The Queen’s Fool

The chief bride was as white as the pearls embroidered on her gold gown. Her bridegroom sat closer to his mother than to his new bride and neither bride nor groom spoke so much as one word to each other. Jane’s sister had been married to her betrothed in the same ceremony and she and he toasted each other and drank amorously from the same loving cup. But when the shout went up for a toast for Jane and Guilford, I could see that it cost Lady Jane an effort to raise her golden goblet to her new husband. Her eyes were red and raw, and the shadows under her eyes were dark with fatigue; there were marks on either side of her neck that looked like thumbprints. It looked very much as if someone had shaken the bride by the neck till she agreed to take her vows. She barely touched the bridal ale with her lips, I did not see her swallow.

‘What d’you think, Hannah the Fool?’ the Duke of Northumberland shouted down the hall to me. ‘Shall she be a lucky bride?’

My neighbours turned to me, and I felt the old swimming sensation that was a sign of the Sight coming. I tried to fight it off, this court would be the worst place in the world to tell the truth. I could not stop the words coming. ‘Never more lucky than today,’ I said.

Lord Robert flashed a cautionary look at me but I could not take back the words. I had spoken as I felt, not with the skill of a courtier. My sense was that Jane’s luck, at a low ebb when she married with a bruise on her throat, would now run ever more swiftly downhill. But the duke took it as a compliment to his son and laughed at me, and raised his goblet. Guilford, little more than a dolt, beamed at his mother, while Lord Robert shook his head, and half-closed his eyes, as if he wished he was elsewhere.

There was dancing, and a bride had to dance at her own wedding, though Lady Jane sat in her chair, as stubborn as a white mule. Lord Robert led her gently to the dance floor. I saw him whisper to her and she found a wan little smile and put her hand in his. I wondered what he was saying to cheer her. In the moments when the dancers paused and awaited their turn in the circle his mouth was so close to her ear that I thought she must feel the warmth of his breath on her bare neck. I watched without envy. I did not long to be her, with his long fingers holding my hand, or his dark eyes on my face. I gazed on them as I might look on a pair of beautiful portraits, his face turned to her as sharp as a hawk’s beak in profile, her pallor warming under his kindness.

The court danced until late, as if there were great joy from such weddings, and then the three couples were taken to their bedrooms and put to bed with much throwing of rose petals and sprinkling of rose water. But it was all show, no more real than Will and I fighting with wooden swords. None of the marriages was to be consummated yet, and the next day Lady Jane went home with her parents to Suffolk Place, Guilford Dudley went home with his mother, complaining of stomach ache and bloating, and Lord Robert and the duke were up early to return to the king at Greenwich.

‘Why does your brother not make a house with his wife?’ I asked Lord Robert. I met him at the gateway of the stable-yard, and he waited beside me while they brought out his great horse.

‘Well, it is not unusual. I do not live with mine,’ he remarked.

I saw the roofs of Durham House tilt against the sky, as I staggered back and held on to the wall till the world steadied again. ‘You have a wife?’

‘Oho, did you not know that, my little seer? I thought you knew everything?’

‘I did not know …’ I began.

‘Oh yes, I have been married since I was a lad. And I thank God for it.’

‘Because you like her so much?’ I stammered, feeling an odd pain like sickness under my ribs.

‘Because if I had not been married already, it would have been me married to Jane Grey and dancing to my father’s bidding.’

‘Does your wife never come to court?’

‘Almost never. She will only live in the country, she has no liking for London, we cannot agree … and it is easier for me …’ He broke off and glanced towards his father, who was mounting a big black hunter and giving his grooms orders about the rest of the horses. I knew at once that it was easier for Lord Robert to move this way and that, his father’s spy, his father’s agent, if he was not accompanied by a wife whose face might betray them.

‘What’s her name?’

‘Amy,’ he said casually. ‘Why?’

I had no answer. Numbly, I shook my head. I could feel an intense discomfort in my belly. For a moment I thought I had taken Guilford Dudley’s bloat. It burned me like bile. ‘Do you have children?’

If he had said that he had children, if he had said that he had a girl, a beloved daughter, I think I would have doubled up and vomited on the cobbles at his feet.

But he shook his head. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘You must tell me one day when I shall get a son and an heir. Can you do that?’

I looked up and tried to smile despite the burning in my throat. ‘I don’t think I can.’

‘Are you afraid of the mirror?’

I shook my head. ‘I’m not afraid, if you are there.’

He smiled at that. ‘You have all the cunning of a woman, never mind the skills of a holy fool. You seek me out, don’t you, Mistress Boy?’

I shook my head. ‘No, sir.’

‘You didn’t like the thought of me married.’

