The Queen's Fool

by Philippa Gregory

  I had not expected his wife Amy at the quayside, but she was there, hand over her eyes, scanning the deck for him. I saw her before she saw him and said, “Your wife,” in his ear.

  He went quickly down the gangplank to her, he did not take her in his arms nor greet her with any sign of affection, but he listened intently to her and then he turned to me.

  “I have to go to court, I have to explain to the queen what has happened at Calais,” he said briefly. “Heads will have to roll for this, perhaps mine.”

  “My lord,” I breathed.

  “Yes,” he said savagely. “I don’t seem to have done much to advance my family. Hannah, you go with Amy, she is staying with friends in Sussex. I shall send for you there.”

  “My lord.” I went a little closer. “I don’t want to live in the country,” was all I could say.

  Robert Dudley grinned at me. “I am sure, sweetheart. I cannot stand it myself. But you must endure it for a month or two. If the queen beheads me for incompetence, then you can make your own way where you please. All right? But if I survive this, I will open my London house and you shall come back to my service. Whatever you wish. How old is the child?”

  I hesitated, realizing I did not know. “He’s nearly two,” I said.

  “You married his father?” he asked.

  I looked him in the face. “Yes.”

  “And named him?”

  “Daniel, for his father.”

  He nodded. “Amy will take care of you,” he said. “She likes children.” A snap of his fingers summoned his wife to his side. I saw her shake her head in disagreement, and then lower her eyes when she was overruled. When she shot me a look of pure hatred I guessed that he had ordered her to care for me and my son, when she would rather have gone with him to the queen’s court.

  She had brought his horse. I watched him swing up into his saddle, his men mount up around him. “London,” he said succinctly and rode his horse north toward whatever fate had for him.

  I could not get the measure of Amy Dudley as we rode through the icy countryside of England in those cold days of January 1558. She was a good rider but she seemed to take little pleasure in it, not even on the days when the sun rose like a red disk on the horizon and when a few robins hopped and hid in the leafless hedgerows, and the frost in the morning made the blood sing. I thought it was the absence of her husband that made her so sulky; but her companion, Mrs. Oddingsell, did not try to cheer her, they did not even speak of him. They rode in silence, as women accustomed to it.

  I had to ride behind them, all the way from Gravesend to Chichester, with the baby strapped on my back and every evening I was aching from my buttocks to my neck with the strain. The extraordinary child had barely made a noise from the moment that his mother had half flung him at me as the French cavalry rode her down. I had changed his clout with some linen lent to me on board ship, and wrapped him in a sailor’s woolen knitted vest and generally lugged him around as if he were a box that someone had insisted I carry against my will. He had not uttered one word of inquiry or protest. Sleeping, he had rested against me, nestled in as if he were my own; awake, he sat on my lap or on the floor at my feet, or stood, one hand holding firmly on to my breeches. He said not one word, not in French, the language of his mother, nor in English. He regarded me with solemn dark eyes and said nothing.

  He seemed to have a certainty that he should be with me. He would not fall asleep unless I was watching him, and if I tried to put him down and move away from him he would raise himself up and toddle after me, still silent, still uncomplaining, but with a little face which became more and more crumpled with distress as he got left behind.

  I was not a naturally maternal woman, I had not been a girl for dolls, and of course there had been no baby brother or sister for me to nurse. Yet I could not help but admire this small person’s tenacity. I had suddenly come into his life as his protector, and he would ensure that he stayed by my side. I started to like the feeling of his fat little hand stretching trustfully up for mine, I started to sleep well with him nestled against my side.

  Lady Amy Dudley did nothing to help me with him in the long cold ride. There was no reason that she should, she did not want me nor him. But it would have been kind of her to order one of the men to take me on a pillion saddle behind him, so that I might have held the child in my arms and eased my aching back. She must have seen that at the end of a long day in the saddle I was so exhausted that I could barely stand. It would have been kind of her to see me housed quickly, to have made sure that there was gruel for the baby. But she did nothing for me, nothing for him. She eyed us both with a glaring suspicion and said not one word to me, other than an order to be ready to leave at the appointed time.

