‘Sit down,’ I said gently. ‘I will fetch you some small ale.’
‘I don’t want small ale,’ she said crossly, though her legs buckled beneath her. ‘I want my place at court. I want my freedom.’
‘It will come.’ I fetched a jug and a cup from the sideboard and poured her a drink. She sipped it and then looked at me.
‘It’s all right for you,’ she said nastily. ‘You’re not a prisoner. You’re not even my servant. You can come and go as you please. She wants you at her side. You will be able to see all your grand friends again when you meet them at Winchester for the wedding feast. No doubt they will have a new doublet and hose for you – the pet hermaphrodite. No doubt you will be in the queen’s train.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Hannah, you can’t leave me,’ she said flatly.
‘Lady Elizabeth, I have to go, the queen commands me.’
‘She said you were to be my companion.’
‘And now she says I am to leave.’
‘Hannah!’ She broke off, near to tears.
Slowly, I knelt at her feet and looked up into her face. Elizabeth was always such a mixture of raging emotion and calculation that I could rarely take her measure. ‘My lady?’
‘Hannah, I have no-one here but you and Kat and that idiot Sir Henry. I am a young woman, I am at my peak of beauty and wit and I live alone, a prisoner, with no companion but a nursemaid, a fool and an idiot.’
‘Then you will hardly miss the fool,’ I said drily.
I meant to make her laugh but when she looked at me her eyes were filled with tears. ‘I will miss the fool,’ she said. ‘I have no-one to be my friend, I have no-one to talk to. I have no-one to care for me.’
She rose to her feet. ‘Walk with me,’ she commanded.
We went through the ramshackle palace and through the door which hung, half off its hinges, into the garden, she leaned on me and I felt her weakness. The grass was sprawled over the path, there were nettles thrusting up in all the ditches. Elizabeth and I made our way through the ruin of the garden like two old women, clinging to each other. For a moment I thought that her fears were true: that this imprisonment would be the death of her, even if the queen did not send for the executioner and his axe. We went through the swinging gate and into the orchard. The petals from the blossom were spilled over the grass like snow, the boughs leaned down with their creamy weight. Elizabeth looked around the orchard before she put her hand in my arm and drew me to her.
‘I am ruined,’ she said softly. ‘If she bears a son to him, I am ruined.’ She turned from me and walked across the grass, her shabby black gown brushing the damp petals which clung to the hem. ‘A son,’ she muttered, cautious even in her chagrin to keep her voice low. ‘A damned Spanish son. A damned Catholic Spanish son. And England an outpost of the Spanish empire, England, my England, a cat’s-paw of Spanish policy. And the priests back, and the burnings beginning, and my father’s faith and my father’s legacy torn out of English earth before it has time to flower. Damn her. Damn her to hell and her misconceived child with her.’
‘Lady Elizabeth!’ I exclaimed. ‘Don’t say that!’
She rounded on me, her hands up, her fists clenched. If I had been closer, she would have hit me. She was in such a passion she was beyond knowing what she was doing. ‘Damn her, and damn you too for standing her friend.’
‘You must have thought it might happen,’ I started. ‘The marriage was agreed, he would not delay for ever …’
‘Why would I think that she would marry?’ she snapped. ‘Who would have her? Old and plain, named as a bastard for half her life, half the princes of Europe have refused her already. If it was not for her damned Spanish blood, Philip would never have had her. He must have begged to be excused. He must have gone down on his knees and prayed for any fate rather than to be forced to stick it up that old dried-up virgin.’
‘Elizabeth!’ I exclaimed, I was genuinely shocked.
‘What?’ Her eyes were blazing with temper. For a moment I believed that she did not know what she was saying. ‘What’s wrong with telling the truth? He is a young handsome man who will inherit half of Europe, she is a woman old before her time and old enough anyway. It is disgusting to think of them rutting together like a young piglet on an old sow. It is an abomination. And if she is like her mother she will bear nothing but dead babies.’
