Philippa Gregory: The Queen's Fool

Elizabeth and my lord exchanged a hidden smile at my rudeness. The count turned his head away.

“You may take a seat with my ladies and see me privately after dinner,” the princess ruled. “Did you come alone with your son?”

I shook my head. “Jane Dormer came with me, and we were escorted by two gentlemen from the queen’s household.”

The count turned quickly back. “Mistress Dormer is here?”

“She is dining alone,” I said, my face insolently blank. “She did not want to keep this company.”

Elizabeth bit her lip to hide another smile, and waved me to the table. “I see you are not so choosy,” she taunted me.

I met her bright black gaze without shrinking. “Dinner is dinner, Princess. And both of us have gone hungry in the past.”

She laughed at that and nodded at them to make a space for me. “She has become a witty fool,” she said to Lord Robert. “I am glad of it. I never had much faith in seeings and predictions.”

“Once she told me a pretty vision,” he said, his voice very low, his eyes on me but his smile for her.

“Oh?”

“She told me I would be adored by a queen.”

They both laughed, that low-voiced chuckle of conspiring lovers, and he smiled down the hall at me. I met his gaze with a face like flint.

“What is the matter with you?” Elizabeth demanded of me after dinner. We were standing in an alcove in the gallery at Hatfield. Elizabeth’s court was at a distance, our words hidden by the playing of a lute nearby.

“I don’t like Count Feria,” I said bluntly.

“You made that clear enough. Do you really think I will allow you to come into my dinner and insult my guests? You took off a fool’s livery, you will have to behave like a lady.”

I smiled. “Since I carry a message that you want to hear I think you will listen to it before you have me thrown out of the gates, whether I am a fool or a lady.”

She laughed at my impertinence.

“And I doubt that you like him either,” I said boldly. “First he was your enemy, now he is your friend. There are many such as him around you now, I should imagine.”

“Most of this court. And you among them.”

I shook my head. “I have always admired you both.”

“You love her more than you love me,” she insisted jealously.

I laughed aloud at her childishness; and Lord Robert, standing near, turned to look at me with a smile. “But Princess, she loves me, and you have never done anything but abuse me and accuse me of being her spy.”

Elizabeth laughed too. “Yes. But I don’t forget that you came to serve me in the Tower. And I don’t forget that you brought me a true vision. When you smelled the smoke from the burnings I knew then that I must become queen and bring peace to this country.”

“Well, amen to that,” I said.

“And what is your message?” she asked more soberly.

“Can we talk in your privy chamber? And can I bring Jane Dormer to you?”

“With Lord Robert,” she stipulated. “And John Dee.”

I bowed my head and followed her as she walked down the gallery to her chamber. The court billowed into bows as she went past as if she were queen already. I smiled, remembering a day when she had limped with her shoe in her hand and no one had offered her an arm. Now they would lay down their cloaks in the mud to keep her feet dry.

We went into her chamber and Elizabeth took a small wooden chair by the fireside. She gestured that I could pull up a stool and I took it to the other side of the fire, put Danny on my knee, and leaned back against the wooden paneling. I had a sense that I should be quiet and listen. The queen wanted me to advise her if Elizabeth would keep the true faith. I had to listen through the words to the meaning behind them. I had to look through the mask of her smiling face and into her heart.

The door opened, and Jane came into the room. She swept Elizabeth the scantest of curtseys and stood before her. Elizabeth gestured her to sit.

“I will stand, if it please you,” Jane said stiffly.

“You have business with me.” Elizabeth invited her to begin.

“The queen has asked Hannah and me to come to you and put a question to you. The queen requires you to make your answer in very truth. She would want you to swear on your soul that the answer you give is the truth and the whole truth.”

“And what is this question?”

Danny squirmed in my lap and I shifted him in a little closer, putting his small head against my cheek, so that I could look over him to the princess’s pale face.

“The queen bid me tell you that she will name you as her heir, her one true heir, and you will be queen on the throne of England without a word of dissent if you will promise her that you will cleave to the true faith,” Jane said quietly.

John Dee drew in a sharp breath, but the princess was absolutely still.

“And if I do not?”

“Then she will name another heir.”

“Mary Stuart?”

“I do not know and I will not speculate,” Jane replied.

The princess nodded. “Am I to swear on a Bible?” she asked.

“On your soul,” Jane said. “On your immortal soul before God.”

It was a solemn moment. Elizabeth glanced toward Lord Robert and he took a little step toward her, as if he would protect her.

“And does she swear to name me as heir in return?”

Jane Dormer nodded. “If you are of the true faith.”

Elizabeth took a deep breath. “I will swear,” she said.

She rose to her feet. Robert Dudley started forward as if he would stop her but she did not even look at him. I did not rise as I should have done, I stayed completely still, my eyes fixed on her pale face as if I would read her like a clean page of text, fresh off the press, with the ink still drying.

Elizabeth raised her hand. “I swear, on my immortal soul, that I shall keep this country in the true faith,” she said. Her hand trembled slightly. She brought it down and clasped her hands together before her, and turned to Jane Dormer.

“Did she ask for anything more?”

“No more,” Jane said, her voice very thin.

“So you can tell her I have done it?”

Jane’s eyes slid toward me, and the princess was on to her at once.

“Ah, so that is what you are here for.” She rounded on me. “My little seer-spy. You are to make a window into my soul and see into my heart and tell the queen what you think you know, what you imagine you saw.”

I said nothing.

“You will tell her that I raised my hand and I swore her oath,” she commanded me. “You will tell her that I am her true heir.”

I rose to my feet, Danny’s little head lolled sleepily against my shoulder. “If we may, we will stay here tonight, and return to the queen tomorrow,” I said, avoiding answering.

“There was one other thing,” Jane Dormer said. “Her Grace requires you to pay her debts and take care of her trusted servants.”

Elizabeth nodded. “Of course. Assure my sister that I will honor her wishes as any true heir would do.”

I think only I could have heard the ripple of Elizabeth’s joy under her grave voice. I did not condemn her for it. Like Mary she had waited all her life for the moment when she might hear the news that she was queen, and now she thought that it would come to her, without dissent, tomorrow, or the day after.

“We will leave at dawn,” I said, thinking of the frailty of the queen’s health. I knew she would be hanging on to hear that England was safe within the true faith, that whatever else was lost, she had restored England into grace.

“Then I will bid you goodnight and God speed now,” Elizabeth said sweetly.

She let us get to the door and Jane Dormer to go through ahead of me, before she said, so quietly that only I, listening for her summons, could have heard it: “Hannah.”