The Queen's Fool

by Philippa Gregory

  “And have you ever foretold the future and it came true?” he asked, suddenly serious.

  The question itself was dangerous in a country that was always alert for witchcraft. “I have no powers,” I said quickly.

  “But without exerting powers, can you see the future? It is given to some of us, as a holy gift, to know what might be. My friend here, Mr. Dee, believes that angels guide the course of mankind and may sometimes warn us against sin, just as the course of the stars can tell a man what his destiny might be.”

  I shook my head doltishly at this dangerous talk, determined not to respond to him.

  He looked thoughtful. “Can you dance or play an instrument? Learn a part in a masque and say your lines?”

  “Not very well,” I said unhelpfully.

  He laughed at my reluctance. “Well, we shall see, Mistress Boy. We shall see what you can do.”

  I gave my little boyish bow and took care to say nothing more.

  Next day, carrying a parcel of books and a carefully rolled scroll of manuscript, I walked across the town, past the Temple Bar and past the green fields of Covent Garden to Whitehall Palace. It was cold with a sleety rain which forced my head down and made me pull my cap low over my ears. The wind off the river was as icy as if it were coming straight from the Russias, it blew me up King’s Street to the very gates of Whitehall Palace.

  I had never been inside a royal palace before, and I had thought I would just give the books to the guards on the gate, but when I showed them the note that Lord Robert had scrawled, with the Dudley seal of the bear and staff at the bottom, they bowed me through as though I were a visiting prince, and ordered a man to guide me.

  Inside the gates, the palace was like a series of courtyards, each beautifully built, with a great garden in the middle set with apple trees and arbors and seats. The soldier from the gate led me across the first garden and gave me no time to stop and stare at the finely dressed lords and ladies who, wrapped in furs and velvets against the cold, were playing at bowls on the green. Inside the door, swung open by another pair of soldiers, there were more fine people in a great chamber, and behind that great room another, and then another. My guide led me through door after door until we came to a long gallery and Robert Dudley was at the far end of it, and I was so relieved to find him, the only man I knew in the whole palace, that I ran a few steps toward him and called out: “My lord!”

  The guard hesitated, as if he would block me from getting any closer, but Robert Dudley waved him aside. “Mistress Boy!” he exclaimed. He got to his feet and then I saw his companion. It was the young king, King Edward, fifteen years of age and beautifully dressed in plush blue velvet but with a face the color of skimmed milk and thinner than any lad I had ever seen before.

  I dropped to my knee, holding tight to my father’s books and trying to doff my cap at the same time, as Lord Robert remarked: “This is the girl-boy. Don’t you think she would be a wonderful player?”

  I did not look up but I heard the king’s voice, thinned with pain. “You take such fancies, Dudley. Why should she be a player?”

  “Her voice,” Dudley said. “Such a voice, very sweet, and that accent, part Spanish and part London, I could listen to her forever. And she holds herself like a princess in beggar’s clothes. Don’t you think she’s a delightful child?”

  I kept my head down so that he should not see my delighted beam. I hugged the words to my skinny chest: “a princess in beggar’s clothes,” “a sweet voice,” “delightful.”

  The young king returned me to the real world. “Why, what part should she play? A girl, playing a boy, playing a girl. Besides, it’s against Holy Writ for a girl to dress as a boy.” His voice tailed away into a cough which shook him like a bear might shake a dog.

  I looked up and saw Dudley make a little gesture toward the young man as if he would hold him. The king took his handkerchief from his mouth and I saw a glimpse of a dark stain, darker than blood. Quickly, he tucked it out of sight.

  “It’s no sin,” Dudley said soothingly. “She’s no sinner. The girl is a holy fool. She saw an angel walking in Fleet Street. Can you imagine it? I was there, she truly did.”

  The younger man turned to me at once, his face brightened with interest. “You can see angels?”

  I kept down on my knee and lowered my gaze. “My father says I am a fool,” I volunteered. “I am sorry, Your Grace.”

