers grinned at the laborious unfolding of the jest. “Up one minute, down the next,” he said. “Heir one moment, bastard the next. Up the mountain and down again. Princesses and goats, all alike. You must stand like a princess, and dance like a goat.”

  “I have seen the Lady Elizabeth,” I volunteered.

  “Have you?”

  “Once, when I was a little girl. My father brought me on a visit to London and I had to deliver some books to Admiral Lord Seymour.”

  Will put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Least said, soonest mended,” he advised quietly. Then he slapped his forehead and gave me his merry smile. “Here am I, telling a woman to mind her tongue! Fool that I am!”

  The lesson went on. He showed me the swordsman’s stance, hand on my hip for balance, how to slide forward with my leading foot always on the floor so that I should not trip or fall, how to move behind the sword and to let it retreat to me. Then we started on the feints and passes.

  Will first commanded me to stab at him. I hesitated. “What if I hit you?”

  “Then I shall take a splinter, not a deadly cut,” he pointed out. “It’s only wood, Hannah.”

  “Get ready then,” I said nervously and lunged forward.

  To my amazement Will sidestepped me and was at my side, his wooden sword to my throat. “You’re dead,” he said. “Not so good at foresight after all.”

  I giggled. “I’m no good at this,” I admitted. “Try again.”

  This time I lunged with a good deal more energy and caught the hem of his coat as he flicked to one side.

  “Excellent,” he said breathlessly. “And again.”

  We practiced until I could make a convincing stab at him and then he started to lunge at me and teach me to drop to one side or the other. Then he rolled out a thick carpet on the floor and showed me how to turn head over heels.

  “Comical,” he announced, sitting upright, his legs entwined like a child seated to read a book.

  “Not very,” I said.

  “Ah, you’re a holy fool, not a jester,” he said. “You have no sense of the laughable.”

  “I have,” I said, stung. “It’s just that you are not funny.”

  “I have been the most comical man in England for nearly twenty years,” he insisted. “I came to court when Henry loved Anne Boleyn and once boxed my ears for jesting against her. But the joke was on her, later. I was the funniest man in England before you were born.”

  “Why, how old are you?” I asked, looking into his face. The laughter lines were deeply engraved on either side of his mouth, crow’s feet by his eyes. But he was lithe and lanky as a boy.

  “As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth,” he said.

  “No, really.”

  “I am thirty-three. Why, d’you want to marry me?”

  “Not at all. Thank you.”

  “You would wed the wittiest fool in the world.”

  “I would rather not marry a fool.”

  “Now that is inevitable. A wise man is a bachelor.”

  “Well, you don’t make me laugh,” I said provocatively.

  “Ah, you’re a girl. Women have no sense of the ludicrous.”

  “I have,” I insisted.

  “It is well known that women, not being in the image of God, can have no sense of what is funny and what is not.”

  “I have! I have!”

  “Of course women do not!” he triumphed. “For why else would a woman ever marry a man? Have you ever seen a man when he desires a woman?”

  I shook my head. Will put the wooden sword between his legs and made a little rush to one side of the room and then the other. “He can’t think, he can’t speak, he can’t command his thoughts or his wishes, he runs everywhere behind his cock like a hound behind a scent, all he can do is howl. How-oww-oww-owwl!”

  I was laughing out loud as Will raced around the room, straining backward as if to restrain his wooden sword, leaning back as if to take the weight of it. He broke off and smiled at me. “Of course women have no wit,” he said. “Who with any wit would ever have a man?”

  “Well, not I,” I said.

  “God bless you and keep you a virgin then, Maid-Boy. But how shall you get a husband if you will not have a man?”

  “I don’t want one.”

  “Then you are a fool indeed. For without a husband how shall you have a living?”

  “I shall make my own.”

  “Then again you are a fool, for the only living you can make is from fooling. That makes you a fool three times over. Once for not wanting a husband, twice for making a living without him, and thrice since the living you make is from fooling. At least I am just a fool, but you are a triple fool.”

  “Not at all!” I rejoined, falling in with the rhythm of his speech. “Because you have been a fool for years, you have been a fool for two generations of kings, and I have only been one for a few weeks.”

  He laughed at that and slapped me on the shoulder. “Take care, Maid-Boy, or you will not be a holy fool but a witty fool and I tell you, clowning and jesting every day is harder work than saying something surprising once a month.”

  I laughed at the thought of my work being to say something surprising once a month.

  “Up and at it!” Will Somers said, pulling me to my feet. “We have to plan how you are going to murder me amusingly by Candlemas.”

  We had our sword dance planned in good time and it did seem very funny. At least two practices ended in us both having fits of giggles as we mistimed a lunge and cracked heads together, or both feinted at the same time, an