The Queen's Fool

by Philippa Gregory

  I led the way up the stairs to one of the small bedchambers on the first floor, John Dee following me. Lord Robert sprang up the stairs two at a time behind us, we heard the door bang as he went into his room.

  I had barely showed John Dee where he was to sleep, the cupboard where he could put his clothes, and poured hot water for him to wash, when the chamber door opened and Lord Robert came in.

  “Hannah, don’t go,” he said. “I want to hear your news.”

  “I have none,” I said coolly. “I have been here, as you know, all this long while, with your wife, doing nothing.”

  He gave a short laugh. “Have you been bored, Mistress Boy? It cannot be worse than married life, surely?”

  I smiled. I was not going to tell Lord Robert that I had parted from my husband within a year of our marriage.

  “And have you kept your gift?” John Dee asked quietly. “I always thought that the angels would only come to a virgin.”

  I thought for a moment, I could not forget that the last time I had seen him he had been advising Bishop Bonner. I remembered the woman who had cupped her torn fingers in her lap. I remembered the smell of urine in the little room and the wet warmth in my breeches, and my shame. “I don’t know, sir,” I said, my voice very small.

  Robert Dudley heard the constraint in my tone and looked quickly from me to his friend. “How now?” he asked sharply. “What’s this?”

  Dr. Dee and I exchanged an odd complicit glance: that of the secret torturer to his unproclaimed victim, that of a horror shared. He said nothing.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “Odd sort of nothing,” Lord Robert said, his tone hardening. “You tell me, John.”

  “She was brought before Bonner,” John Dee said briefly. “Heresy. I was there. The charges were dismissed. She was released.”

  “My God, you must have pissed yourself, Hannah!” Robert exclaimed.

  He hit the mark so precisely that my cheeks burned red and I gripped Daniel’s son against me.

  John Dee shot a brief apologetic look at me. “We were all afraid,” he said. “But in this world, we all do what we have to do, Robert. We all do the best we can. Sometimes we wear masks, sometimes we can be ourselves, sometimes the masks are truer than the faces. Hannah betrayed no one and was clearly innocent herself. She was released. That’s all.”

  Lord Robert leaned over and gripped Bishop Bonner’s most orthodox, most rigorous chaplain by the hand. “That’s all indeed. I would not have wanted her racked, she knows much too much. I am glad you were there.”

  John Dee did not glow in return. “No one was there by choice,” he said. “There were more innocents than this one that went to be scourged and burned.”

  I looked from one man to the other, wondering where the allegiances truly lay. At least now I knew enough not to ask, and not to trust any answer.

  Lord Robert turned back to me. “And so do you have your gift still, even though you have lost your virginity?”

  “It comes so rarely that it is hard to tell. But I had a true seeing in Calais, after my wedding: I foresaw the horsemen riding through the streets.” I shut my eyes against the memory.

  “You saw the French coming into Calais?” Lord Robert asked incredulously. “Dear God, why didn’t you warn me?”

  “I would have done if I had known what it was,” I replied. “Don’t doubt me. I would have come at once if I could have understood what I was seeing. But it was so unclear. It was a woman being cut down as she ran from them and calling out…” I broke off. I would not tell even these trusted men that she called me to take her son. Danny was mine now. “God knows I would have warned that woman… even though… I would not want anyone to suffer that death.”

  Robert shook his head and turned to look out of the window. “I wish to God I had been warned,” he said moodily.

  “Will you scry for me again?” John Dee asked. “So that we can see if your gift remains true?”

  I looked at him in utter disbelief. “Are you seeking the advice of angels?” I asked the Inquisitor’s chaplain. “You? Of all men?”

  John Dee was not at all perturbed by the sharpness of my tone. “I do not change my beliefs. And we need guidance all the more, in these troubled times. But we must ask discreetly. There is always danger for those who seek knowledge. But if we could know that the queen will give birth to a healthy child we would be better able to plan for the future. If she is to be blessed with a son, then Princess Elizabeth should change her plans.”

