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  ‘No! Never. I knew at once that I wanted to be with you. I have been trying to get a letter to you. I have been trying to reach you. I swear it, Daniel. I have thought of nothing and no-one but you, ever since I left.’

  ‘Have you come back to be my wife?’ he asked simply.

  I nodded. At this most important moment I found I lost all my fluency. I could not speak. I could not argue my case, I could not persuade him in any one of my many languages. I could not even whisper. I just nodded emphatically, and Danny on my hip, his arms around my neck, gave a gurgle of laughter and nodded too, copying me.

  I had hoped Daniel would be glad and snatch me up into his arms, but he was sombre. ‘I will take you back,’ he said solemnly. ‘And I will not question you, and we will say no more about this time apart. You will never have a word of reproach from me, I swear it; and I will bring this boy up as my son.’

  For a moment, I did not understand what he meant, and then I gasped. ‘Daniel, he is your son! This is your son by your woman. This is her son. We were running from the French horsemen and she fell, she gave him to me as she went down. I am sorry, Daniel. She died at once. And this is your boy, I passed him off as mine. He is my boy now. He is my boy too.’

  ‘He is mine?’ he asked wonderingly. He looked at the child for the first time and saw, as anyone would have to see, the dark eyes which were his own, and the brave little smile.

  ‘He is mine too,’ I said jealously. ‘He knows that he is my boy.’

  Daniel gave a little half-laugh, almost a sob, and put his arms out. Danny reached for his father and went confidingly to him, put his plump little arms around his neck, looked him in the face and leaned back so he could scrutinise him. Then he thumped his little fist on his own chest and said, by way of introduction: ‘Dan’l.’

  Daniel nodded, and pointed to his own chest. ‘Father,’ he said. Danny’s little half-moon eyebrows raised in interest.

  ‘Your father,’ Daniel said.

  He took my hand and tucked it firmly under his arm, as he held his son tightly with the other. He walked to the dispatching officer and gave his name and was ticked off their list. Then together we walked towards the open portcullis.

  ‘Where are we going?’ I asked, although I did not care. As long as I was with him and Danny, we could go anywhere in the world, be it flat or round, be it the centre of the heavens or wildly circling around the sun.

  ‘We are going to make a home,’ he said firmly. ‘For you and me and Daniel. We are going to live as the People, you are going to be my wife, and his mother, and one of the Children of Israel.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said, surprising him again.

  He stopped in his tracks. ‘You agree?’ he repeated comically.

  I nodded.

  ‘And Daniel is to be brought up as one of the People?’ he confirmed.

  I nodded. ‘He is one already,’ I said. ‘I had him circumcised. You must instruct him, and when he is older he will learn from my father’s Hebrew Bible.’

  He drew a breath. ‘Hannah, in all my dreams, I did not dream of this.’

  I pressed against his side. ‘Daniel, I did not know what I wanted when I was a girl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our other children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don’t want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Carpenter.’

  ‘And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our beliefs without danger,’ he insisted.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘in the England that Elizabeth will make.’

  Author’s Note

  The characters of Hannah and her family are invented, but there were Jewish families concealing their faith in London as elsewhere in Europe, throughout this period. I am indebted to Cecil Roth’s moving history and to the broadcaster and film-maker Naomi Gryn for giving me a small insight into these courageous lives. Most of the other characters in this novel are real, created by me in this fiction to match the historical record as I understand it. Below is a list of some of my sources, and for the history of Calais I am also indebted to the French historian Georges Fauquet who was generous with his time and his knowledge.

  Billington, Sandra, A Social History of the Fool, 1984

  Braggard, Philippe, Termote, Johan, Williams, John (ed), Walking the Walls, Historic Town Defences in Kent, Côte d’Opale and West Flanders, Kent County Council, 1999

  Brigden, Susan, New Worlds, Lost Worlds, The rule of the Tudors 1485–1603, 2000

  Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death, Ritual, Religions and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, 1977

  Darby, H.C., A New Historical Geography of England before 1600, 1976

  Doran, John, A History of Court Fools, 1858

  Fontaine, Raymond, Calais, ville d’histoire et de tourisme, Syndicat d’initiative de France, (P.d.C.) 2002

  Green, Dominic, The Double Life of Doctor Lopez, 2003

  Guy, John, Tudor England, 1988

  Haynes, Alan, Sex in Elizabethan England, 1997

  Hibbert, Christopher, The Virgin Queen, 1992

  Lenoir, Laurent, Á la decouverté des anciennes fortifications de Calais, Nord Patrimonie Editions, 2002

  Loades, David, The Tudor Court, 1986

  Marshall, Peter, The Philosopher’s Stone, A quest for the secrets of alchemy, 2001

  Neale, J.E., Queen Elizabeth, 1934

  Plowden, Alison, Elizabeth: Marriage with my Kingdom, 1999

  Plowden, Alison, The Young Elizabeth, 1999

  Plowden, Alison, Tudor Queens and Commoners, 1998

  Ridley, Jasper, Elizabeth I, 1987

  Roth, Cecil, A History of the Marranos, The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia, USA, 1932

  Somerset, Anne, Elizabeth I, 1997

  Starkey, David, Elizabeth, 2001

  Turner, Robert, Elizabethan Magic. The art and the Magus, 1989

  Weir, Alison, Children of England, 1997

  Weir, Alison, Elizabeth the Queen, 1999

  Welsford, Enid, The Fool: His social and literary history, 1935

  Woolley, Benjamin, The Queen’s Conjuror, 2001

  Yates, Frances, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, 1979

  PHILIPPA GREGORY

  THE VIRGIN’S LOVER

  Dedication

  For Anthony

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Autumn 1558

  One Year Earlier: Summer 1557

  Winter 1558

  Summer 1558

  Autumn 1558

  Winter 1558–59

  Spring 1559

  Summer 1559

  Autumn 1559

  Winter 1559–60

  Spring 1560

  Summer 1560

  Author’s Note

  Autumn 1558

  All the bells in Norfolk were ringing for Elizabeth, pounding the peal into Amy’s head, first the treble bell screaming out like a mad woman, and then the whole agonising, jangling sob till the great bell boomed a warning that the whole discordant carillon was about to shriek out again. She pulled the pillow over her head to shut out the sound, and yet still it went on, until the rooks abandoned their nests and went streaming into the skies, tossing and turning in the wind like a banner of ill omen, and the bats left the belfry like a plume of black smoke as if to say that the world was upside down now, and day should be forever night.

  Amy did not need to ask what the racket was for; she already knew. At last, poor sick Queen Mary had died, and Princess Elizabeth was the uncontested heir. Praise be. Everyone in England should rejoice. The Protestant princess had come to the throne and would be England’s queen. All over the country people would be ringing bells for joy, striking kegs of ale, dancing in the streets, and throwing open prison doors. The English had their Elizabeth