The Queen’s Fool

‘Amen to that, Amen,’ Elizabeth whispered, and at the joyful sincerity in her voice I thought of how often I had stood in church or at Mass and whispered ‘Amen’, and that, however sweet the sound was, it could always mean nothing.

These were not easy days for the Lady Mary. She was preparing for her coronation but the Tower, where the Kings of England usually spent their coronation night, was filled with traitors who had armed against her only a few months before.

Her advisors, especially the Spanish ambassador, told her that she should execute at once everyone who had been involved in the rebellion. Left alive, they would only become a focus of discontent; dead they would be soon forgotten.

‘I will not have the blood of that foolish girl on my hands,’ the Lady Mary said.

Lady Jane had written to her cousin and confessed that she had been wrong to take the throne but that she had acted under duress.

‘I know Cousin Jane,’ the Lady Mary said quietly to Jane Dormer one evening, while the musicians plucked away at their strings and the court yawned and waited for their beds. ‘I have known her since she was a girl, I know her almost as well as I know Elizabeth. She is a most determined Protestant, and she has spent her life at her studies. She is more scholar than girl, awkward as a colt and rude as a Franciscan in her conviction. She and I cannot agree about matters of religion; but she has no worldly ambition at all. She would never have put herself before one of my father’s named heirs. She knew I was to be queen, she would never have denied me. The sin was done by the Duke of Northumberland and by Jane’s father between them.’

‘You can’t pardon everyone,’ Jane Dormer said bluntly. ‘And she was proclaimed queen and sat beneath the canopy of state. You can’t pretend it did not happen.’

Lady Mary nodded. ‘The duke had to die,’ she agreed. ‘But there it can end. I shall release Jane’s father, the Duke of Suffolk, and Jane and her husband Guilford can stay in the Tower until after my coronation.’

‘And Robert Dudley?’ I asked in as small a voice as I could make.

She looked around and saw me, seated on the steps before her throne, her greyhound beside me. ‘Oh are you there, little fool?’ she said gently. ‘Yes, your old master shall be tried for treason but held, not executed, until it is safe to release him. Does that content you?’

‘Whatever Your Grace wishes,’ I said obediently, but my heart leaped at the thought of his survival.

‘It won’t content those who want your safety,’ Jane Dormer pointed out bluntly. ‘How can you live in peace when those who would have destroyed you are still walking on this earth? How will you make them stop their plotting? D’you think they would have pardoned and released you if they had won?’

The Lady Mary smiled and put her hand over the hand of her best friend. ‘Jane, this throne was given to me by God. No-one thought that I would survive Kenninghall, no-one thought that I would ride out of Framlingham without a shot being fired. And yet I rode into London with the blessing of the people. God has sent me to be queen. I shall show His mercy whenever I can. Even to those who know it not.’

I sent a note to my father that I would come on Michaelmas Day, and I collected my wages and walked through the darkening streets to him. I strode out without fear in new good-fitting boots and with a little sword at my side. I wore the livery of a beloved queen, no-one would molest me, and if they did, thanks to Will Somers, I could defend myself.

The door of the bookshop was closed, candlelight showing through the shutters, the street secure and quiet. I tapped on the door and he opened it cautiously. It was Friday night and the Sabbath candle was hidden under a pitcher beneath the counter, burning its holy light into the darkness.

He was pale as I came into the room and I knew, with the quick understanding of a fellow refugee, that the knock on the door had startled him. Even when he was expecting me, even when there was no cause to fear, his heart missed a beat at the knock in the night. I knew this for him, because it was true for me.

‘Father, it is only me,’ I said gently and I knelt before him, and he blessed me and raised me up.

‘So, you are in service to the royal court again,’ he said, smiling. ‘How your fortunes do rise, my daughter.’

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