  I felt the universal smugness of women with children and reminded myself that she was barren. I thought too that she suspected her husband of being the father of my child, and that she was punishing the two of us for her jealousy. I decided that I must make clear to her soon that I had not seen his lordship for years, and that I was now a married woman. But Amy Dudley gave me no chance to speak with her, she treated me as she treated the men who rode with her, as part of the cold landscape, as one of the ice-trimmed trees. She paid no attention to me at all.

  I had plenty of time to think as we went slowly south and west on the frozen roads, winding through villages and past fields where it was clear that hunger had hold of the land. The great barn doors stood open, there was neither hay nor straw to keep. The villages were often in darkness, the cottages empty. Some small hamlets were utterly deserted, the people despairing of making a living on the poor land in the continuously bad weather.

  I went down the empty roads with my eyes on the country which was bleak and so cursed; but my mind was on my husband and the town I had left. Now that our flight was over and we had arrived in a comparative safe haven, I was sick with fear for Daniel. Now I had time to realize that Daniel and I had lost each other again, and we had lost each other so finally that we might never meet. I did not even know if he was alive. We were trapped in countries at war with each other, and we had parted during the most bitter fighting that Christendom had ever seen. It would be impossible for me to return to him at Calais and for all I knew he could have been killed in that first vicious charge into the city, or he could be ill with the many contagious diseases that a wounded army would bring. I knew that he would think it his duty to go out to help the injured and the sick, and I could only pray for the unlikely hope that the French would show mercy to an enemy doctor in the town which had been a thorn in their side for two centuries.

  The arrival of the army would be followed by the French Catholic church, alert for heresy in a town which had once been proudly Protestant. If Daniel had escaped death during the fighting, if he had escaped disease from the soldiers, he might still be taken as a heretic if someone accused him of being a Jew.

  I knew that worrying about him helped neither of us, at all; but it was impossible to stop myself, as I rode along the cold hard roads. I could not get a letter into Calais until some sort of peace was declared and that would not be for months. Worse, I could not expect to hear from him, he would have no idea where I had gone or even if I were alive. When he went to my shop in the city wall to look for me, as he surely would do, he would find the place sacked or burned out, and not even Marie, supposing she had survived, would be able to tell him where I was. And then he would find that little Daniel’s mother was dead and that the boy was missing too. He would have no reason to guess that I and his son were together in safety in England. He would think that he had lost his wife and his child in one dreadful battle.

  I could not enjoy my safety when I knew that he might still be in danger, there could be no happiness for me until I knew that he was alive. I could not settle in England, I did not think I could settle anywhere until I knew that Daniel was safe. I rode along the cold roads, the weight of his son strapped awkwardly on my back, and I started to wonder at my own discomfort. S
omewhere on the road — in Kent, I think — it came to me with the simple brightness of the wintry sun lying on the horizon and shining blindingly into my eyes. I could not settle without Daniel, because I loved him. I had loved him perhaps from the moment I had seen him at the gates of Whitehall Palace where we had quarreled at our meeting, and I had loved his steadiness and his fidelity and his patience with me ever since. I felt as if I had grown up with him. He had seen me begged as a fool to the king, devoted to the queen and entranced by the Princess Elizabeth. He had seen my schoolchild adoration of my master, and he had seen me struggle with myself to become the woman I now was. The only thing he had not seen, the only thing I had never let him guess, was the resolution of this inner battle: the moment when I could say, “Yes, I am a woman, and I love this man.”

  Everything that had happened in Calais melted away before this one fact. The intrusion of his mother, the malice of his sisters, his own innocent stupidity in thinking that we could all live happily under one small roof. Nothing seemed to matter but that I knew now that I loved him, and that I had to acknowledge that it might be too late for me ever to tell him. He could be dead.

