Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

“Your Grace, I shall be so pleased to bear you company.”

“A spring baby,” she said dreamily. “A little spring lamb of God. Won’t that be wonderful, Hannah? An heir for England and for Spain.”

It was like traveling to another country to leave Whitehall for Woodstock. I left a happy court, filled with amusements, exulting in optimism, waiting for an heir; and arrived at a small prison, victualed and managed by Elizabeth’s old servants who were not even allowed in the ramshackle gatehouse to serve her, but had to do all their business in the tap room of the nearby inn, where they dealt with some very odd customers indeed.

At Woodstock I found Elizabeth very ill. No one could have doubted her frailty. She was in bed, exhausted and fat, she looked years older than twenty-one. She looked older than her older sister. I thought that her earlier taunts about her youth and beauty and the queen’s sterile age had rebounded most cruelly on her this autumn when she was swollen up, as fat as old Anne of Cleves, and the queen was blooming like Ceres. With her jowls bloated by illness Elizabeth bore a startling resemblance to the portraits of her father in his later years. It was a horror to see her girlish prettiness change into his gross features. The clear line of her jaw had disappeared into rolls of fat, her eyes were occluded by the red eyelids, her pretty rosebud mouth was hidden by the fat flesh of her cheeks and the grooved lines running from nose to chin.

Even her beautiful hands were fat. She had laid her rings aside, they would not go on her fingers, the very fingernails were half hidden by the monstrous growth of the flesh.

I waited till the physicians had seen her and bled her and she had rested before I went into her bed chamber. She threw me one resentful look and lay still on her bed, saying nothing. Kat Ashley flicked out of the door and stood on the outside to guard us from eavesdroppers. “Don’t be too long,” she said as she went past me. “She’s very weak.”

“What is wrong with her?” I whispered.

She shrugged. “They don’t know. They have never known. It is an illness of water, she swells with water and cannot rid herself of it. But she is worse when she is unhappy, and they have made her very unhappy here.”

“Lady Elizabeth,” I said and dropped to my knees by the bed.

“Faithless,” she said, hardly opening her eyes.

I had to choke back a giggle at her irresistible tendency to drama. “Oh, my lady,” I said reproachfully. “You know I have to go where I am bid. You must remember that I came to you in the Tower when I need not have come at all.”

“I know you went dancing off to Winchester for the wedding and I have not seen you since.” Her voice rose to match her temper.

“The queen commanded me to go with her to London and now she has sent me to you. And I bring a message.”

She raised herself a little on her pillows. “I am almost too sick to listen, so tell me briefly. Am I to be released?”

“If you will admit your fault.”

Her dark eyes flared under the puffy eyelids. “Tell me exactly what she said.”

As precisely as a clerk I recited to her what the queen had offered. I spared her nothing, not the news of the pregnancy, her sister’s sadness at Elizabeth’s resentment, her willingness to be friends again.

I had thought she would rage when she heard the queen was with child, but she did not even comment. I realized then that she had known the news before I told her. In that case, she had a spy so well positioned that he or she knew a secret I had thought was known only to the king, the queen, Jane Dormer and me. Elizabeth, like a cornered dog, should never be underestimated.

“I will think about what you have told me,” she said, following her usual instinct to buy time. “Are you to stay with me? Or take an answer back to her?”

“I am not to go back to court until Christmas,” I said. Temptingly, I added: “If you were to beg her forgiveness perhaps you could be at the court for Christmas. It’s very gay now, Princess, the court is filled with handsome grandees and there is dancing every night and the queen is merry.”

She turned her head away from me. “I should not dance with a Spaniard even if I were to go.” She considered the picture for a moment. “They could throng around me and beg me to dance and I would not get to my feet.”

“And you would be the only princess,” I reminded her persuasively. “The only princess in court. If you refused to dance they would all gather round you. And there would be new gowns. You would be the only virgin princess in England, at the greatest court in the world.”

“I’m not a child to tempt with toys,” she said with quiet dignity. “And I am not a fool. You can go now, Hannah, you have served her and done her bidding. But for the rest of your stay here you shall serve me.”

I nodded and rose to my feet. For a moment I hesitated; she did look so very sick as she lay on her bed facing the prospect of either a confession to treason or an unending imprisonment and disgrace. “God guide your ladyship,” I said with sudden compassion. “God guide you, Princess Elizabeth, and bring you safely out of here.”

She closed her eyes and I saw her eyelashes were darkened with tears. “Amen,” she whispered.

She did not do it. She would not confess. She knew that her stubbornness would condemn her to stay at Woodstock perhaps forever, and she feared that her health would not outlast the queen’s resentment. But to confess was to throw herself into the queen’s power absolutely, and she would not do that. She mistrusted Mary’s mercy, and the relentless Tudor stubbornness drove both sisters. Mary had been named as heir, and then named as bastard, and then made heir again. Exactly the same ordeal had been endured by Elizabeth. Both of them had decided never to surrender, always to claim their birthright, never to despair that the crown would come. Elizabeth would not relinquish the habit of a lifetime, not even for a chance to shine at a wealthy happy court and be received with honor. She might or might not be guilty, but she would never confess.

“What am I to tell the queen?” I asked her at the end of a long week. The physicians had declared her on the way to health once more, they could take a message back to court for me. If Elizabeth continued to mend she could have ridden in triumph to court for Christmas, if only she would confess.

“You can tell her a riddle,” Elizabeth said with feeble malice. She was seated in a chair, a pillow thrust behind her back to support her, a blanket wrapped around a hot brick under her cold feet.

I waited.

“You are a rhyming fool, are you not?”

“No, Princess,” I said quietly. “As you know, I have no fooling skills.”

“Then I will teach you a rhyme,” she said savagely. “You can write it to the queen if you wish. You can engrave it on every damned window in this hellhole if you wish.” She smiled grimly at me. “It goes like this:

“Much suspected of me Nothing proved can be Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner.

“Don’t you think that is neat?”

I bowed and went to write my letter to the queen.

We waited, Christmas came and went and there was no joy for me either as I was ordered to stay with Elizabeth until she begged for forgiveness. It was freezing cold at Woodstock, there was not a window that did not direct a draft into the room, there was not a fire that did not smoke. The linen on the beds was always damp, the very floorboards underfoot were wet to the touch. It was a malevolent house in winter. I had been in good health when I arrived, and yet even I could feel myself growing weak from the relentless cold and the darkness, late dawns and early twilights. For Elizabeth, already exhausted by her ordeal in the Tower, always quick to go from anxiety to illness, the house was a killer.