I put my hands over my ears. ‘You are offensive,’ I said frankly.
Elizabeth whirled on me. ‘And you are unfaithful!’ she shouted. ‘You should be my friend, and stand my friend whatever else happens, whatever I say. You were begged to me as a fool, you should be mine. And I say nothing but the truth. I would be ashamed to chase after a young man like her. I would rather die than court a man young enough to be my son. I would rather die now than get to her age and be an unwanted old maid, good for nothing, pleasing to nobody, useless!’
‘I am not unfaithful,’ I said steadily. ‘And I am your companion, she did not beg me as a fool to you. I would be your friend. But I cannot listen to you cursing her like a Billingsgate fishwife.’
She let out a wail at that and dropped to the ground, her face as white as apple blossom, her hair tumbled over her shoulders, her hands clamped over her mouth.
I knelt beside her and took her hands. They were icy, she looked near to collapse. ‘Lady Elizabeth,’ I said soothingly. ‘Be calm. It is a marriage which is bound to take place and there is nothing you can do about it.’
‘But not even invited …’ She gave a little wail.
‘Is hard. But she has been merciful to you.’ I paused. ‘Remember, he would have had you beheaded.’
‘And I am to be grateful for that?’
‘You could be calm. And wait.’
The face she turned up to me was suddenly glacial. ‘If she bears him a son then I will have nothing to wait for but a forced marriage to some Papist prince, or death.’
‘You said to me that any day you could stay alive was a victory,’ I reminded her.
She did not smile in reply. She shook her head. ‘Staying alive is not important,’ she said quietly. ‘It never was. I was staying alive for England. Staying alive to be England’s princess. Staying alive to inherit.’
I did not correct her, the words were true for her now, though I thought I knew Elizabeth too well to see her as a woman only staying alive for her country. But I did not want to launch her into one of her passionate tantrums. ‘You must do that,’ I said soothingly. ‘Stay alive for England. Wait.’
She let me go the next day though her resentment was as powerful as that of a child excluded from a treat. I did not know what upset her more: the gravity of her situation as the only Protestant princess in Roman Catholic England, or not being invited to the greatest event in Christendom since the Field of the Cloth of Gold. When she waved me away without a word and with a sulky turn of her head I thought that missing the party was probably the worst thing for her that morning.
If Sir Henry’s men had not known the road to Winchester we could have found it by following the crowds. It seemed that every man, woman and child wanted to see the queen take her husband at last, and the roads were crowded with farmers bringing their produce into the greatest market in the country, entertainers setting up their pitches all along the way, whores and mountebanks and pedlars with cures, goose girls and washerwomen, carters and riders leading strings of spare horses. Then there was all the panoply and organisation of the royal court on the move: the messengers coming and going, the men in livery, the men at arms, the outriders and those galloping desperately to catch up.
Sir Henry’s men carried reports of Elizabeth for the queen’s council, so we parted at the entrance of Wolvesey Palace, the bishop’s great house where the queen was staying. I went straight to the queen’s rooms and found a crowd of people at every doorway pushing their way forward with petitions that she might grant. I slid under elbows, between shoulders, sneaking between panelled walls and bulky squires till
I reached the guards on the door and stood before their crossed halberds.
‘The queen’s fool,’ I announced myself. One man recognised me. He and his fellow stepped forward and let me dart in behind them and open the door while they held back the weight of the crowd.
Inside the presence chamber it was scarcely less crowded but the clothes were more silks and embroidered leather, and the altercations were taking place in French and Spanish as well as English. Here were the ambitious and rising men and women of the kingdom jockeying for a place and anxious to be seen by the new king who would be creating a court which must – surely to God! – include at least some true-born Englishmen as well as the hundreds of Spaniards he had insisted on bringing over as his personal retinue.
I skirted the perimeter of the hall, overhearing the snatches of conversation, which was mostly scandalous, often speculating on what the handsome young prince would make of the old queen, and I found that my cheeks were blazing with temper and my teeth gritted by the time I got to the door of her private rooms.
