Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

“What d’you want with me?” I asked, instantly alert.

“I bring you these to take to Lord Robert,” he said simply and thrust two books, one a book of prayers, one a testament, into my arms.

“From who?”

He shook his head. “He wants them,” he said. “I was told you would be glad to take them to him.” Without waiting for my reply he faded away into the darkness, running half stooped along the shelter of the wall, leaving me with the two books in my arms.

Before I went back into the palace I turned both books upside down, and checked the endpapers for any hidden messages. There was nothing. I could take them to him if I wished. All I did not know was whether or not I wanted to go.

I chose to go to the Tower in the morning, in broad daylight, as if I had nothing to hide. I showed the guard the books at the door and this time he riffled the pages and looked at the spine as if to make sure that there was nothing hidden. He stared at the print. “What’s this?”

“Greek,” I said. “And the other is Latin.”

He looked me up and down. “Show me the inside of your jacket. Turn out your pockets.”

I did as I was bid. “Are you a lad or a lass then, or something in between?”

“I am the queen’s fool,” I said. “And it would be better for you if you let me pass.”

“God bless Her Grace!” he said with sudden enthusiasm. “And whatever oddities she chooses to amuse herself with!” He led the way to a new building, walking across the green. I followed him, keeping my head turned from the place where they usually built the scaffold.

We went in a handsome double door and up the twisting stone stairs. The guard at the top stood to one side and unlocked the door to let me in.

Lord Robert was standing by the window, breathing the cold air which blew in from the river. He turned his head at the opening of the door and his pleasure at seeing me was obvious. “Mistress Boy!” he said. “At last!”

This room was a bigger and better one than he had been in before. It looked out over the dark yard outside, the White Tower glowering against the sky. A big fireplace dominated the room, carved horribly with crests and initials and names of men who had been kept there so long that they had the time to put their names into stone with pocket knives. His own crest was there, carved by his brother and his father, who had worked the stone while waiting for their sentence, and had scratched their names while the scaffold was built outside their window.

The months in prison were starting to leave a mark on him. His skin was pallid, whiter even than winter-pale, he had not been allowed to walk in the garden since the rebellion. His eyes were set deeper in their sockets than when he had been the favored son of the most powerful man in England. But his linen was clean and his cheeks were shaved and his hair was shiny and silky, and my heart still turned over at the sight of him, even while I hung back and tried to see him for what he was: a traitor and a man condemned to death, waiting for the day of his execution.

He read my face in one quick glance. “Displeased with me, Mistress Boy?” he demanded. “Have I offended you?”

I shook my head. “No, my lord.”

He came closer and though I could smell the clean leather of his boots and the warm perfume of his velvet jacket, I leaned away from him.

He put his hand under my chin and turned my face up. “You’re unhappy,” he remarked. “What is it? Not the betrothed, surely?”

“No,” I said.

“What then? Missing Spain?”

“No.”

“Unhappy at court?” he guessed. “Girls catfighting?”

I shook my head.

“You don’t want to be here? You didn’t want to come?” Then, quickly spotting the little flicker of emotion that went across my face, he said: “Oho! Faithless! You have been turned, Mistress Boy, as often spies are. You have been turned around and now you are spying on me.”

“No,” I said flatly. “Never. I would never spy on you.”

I would have moved away but he put his hands on either side of my face and held me so that I could not get away from him, and he could read my eyes as if I were a broken code.

“You have despaired of my cause and despaired of me and become her servant and not mine,” he accused me. “You love the queen.”

“Nobody could help loving the queen,” I said defensively. “She is a most beautiful woman. She is the bravest woman I have ever known and she struggles with her faith and with the world every day. She is halfway to being a saint.”

He smiled at that. “You’re such a girl,” he said, laughing at me. “You’re always in love with somebody. And so you prefer this queen to me, your true lord.”

“No,” I said. “For here I am, doing your bidding. As I was told. Though it was a stranger who came to me and I did not know if I was safe.”

He shrugged at that. “And tell me, you did not betray me?”

“When?” I demanded, shocked.

“When I asked you to take a message to Lady Elizabeth and to my tutor?”

He could see the horror in my face at the very thought of such a betrayal. “Good God, no, my lord. I did both errands and I told no one.”

“Then how did it all go wrong?” He dropped his hands from my face and turned away. He paced to the window and back to the table that he used for a study desk. He turned at the desk and went to the fireplace. I thought this must be a regular path for him, four steps to his table, four steps to the fireplace, four steps back to the window; no further than this for a man who used to ride out on his horse before he broke his fast, and then hunt all day, and dance with the ladies of the court all night.

“My lord, that’s easily answered. It was Edward Courtenay who told Bishop Gardiner and the plot was discovered,” I said very quietly. “The bishop brought the news to the queen.”

He whirled around. “They let that spineless puppy out of their sight for a moment?”

“The bishop knew that something was being planned. Everyone knew that something was being planned.”

He nodded. “Tom Wyatt was always indiscreet.”

“He will pay for it. They are questioning him now.”

“To discover who else is in the plot?”

“To get him to name the Princess Elizabeth.”

Lord Robert pushed his fists on either side of the window frame, as if he would stretch the stone wide and fly free. “They have evidence against her?”

“Enough,” I said acerbically. “The queen is on her knees right now, praying for guidance. If she decides that it is God’s will that she should sacrifice Elizabeth, she has more than enough evidence.”

“And Jane?”

“The queen is fighting to save her. She has asked Jane to be taught the true faith. She is hoping that she will recant and then she can be forgiven.”

He laughed shortly. “The true faith is it, Mistress Boy?”

I flushed scarlet. “My lord, it’s only how everyone talks at court now.”

“And you with them, my little conversa, my nueva cristiana?”

“Yes, my lord,” I said steadily, meeting his eyes.

“What a bargain to put before a sixteen-year-old girl,” he said. “Poor Jane. Her faith or death. Does the queen want to make a martyr of her cousin?”

“She wants to make converts,” I said. “She wants to save Jane from death and from damnation.”

“And me?” he asked quietly. “Am I to be saved, or am I a brand for the burning, d’you think?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, my lord. But if Queen Mary follows the advice she is given, then every man whose loyalty is questionable will be hanged. Already the soldiers who fought in the rebellion are on the scaffolds at every corner.”

“Then I had better read these books quickly,” he said dryly. “Perhaps a light will dawn for me. What d’you think, Mistress Boy? Did a light dawn for you? You and the true faith, as you call it?”