‘I warned you not to leave it too late,’ she said, her gesture taking in the waiting women, the lounging handsome men, the courtiers from London who saw me recognise them and looked a little abashed. A couple of members of the queen’s council stepped back from my scrutiny; with them was an envoy of France, and a minor prince or two.
‘I see your ladyship keeps a merry court,’ I said evenly. ‘As you should. And I cannot join you, even if you would condescend to have me. I have to serve your sister. She does not have a merry court, she has few friends. I would not leave her now.’
‘Then you must be the only person in England who has not deserted her,’ she said cheerfully. ‘I took on her cook last week. Does she get anything to eat at all?’
‘She manages,’ I said drily. ‘And even the Spanish ambassador, Count Feria, her greatest friend and trusted councillor, was missing from court when I left.’
She shot a quick look at Robert Dudley and I saw him nod permission for her to speak.
‘I refused his request,’ she said gently. ‘I have no plans to marry anyone. You can assure the queen of that, for it is true.’
I gave her a little curtsey. ‘I am glad not to have to take her any news which would make her yet more unhappy.’
‘I wish she would feel some distress for the people of the country,’ Elizabeth said sharply. ‘The burning of heretics goes on, Hannah, the agony of innocent people. You should tell the queen that her sadness at the loss of a child who never was is nothing compared with the grief of a woman who sees her son go to the stake. And there are hundreds of women who have been forced to watch that.’
Robert Dudley came to my rescue. ‘Shall we dine?’ he asked lightly. ‘And there will be music after dinner. I demand a dance.’
‘Only one?’ she queried, her mood lifting at once.
‘Only one,’ he said.
She made a little flirtatious pouting face.
‘The one that starts when the music starts after dinner and ends when the sun comes up and no-one can dance another step,’ he said. ‘That one.’
‘And what shall we do then, when we have danced ourselves to a standstill?’ she asked provocatively.
I looked from her to him, I could hardly believe the intimacy of their tone. Anyone who heard them would have thought them to be lovers in the very first days of their desire.
‘We will do whatever you wish, of course,’ he said, his voice like silk. ‘But I know what I would wish.’
‘What?’ she breathed.
‘To lie with …’
‘With?’
‘The morning sun on my face,’ he finished.
Elizabeth stepped a little closer to him and whispered a phrase in Latin. I kept my expression deliberately blank. I had understood the Latin as readily as Lord Robert, she had whispered that she wanted kisses in the morning … From the sun, of course.
She turned to her court. ‘We will dine,’ she announced out loud. She walked alone, head up, towards the doors to the great hall. As she went into the dark interior she paused and threw a glance at Lord Robert over her shoulder. I saw the invitation in her look, and almost like a moment of dizziness, I recognised that look. I had seen that very same look before, to the queen’s husband King Philip. And I had seen that look before then, when she had been a girl and I had been a child: to Lord Thomas Seymour, her stepmother’s husband. It was the same look, it was the invitation of the same desire. Elizabeth liked to choose her lovers from the husbands of other women, she liked to arouse desire from a man whose hands were tied, she liked to triumph over a woman who could not keep her husband, and more than anything in the world, she liked to throw that look over her shoulder and see a man start forward to go to her side – as Lord Robert started now.
Elizabeth’s court was a young merry optimistic court. It was the court of a young woman waiting for her fortune, waiting for her throne, certain, now, that it would come to her. It hardly mattered that the queen had not named her as heir; all the time-serving, self-serving men of the queen’s court and council had already pledged their allegiance to this rising star. Half of them had sons and daughters in her service already. The visit from Count Feria was nothing more than another straw in the wind which was blowing smoothly and sweetly towards Hatfield. It told everyone that the queen’s power, like her happiness, like her health, had waned. Even the queen’s husband had transferred to her rival.
It was a merry, joyful summertime court and I spent the afternoon and night in that happy company. It left me sick and chilled to the bone. I slept in a little bed with my arms tight around my child, and the next day we rode back to the queen.