  “And I should change mine,” Lord Robert remarked wryly.

  “Anyway, I don’t know if I can do it,” I said. “I have only seen the future just once, in all the time I was in Calais.”

  “Shall we try this evening?” Lord Robert asked. “Will you try and see if it comes easily, Hannah? For old times’ sake?”

  My gaze slid past him to John Dee. “No,” I said flatly.

  John Dee looked directly at me, his dark eyes meeting mine with honesty. “Hannah, I do not pretend that my ways are not dark and tortuous,” he said simply. “But you for one should be glad that I was there at St. Paul’s when you were arraigned to answer.”

  “I was glad that my innocence was recognized,” I said staunchly. “And I don’t want to go in there again.”

  “You will not,” he said simply. “My word on it.”

  “So will you scry for us?” my lord pressed me.

  I hesitated. “If you will ask a question for me,” I bargained with them.

  “What is it?” John Dee asked.

  “If my husband is alive or dead,” I said. “It’s all I want to know. I don’t even ask the future, if I shall see him again. I would be happy just to know that he is alive.”

  “You love him so much?” Lord Robert asked skeptically. “Your young man?”

  “I do,” I said simply. “I cannot rest until I know that he is safe.”

  “I shall ask the angels and you shall scry for me,” John Dee promised. “Tonight?”

  “When Danny is asleep,” I said. “I couldn’t do it while I was listening for him.”

  “At eight o’clock?” Lord Robert asked. “Here?”

  John Dee glanced around. “I will ask the men to bring up my table and my books.”

  Lord Robert noticed the smallness of the room and made an impatient noise. “She always does this,” he said irritably. “She never puts my friends in the best chambers. She is sick with envy of them, I shall tell her…”

  “There is plenty of room,” Dee said pacifically. “And she is bound to resent you coming with a great train when she will have wanted you to herself. Should you not go to her now?”

  Lord Robert went reluctantly to the door. “Come with me,” he said. “Come, both of you, and we’ll take a glass of ale to wash down the dust from the road.”

  I hung back. “I cannot come,” I said when he held the door for me.

  “What?”

  “She does not receive me,” I said awkwardly. “I am not invited to sit with her.”

  Robert’s dark eyebrows snapped together. “I told her that she was to keep you with her as her companion until we decided where you should live,” he said. “Where do you dine?”

  “At the table for the maids. I am not seated with your wife.”

  He took a rapid step toward the stairs and then he checked himself and came back. “Come,” he said, holding out his hand to me. “I am master here, I do not have to argue to see my wishes done. Just come, and you shall dine with me now. She is a stupid woman who does not reward her husband’s loyal servants. And a jealous woman who thinks that a pretty face is safer seen from afar.”

  I did not go to his outstretched hand. I smiled at him steadily, keeping my place in the window seat. “My lord,” I said. “I imagine you are going back to court within a few days?”

  “Yes,” he said. “What of it?”

  “Shall you take me with you?”

  He looked surprised. “I don’t know. I hadn’t thoug
ht.”

  I felt my smile turn into a giggle. “I thought not,” I said. “So I may have to stay here for some weeks yet?”

  “Yes. And so?”

  “And so I would rather not spur your wife’s irritation into rage if you are going to blow in and out again like a spring wind that spoils the peace of the orchard.”

  He laughed. “Are you at peace, my little orchard?”

  “We are in a state of quiet enmity,” I said frankly. “But I would rather that, than the open warfare you would bring. Go and sit with her now, and I will meet you back here tonight.”

  Robert patted me on the cheek. “God bless your caution, Hannah. I think I should never have given you to the king. I would be a better man today if I had kept your counsel.”

  Then he ran downstairs whistling, and it made me shiver when I heard the wind at the castle windows whistle back at him.