The guard let me through with a nod of recognition but even inside the queen’s privy chamber there was no peace. There were more ladies and attendants, musicians, singers, escorts and general hangers-on than I had ever seen with her before. I looked around for her, still she was not there, the chair which served as her throne by the fireside was empty. Jane Dormer was in the window-seat sewing, looking as determinedly unimpressed as she had been on the day I had first met her when the queen had been a sick woman, in a court of shadows with no chance of the throne.
‘I have come to the queen,’ I said to her with a little bow.
‘You’re among many,’ she said dourly.
‘I’ve seen them,’ I said. ‘Has it been like this since you came from London?’
‘Every day there are more people,’ she said. ‘They must think her soft in the head as well as the heart. If she gave her kingdom away three times over she would not be able to satisfy their demands.’
‘Shall I go in?’
‘She’s praying,’ she said. ‘But she’ll want to see you.’
She rose from the window-seat and I saw that she had positioned herself so that no-one could enter the queen’s narrow doorway without first going past Jane. She opened the door and peeped in, then she waved me through.
The queen had been praying before an exquisite gold and mother-of-pearl icon, but now she was sitting back on her heels, her face calm and shining. She radiated joy as she knelt there, so calm and sweet in her happiness that anyone looking at her would have known her for a bride on her wedding day; a woman preparing herself for love.
When she heard the door close behind me she slowly turned her head and smiled. ‘Ah, Hannah! How glad I am you have come, you are just in time.’
I crossed the room and knelt before her. ‘God bless Your Grace on this most fortunate day.’
She put her hand on my head in blessing in that affectionate familiar gesture. ‘It is a fortunate day, isn’t it?’
I looked up, the glow around her was shining as brightly as sunshine. ‘It is, Your Grace,’ I said. I had no doubt of it at all. ‘I can see that it is a wonderful day for you.’
‘This is the start of my new life,’ she said gently. ‘The start of my life as a married woman, as a queen with a prince at my side, with my country at peace and the greatest nation in Christendom, my mother’s home, as our ally.’
I looked up smiling, I was still on my knees before her.
‘And shall I have a child?’ she asked in a soft whisper. ‘Can you see that for me, Hannah?’
‘I am sure of it,’ I said in a voice as quiet as her own.
Joy leaped into her face. ‘From your heart or from your gift?’ she asked me quickly.
‘From both,’ I said simply. ‘I am sure of it, Your Grace.’
She closed her eyes for a moment and I knew she was thanking God for my certainty and for the promise of a future for England where there would be peace and an end to religious faction.
‘Now I must get ready,’ she said, rising to her feet. ‘Ask Jane to send my maids to me, Hannah. I want to get dressed.’
I could not see much of the actual wedding service. I had a glimpse of Prince Philip as he stepped towards the blaze of gold of the altar of Winchester Cathedral but then the person standing before me, a corpulent squire from Somerset, shifted his position and blocked my view and I could only hear the soaring voices of the queen’s choristers singing the Wedding Mass and then the soft gasp as Bishop Gardiner raised the couple’s clasped hands to show that the wedding was completed and England’s virgin queen was now a married woman.
I thought I would see the prince clearly at the wedding feast but as I was hurrying on my way to the hall, I heard the rattle of the weapons of the Spanish guard and I stepped back into a window embrasure as the men at arms marched down and then came the bustle of his court after them, the prince himself at the centre. And then, amid all this hustle of excitement, something happened to me. It was caused by the flurry of silks and velvets, embroidery and diamonds, the dark full richness of the Spanish court. It was caused by the scent of the pomade they wore on their hair and beards, and the perfumed pomander that every man had pinned with a golden buckle to his belt. It was the clink of the priceless inlaid breastplates of the soldiery, the tap of the beautifully forged swords against the stone of the walls. It was the rapid interchange of the language, which was like the coo in a dovecote of home to me who had been a stranger in a strange land for so very long. I smelled the Spaniards and saw them and heard them and sensed them in a way that I had never apprehended anything before, and I stumbled back, feeling for the cold wall behind me to steady me, almost fainting, overwhelmed with a homesickness and a longing for Spain that was so strong that it was almost like a gripe in my belly. I think I even cried out, and one man heard me, one man turned dark familiar eyes and looked towards me.