  “But did you see an angel in Fleet Street?”

  I nodded, my eyes downcast. I could not deny my gift. “Yes, sire. I am sorry. I was mistaken. I didn’t mean to give offense…”

  “What can you see for me?” he interrupted.

  I looked up. Anyone could have seen the shadow of death on his face, in his waxy skin, in his swollen eyes, in his bony thinness, even without the evidence of the stain on his handkerchief and the tremor of his lips. I tried to tell a lie but I could feel the words coming despite myself. “I see the gates of heaven opening.”

  Again, Robert Dudley made that little gesture, as if he would touch the boy, but his hand fell to his side.

  The young king was not angry. He smiled. “This child tells the truth when everyone else lies to me,” he said. “All the rest of you run around finding new ways to lie. But this little one…” He lost his breath and smiled at me.

  “Your Grace, the gates of heaven have been opened since your birth,” Dudley said soothingly. “As your mother ascended. The girl’s saying nothing more than that.” He shot me an angry look. “Aren’t you?”

  The young king gestured to me. “Stay at court. You shall be my fool.”

  “I have to go home to my father, Your Grace,” I said as quietly and as humbly as I could, ignoring Lord Robert’s glare. “I only came today to bring Lord Robert his books.”

  “You shall be my fool and wear my livery,” the young man ruled. “Robert, I am grateful to you for finding her for me. I shan’t forget it.”

  It was a dismissal. Robert Dudley bowed and snapped his fingers for me, turned on his heel and went from the room. I hesitated, wanting to refuse the king, but there was nothing to do but bow to him and run after Robert Dudley as he crossed the huge presence chamber, negligently brushing off the couple of men who tried to stop him and ask after the health of the king. “Not now,” he said.

  He went down a long gallery, toward double doors guarded by more soldiers with pikes, who flung them open as we approached. Dudley passed through to their salute and I went after him at a run, like some pet greyhound scampering at its master’s heels. Finally we came to a great pair of doors where the soldiers wore the Dudley livery and we went in.

  “Father,” Dudley said and dropped to one knee.

  There was a man at the fireplace of the great inner hall, looking down into the flames. He turned and made an unemotional blessing over his son’s head with two fingers. I dropped to my knee too, and stayed down even when I felt Robert Dudley rise up beside me.

  “How’s the king this morning?”

  “Worse,” Robert said flatly. “Cough bad, he brought up some black bile, breathless. Can’t last, Father.”

  “And this is the girl?”

  “This is the bookseller’s daughter, calls herself twelve, I’d guess older, dresses like a lad but certainly a girl. Has the Sight, according to John Dee. I took her into the king as you ordered, begged her for a fool. She told him that she saw the gates of heaven opened for him. He liked it. She is to be his fool.”

  “Good,” the duke said. “And have you told her of her duties?”

  “I brought her straight here.”

  “Stand, fool.”

  I rose to my feet and took my first look at Robert Dudley’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, the greatest man in the kingdom. I took him in: a long bony face like a horse, dark eyes, balding head half hidden by a rich velvet cap with a big silver brooch of his coat of arms: the bear and staff. A Spanish beard and moustache round a full mouth. I looked into his eyes and saw — nothing. This was a man
whose face could hide his thoughts, a man whose very thoughts could conspire to hide his thoughts.

  “So?” he asked of me. “What do you see with those big black eyes of yours, my girl-boy fool?”

  “Well, I don’t see any angels behind you,” I said abruptly and was rewarded by an amused smile from the duke and a crack of laughter from his son.

  “Excellent,” he said. “Well done.” He turned to me. “Listen, fool — what’s your name?”

  “Hannah Green, my lord.”

  “Listen, Hannah the Fool, you have been begged for a fool and the king has accepted you, according to our laws and customs. D’you know what that means?”

  I shook my head.