  I watched Amy at dinner. She never took her eyes off her husband throughout the prolonged meal. She ached to be the center of her husband’s attention but she had no skills to fascinate him. She knew nothing of the gossip of the court, she had not even heard of half of the names that he mentioned. I, seated below the salt, kept my eyes on my plate to prevent myself from looking up and laughing at a story about a woman I knew, or interrupting to ask him what had become of one young courtier or another.

  Lady Amy did not even have the native wit to invite him to talk, even if she knew nothing herself. She pursed her lips whenever he spoke of a woman, she looked down in disapproval when he laughingly mentioned the queen. She was downright rude to John Dee whom she clearly regarded as a turncoat from the defeated Protestant cause. But she was no enthusiast for news of the Princess Elizabeth either.

  I thought that when my lord had first met her he must have loved the unspoiled freshness of her, when she was a young girl who knew nothing of the court or of his father’s sly progress to power. When she was a simple squire’s daughter in Norfolk with big blue eyes and large breasts pressing against the neck of her gown, she must have seemed to be everything that the ladies of court were not: honest, unsophisticated, true. But now all those virtues were disadvantages to him. He needed a wife who could watch the direction of change, could trim her speech and style to the prevailing tides, and could watch and caution him. He needed a wife who was quick in understanding and skilled in any company, a wife he could take to court, and know he had a spy and an ally among the ladies.

  Instead he was burdened with a woman who, in her vanity, was prepared to insult the chaplain of one of the most powerful priests in the country, who had no interest in the doings of the court and the wider world, and who resented his interest.

  “We’ll never have another Dudley if she does not make more effort with him,” one of the upper maids whispered indiscreetly to me.

  “What ails her?” I demanded. “I’d have thought she would be all over him.”

  “She can never forgive him for going to court in his father’s train. She thought his imprisonment would teach him a lesson. Teach him not to overreach himself.”

  “He’s a Dudley,” I said. “They’re born to overreach themselves. They’re from the greediest most ambitious line in the world. Only a Spaniard likes gold better than a Dudley, only an Irishman desires more land.”

  I looked down the table at Amy. She was eating a sweetmeat, the sugared plum distending her mouth as she sucked on it. She was staring straight ahead, ignoring her husband’s intense conversation with John Dee. “You know her well?”

  The older woman nodded. “Yes, and I’ve come to pity her. She likes a small station in life and she wants him to be small too.”

  “She’d have done better to have chosen a country squire then,” I said. “For Robert Dudley is a man with a great future, not a small one, and he will never allow her to stand in his way.”

  “She will pull him down if she can,” the woman warned.

  I shook my head. “Not her.”

  Amy had hoped to sit up late with her husband, or to go to bed early together, but at eight o’clock he made excuses and he and John Dee and I gathered in John Dee’s room with the door closed, the shutters across the window and only one candle lit and glowing in the mirror.

  “Are you happy to do this?” John Dee asked.

  “What are you going to ask?”

  “If the queen will have a boy child,” Robert said. “There is nothing more important to know than this. And if we can win back Calais.”

  I looked toward John Dee. “And if my husband lives,” I reminded him.

  “We will see what is given us,” he said gently. “Let us pray.”

  I closed my eyes and at the rolling gentle sounds of the Latin I felt myself restored, returned. I was at home again, at home with my gift, with my lord, and with myself. When I opened my eyes the candle flame was warm as well as bright on my face and I smiled at John Dee.

  “You still have your gift?” he asked.

  “I am sure of it,” I said quietly.

  “Watch the flame and tell us what you hear or what you see.”

  The candle flame bobbed in a little draft, its brightness filled my mind. It was like the summer sunshine of Spain, and I thought I heard my mother calling me, her voice happy and filled with confidence that nothing would ever go wrong. Then abruptly I heard a tremendous banging that made me gasp and leap to my feet, jolted out of my dream with my heart thudding in fear of arrest.

  John Dee was white-faced. We were discovered and ruined. Lord Robert had his sword from his belt and a knife from his boot.

