Philippa Gregory: The Queen's Fool

The duke raised one eyebrow at his son. Robert leaned toward me and spoke very quietly.

“Mistress Boy, your own father cannot care for you. He said that in your hearing, d’you remember?”

“Yes, but, my lord, he only meant that I am a trouble to him…”

“Mistress Boy, I think your father is not a good Christian from a good Christian family at all, but a Jew. I think you came from Spain because you were expelled by the Spanish for the sin of Jewishness, and if your neighbors and the good citizens of London knew that you were Jews, you would not last for very long in your new little home.”

“We are Marranos, our family converted years and years ago,” I whispered. “I have been baptized, I am betrothed to marry a young man of my father’s choosing, a Christian Englishman…”

“I wouldn’t go in that direction,” Robert Dudley warned bluntly. “Lead us to that young man and I imagine you lead us to a family of Jews living in the heart of England itself, and from thence to — where did you say? Amsterdam? And then Paris?”

I opened my mouth to deny it, but I could not speak for fear.

“All forbidden Jews, all pretending to be Christians. All lighting a candle on Friday night, all avoiding pork, all living with the noose around their necks.”

“Sir!”

“They all helped and guided you here, didn’t they? All Jews, all practicing a forbidden religion in secret, all helping one another. A secret network, just as the most fearful of Christians claim.”

“My lord!”

“Do you really want to be the key that leads this most Christian king to seek you out? Don’t you know that the reformed church can light a pyre just as bright as the Papists? Do you want to pile your family on it? And all their friends? Have you ever smelled roasting human flesh?”

I was shaking in terror, my throat so dry that I could say nothing. I just looked at him and I knew my eyes were black with fear and he would see the sheen of sweat on my forehead.

“I know. You know. Your father knows he cannot keep you safe. But I can. Enough. I won’t say another word.”

He paused. I tried to speak but all I could manage was a little croak of terror. Robert Dudley nodded at the craven depth of my fear. “Now, luckily for you, your Sight has won you the safest and highest place that you might dream of. Serve the king well, serve our family well and your father is safe. Fail us in any one thing and he is tossed in a blanket till his eyes fall backward in his head, and you are married to a red-faced chapel-going Luther-reading pig herder. You can choose.”

There was the briefest of moments. Then the Duke of Northumberland waved me away. He did not even wait for me to make my choice. He did not need the Sight to know what my choice would have to be.

“And you are to live at court?” my father confirmed.

We were eating our dinner, a small pie brought in from the bakehouse at the end of the street. The unfamiliar taste of English pastry stuck at the back of my throat, my father forced down gravy that was flavored with bacon rinds.

“I am to sleep with the maidservants,” I said glumly. “And wear the livery of the king’s pages. I am to be his companion.”

“It’s better than I could have provided for you,” my father said, trying to be cheerful. “We won’t make enough money to pay the rent on this house next quarter, unless Lord Robert orders some more books.”

“I can send you my wages,” I offered. “I am to be paid.”

He patted my hand. “You’re a good girl,” he said. “Never forget that. Never forget your mother, never forget that you are one of the children of Israel.”

I nodded, saying nothing. I saw him spoon a little of the contaminated gravy and swallow it down.

“I am to go to the palace tomorrow,” I whispered. “I am to start at once. Father…”

“I will come to the gate and see you every evening,” he promised. “And if you are unhappy or they treat you badly we will run away. We can go back to Amsterdam, we can go to Turkey. We will find somewhere, querida. Have courage, daughter. You are one of the Chosen.”

“How will I keep the fast days?” I demanded in sudden grief. “They will make me work on the Sabbath. How will I say the prayers? They will make me eat pork!”

He met my gaze and then he bowed his head. “I shall keep the law for you here,” he said. “God is good. He understands. You remember what that German scholar said? That God allows us to break the laws rather than lose our lives. I will pray for you, Hannah. And even if you are praying on your knees in the Christian chapel God still sees you and hears your prayer.”

“Father, Lord Robert knows who we are. He knows why we left Spain. He knows who we are.”

“He said nothing directly to me.”

“He threatened me. He knows we are Jews and he said that he would keep our secret as long as I obey him. He threatened me.”

“Daughter, we are safe nowhere. And you at least are under his patronage. He swore to me that you would be safe in his household. Nobody would question one of his servants. Nobody would question the king’s own fool.”

“Father, how could you let me go? Why did you agree that they could take me away from you?”

“Hannah, how could I stop them?”

In the lime-washed room under the eaves of the palace roof I turned over the pile of my new clothes and read the inventory from the office of the Master of the Household:

Item: one pageboy livery in yellow.

Item: one pair of hose, dark red.

Item: one pair of hose, dark green.

Item: one surcoat, long.

Item: two linen shirts for wearing underneath.

Item: two pairs of sleeves, one pair red, one pair green.

Item: one black hat.

Item: one black cloak for riding.

Item: pair of slippers fit for dancing.

Item: pair of boots fit for riding.

Item: pair of boots fit for walking.

Everything used but clean and darned and delivered to the king’s fool, Hannah Green.

“I shall look a fool indeed.”

That night I whispered an account of my day to my father as he stood at the postern gate and I leaned against the doorway, half in, half out. “There are two fools at court already, a dwarf called Thomasina, and a man called Will Somers. He was kind to me, and showed me where I should sit, beside him. He is a witty man, he made everyone laugh.”

“And what do you do?”

“Nothing as yet. I have thought of nothing to say.”

My father glanced around. In the darkness of the garden an owl hooted, almost like a signal.

“Can you think of something? Won’t they want you to think of something?”

“Father, I cannot make myself see things, I cannot command the Sight. It just comes or it does not.”

“Did you see Lord Robert?”

“He winked at me.” I leaned back against the cold stone and drew my warm new cloak around my shoulders.

“The king?”

“He was not even at dinner. He was sick, they sent his food to his rooms. They served a great dinner as if he were at the table but they sent a little plate to his rooms for him. The duke took his place at the head of the table, all but sitting on the throne.”

“And does the duke have his eye on you?”

“He did not seem to see me at all.”

“Has he forgotten you?”

“Ah, he doesn’t have to look to know who is where, and what they are doing. He will not have forgotten me. He is not a man who forgets anything.”

The duke had decided that there was to be a masque at Candlemas and gave it out as the king’s command, so we all had to wear special costumes and learn our lines. Will Somers, the king’s fool who had come to court twenty years ago when he was a boy the same age as me, was to introduce the piece and recite a rhyme, the king’s choristers were to sing, and I was to recite a poem, specially composed for the occasion. My costume was to be a new livery, specially made for me in the fool’s color of yellow. My hand-me-down livery was too tight on my chest. I was that odd androgynous thing, a girl on the threshold of being a woman. One day, in a certain light, as I turned my head before the mirror I could see the glimpse of a stranger, a beauty. Another day I was as plain as a slate.