The Queen's Fool Read online

  The skin on the back of my neck went cold. “I can keep a secret,” I said unhelpfully. “But I don’t like to.”

  “And you will not go into a trance and speak of foretellings and smoke and crystals and betray everything?”

  “You hired me for my trances and foretellings,” I reminded him. “I can’t order the Sight.”

  “Does she do it often?” he demanded of his son.

  Lord Robert shook his head. “Rarely, and never out of turn. Her fear is greater than her gift. She is witty enough to turn anything. Besides, who would listen to a fool?”

  The duke gave his quick bark of a laugh. “Another fool,” he suggested.

  Robert smiled. “Hannah will keep our secrets,” he said gently. “She is mine, heart and soul.”

  The duke nodded. “Well, then. Tell her the rest.”

  I shook my head, wanting to block my ears; but Lord Robert came around the table and took my hand. He stood close to me and when I looked up from my study of the floor I met his dark gaze. “Mistress Boy, I need you to go to the Lady Mary and write to me and tell me what she thinks, and where she goes, and who she meets.”

  I blinked. “Spy on her?”

  He hesitated. “Befriend her.”

  “Spy on her. Exactly,” his father said brusquely.

  “Will you do this for me?” Lord Robert asked. “It would be a very great service to me. It is the service I ask of your love.”

  “Will I be in danger?” I asked. In my head I could hear the knock of the Inquisition on the heavy wooden door and the trample of their feet over our threshold.

  “No,” he promised me. “I have guaranteed your safety while you are mine. You will be my fool, under my protection. No one can hurt you if you are a Dudley.”

  “What must I do?”

  “Watch the Lady Mary and report to me.”

  “You want me to write to you? Will I never see you?”

  He smiled. “You shall come to me when I send for you,” he said. “And if anything happens…”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “These are exciting times, Mistress Boy. Who knows what might happen? That’s why I need you to tell me what Lady Mary does. Will you do this for me? For love of me, Mistress Boy? To keep me safe?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  He put his hand into his jacket and brought out a letter. It was from my father to the duke, promising him the delivery of some manuscripts. “Here is a mystery for you,” Lord Robert said gently. “See the first twenty-six letters of the first sentence?”

  I scanned them. “Yes.”

  “They are to be your alphabet. When you write to me I want you to use these. Where it says ‘My Lord,’ that is your ABC. The M for ‘my’ is your A. The Y is your B. And so on, do you understand? When you have a letter which occurs twice you only use it once. You use the first set for your first letter to me and your second set for your second letter, and so on. I have a copy of the letter and when your message comes to me I can translate it.”

  He saw my eyes run down the page. There was only one thing I was looking for and it was how long this system would last. There were enough sentences to translate as many as a dozen letters; he was sending me away for weeks.

  “I have to write in code?” I asked nervously.

  His warm hand covered my cold fingers. “Only to prevent gossip,” he said reassuringly. “So that we can write privately to one another.”

  “How long do I have to stay away?” I whispered.

  “Oh, not for so very long.”

  “Will you reply to me?”

  He shook his head. “Only if I need to ask you something, and if I do, I will use this almanac also. My first letter will be the first twenty-six characters, my second the next set. Don’t keep my letters to you, burn them as soon as you have read them. And don’t make copies of yours to me.”

  I nodded.

  “If anyone finds this letter it is just something you brought from your father to me and forgot.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you promise to do this exactly as I ask?”

  “Yes,” I said miserably. “When do I have to go?”

  “Within three days,” the duke said from his place behind the table. “There’s a cart going to the Lady Mary with some goods for her. You can ride alongside that. You shall have one of my ponies, girl, and you can keep her at Lady Mary’s house for your return. And if something should happen that you think threatens me or Lord Robert, something very grave indeed, you can ride to warn us at once. Will you do that?”

  “Why, what should threaten you?” I asked the man who ruled England.

  “I shall be the one that wonders what might threaten me. You shall be the one to warn me if it does. You are to be Robert’s eyes and ears at the house of the Lady Mary. He tells me that he can trust you; make sure that he can.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said obediently.

  Lord Robert said that I might send for my father to say good-bye to him and he came downriver to Greenwich Palace in a fishing smack on the ebbing tide, with Daniel seated beside him.

  “You!” I said without any enthusiasm, when I saw him help my father from the bobbing boat.

  “Me,” he replied with the glimmer of a smile. “Constant, aren’t I?”

  I went to my father and felt his arms come around me. “Oh, Papa,” I whispered in Spanish. “I wish we had never come to England at all.”

  “Querida, has someone hurt you?”

  “I have to go to the Lady Mary and I am afraid of the journey, and afraid of living at her house, I am afraid of…” I broke off, tasting the many lies on my tongue and realizing that I would never be able to tell anyone the truth about myself ever again. “I am just being foolish, I suppose.”

  “Daughter, come home to me. I will ask Lord Robert to release you, we can close the shop, we can leave England. You are not trapped here…”

  “Lord Robert himself asked me to go,” I said simply. “And I already said I would.”

  His gentle hand caressed my cropped hair. “Querida, you are unhappy?”

  “I am not unhappy,” I said, finding a smile for him. “I am being foolish. For look, I am being sent to live with the heir to the throne, and Lord Robert himself has asked me to go.”

  He was only partly reassured. “I shall be here, and if you send for me I shall come to you. Or Daniel will come and fetch you away. Won’t you, Daniel?”

  I turned in my father’s arms to look at my betrothed. He was leaning against the wooden railing that ran around the jetty. He was waiting patiently, but he was pale and he was scowling with anxiety.

  “I would rather fetch you away now.”

  My father released me and I took a step toward Daniel. Behind him, bobbing at the jetty, their boat was waiting for them. I saw the swirl of water and saw the tide was ready to turn; we could go upstream almost at once. He had timed this moment very carefully.

  “I have agreed to go to serve Lady Mary,” I said quietly to him.

  “She is a Papist in a Protestant country,” he said. “You could not have chosen a place where your faith and practices will be more scrutinized. It is me who is named for Daniel, not you. Why should you go into the very den of lions? And what are you to do for Lady Mary?”

  He stepped closer to me so we could whisper.

  “I am to be her companion, be her fool.” I paused and decided to tell him the truth. “I am to spy for Lord Robert and his father.”

  His head was so close to mine that I could feel the warmth of his cheek against my forehead as he leaned closer to speak into my ear.

  “Spy on Lady Mary?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you have agreed?”

  I hesitated. “They know that Father and I are Jews,” I said.

  He was silent for a moment. I felt the solidity of his chest against my shoulder. His arm came around my waist to hold me closer to him and I felt the warmth of his grip. A rare sense of safety came over me as he held me,