The Queen’s Fool

Every day she reviewed the troops and promised them her thanks and a more solid reward if they would stand by her, hold the line; and every afternoon she walked on the battlements, along the mighty curtain wall which ran around the impenetrable castle, and looked to the London road for the plume of dust which would tell her that the most powerful man in England was riding at the head of his army against her.

There were very many advisors to tell the Lady Mary that she could not win a pitched battle against the duke. I used to listen to their confident predictions and wonder if it would be safer for me to slip away now, before the encounter which must end in defeat. The duke had seen a dozen actions, he had fought and held power on the battlefield and in the council chamber. He forged an alliance with France and he could bring French troops against us if he did not defeat us at once, and then the lives of Englishmen would be taken by Frenchmen, the French would fight on English soil and it would all be her fault. The horror of the Wars of the Roses, with brother against brother, would be re-lived once more if Lady Mary would not see reason and surrender.

But then, in the middle of July, it all fell apart for the duke. His alliances, his treaties, could not hold against the sense that every Englishman had that Mary, Henry’s daughter, was the rightful queen. Northumberland was hated by many and it was clear that he would rule through Jane as he had ruled through Edward. The people of England, from lords to commoners, muttered and then declared against him.

The accord he had stitched together to darn Queen Jane into the fabric of England all unravelled. More and more men declared in public for Lady Mary, more and more men secretly slipped away from the duke’s cause. Lord Robert himself was defeated by an army of outraged citizens, who just sprang up from the ploughed furrows, swearing that they would protect the rightful queen. Lord Robert declared for the Lady Mary and deserted his father but, despite turning his coat, was captured at Bury by citizens who declared him a traitor. The duke himself, trapped at Cambridge, his army disappearing like mist in the morning, announced suddenly that he too was for Lady Mary and sent her a message explaining that he had only ever tried to do his best for the realm.

‘What does this mean?’ I asked her, seeing the letter shaking so violently in her hand that she could hardly read it.

‘It means I have won,’ she said simply. ‘Won by right, accepted right and not by battle. I am queen and the people’s choice. Despite the duke himself, the people have spoken and I am the queen they want.’

‘And what will happen to the duke?’ I asked, thinking of his son, Lord Robert, somewhere a prisoner.

‘He’s a traitor,’ she said, her eyes cold. ‘What do you think would have happened to me if I had lost?’

I said nothing. I waited for a moment, a heartbeat, a girl’s heartbeat. ‘And what will happen to Lord Robert?’ I asked, my voice very small.

Lady Mary turned. ‘He is a traitor and a traitor’s son. What do you think will happen to him?’

Lady Mary took her big horse and, riding side saddle, set off on the road to London, a thousand, two thousand men riding behind her, and their men, their tenants and retainers and followers coming on foot behind them. The Lady Mary was at the head of a mighty army with only her ladies and me, her fool, riding with her.

When I looked back I could see the dust from the horses’ hooves and the tramping feet drifting like a veil across the ripening fields. When we marched through villages, men came running out of their doors, their sickles or bill hooks in their hands, and fell in with the army and matched their step to the marching men’s. The women waved and cheered and some of them ran out with flowers for the Lady Mary or threw roses in the road before her horse. The Lady Mary, in her old red riding habit, with her head held high, rode her big horse like a knight going into battle, a queen going to claim her own. She rode like a princess out of a story book to whom everything, at last, is given. She had won the greatest victory of her life by sheer determination and courage and her reward was the adoration of the people that she would rule.

Everyone thought that her coming to the throne would be the return of the good years, rich harvests, warm weather, and an end to the constant epidemics of plague and sweat and colds. Everyone thought that she would restore the wealth of the church, the beauty of the shrines and the certainty of faith. Everyone remembered the sweetness and beauty of her mother who had been Queen of England for longer than she had been a princess of Spain, who had been the wife that the king had loved the longest and the best, and who had died with a blessing for him, even though he had deserted her. Everyone was glad to see her daughter riding to her mother’s throne with her golden cap on her head and her army of men behind her, their bright glad faces showing the world that they were proud to serve such a princess and to bring her to her capital city, which even now declared for her and was ringing the bells in every church tower to make her welcome.