  “You become his, like one of his puppies, like one of his soldiers. Your job, like a puppy and not like a soldier, is to be yourself. Say the first thing that comes into your head, do whatever you wish. It will amuse him. It will amuse us, and it will set before us all the work of the Lord, which will please him. You will tell the truth in this court of liars, you will be our innocent in this wicked world. Understand?”

  “How am I to be?” I was absolutely confounded. “What d’you want of me?”

  “You are to be yourself. Speak as your gift commands you. Say whatever you wish. The king has no holy fool at present and he likes an innocent at court. He has commanded you. You are now a royal fool. One of the household. You will be paid to be his fool.”

  I waited.

  “Do you understand, fool?”

  “Yes. But I don’t accept.”

  “You can’t accept or not accept. You’ve been begged for a fool, you have no legal standing, you have no voice. Your father has handed you over to Lord Robert here, and he has given you to the king. You are now the king’s.”

  “If I refuse?” I could feel myself trembling.

  “You can’t refuse.”

  “If I run away?”

  “Punished according to the king’s wishes. Whipped like a puppy. You were your father’s property, now you are ours. And we have begged you for a fool to the king. He owns you. D’you understand?”

  “My father would not sell me,” I said stubbornly. “He would not let me go.”

  “He cannot stand against us,” Robert said quietly behind me. “And I promised him that you would be safer here than out on the street. I gave him my word and he accepted. The business was done while we ordered the books, Hannah. It is finished.”

  “Now,” continued the duke. “Not like a puppy, and not like a fool, you have another task to do.”

  I waited.

  “You are to be our vassal.”

  At the strange English word I glanced at Robert Dudley.

  “Servant to command, servant for life,” he explained.

  “Our vassal. Everything you hear, everything you see, you come and tell me. Anything the king prays for, anything that makes him weep, anything that makes him laugh, you come and tell me, or you tell Robert here. You are our eyes and our ears at his side. Understand?”

  “My lord, I have to go home to my father,” I said desperately. “I cannot be the king’s fool nor your vassal. I have work to do at the bookshop.”

  The duke raised one eyebrow at his son. Robert leaned toward me and spoke very quietly.

  “Mistress Boy, your own father cannot care for you. He said that in your hearing, d’you remember?”

  “Yes, but, my lord, he only meant that I am a trouble to him…”

  “Mistress Boy, I think your father is not a good Christian from a good Christian family at all, but a Jew. I think you came from Spain because you were expelled by the Spanish for the sin of Jewishness, and if your neighbors and the good citizens of London knew that you were Jews, you would not last for very long in your new little home.”

  “We are Marranos, our family converted years and years ago,” I whispered. “I have been baptized, I am betrothed to marry a young man of my father’s choosing, a Christian Englishman…”

  “I wouldn’t go in that direction,” Robert Dudley warned bluntly. “Lead us to that young man and I imagine you lead us to a family of Jews living in the heart of England itself, and from thence to — where did you say? Amsterdam? And then Paris?”

  I opened my mouth to deny it, but I could not speak for fear.

  “All forbidden Jews, all pretending to be Christians. All lighting a candle on Friday night, all avoiding pork, all living with the noose around their necks.”

  “Sir!”

  “They all helped and guided you here, didn’t they? All Jews, all practicing a forbidden religion in secret, all helping one another. A secret network, just as the most fearful of Christians claim.”

  “My lord!”

  “Do you really want to be the key that leads this most Christian king to seek you out? Don’t you know that the reformed church can light a pyre just as bright as the Papists? Do you want to pile your family on it? And all their friends? Have you ever smelled roasting human flesh?”

  I was shaking in terror, my throat so dry that I could say nothing. I just looked at him and I knew my eyes were black with fear and he would see the sheen of sweat on my forehead.

  “I know. You know. Your father knows he cannot keep you safe. But I can. Enough. I won’t say another word.”