  If he were dead then it did not seem to matter very much that he had laid with another girl; the greater loss quite concealed the smaller betrayal. As I mounted my horse in the morning and dismounted wearily at night I realized that I was indeed the widow I announced myself to be. I had lost Daniel, and only now did I have the sense to find that I had loved him all along.

  We were to stay in a great house, north of Chichester, and I was glad to clatter into the stable yard at midday and hand over my tired horse to one of the grooms. I was weary as I followed Lady Dudley up the steps to the great hall, and apprehensive — I did not know these people, and being on my lady’s charity was not a position any woman would freely choose. I was too independent in my own mind, and she was too distant and cold to make anyone feel welcome.

  Lady Dudley led the way into the great hall, I followed Mrs. Oddingsell with Danny on my hip, and there was our hostess, Lady Philips, with a hand held out for Lady Dudley, and a deep curtsey. “You shall have your usual room overlooking the park,” she said, and then she turned to Mrs. Oddingsell and me with a smile.

  “This is Mrs. Carpenter. She can share with your housekeeper,” Lady Dudley said abruptly. “She is a woman known to my lord, that he rescued from Calais. I daresay he will let me know what she is to do, shortly.”

  Lady Philips raised an eyebrow at Amy’s abrupt tone, which all but named me as Robert Dudley’s whore. Mrs. Oddingsell curtseyed and went to the stairs but I did not immediately follow her. “I need some things for the child,” I said uncomfortably.

  “Mrs. Oddingsell will help you,” Robert Dudley’s wife said icily.

  “There are some baby clothes in the paupers’ cupboard,” Lady Philips said.

  I curtseyed. “It was very kind of his lordship to give me a place on his ship from Calais,” I said clearly. “The more so since he had not seen me for so long, since I had been in royal service to the queen. But I am a married woman now, my husband a doctor in Calais, and this is my husband’s son.”

  I saw that they both understood me and had heard the reference to royal service.

  “My lord is always good to his servants, however lowly,” Amy Dudley said unpleasantly, and waved me away.

  “And I need proper clothes for my son,” I said, standing my ground. “Not from the paupers’ cupboard.”

  Both women looked at me with renewed attention. “I need clothes for a gentleman’s son,” I said simply. “I will sew him his linen as soon as I can.”

  Lady Philips, not at all sure now what cuckoo she had welcomed into her house, gave me a cautious smile. “I have some things put by,” she said carefully. “My sister’s boy wore them.”

  “I am sure they will suit the purpose excellently,” I said with a pleasant smile. “And I thank you, your ladyship.”

  Within a week I was desperate to leave, the bleak countryside of Sussex in winter seemed to press on my face like a pane of cold glass. The Downs leaned over the little castle as if they would crush us into the unresponsive chalky earth. The sky above the hills was iron gray, filled with snow. Within two weeks I had developed a headache which plagued me all the hours of daylight and would only leave me at night when I would fall into a sleep so deep that it could have been death.

  Amy Dudley was a welcome and regular guest here. There was some debt between Sir John Philips and my lord which was repaid by his hospitality to Lady Dudley. Her stay was indefinite, no one remarked when she might leave, or where she might go next.

  “Does she not have a house of her own?” I demanded of Mrs. Oddingsell in frustration.

  “Not one that she chooses to use,” she said shortly and closed her lips tight on gossip.

  I could not understand it. My lord had lost most of his great lands and fortune on his arrest for treason, but surely his wife must have had family and friends who would have kept at least a small estate for him?

  “Where did she live when he was in the Tower?” I demanded.

  “With her father,” Mrs. Oddingsell replied.

  “Where is he now?”

  “Dead, God rest his soul.”