‘What is it, lad?’ he asked, seeing my golden pageboy suit.
‘It’s the queen’s holy fool,’ one of his men remarked in Spanish. ‘Some toy that she affects. A boy-girl, a hermaphrodite.’
‘Good God, a wizened old maid served by no maid at all,’ someone quipped, his accent Castilian. The prince said ‘Hush,’ but absentmindedly, as if he was not defending a new wife but reprimanding a familiar offence.
‘Are you sick, child?’ he asked me in Spanish.
One of his companions stepped forward and took my hand. ‘The prince asks are you sick?’ he demanded in careful English.
I felt my hand tremble at his touch, the touch of a Spanish lord on my Spanish skin. I expected him to know me at once, to know that I understood every word he said, that my reply in Spanish was readier on my tongue than my English.
‘I am not sick,’ I said in English, speaking very quietly and hoping that no-one would hear the vestiges of my accent. ‘I was startled by the prince.’
‘You startled her only,’ he laughed, turning to the prince and speaking in Spanish. ‘God grant that you may startle her mistress.’
The prince nodded, indifferent to me, as a servant beneath his notice, and walked on.
‘She’s more likely to startle him,’ someone remarked quietly from the back. ‘God save us, how are we to put our prince to bed with such an aged dame?’
‘And a virgin,’ someone else replied. ‘Not even a warm and willing widow who knows what she’s been missing. This queen will freeze our lord, he’ll wilt at her bedside.’
‘And she’s so dull,’ the first one persisted.
The prince heard that, he halted and looked back at his retinue. ‘Enough,’ he said clearly, speaking in Spanish, thinking that only they would understand. ‘It is done. I have wedded her, and I shall bed her, and if you hear that I cannot do it you can speculate then as to the cause. In the meantime let us have peace. It is not fair dealing to the English to come into the country and insult their queen.’
‘They don’t deal fair to us …’ someone star
ted.
‘A country of idiots …’
‘Poor and bad-tempered …’
‘And grasping!’
‘Enough,’ he said.
I followed them down the gallery to the steps leading to the great chamber. I followed them as if drawn on a chain, I could not have parted from them if my life had depended on it. I was back with my own people, hearing them speak, even though every word they said was a slander against the only woman who had been kind to me, or against England, my second home.
It was Will Somers who caught me out of my trance. He took me by the arm as I was about to follow the Spaniards into the great hall and gave me a little shake. ‘How now, maid? In a dream?’
‘Will,’ I said and grabbed on to his sleeve as if to steady myself. ‘Oh, Will!’
‘There,’ he said, gently patting me on the back as if I were an overwrought pageboy. ‘Silly little maid.’
‘Will, the Spanish …’
He drew me away from the main doors and put a warm arm around my shoulder.
‘Take care, little fool,’ he warned me. ‘The very walls of Winchester have ears and you never know who you are offending.’
‘They’re so …’ I could not find the words. ‘They’re so … handsome!’ I burst out.
He laughed aloud, released me and clapped his hands. ‘Handsome, is it? You, besotted with the señors just like Her Grace, God bless her?’
‘It’s their …’ I paused again. ‘It’s their perfume,’ I said simply. ‘They smell so wonderful.’
‘Oh little maid, it is time you were wed,’ he said in mock seriousness. ‘If you are running after men and sniffing at their spoor like a little bitch on the hunt then one day you will make your kill and you’ll be a holy fool no longer.’
He paused for a moment, measuring me. ‘Ah, I had forgot. You were from Spain, weren’t you?’
I nodded. There was no point in fooling a fool.
‘They make you think of your home,’ he predicted. ‘Is that it?’
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