Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

“Did they tell you to ask me?” she whispered. “Is he to give me extreme unction? Is it to be tomorrow?”

“No!” I said hastily, cursing myself for making matters worse. “No! I just thought you might want to pray for your safe deliverance from here.”

She turned her head to the arrow-slit window, which showed her a glimpse of grey sky and allowed a breath of cold air. “No,” she said shortly. “Not with the priest that she would send me. She tortured Jane with the prospect of forgiveness, didn’t she?”

“She hoped she would convert,” I said, trying to be fair.

“She offered her life in return for her faith.” Her mouth twisted in contempt. “What a bargain to make with a young girl. Serve her right that Jane had the courage to refuse.” Her eyes darkened again and she turned her face to the counterpane on the bed. “I don’t have that courage. I don’t think like that. I have to live.”

Twice in the time that she was awaiting her trial I went to court, to collect my clothes and to gather news. The first time I briefly saw the queen, who asked me coldly how the prisoner was faring.

“See if you can bring her to a sense of penitence. Only that can save her. Tell her if she confesses I will pardon her and she will escape the block.”

“I will,” I promised. “But can you forgive her, Your Grace?”

She raised her eyes to me and they were filled with tears. “Not in my heart,” she said softly. “But if I can save her from a traitor’s death I will. I would not see my father’s daughter die as a criminal. But she has to confess.”

On my second visit to court the queen was engaged with the council, but I found Will petting a dog on a bench in the great hall.

“Are you not asleep?” I asked.

“Are you not beheaded?” he replied.

“I had to go with her,” I said shortly. “She asked for me.”

“Let’s hope you’re not her last request,” he said dryly. “Happen she’ll eat you for her last meal.”

“Is she to die?” I whispered.

“Certainly,” he said. “Wyatt denied her guilt from his scaffold, but all the evidence convicts her.”

“But he cleared her?” I asked hopefully.

Will laughed. “He cleared all of them. Turns out it was a rebellion of one and we must all have imagined the army. He even cleared Courtenay, who had already confessed! I don’t think Wyatt’s voice will make much odds. And we won’t hear it again. He won’t be repeating himself.”

“Has the queen decided against her?”

“The evidence has decided against her,” he said. “She can’t hang a hundred men and spare their leader. Elizabeth breeds treason like old meat breeds maggots. Not much point swatting flies and leaving the meat rotting in the open.”

“Soon?” I asked, aghast.

“Ask her yourself—” He broke off and nodded to the door to the presence chamber. It swung open and the queen came out. She gave a genuine smile of pleasure to see me and I went forward and dropped to my knee before her.

“Hannah!”

“Your Grace,” I said. “I am glad to see you again.”

A shadow crossed her face. “You have come from the Tower?”

“As you commanded,” I said quickly.

She nodded. “I do not want to know how she does.”

At the cold look in her face I kept my lips together and bowed my head.

She nodded at my obedience. “You can come with me. We are going riding.”

I fell in among her train. There were two or three new faces, ladies and gentlemen, but for a queen’s court they were very soberly dressed, and for young people out on a ride for pleasure, they were very quiet. This had become an uneasy court.

I waited till we were all mounted and riding out of the city to the north, past the beautiful Southampton House and on to the open country, before I brought my horse up alongside the queen.

“Your Grace, may I stay with Elizabeth until…” I broke off. “Until the end?” I concluded.

“Do you love her so much?” she asked bitterly. “Are you hers now?”

“No,” I said. “I pity her, as you would if you would only see her.”

“I won’t see her,” she said firmly. “And I dare not pity her. But yes, you can keep her company. You are a good girl, Hannah, and I don’t forget that we rode into London together on that first day.” She glanced back. The streets of London were very different now, a gibbet on every corner, with a traitor hanging by the neck, and the carrion crows on every rooftop growing fat on good pickings. The stink in the city was like a plague wind, the smell of English treason. “I had great hopes then,” she said shortly. “They will return, I know it.”

“I am sure of it,” I said: empty words.

“When Philip of Spain comes we shall make many changes,” she assured me. “You will see then, things will be better.”

“He is to come soon?”

“This month.”

I nodded. It was the date of Elizabeth’s death sentence. He had sworn he would not come to England while the Protestant princess was alive. She had no more than two dozen days left to live.

“Your Grace,” I said tentatively. “My old master, Robert Dudley, is still in the Tower.”

“I know it,” Queen Mary said quietly. “Along with other traitors. I wish to hear of none of them. Those who have been found guilty must die to keep the country safe.”

“I know you will be just, and I know you will be merciful,” I prompted her.

“I certainly will be just,” she repeated. “But some, Elizabeth among them, have outworn mercy from me. She had better pray that she can receive it from God.”

And she touched her horse’s flank with her whip and the court broke into a canter and there was nothing more to be said.

In the middle of May, the proposed month of the queen’s wedding, as the weather grew warmer, still the scaffold was not built for Elizabeth, still Philip of Spain did not come. Then, one day, there was a sudden change at the Tower. A Norfolk squire and his blue-liveried men marched into the Tower to make it their own. Elizabeth went from door to window, in a frenzy of fear, craning her head at the arrow-slit, peering through the keyhole of the door trying to see what was happening. Finally, she sent me out to ask if he had come to oversee her execution, and she asked the guard on the door if the scaffold was being built on the green. They swore it was not, but she sent me to look. She could trust nobody, she could never be at peace until she saw with her own eyes, and she would not be allowed to see.

“Trust me,” I said briefly.

She caught my hands in her own. “Swear you won’t lie to me,” she said. “I have to know if it is to be today. I have to prepare, I am not ready.” She bit her lip, which was already chapped and sore from a hundred nips. “I’m only twenty, Hannah, I am not ready to die tomorrow.”

I nodded, and went out. The green was empty, there were no sawn planks awaiting a carpenter. She was safe for another day. I stopped at the watergate and fell into conversation with one of the blue-liveried men. The gossip he told me sent me flying back to the princess.

“You’re saved,” I said briefly, coming in through the door of her cramped room. Kat Ashley looked up and made the sign of a cross, the old habit forced out of her by her fear.

Elizabeth, who had been kneeling up at the window, looking out at the circling seagulls, turned around, her face pale, her eyelids red. “What?”

“You’re to be released to Sir Henry Bedingfield,” I said. “And to go with him to Woodstock Palace.”

There was no leap of hope in her face. “And what then?”

“House arrest,” I said.

“I am not declared innocent? I am not received at court?”