On the road to London I wrote a note for Lord Robert, and translated it into his code. It read: ‘You will be tried for treason and executed. Please, my lord, escape. Please, my lord, escape.’ I put it into the fire in the hearth of an inn and watched it burn black, and then I took the poker and mashed it into black ash. There was no way that I could get the warning to him, and in truth, he would not need a warning.

He knew the risks he was running and he would have known them when he was defeated and gave himself up at Bury. He would know now, wherever he was, whether in the prison of some small town being taunted by men who would have kissed his shoe a month ago, or already in the Tower, that he was a dead man, a condemned man. He had committed treason against the rightful heir to the throne and the punishment for treason was death, hanging until he lost consciousness, coming back into awareness with the shock of the agony of the executioner slicing his stomach open and pulling his guts out of his slit belly before his face so that his last sight would be his own pulsing entrails, and then they would quarter him: first slashing his head from his body and then hacking his body into four pieces, setting his handsome head up on a stake as a warning to others, and sending his butchered corpse to the four corners of the city. It was as bad a death as anyone could face, almost as bad as being burned alive and I, of all people, knew how bad that was.

I did not cry for him, as we rode to London. I was a young girl but I had seen enough death and known enough fear to have learned not to cry for grief. But I found I could not sleep at night, not any night, for wondering where Lord Robert was, and whether I would ever see him again, and whether he would ever forgive me for riding into the capital of England, with crowds cheering and crying out blessings, at the side of the woman who had so roundly defeated him, and who would see him and all his family destroyed.

Lady Elizabeth, too sick to rise from her bed during the days of danger, managed to get to London before us. ‘That girl is first, everywhere she goes,’ Jane Dormer said sourly to me.

Lady Elizabeth came riding out from the city to greet us, at the head of a thousand men, all in the Tudor colours of green and white, riding in her pride as if she had never been sick with terror and hiding in her bed. She came out as if she were Lord Mayor of London, coming to give us the keys to the city, with the cheers of the Londoners ringing like a peal of bells all around her, crying ‘God bless!’ to the two princesses.

I reined in my horse and fell back a little so that I could see her. I had been longing to see her again ever since Lady Mary had spoken of her with such affection, ever since Will Somers had called her a goat: up one moment and down the next. I remembered the flash of a green skirt, the invitingly tilted red head against the dark bark of the tree, the girl in the garden that I had seen running from her stepfather, and making sure that he caught her. I was desperately curious to see how that girl had changed.

The girl on horseback was far beyond the child of shining innocence that Lady Mary had described, beyond the victim of circumstance that Will had imagined, and yet not the calculating siren that Jane Dormer hated. I saw instead a woman riding towards her destiny with absolute confidence. She was young, only nineteen years old, yet she was imposing. I saw at once that she had arranged this cavalcade – she knew the power of appearances and she had the skill to design them. The green of her livery had been chosen by her to suit the flaming brazen red of her hair which she wore loose beneath her green hood as if to flaunt her youth and maidenhood beside her older spinster sister. Green and white were the Tudor colours of her father, and no-one looking at her high brow and red hair could doubt this girl’s paternity. The men riding closest to her as her guards had been picked, without doubt, for their looks. There was not one man beside her who was not remarkably handsome. The dull-looking ones were all scattered, further back in her train. Her ladies were the reverse; there was not one who outshone her, a clever choice, but one which only a coquette would make. She rode a white gelding, a big animal, almost as grand as a man’s warhorse, and she sat on it as if she had been born to ride, as if she took joy in mastering the power of the beast. She gleamed with health and youth and vitality, she shone with the glamour of success. Against her radiance, the Lady Mary, drained by the strain of the last two months, faded into second place.

