The Queen's Fool Read online

  “I’m off!” Marie shouted to me, plunging away down a lane which led toward the fish quay.

  I could not even shout a blessing, the smell of the smoke from burning buildings caught in the back of my throat like the stab of a knife and choked me into silence. The smell of smoke — the very scent of my nightmares — filled the air, filled my nostrils, my lungs, even my eyes, so that I could not breathe and my eyes were filled with tears so that I could not see.

  From the ramparts above me I heard a high shriek of terror and I looked up to see a man on fire, the burning arrow still caught in his clothing, as he dived to the floor and rolled, trying to extinguish the flames, screaming like a heretic as his body burned.

  I ducked from the doorway and started to run, anywhere to get away from the smell of a man burning. I wanted to find Daniel. He seemed like the only safe haven in a world turned into a nightmare. I knew I would have to fight my way through the chaotic streets, filled with frightened people rushing to the harbor, with soldiers pounding in the opposite direction to the ramparts, and somehow get through the cavalry, their horses wheeling and pushing in the narrow streets, waiting to charge out of the gates and push back the French army.

  I pressed myself back against the walls of the houses as a company of horse mustered in the street. The big haunches of the animals pushed one against the other and I shrank back into the doorway, fearing that they would knock me over and I would be crushed.

  I waited for my chance to get by, watching other people darting among the big hooves of the horses, seeing Daniel’s street at the other side of the square, hearing the men shout and the horses neigh and the bugler blasting out the call to arms, and I thought, not of my mother — who had faced death like a saint, but of the queen — who had faced death like a fighter. The queen — who had got her own horse and ridden out in the darkness to stand up for her own. And thinking of her, I found the courage to plunge out of the doorway and dart around the dangerous heels of the big horses and duck into a refuge further down the street when a great charge of horsemen came thundering by. Then I looked up and saw the standard they were carrying before them, smirched with mud and bloodied by an earlier battle, and I saw the bear and staff embroidered on the bright ground and I called out: “Robert Dudley!”

  A man looked over at me. “At the head, where he always is.”

  I pushed my way back, afraid of nothing now, turning horses’ heads to one side, sliding between their big flanks. “Let me by, let me by, sir. I am going to Robert Dudley.”

  It became like a dream. The great horses with the men mounted as high as centaurs above me. Their great heavy armor shining in the sunshine, clashing when they brushed one against another, sounding like cymbals when they hammered their halberds on their shields, hearing their great raw bellow above the clatter of the horses on the cobbles, louder than a storm.

  I found myself at the head of the square and there was his standard-bearer, and beside him…

  “My lord!” I yelled.

  Slowly, the helmeted head turned toward me, the visor down so he could not see me. I pulled off the cap from my head, and my hair tumbled down and I lifted my face up toward the dark knight, high on his great horse.

  “My lord! It’s me! Hannah the Fool.”

  His gauntleted hand lifted the false face of metal, but the shadow of the helmet left his face in darkness and still I could not see him. The horse shifted, held in powerful control by his other hand. His head was turned toward me, I could feel his eyes on me, sharp under the sharp points of the helmet.

  “Mistress Boy?”

  It was his voice, coming from the mouth of this great man-god, this great man of metal. But it was his voice, as intimate and warm and familiar as if he had come from dancing at King Edward’s summer feast.

  The horse sidled, I stepped back on a doorstep, it raised me up four inches, nothing more. “My lord, it is me!”

  “Mistress Boy, what the devil are you doing here?”

  “I live here,” I said, half laughing and half crying at seeing him again. “What of you?”

  “Released, fighting, winning — perhaps losing at the moment. Are you safe here?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said honestly. “Can we hold the town?”

  He pulled the gauntlet from his right hand, twisted a ring from his finger, threw it toward me, careless if I caught it or not. “Take this to the Windflight,” he said. “My ship. I will see you aboard if we need to sail. Go now, get aboard. We are to make a charge.”

  “Fort Risban is lost!” I shouted above the noise. “You can’t sail away, they will turn the guns on the harbor.”

  Robert Dudley laughed aloud as if death itself were a joke. “Mistress Boy, I don’t expect to survive this charge! But you might be lucky and slip away. Go now.”

  “My lord…”

  “It’s an order!” he shouted at me. “Go!”

  I gasped, pushing the ring on my finger. It had been on his little finger, it fitted my third, just above my wedding ring: Dudley’s ring on my finger.

  “My lord!” I cried out again. “Come back safe.”

  The bugle played so loud that no one could be heard. They were about to charge. He dropped his visor over his face, pulled his gauntlet back on his hand, lifted his lance from its place, tipped it to his helmet in a salute to me, and wheeled his horse around to face his company.

  “A Dudley!” he shouted. “For God and the queen!”

  “For God and the queen!” they roared back at him. “For God and the queen! Dudley! Dudley!”

  They moved toward the city walls, out of the square, and like a camp follower, disobedient to his order, I moved after them. To my left were the lanes running down to the harbor but I was drawn by the jingle of the bits and the deafening clatter of the metaled hooves on the cobbles. The roar of the siege grew louder as they got near to the gate, and at the sound of French rage I hesitated, shrank back, looked behind for the way to the harbor.

  Then I saw her. Daniel’s woman, bedraggled with her pretty dress half dragged from her shoulder, exposing her breast. Her child was on her hip, clinging to her, his dark eyes wide, her hair was tumbling down, her eye blacked, her face anguished, running like a hunted deer, skipping and stumbling on the cobbles of the street.

  She recognized me at once. She had watched me, as I had watched her, every Sunday at Mass. Both of us confined to the poor pews at the back of church. Both of us trapped into shame by the other’s determination.

  “Hannah,” she called out to me. “Hannah!”

  “What is it?” I shouted irritably. “What d’you want with me?”

  She showed me her child. “Take him!”

  At once I remembered the intensity of my vision in church, the first time I had seen her. Then as now there was a screaming and a thundering noise. Then, in my nightmare, she had called out “Take him!” As she cried out the sky suddenly grew dark with a hail of missiles and I ducked into a doorway but on the other side of the street she came on, dodging through the falling rocks. “Hannah! Hannah! I need your help.”

  “Go home,” I shouted unhelpfully. “Go to a cellar or somewhere.”

  The last of the horses was moving out of the square, we heard the groan of the counterweights as they pulled back the great gates for Lord Robert and his cavalry to charge out, and the great roar of rage as they thundered out to meet the French army.

  “They are leaving us?” she screamed in horror. “Running away?”

  “No, going out to fight. Find yourself a refuge…” I yelled impatiently.

  “God save us, they need not go out to fight them, they are in already! They must turn to fight! The French are here! They are in the town! We are lost!” Daniel’s woman shouted. “It was them…”

  Her words suddenly penetrated my mind, and I whirled around to look at her again. At once I realized the significance of her black eye and her torn gown. The French were in the city, and they had raped her.

  “They came in thr