‘I was surprised, only.’

Lord Robert put his gloved hand under my chin and turned my face up to him so that I was forced to meet his dark eyes. ‘Don’t be a woman, a lying woman. Tell me the truth. Are you troubled with the desires of a maid, my little Mistress Boy?’

I was too young to hide it. I felt the tears come into my eyes and I stayed still, letting him hold me.

He saw the tears and knew what they meant. ‘Desire? And for me?’

Still I said nothing, looking at him dumbly through my blurred vision.

‘I promised your father that I would not let any harm come to you,’ he said gently.

‘It has come already,’ I said, speaking the inescapable truth.

He shook his head, his dark eyes warm. ‘Oh, this is nothing. This is young love, green-sickness. The mistake I made in my youth was to marry for such a slim cause. But you, you will survive this and go on to marry your betrothed and have a houseful of black-eyed children.’

I shook my head but my throat was too tight to speak.

‘It is not love that matters, Mistress Boy, it is what you choose to do with it. What d’you choose to do with yours?’

‘I could serve you.’

He took one of my cold hands and took it up to his lips. Entranced, I felt his mouth touch the tips of my fingers, a touch as intimate as any kiss on the lips. My own mouth softened, in a little pursed shape of longing, as if I would have him kiss me, there, in the courtyard before them all.

‘Yes,’ he said gently, not raising his head but whispering against my fingers. ‘You could serve me. A loving servant is a great gift for any man. Will you be mine, Mistress Boy? Heart and soul? And do whatever I ask of you?’

His moustache brushed against my hand, as soft as the breast feathers of his hawk.

‘Yes,’ I said, hardly grasping the enormity of my promise.

‘Whatever I ask of you?’

‘Yes.’

At once he straightened up, suddenly decisive. ‘Good. Then I have a new post for you, new work.’

‘Not at court?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘You begged me to the king,’ I reminded him. ‘I am his fool.’

His mouth twisted in a moment’s pity. ‘The poor lad won’t miss you,’ he said. ‘I shall tell you all of it. Come to Greenwich tomorrow, with the rest of them, and I’ll tell you then.’

He laughed at himself as if the future was an adventure that he wanted to start at once. ‘Come to Greenwich tomorrow,’ he threw over his shoulder as he strode towards his horse. His groom cupped his hands for his master’s boot and Lord Robert vaulted up into the high saddle of his hunter. I watched him turn his horse and clatter out of the stable-yard, into the Strand and then towards the cold English morning sun. His father followed behind at a more sober pace, and I saw that as they passed, although all the men pulled off their hats and bent their heads to show the respect that the duke commanded, their faces were sour.

I clattered into the courtyard of the palace at Greenwich riding astride one of the carthorses pulling the wagon with supplies. It was a beautiful spring day, the fields running down to the river were a sea of gold and silver daffodils, and they reminded me of Mr Dee’s desire to turn base metal to gold. As I paused, feeling the warmer breeze against my face, one of the Dudley servants shouted towards me: ‘Hannah the Fool?’

‘Yes?’

‘To go to Lord Robert and his father in their privy rooms at once. At once, lad!’

I nodded and went into the palace at a run, past the royal chambers to the ones that were no less grand, guarded by soldiers in the Dudley livery. They swung open the double doors for me and I was in the presence room where the duke would hear the petitions of common people. I went through another set of doors, and another, the rooms getting smaller and more intimate, until the last double doors opened, and there was Lord Robert leaning over a desk with a manuscript scroll spread out before him, his father looking over his shoulder. I recognised at once that it was Mr Dee’s writing, and that it was a map that he had made partly from ancient maps of Britain borrowed from my father, and partly from calculations of his own based on the sailors’ charts of the coastline. Mr Dee had prepared the map because he believed that England’s greatest fortune were the seas around the coast; but the duke was using it for a different purpose.

He had placed little counters in a crowd at London, and more in the painted blue sea. A set of counters of a different colour was in the north of the country, Scots, I thought, and another little group like Lord Robert’s chess pawns in the east of the country. I made a deep bow to Lord Robert and to his father.

‘It has to be done at speed,’ the duke remarked, scowling. ‘If it is done at once, before anyone has a chance to protest, then we can deal with the north, with the Spanish, and with those of her tenants who stay loyal, in our own time.’

‘And she?’ Lord Robert asked quietly.

‘She can do nothing,’ the duke said. ‘And if she tries to run, your little spy will warn us.’ He looked up at me on those words. ‘Hannah Green, I am sending you to wait upon the Lady Mary. You are to be her fool until I summon you back to court. My son assures me that you can keep your counsel. Is he right?’