Lady Elizabeth’s entourage halted before us and Lady Mary started to dismount as Lady Elizabeth flung herself down from her horse as if she had been waiting all her life for this moment, as if she had never skulked in bed, biting her nails and wondering what would happen next. At the sight of her, the Lady Mary’s face lit up, as a mother will smile on seeing her child. Clearly, Elizabeth riding in her pride was a sight that gave her sister a pure unselfish joy. Lady Mary held out her arms, Elizabeth plunged into her embrace and Lady Mary kissed her warmly. They held each other for a moment, scrutinising each other’s faces and I knew, as Elizabeth’s bright gaze met Mary’s honest eyes, that my mistress would not have the skill to see through the fabled Tudor charm to the fabled Tudor duplicity which lay beneath.

Lady Mary turned to Elizabeth’s companions, gave them her hand and kissed each of them on the cheek to thank them for bearing Elizabeth company and giving us such a grand welcome into London. Lady Mary folded Elizabeth’s hand under her arm, and scanned her face again. She could not have doubted that Elizabeth was well, the girl was radiant with health and energy, but still I heard a few whispered confidences of Elizabeth’s faintness, and swelling of her belly, and headache, and the mysterious illness that had confined her to bed, unable to move, while the Lady Mary had stared down her own fear alone, and armed the country and prepared to fight for their father’s will.

Elizabeth welcomed her sister to the city and congratulated her on her great victory. ‘A victory of hearts,’ she said. ‘You are queen of the hearts of your people, the only way to rule this country.’

‘Our victory,’ Mary said generously at once. ‘Northumberland would have put us both to death, you as well as me. I have won the right for us both to take our inheritance. You will be an acknowledged princess again, my sister and my heir, and you will ride beside me when I enter London.’

‘Your Grace honours me too much,’ Elizabeth said sweetly.

‘She does indeed,’ Jane Dormer said in a hiss of a whisper to me. ‘Sly bastard.’

The Lady Mary gave the signal to mount and Elizabeth turned to her horse as her groom helped her into her saddle. She smiled around at us; saw me, riding astride in my pageboy livery, and her gaze went past me, utterly uninterested. She did not recognise me as the child who had seen her with Tom Seymour in the garden, so long ago.

But I was interested in her. From the first glimpse I had of her, up against a tree like a common whore, she had haunted my memory. There was something about her that absolutely fascinated me. The first sight I had of her was that of a foolish girl, a flirt, a disloyal daughter, but there was always more to her than that. She had survived the execution of her lover, she had avoided the danger of a dozen plots. She had controlled her desire, she had played the game of a courtier like an expert, not like a girl. She had become her brother’s favourite sister, the Protestant princess. She had stood outside the conspiracies of the court and yet known to a penny the price of every man. Her smile was utterly carefree, her laugh as light as birdsong; but her eyes were as sharp as a black-eyed cat that misses nothing.

I wanted to know every single thing about her, to discover everything she did, and said, and thought. I wanted to know if she hemmed her own linen, I wanted to know who starched her ruff. I wanted to know how often she washed her great mane of red hair. As soon as I saw her, in her green gown at the head of such a troop of men and women on that huge white horse, I saw a woman that I could one day wish to be. A woman who was proud of her beauty and beautiful in her pride; and I longed to grow into a woman like that. The Lady Elizabeth seemed to me to be something that Hannah the Fool might become. I had been an unhappy girl for so long, and then a boy for so long, and a fool for so long that I had no idea how to be a woman – the very idea baffled me. But when I saw the Lady Elizabeth, high on her horse, blazing with beauty and confidence, I thought that this was the sort of woman that I might be. I had never seen such a thing in my life before. This was a woman who gave no quarter to a disabling maidenly modesty, this was a woman who looked as if she could claim the ground she walked on.

But she was not bold in a brazen way, for all of her red hair, and her smiling face, and the energy of her every movement. She deployed all the modesty of a young woman, with a sideways sliding smile at the man who lifted her back into the saddle, and a flirtatious turn of the head as she gathered up the reins. She looked like someone who knew all the pleasures of being a young woman and was not prepared to take the pains. She looked like a young woman who knew her mind.