  “Open up!” came the shout from the barred door and there was a great blow against the wood which made it rock inward. I was certain that it was the Inquisition. I crossed the room to Lord Robert. “Please, my lord,” I said rapidly. “Don’t let them burn me. Run me through, before they take me, and save my son.”

  In one fluid movement he was up on the window seat, pulled me up beside him and kicked out the windowpane. “Jump out,” he advised me. “And run if you can. I’ll hold them for a moment.” There was another terrible blow on the door. He nodded at John Dee. “Open up,” he said.

  John Dee flung open the door and Lady Amy Dudley fell into the room. “You!” she exclaimed as soon as she saw me, half out of the window. “As I thought! Whore!”

  A servant behind her raised a mace in a half apologetic gesture. The Philipses’ elegant linenfold door panels were splintered beyond repair. Robert slammed his sword back into the scabbard, and gestured to John Dee. “Please, John, do shut what is left of the door,” he said wearily. “This will be halfway round the county by dawn.”

  “What are you doing here?” Amy demanded, striding into the room, her eyes taking in the table, the candles, their flames guttering in the draft from the window, the holy symbols. “What foul lechery?”

  “Nothing,” Robert said wearily.

  “What is she doing here with you? And him?”

  He stepped forward and took her hands. “My lady, this is my friend and this my loyal servant. We were praying together for my prosperity.”

  She broke from his grasp and struck at him, her hands clenched into fists, pounding against his chest. “She is a whore and he is a dealer in black arts!” she cried. “And you are a false deceiver who has broken my heart too many times to count!”

  Robert caught her hands. “She is a good servant of mine and a respectable married woman,” he said quietly. “And Dr. Dee is chaplain to one of the most important churchmen in the land. Madam, I beg you to compose yourself.”

  “I will see him hanged for this!” she shouted into his face. “I will name him as a dealer with the devil, and she is nothing more than a witch and a whore.”

  “You will do nothing but make yourself a laughingstock,” he said steadily. “Amy, you know what you are like. Be calm.”

  “How can I be calm when you shame me before your own friends?”

  “You are not shamed…” he started.

  “I hate you!” sh
e suddenly screamed.

  John Dee and I shrank back against the wall and glanced longingly at the door, wishing to be away from this uproar.

  With a wail she tore herself from his grip and threw herself facedown on the bed. She was screaming with grief, quite beside herself. John Dee and my lord exchanged an aghast look. There was a little tearing noise and I realized she had bitten the counterpane and was ripping it with her teeth.

  “Oh, for the sake of God!” Robert took her shoulders and pulled her up from the bed. At once she went for his face with her nails, her hands clenched like a cat’s unsheathed claws. Robert grabbed her hands and bore her down till she fell on the floor, kneeling at his feet, her wrists in his grip.

  “I know you!” she swore up at him. “If it is not her, then it is another. There is nothing about you but pride and lust.”

  His face, suffused with temper, slowly calmed, but he kept a tight hold of her hands. “I am a sinner indeed,” he said. “But thank God, I at least am not crazed.”

  Her mouth trembled and then she let out a wail, looking up into his flinty face, the tears pouring from her eyes, her mouth drooling sobs. “I am not crazed, I am ill, Robert,” she said despairingly. “I am sick of grief.”

  He met my eyes over her head. “Fetch Mrs. Oddingsell,” he said briefly. “She knows what to do.”

  I was transfixed for the moment, watching Amy Dudley grinding her teeth, scrabbling at her husband’s feet. “What?”

  “Get Mrs. Oddingsell.”

  I nodded and went from the room. Half the household was busy on the landing outside the chamber. “Go to your work!” I said abruptly, and then I ran down the long gallery to find Mrs. Oddingsell seated before a mean fire at the cold end of the chamber.

  “Her ladyship is crying, and his lordship sent for you,” I said baldly.

  She got to her feet at once, without surprise, and went quickly down the room. I half ran beside her. “Has this happened before?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Is she ill?”

  “Easily distressed by him.”

  I took that in, made allowances for a servant’s loyal lies. “Was she always like this?”