  Without a house to command or lands to farm, Lady Dudley was a woman of complete idleness. I never saw her with a book in her hand, I never saw her even write a letter. She rode out in the morning with only a groom for company on a long ride which lasted until dinner. At dinner she ate little and with no appetite. In the afternoon she would sit with Lady Philips and the two of them would gossip and sew. No detail of the Philips household, neighbors and friends was too small for their comment. When Mrs. Oddingsell and I sat with them I nearly fainted from sheer boredom as Lady Philips retold the story of Sophie’s disgrace, and Amelia’s remark, and what Peter had said about it all for the third time in three days.

  Mrs. Oddingsell caught me yawning. “What ails you?” she demanded without sympathy.

  “I am so bored,” I said frankly. “She gossips like a farmer’s wife. Why would she be interested in the lives of dairymaids?”

  Mrs. Oddingsell gave me a quizzical look but said nothing.

  “Does she have no friends at court, does she have no news from my lord, if she must tittle-tattle all afternoon?”

  The woman shook her head.

  We went to bed early, which was just as well for me, and Amy Dudley rose early in the morning. Ordinary days, ordinary to the point of boredom, but she went through them with an air of cold detachment, as if it were not her own precious life utterly wasted in nothings. She lived her life like a woman performing in a long pointless tableau. She went through her days like an automaton — like those I had seen in the treasure cases at Greenwich. A little golden toy soldier which could beat a drum or bend and straighten to fire a cannon. Everything she did, she did as if she were ticking along to do it on invisible wheels and her head turned and she spoke only when the cogs clicked inside her. There was nothing that brought her alive. She was in a state of obedient waiting. Then I realized what she was waiting for. She was waiting for a sign from him.

  But there was no sign of Robert though January went into February. No sign of Robert though she told me he would come soon and set me to work, no sign of Robert though he clearly had not been arrested by the queen; whatever the blame for the loss of Calais, it was not to be laid at his door.

  Amy Dudley was accustomed to his absence, of course. But when she had slept alone for all those years he had been in the Tower, she had known why she was alone in her marital bed. To everyone — to her father, to his adherents and kin — she was a martyr to her love for him, and they had all prayed for his return and her happiness. But now, it slowly must dawn on her, on everyone, that Lord Robert did not come home to his wife because he did not choose to do so. For some reason, he was in no hurry to be in her bed, in her company. Freedom from the Tower did not mean a return to the tiny scale of his wife’s existe
nce. Freedom for Lord Robert meant the court, meant the queen, meant battlefields, politics, power: a wider world of which Lady Dudley had no knowledge. Worse than ignorance, she felt dread. She thought of the wider world with nothing but fear.

  The greater world which was Lord Robert’s natural element was to her a place of continuous threat and danger. She saw his ambition, his natural God-given ambition, as a danger, she saw his opportunities all as risk. She was, in every sense of the word, a hopeless wife to him.

  Finally, in the second week in February, she sent for him. One of his men was told to ride to the court at Richmond where the queen had entered her confinement chamber to have her child. Her ladyship told the servant to tell his lordship that she needed him at Chichester, and to wait to accompany him home.

  “Why would she not write to him?” I asked Mrs. Oddingsell, surprised that Lady Dudley would broadcast to the world her desire that he should come home.

  She hesitated. “She can do as she chooses, I suppose,” she said rudely.

  It was her discomfiture that revealed the truth to me. “Can she not write?” I asked.

  Mrs. Oddingsell scowled at me. “Not well,” she conceded reluctantly.

  “Why not?” I demanded, a bookseller’s daughter to whom reading and writing was a skill like eating and walking.

  “When would she learn?” Mrs. Oddingsell countered. “She was just a girl when she married him, and nothing more than a bride when he was in the Tower. Her father did not think a woman needed to know more than to sign her name, and her husband never spared the time to teach her. She can write, but slowly, and she can read if she has to.”

  “You don’t need a man to teach you to read and write,” I said. “It is a skill a woman can get on her own. I could teach her, if she wanted it.”