I looked from her to the Lady Mary, the mistress that I had come to love, and I thought that it would be better for her if she made plans to marry off Lady Elizabeth at once, and send her far away. No household could be at peace with this firebrand in its midst, and no kingdom could settle with such an heir burning so brightly beside an ageing queen.

Autumn 1553

As Lady Mary became established in her new life as the next Queen of England I realised that I must speak to her about my own future. September came and I was paid my wage from the queen’s household accounts, just as if I were a musician or a pageboy in very truth, or one of her other servants. Clearly, I had exchanged one master for another, the king to whom I had been begged as a fool was dead, the lord who had sworn me as his vassal was in the Tower, and the Lady Mary on whom I had been battened all this summer was now my mistress. In a move contrary to the spirit of the times – since everyone else in the country seemed to be coming to court with their palm outstretched to assure her that their village would never have declared for her had it not been for their own heroic isolated efforts – I thought that perhaps the moment had come for me to excuse myself from royal service and go back to my father.

I chose my time carefully, just after Mass when the Lady Mary walked back from her chapel at Richmond in a mood of quiet exaltation. The raising of the Host was not an empty piece of theatre to her, it was the presence of the risen God, you could see it in her eyes and in the serenity of her smile. She was uplifted by it in a way I had only ever seen before in those who held to a religious life for conviction. She was more abbess than queen when she walked back from Mass, and it was then that I fell into step beside her.

‘Your Grace?’

‘Yes, Hannah?’ she smiled at me. ‘Do you have any words of wisdom for me?’

‘I am a most irregular fool,’ I said. ‘I see that I pronounce very rarely.’

‘You told me I would be queen, and I held that to my heart in the days when I was afraid,’ she said. ‘I can wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit to move you.’

‘It was that I wanted to speak to you about,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I have just been paid by the keeper of your household …’

She waited. ‘Has he underpaid you?’ she asked politely.

‘No! Not at all! That is not what I meant!’ I exclaimed desperately. ‘No, Your Grace. This is the first time that you have paid me. I was paid by the king before. But I came into his service when I was begged as a fool to him by the Duke of Northumberland, who then sent me as a companion to you. I was merely going to say that you, er, you don’t have to have me.’

As I spoke, we turned into her private apartments and it was as well, for she gave a most unqueenly gurgle of laughter. ‘You are not, as it were, compulsory?’

I found I was smiling too. ‘Please, Your Grace. I was taken from my father on the whim of the duke and then begged as a fool to the king. Since then I have been in your household without you ever asking for my company. I just wanted to say that you can release me, I know you never asked for me.’

She sobered at once. ‘Do you want to go home, Hannah?’

‘Not especially, Your Grace,’ I said tentatively. ‘I love my father very well but at home I am his clerk and printer. It is more enjoyable and more interesting at court, of course.’ I did not add the proviso – if I can be safe here – but that question always dominated me.

‘You have a betrothed, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I said, disposing of him promptly. ‘But we are not to marry for years yet.’

She smiled at the childishness of my reply. ‘Hannah, would you like to stay with me?’ she asked sweetly.

I knelt at her feet, and spoke from my heart. ‘I would,’ I said. I trusted her, I thought I might be safe with her. ‘But I cannot promise to have the Sight.’

‘I know that,’ she said gently. ‘It is the gift of the Holy Spirit, which blows where it lists, I don’t expect you to be my astrologer. I want you to be my little maid, my little friend. Will you be that?’

‘Yes, Your Grace, I should like that,’ I said, and felt the touch of her hand on my head.

She was silent for a moment, her hand resting gently as I knelt before her. ‘It is very rare to find one that I can trust,’ she said quietly. ‘I know that you came into my household paid by my enemies; but I think your gift comes from God, and I believe that you came to me from God. And you love me now, don’t you, Hannah?’

‘Yes, Your Grace,’ I said simply. ‘I don’t think anyone could serve you and not come to love you.’