  He paused. I tried to speak but all I could manage was a little croak of terror. Robert Dudley nodded at the craven depth of my fear. “Now, luckily for you, your Sight has won you the safest and highest place that you might dream of. Serve the king well, serve our family well and your father is safe. Fail us in any one thing and he is tossed in a blanket till his eyes fall backward in his head, and you are married to a red-faced chapel-going Luther-reading pig herder. You can choose.”

  There was the briefest of moments. Then the Duke of Northumberland waved me away. He did not even wait for me to make my choice. He did not need the Sight to know what my choice would have to be.

  “And you are to live at court?” my father confirmed.

  We were eating our dinner, a small pie brought in from the bakehouse at the end of the street. The unfamiliar taste of English pastry stuck at the back of my throat, my father forced down gravy that was flavored with bacon rinds.

  “I am to sleep with the maidservants,” I said glumly. “And wear the livery of the king’s pages. I am to be his companion.”

  “It’s better than I could have provided for you,” my father said, trying to be cheerful. “We won’t make enough money to pay the rent on this house next quarter, unless Lord Robert orders some more books.”

  “I can send you my wages,” I offered. “I am to be paid.”

  He patted my hand. “You’re a good girl,” he said. “Never forget that. Never forget your mother, never forget that you are one of the children of Israel.”

  I nodded, saying nothing. I saw him spoon a little of the contaminated gravy and swallow it down.

  “I am to go to the palace tomorrow,” I whispered. “I am to start at once. Father…”

  “I will come to the gate and see you every evening,” he promised. “And if you are unhappy or they treat you badly we will run away. We can go back to Amsterdam, we can go to Turkey. We will find somewhere, querida. Have courage, daughter. You are one of the Chosen.”

  “How will I keep the fast days?” I demanded in sudden grief. “They will make me work on the Sabbath. How will I say the prayers? They will make me eat pork!”

  He met my gaze and then he bowed his head. “I shall keep the law for you here,” he said. “God is good. He understands. You remember what that German scholar said? That God allows us to break the laws rather than lose our lives. I will pray for you, Hannah. And even if you are praying on your knees in the Christian chapel God still sees you and hears your prayer.”

  “Father, Lord Robert knows who we are. He knows why we left Spain. He knows who we are.”

  “He said nothing directly to me.”

  “He threatened me. He knows we are Jews and he said that he would keep our sec
ret as long as I obey him. He threatened me.”

  “Daughter, we are safe nowhere. And you at least are under his patronage. He swore to me that you would be safe in his household. Nobody would question one of his servants. Nobody would question the king’s own fool.”

  “Father, how could you let me go? Why did you agree that they could take me away from you?”

  “Hannah, how could I stop them?”

  In the lime-washed room under the eaves of the palace roof I turned over the pile of my new clothes and read the inventory from the office of the Master of the Household:

  Item: one pageboy livery in yellow.

  Item: one pair of hose, dark red.

  Item: one pair of hose, dark green.

  Item: one surcoat, long.

  Item: two linen shirts for wearing underneath.

  Item: two pairs of sleeves, one pair red, one pair green.

  Item: one black hat.

  Item: one black cloak for riding.

  Item: pair of slippers fit for dancing.

  Item: pair of boots fit for riding.

  Item: pair of boots fit for walking.

  Everything used but clean and darned and delivered to the king’s fool, Hannah Green.

  “I shall look a fool indeed.”

  That night I whispered an account of my day to my father as he stood at the postern gate and I leaned against the doorway, half in, half out. “There are two fools at court already, a dwarf called Thomasina, and a man called Will Somers. He was kind to me, and showed me where I should sit, beside him. He is a witty man, he made everyone laugh.”

  “And what do you do?”

  “Nothing as yet. I have thought of nothing to say.”

  My father glanced around. In the darkness of the garden an owl hooted, almost like a signal.

  “Can you think of something? Won’t they want you to think of something?”

  “Father, I cannot make myself see things, I cannot command the Sight. It just comes or it does not.”

  “Did you see Lord Robert?”