I made sure I did not count how many great men and women we passed on the road to Hatfield, going in the opposite direction. I did not need to add to the sour taste of sickness in my mouth. Long before this day, I had seen the court move from a sick king to a waiting heir and I knew how light is the fidelity of courtiers. But even so, even though I had known it, there was something about the turn of this tide that felt more like the dishonourable turning of a coat.
I found the queen walking by the river, no more than a handful of courtiers behind her. I marked who they were; half of them at least were the dourest most solid Catholics whose faith would never change whoever was on the throne, a couple of Spanish noblemen, hired by the king to stay at court and bear his wife company, and Will Somers, faithful Will Somers, who called himself a fool but had never, in my hearing, said a foolish word.
‘Your Grace,’ I said, and swept her my curtsey.
The queen took in my appearance, the mud on my cloak, the child at my side.
‘You have come straight from Hatfield?’
‘As you commanded.’
‘Can someone take the child?’
Will stepped forward and Danny beamed. I set him down and he gave his quiet little gurgle of pleasure and toddled towards Will.
‘I am sorry to bring him to Your Grace, I thought you might like to see him,’ I said awkwardly.
She shook her head. ‘No, Hannah, I do not ever want to see him.’ She gestured for me to walk beside her. ‘Did you see Elizabeth?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what did she say of the ambassador?’
‘I spoke to one of her women.’ I was anxious not to identify Lord Robert as the favourite at this treacherous alternative court. ‘She said that the ambassador had visited to pay his compliments.’
‘And what else?’
I hesitated. My duty to be honest to the queen and my desire not to hurt her seemed to be in utter conflict. I had puzzled about this for all of the ride back to court and I had decided that I should be as faithless as the rest of them. I could not bring myself to tell her that her own husband was proposing marriage to her own sister.
‘He was pressing the suit of the Duke of Savoy,’ I said. ‘Elizabeth herself assured me that she would not marry him.’
‘The Duke of Savoy?’ she asked.
I nodded.
The queen reached out her hand and I took it and waited, not knowing what she would say to me. ‘Hannah, you have been my friend for many years, and a true friend, I think.’
‘Yes, Your Grace.’
She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Hannah, sometimes I think I have run mad, quite mad, with jealousy and unhappiness.’
Her dark eyes filled with tears. I held tightly to her hand. ‘What is it?’
‘I am doubting him. I am doubting my own husband. I am doubting our marriage vows. If I doubt this then my world will fall apart, and yet I do doubt.’
I did not know what to say. Her grip on my hand was painful but I did not flinch. ‘Queen Mary?’
‘Hannah, answer me a question and then I will never think of this again. But answer me truly, and tell no-one.’
I gulped, wondering what terror was opening up beneath my feet. ‘I will, Your Grace.’ Inwardly I promised myself that if the question endangered me, or Danny, or my lord; I would allow myself to lie. The famili
ar tremor of fear of court life was making my heart flutter, I could hear it pounding in my ears. The queen was white as a shroud, her eyes madly intent.
‘Was there any suggestion that the king was pressing his own suit?’ she whispered, so low that I could hardly hear her. ‘Even though he is my husband, even though he is forsworn before God, the Pope, and our two kingdoms? Please tell me, Hannah. I know that it is the question of a madwoman. I know that I am his wife and he could not be doing this. But I have become filled with the thought that he is courting her, not as a pastime, not as a flirtation: but for his wife. I have to know. I am tortured by this fear.’
I bit my lip, and she needed nothing more. With the quick apprehension of a woman seeing her worst fear, she knew it at once.
‘Dear God, it is so,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought that my suspicion of him was part of my illness, but it is not. I can see it on your face. He is courting my sister for marriage. My own sister? And my own husband?’
