Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

Of course, our lives did depend on it.

I ran errands, read proofs, helped with translations, set print, stitched like a saddler with the sharp needle of the binder, read the backward-writing on the stone of the printing press. On days when I was not busy in the print shop I stood outside to summon passersby. I still dressed in the boy’s clothes I had used for our escape and anyone would have mistaken me for an idle lad, breeches flapping against my bare calves, bare feet crammed into old shoes, cap askew. I lounged against the wall of our shop like a vagrant lad whenever the sun came out, drinking in the weak English sunshine and idly surveying the street. To my right was another bookseller’s shop, smaller than ours and with cheaper wares. To the left was a publisher of chap books, poems and tracts for itinerant peddlers and ballad sellers, beyond him a painter of miniatures and maker of dainty toys, and beyond him a portrait painter and limner. We were all workers with paper and ink in this street, and Father told me that I should be grateful for a life which kept my hands soft. I should have been; but I was not.

It was a narrow street, meaner even than our temporary lodgings in Paris. Each house was clamped on to another house, all of them tottering like squat drunkards down to the river, the gable windows overhanging the cobbles below and blocking out the sky, so the pale sunshine striped the earth-plastered walls, like the slashing on a sleeve. The smell of the street was as strong as a farmyard’s. Every morning the women threw the contents of the chamber pots and the washing bowls from the overhanging windows and tipped the night-soil buckets into the stream in the middle of the street where it gurgled slowly away, draining sluggishly into the dirty ditch of the River Thames.

I wanted to live somewhere better than this, somewhere like the Princess Elizabeth’s garden with trees and flowers and a view down to the river. I wanted to be someone better than this: not a bookseller’s ragged apprentice, a hidden girl, a woman heading for betrothal to a stranger.

As I stood there, warming myself like a sulky Spanish cat in the sunshine, I heard the ring of a spur against a cobblestone and I snapped my eyes open and leaped to attention. Before me, casting a long shadow, was a young man. He was richly dressed, a tall hat on his head, a cape swinging from his shoulders, a thin silver sword at his side. He was the most breathtakingly handsome man I had ever seen.

All of this was startling enough, I could feel myself staring at him as if he were a descended angel. But behind him was a second man.

This was an older man, near thirty years of age, with the pale skin of a scholar, and dark deep-set eyes. I had seen his sort before. He was one of those who visited my father’s bookshop in Aragon, who came to us in Paris and who would be one of my father’s customers and friends here in London. He was a scholar, I could see it in the stoop of his neck and the rounded shoulders. He was a writer, I saw the permanent stain of ink on the third finger of his right hand; and he was something greater even than these: a thinker, a man prepared to seek out what was hidden. He was a dangerous man: a man not afraid of heresies, not afraid of questions, always wanting to know more; a man who would seek the truth behind the truth.

I had known a Jesuit priest like this man. He had come to my father’s shop in Spain, and begged him to get manuscripts, old manuscripts, older than the Bible, older even than the Word of God. I had known a Jewish scholar like this man, he too had come to my father’s bookstore and asked for the forbidden books, remnants of the Torah, the Law. Jesuit and scholar had come often to buy their books; and one day they had come no more. Ideas are more dangerous than an unsheathed sword in this world, half of them are forbidden, the other half would lead a man to question the very place of the earth itself, safe at the center of the universe.

I had been so interested in these two, the young man like a god, the older man like a priest, that I had not looked at the third. This third man was all dressed in white, gleaming like enameled silver, I could hardly see him for the brightness of the sun on his sparkling cloak. I looked for his face and could see only a blaze of silver, I blinked and still I could not see him. Then I came to my senses and realized that whoever they might be, they were all three looking in the doorway of the bookshop next door.

One swift glance at our own dark doorway showed me that my father was in the inside room mixing fresh ink, and had not seen my failure to summon customers. Cursing myself for an idle fool, I jumped forward into their path and said clearly, in my newly acquired English accent, “Good day to you, sirs. Can we help you? We have the finest collection of pleasing and moral books you will find in London, the most interesting manuscripts at the fairest of prices and drawings wrought with the most artistry and the greatest charm that…”

“I am looking for the shop of Oliver Green, the printer,” the young man said.

At the moment his dark eyes flicked to mine, I felt myself freeze, as if all the clocks in London had suddenly stopped still and their pendulums were caught silent. I wanted to hold him: there, in his red slashed doublet in the winter sunshine, forever. I wanted him to look at me and see me, me, as I truly was; not an urchin lad with a dirty face, but a girl, almost a young woman. But his glance flicked indifferently past me to our shop, and I came to my senses and held open the door for the three of them.

“This is the shop of the scholar and bookmaker Oliver Green. Step inside, my lords,” I invited them and I shouted, into the inner dark room: “Father! Here are three great lords to see you!”

I heard the clatter as he pushed back his high printer’s stool and came out, wiping his hands on his apron, the smell of ink and hot pressed paper following him. “Welcome,” he said. “Welcome to you both.” He was wearing his usual black suit and his linen at the cuffs was stained with ink. I saw him through their eyes for a moment and saw a man of fifty, his thick hair bleached white from shock, his face deep-furrowed, his height concealed in the scholar’s stoop.

He prompted me with a nod, and I pulled forward three stools from under the counter, but the lords did not sit, they stood looking around.

“And how may I serve you?” he asked. Only I could have seen that he was afraid of them, afraid of all three: the handsome younger man who swept off his hat and pushed his dark curled hair back from his face, the quietly dressed older man and, behind them, the silent lord in shining white.

“We are seeking Oliver Green, the bookseller,” the young lord said.

My father nodded his head. “I am Oliver Green,” he said quietly, his Spanish accent very thick. “And I will serve you in any way that I can do. Any way that is pleasing to the laws of the land, and the customs…”

“Yes, yes,” the young man said sharply. “We hear that you are just come from Spain, Oliver Green.”

My father nodded again. “I am just come to England indeed, but we left Spain three years ago, sir.”

“An Englishman?”

“An Englishman now, if you please,” my father said cautiously.

“Your name? It is a very English name?”

“It was Verde,” he said with a wry smile. “It is easier for Englishmen if we call ourselves Green.”

“And you are a Christian? And a publisher of Christian theology and philosophy?”

I could see the small gulp in my father’s throat at the dangerous question, but his voice was steady and strong when he answered. “Most certainly, sir.”

“And are you of the reformed or the old tradition?” the young man asked, his voice very quiet.