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 goodbye 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 realising 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 towards 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 scrutinised. 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, and for a moment I stood still.

‘They are going to act against us?’

‘No.’

‘But you are a hostage.’

‘In a way. It feels more as if Lord Robert knows my secret and trusts me with his. I feel bound to him.’

He nodded for a moment, I craned my neck to look up into his scowling face. For a moment I thought he was angry then I realised that he was thinking hard. ‘Does he know my name?’ he demanded. ‘Of my mother, of my sisters? Are we all at risk?’

‘He knows I am betrothed, but not of you by name. And he knows nothing of your family,’ I said, with quick pride. ‘I have not brought danger to your door.’

‘No, you keep it all to yourself,’ he said with a brief unhappy smile. ‘And if you were questioned you could not keep it secret for long.’

‘I would not betray you,’ I said quickly.

His face was troubled. ‘No-one can remain silent on the rack, Hannah. A pile of stones will crush the truth out of most people.’ He looked down the river over my head. ‘Hannah, I should forbid you to go.’

He felt my instantaneous move of disagreement. ‘Don’t quarrel with me for nothing, for clumsy words,’ he said quickly. ‘I did not mean forbid like a master. I meant I should beg you not to go – is that better? This road leads straight into danger.’

‘I am in danger whatever I do,’ I said. ‘And this way, Lord Robert will protect me.’

‘But only while you do his bidding.’

I nodded. I could not tell him that I had volunteered to walk into this danger, and I would have risked worse for love of Lord Robert.

Gently he released me. ‘I am sorry you are here, and unprotected,’ he said. ‘If you had sent for me I would have come sooner. This is a burden that you shouldn’t have to bear alone.’

I thought of the terror of my childhood, of my wild apprenticeship in fear on our flight through Europe. ‘It is my burden.’

‘But you have kin now, you have me,’ he said with the pride of a young man made head of his family too young. ‘I shall bear your burdens for you.’

‘I bear my own,’ I said stubbornly.

‘Oh yes, you are your own woman. But if you would condescend to send for me if you are in danger, I would come and perhaps be allowed to help you escape.’

I giggled at that. ‘I promise that I will.’ I held out my hand to him in a gesture which suited my boy’s clothing. But he took my hand and drew me close to him again and bent his head. Very gently he kissed me, full on the lips, and I felt the warmth of his mouth on mine.

He released me and stepped back to the boat. I found I was slightly dizzy, as if I had gulped down strong wine. ‘Oh, Daniel!’ I breathed, but he was climbing into the boat and did not hear me. I turned to my father and caught him hiding his smile.

‘God bless you, daughter, and bring you home safe to us,’ he said quietly. I knelt on the wooden pier for my father’s blessing and felt his hand come down on my head in the familiar, beloved caress. He took my hands and raised me up. ‘He is an attractive young man, isn’t he?’ he demanded, a chuckle behind his voice. Then he wrapped his cape around himself and went down the steps to the fishing smack.

They cast off and the little boat travelled swiftly across the darkening water, leaving me alone on the wooden pier. The mist hanging on the river and the gathering dark hid their silhouette, and all I could hear was the splash of the oars and the creak of the rowlocks. Then that sound was gone too and all that was left was the smack and suck of the rising tide and the quiet whistle of the wind.

Summer 1553

Lady Mary was at her house at Hunsdon, in the county of Hertfordshire. It took us three days to get to her, riding northward out of London, on a winding road through muddy valleys and then climbing arduously through hills called the North Weald, journeying some of the way with another band of travellers, and staying overnight on the road, once at an inn, once at a grand house that had been a monastery and was now in the hands of the man who had cleansed it of heresy at some profit to himself. These days they could offer us no rooms better than a hay loft over the stable, and the carter complained that in the old days this had been a generous house of good monks where any traveller might be sure of a good dinner and a comfortable bed, and a prayer to help him on his way. He had stayed here once when his son had been sick nearly to death and the monks had taken him into their care and nursed him back to health with their own herbs and skills. They had charged him not a penny, but said that they were doing the work of God by serving poor men. The same story could have been told up and down the country at every great monastery or abbey on the roads. But now all the religious houses were in the possession of the great lords, the men of court who had made their fortunes by advising that the world would be a better place if wealth was stripped from the English church and poured into their own pockets. Now the feeding of the poor at the monastery gates, the making of free medicines in the nunnery hospitals, the teaching of the children and the care of the old people of the village had gone the way of the beautiful statues, the illuminated manuscripts, and the great libraries.

The carter muttered to me that this was the case all around the country. The great religious houses, which had been the very backbone of England, had been emptied of the men and women who had been called by God to serve in them. The public good had been turned to private profit and there would never be public good again.