I clasped her cold hand between my own. ‘Your Grace, this is a matter of policy for the king,’ I said. ‘Like making a will to provide for the future. He has to provide in the case of your accident or death. He is trying to secure England for Spain. It is his duty to keep England safe, and in the true faith. And if you were to die, sometime in the future, if he were to marry Elizabeth after your death then England would remain Roman Catholic – and that is what you and he wanted to secure.’
She shook her head, as if she were trying to hear my rapid words but none of them made any sense to her. ‘Dearest God, this is the very worst thing that could ever have happened to me,’ she said quietly. ‘I saw my mother pushed from her throne and shamed by a younger woman who took the king from her and laughed as she did it. And now this woman’s daughter, the very same bastard daughter, does just the same thing to me.’
She broke off and looked at me. ‘No wonder I couldn’t believe it. No wonder I thought it was my own mad suspicion,’ she said. ‘It is the thing I have feared all my life. Ending up like my own mother, neglected, abandoned, with a Boleyn whore in triumph on the throne. When will this wickedness stop? When will the witchcraft of the Boleyns be defeated? They cut off her head and yet here is her daughter rising up like a serpent with the same poison in her mouth!’
I gave her hand a little tug. ‘Your Grace, don’t give way. Not here. Not here before all these people.’
I was thinking of her, and I was thinking of Elizabeth’s court who would laugh till they cried if they heard that the queen had broken down because she had heard at last what all of Europe had known for months – that her husband had betrayed her.
She shook from head to toe with the effort; but she drew herself up, she blinked back the tears. ‘You are right,’ she said. ‘I will not be shamed. I will say nothing more. I will think nothing more. Walk with me, Hannah.’
I glanced back at Danny. Will was seated on the ground with the boy astride his knees, showing him how he could wiggle his ears. Danny’s chuckle was delighted. I took the queen’s arm and matched my stride to her slow pace. The court fell in behind us, yawning.
The queen looked out over the swiftly moving water. There were few ships coming and going, trade was bad for England, at war with France and with the fields yielding less and less each year.
‘You know,’ the queen whispered to me, ‘you know, Hannah, I loved him from the moment I first saw his portrait. D’you remember?’
‘Yes,’ I said, also remembering my warning that he would break her heart.
‘I adored him when I met him, d’you remember our wedding day, when he looked so handsome and we were so happy?’
I nodded again.
‘I worshipped him when he took me to bed and lay with me. He gave me the only joy I had ever known in all my life. Nobody knows what he was to me, Hannah. Nobody will ever know how much I have loved him. And now you tell me that he is planning to marry my worst enemy when I am dead. He is looking forward to my death and his life after it.’
She stood quietly for a few moments as her court halted aimlessly behind her, looking from her to me and wondering what fresh bad news I had brought. Then I saw her stiffen, and her hand went to her eyes, as if she had a sudden pain. ‘Unless he does not wait for my death,’ she said quietly.
A quick glance at my white face told her the rest of the story. She shook her head. ‘No, never,’ she whispered. ‘Not this. He would never divorce me? Not as my father did to my mother? With no grounds except lust for another woman? And she a whore, and the daughter of a whore?’
I said nothing.
She did not cry. She was Queen Mary who had been Princess Mary, who had learned as a little girl to keep her head up and her tears back and if her lips were bitten to ribbons and her mouth was filled with blood then what did it matter, as long as she did not cry where anyone could see her?
She just nodded, as if she had taken a hard knock to the head. Then she beckoned to Will Somers and he came forward, Daniel at his side, and gently took her outstretched hand.
‘You know, Will,’ she said softly, ‘it’s a funny thing, worthy of your wit, but it seems to me that the greatest terror of my life, which I would have done anything to avoid, would have been to end my life as my mother ended hers: abandoned by my husband, childless, and with a whore in my place.’ She looked at him and smiled though her eyes were dark with tears. ‘And now look, Will, isn’t it ridiculous? Here I am, and it has come to me. Can you make a joke about that?’