She smiled a little sadly. ‘Oh, it is possible,’ she said, and I knew she was thinking of the women who had been employed in the royal nursery and paid to love the Princess Elizabeth and to humiliate the older child. She took her hand from my head and I felt her step away, and I looked up to see her going towards the window to look out at the garden. ‘You can come with me now, and bear me company,’ she said quietly. ‘I have to talk with my sister.’

I followed her as she walked through her private rooms to the gallery which ran looking out over the river. The fields were all shaven bare and yellow. But it had not been a good harvest. It had rained at harvest time, and if they could not dry the wheat then the grains would rot and there would not be enough to last through the winter, and there would be hunger in the land. And after hunger came illness. To be a good queen in England under these wet skies you had to command the weather itself; and not even Lady Mary, on her knees to her God for hours every day, could manage that.

There was a rustle of a silk underskirt and I peeped around and saw the Lady Elizabeth had entered the gallery from the other end. The young woman took in my presence and she gave me her mischievous smile, as if we were somehow allies. I felt like one of a pair of schoolmates summoned before a severe teacher and I found that I was smiling back at her. Elizabeth could always do that; she could enlist your friendship with a turn of her head. Then she directed her attention to her sister.

‘Your Grace is well?’

Lady Mary nodded and then spoke coolly. ‘You asked to see me.’

At once the beautiful pale face became sober and grave. Lady Elizabeth dropped to her knees, her mane of copper hair tumbled around her shoulders as she dropped her head forward. ‘Sister, I am afraid you are displeased with me.’

The Lady Mary was silent for a moment. I saw her check a rapid movement forward to raise up her half-sister. Instead she kept her distance and the cool tone of her voice. ‘And so?’ she asked.

‘I can think of no means where I have displeased you, unless it is that you suspect my religion,’ Lady Elizabeth said, her head still penitently bowed.

‘You don’t come to Mass,’ the Lady Mary observed stiffly.

The copper head nodded. ‘I know. Is it that which offends you?’

‘Of course!’ Lady Mary replied. ‘How can I love you as my sister if you refuse the church?’

‘Oh!’ Elizabeth gave a little gasp. ‘I feared it was that. But sister, you don’t understand me. I want to come to Mass. But I have been afraid. I didn’t want to show my ignorance. It’s so foolish … but you see … I don’t know how to do it.’ Elizabeth raised a tearstained face to her sister. ‘Nobody ever taught me what I should do. I was not brought up in the way of the Faith as you were. No-one ever taught me. You remember, I was brought up at Hatfield and then I lived with Katherine Parr and she was a most determined Protestant. How could I ever be taught the things you learned at your mother’s knee? Please, sister, please don’t blame me for an ignorance which I could not help. When I was a little girl and we lived together, you did not teach me your faith then.’

‘I was forbidden to practise it myself!’ the Lady Mary exclaimed.

‘So you know what it was like for me,’ Elizabeth said persuasively. ‘Don’t blame me for the faults of my upbringing, sister.’

‘You can choose now,’ the Lady Mary said firmly. ‘You live in a free court now. You can choose.’

Elizabeth hesitated. ‘Can I have instruction?’ she asked. ‘Can you recommend things that I should read, perhaps I could talk with your confessor? I am conscious of so many things that I don’t understand. Your Grace will help me? Your Grace will guide me in the right ways?’

It was impossible not to believe her. The tears on her cheeks were real enough, the colour had flushed into her face. Gently Lady Mary went forward, gently she outstretched her hand and put it on Elizabeth’s bowed head. The young woman trembled under her touch. ‘Please don’t be angry with me, sister,’ I heard her breathe. ‘I am all alone in the world now; but for you.’

Mary put her hands on her sister’s shoulders and raised her up. Elizabeth was normally half a head higher than the Lady Mary but she drooped in her sadness so that she had to look up at her older sister.

‘Oh, Elizabeth,’ Mary whispered. ‘If you would confess your sins and turn to the true church I would be so very happy. All I want, all I have ever wanted, is to see this country in the true faith. And if I never marry, and if you come after me as another virgin queen, as another Catholic princess, what a kingdom we could build here together. I shall bring the country back to the true faith and you shall come after me and keep it under the rule of God.’