Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

Mr. Dee came out of the inner chamber, his face alight. “She has the Sight,” he said. “She has it indeed.”

Lord Robert looked at his tutor. “Will this make a great difference to your work?”

The older man shrugged. “Who knows? We are all children in darkness. But she has the Sight.” He paused, and then turned to me. “Hannah Verde, I must tell you one thing.”

“Yes, sir?”

“You have the Sight because you are pure in heart. Please, for yourself and for the gift you bear, refuse any offers of marriage, resist any seduction, keep yourself pure.”

Behind me, Lord Robert gave a snort of amusement.

I felt my color rise slowly from my neck to my earlobes to my temples. “I have no carnal desires,” I said in a voice as low as a whisper. I did not dare to look at Lord Robert.

“Then you will see true,” John Dee said.

“But I don’t understand,” I protested. “Who is Jane? It is Lady Mary who will be queen if His Grace dies.”

Lord Robert put his finger on my lips and at once I was silent. “Sit down,” he said and pressed me into a chair. He drew up a stool and sat beside me, his face close to mine. “Mistress Boy, you have seen today two things that would have us all hanged if they were known.”

My heart raced with fear. “My lord?”

“Just by looking in the mirror you put us all in danger.”

My hand went to my cheek as if I would wipe away smuts from a fire. “My lord?”

“You must say not a word of this. It is treason to cast the horoscope of a king, and the punishment for treason is death. You cast his horoscope today and you foretold the day of his death. D’you want to see me on the scaffold?”

“No! I…”

“Do you want to die yourself?”

“No!” I could hear a quaver in my voice. “My lord, I am afraid.”

“Then never say one word of this to anyone. Not even to your father. As to the Jane of the mirror…”

I waited.

“Just forget all you saw, forget I even asked you to look in the mirror. Forget the mirror, forget the room.”

I looked at him solemnly. “I won’t have to do it again?”

“You will never have to do it again unless you consent. But you must forget it now.” He gave me his sweet seductive smile. “Because I ask it of you,” he whispered. “Because I ask it of you as your friend, I have put my life in your hands.”

I was lost. “All right,” I said.

The court moved to Greenwich Palace in February and it was given out that the king was better. But he never asked for me, nor for Will Somers, he did not ask for music nor for company, nor did he ever come to the great hall for dinner. The physicians, who had been in full-blown attendance with their gowns flapping, waiting in every corner of the court, talking amongst themselves and giving carefully guarded replies to all inquiries, seemed to slip away as the days wore on and there was no news of his recovery, and not even their cheerful predictions about leeches cleansing the young man’s blood and poison carefully administered killing his disease, seemed to ring very true. Lord Robert’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, was all but king in Edward’s place, seated at the right hand of an empty throne at dinner, taking the chair at the head of the council table every week, but telling everyone that the king was well, getting better all the time, looking forward to the finer weather, planning a progress this summer.

I said nothing. I was being paid as a fool to say surprising and impertinent things but I could think of nothing more impertinent and surprising than the truth — that the young king was half prisoner to his protector, that he was dying without companions or nursing, and that this whole court, every great man in the land, was thinking of the crown and not of the boy; and that it was a great cruelty, to a boy only a little older than me and without a mother or a father to care for him, to be left to die alone. I looked around me at the men who assured each other that the young man of fifteen, coughing his lungs out in hiding, would be fit to take a wife this summer, and I thought that I would be a fool indeed if I did not see that they were a bunch of liars and rogues.

While the young king vomited black bile in his chamber, the men outside quietly helped themselves to the pensions, to the fees from offices, to the rents from monasteries that they closed for piety and then robbed for greed, and no one said one word against it. I would have been a fool indeed to tell the truth in this court of liars, I would have been as incongruous as an angel in Fleet Street. I kept my head down, I sat near Will Somers at dinner, and I kept silent.

I had new work to do. Lord Robert’s tutor Mr. Dee sought me out and asked if I would read with him. His eyes were tired, he said, and my father had sent him some manuscripts that could be more easily deciphered by young sight.

“I don’t read very well,” I said cautiously.

He was pacing ahead of me in one of the sunny galleries overlooking the river, but at my words he turned and smiled.

“You are a very careful young woman,” he said. “And that is wise in these changing times. But you are safe with me and with Lord Robert. I imagine you can read English and Latin fluently, am I right?”

I nodded.

“And Spanish, of course, and perhaps French?”

I kept my silence. It was obvious that I spoke and read Spanish as my native tongue, and he would guess that I must have picked up some French during our stay in Paris.

Mr. Dee came a little closer and bent his head to whisper in my ear. “Can you read Greek? I need someone who can read Greek for me.”

If I had been older and wiser I would have denied my knowledge. But I was only fourteen and proud of my abilities. My mother herself had taught me to read Greek and Hebrew, and my Father called me his little scholar, as good as any boy.

“Yes,” I said. “I can read Greek and Hebrew.”

“Hebrew?” he exclaimed, his interest sharpened. “Dear God, child, what have you seen in Hebrew? Have you seen the Torah?”

At once I knew I should have said nothing. If I said yes, that I had seen the laws of the Jews and the prayers, then I would have identified myself and my father beyond doubt as Jews and practicing Jews at that. I thought of my mother telling me that my vanity would get me into trouble. I had always thought that she meant my love of fine clothes and ribbons for my hair. Now, dressed as a boy in a fool’s livery I had committed the sin of vanity, I had been prideful of my schooling and the punishment could be extreme.

“Mr. Dee…” I whispered, aghast.

He smiled at me. “I guessed you had fled Spain as soon as I saw you,” he said gently. “I guessed you were Conversos. But it was not for me to say. And it is not in Lord Robert’s nature to persecute someone for the faith of their fathers, especially a faith which they have surrendered. You go to church, don’t you? And observe feast days? You believe in Jesus Christ and his mercy?”

“Oh yes, my lord. Without fail.” There was no point in telling him that there was no more devout Christian than a Jew trying to be invisible.

Mr. Dee paused. “As for me, I pray for a time when we are beyond such divisions, beyond them to the truth itself. Some men think that there is neither God nor Allah nor Elohim…”

At his speaking the sacred name of the only God I gave a little gasp of surprise. “Mr. Dee? Are you one of the Chosen People?”

He shook his head. “I believe there is a creator, a great creator of the world, but I do not know his name. I know the names that he is given by man. Why should I prefer one name to another? What I want to know is His Holy Nature, what I want is the help of his angels, what I want to do is to further his work, to make gold from base, to make Holy from Vulgar.” He broke off. “Does any of this mean anything to you?”