Will shook his head. ‘No,’ he said shortly. ‘I can find no joke in that. Some things are not funny.’
She nodded.
‘And, in any case, women have no sense of humour,’ he said staunchly.
She could not hear him. I could see that she was still taking in the horror that her nightmare had come true. She would be like her mother, abandoned by the king, living out her life in heartbreak.
‘I suppose one can see why that might be,’ Will remarked. ‘Women’s lack of humour. Given the present circumstances.’
The queen released him and turned to me. ‘I am sorry I was unkind about your boy,’ she said. ‘He is a fine boy, I am sure. What is his name?’
Will Somers took Daniel’s hand and drew him towards her.
‘Daniel Carpenter, Your Grace.’ I could see she was holding herself together by a thread of will.
‘Daniel.’ She smiled at him. ‘You be a good boy when you grow up and a faithful man.’ Her voice quavered for only a moment. She rested her beringed hand on his head. ‘God bless you,’ she said gently.
That night as I waited for Danny to fall asleep I took a page of pressed notepaper and wrote to his father.
Dear Husband,
Living here, in the saddest court in Christendom with a queen who has never done anything but what she believed to be right and yet has been betrayed by everyone in the world that she loved, even those who were sworn before God to love her, I think of you and your long years of faithfulness to me. And I pray that one day we can be together again and you will see that I have learned to value love and to value fidelity; and to love and be faithful in return.
Your wife
Hannah Carpenter.
Then I took the page, kissed his name at the top, and dropped it in the fire.
The court was due to leave for Whitehall Palace in August. The usual progress had been abandoned for the queen’s pregnancy, and now that there was no child it was almost as if she had abandoned the summer as well. Certainly there was no good weather to invite the court into the country. It was cold and raining every day, the harvest would be bad again and there would be starvation up and down the land. It would be another bad year of Mary’s reign, another year when God did not smile on England.
There was less fuss about moving than usual; there were fewer people travelling with the queen this year, fewer than ever before, and they had fewer goods, and hangers-on. The court was shrinking.
‘Where is everybody?’ I asked Will, bringing my horse besid
e his as we rode into the city at the head of the court train, just behind the queen in her litter.
‘Hatfield,’ he growled crossly.
The change of air did nothing for the queen, who complained that very night of a fever. She did not dine in the great hall of Whitehall Palace but took to her room and had two or three dishes brought to her. She hardly ate at all. I went past the great hall on my way to her chambers and stopped to glance in the door. For a moment I had a sudden powerful picture in my mind, almost as bright as a seeing: the empty throne, the greedily eating court, the ladies unsupervised, the servants kneeling to the empty throne and serving the royal dinner to the absent monarch on plates that would never be touched. It had been like this when I had first come to court, five years ago. But then it had been King Edward, sick and neglected in his rooms while the court made merry. Now it was my Queen Mary.
I stepped back and bumped into a man walking behind me. I turned with an apology. It was John Dee.
‘Dr Dee!’ My heart thudded with fright. I dropped him a curtsey.
‘Hannah Green,’ he said, bowing over my hand. ‘How are you? And how is the queen?’
I glanced around to see that no-one was in earshot. ‘Ill,’ I said. ‘Very hot, aching in all her bones, weeping eyes and running nose. Sad.’
He nodded. ‘Half the city is sick,’ he said. ‘I don’t think we’ve had one day of clear sunshine in the whole of this summer. How is your son?’
‘Well, and I thank God for it,’ I said.
‘Has he spoken a word yet?’
‘No.’
‘I have been thinking of him and of our talk about him. There is a scholar I know, who might advise you. A physician.’
‘In London?’ I asked.
He took out a piece of paper. ‘I wrote down his direction, in case I should meet you today. You can trust him with anything that you wish to tell him.’
I took the piece of paper with some trepidation. No-one would ever know all of John Dee’s business, all of his friends.
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