Philippa Gregory: The Queen's Fool

The Master of the Revels gave me a little sword and ordered that Will and I should prepare for a fight, which would fit somewhere into the story of the masque.

We met for our first practice in one of the antechambers off the great hall. I was awkward and unwilling, I did not want to learn to fight with swords like a boy, I did not want to be the butt of jokes by taking a public beating. No man at court but Will Somers could have persuaded me to it, but he treated our lesson as if he had been hired to improve my understanding of Greek. He behaved as if it was a skill I needed to learn, and he wanted me to learn well.

He started with my stance. Resting his hands on my shoulders, he gently smoothed them down, took my chin and raised it up. “Hold your head high, like a princess,” he said. “Have you ever seen Lady Mary slouch? Ever seen Lady Elizabeth drop her head? No. They walk as if they are princesses born and bred; dainty like a pair of goats.”

“Goats?” I asked, trying to raise my head without hunching up my shoulders.

Will Somers grinned at the laborious unfolding of the jest. “Up one minute, down the next,” he said. “Heir one moment, bastard the next. Up the mountain and down again. Princesses and goats, all alike. You must stand like a princess, and dance like a goat.”

“I have seen the Lady Elizabeth,” I volunteered.

“Have you?”

“Once, when I was a little girl. My father brought me on a visit to London and I had to deliver some books to Admiral Lord Seymour.”

Will put a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Least said, soonest mended,” he advised quietly. Then he slapped his forehead and gave me his merry smile. “Here am I, telling a woman to mind her tongue! Fool that I am!”

The lesson went on. He showed me the swordsman’s stance, hand on my hip for balance, how to slide forward with my leading foot always on the floor so that I should not trip or fall, how to move behind the sword and to let it retreat to me. Then we started on the feints and passes.

Will first commanded me to stab at him. I hesitated. “What if I hit you?”

“Then I shall take a splinter, not a deadly cut,” he pointed out. “It’s only wood, Hannah.”

“Get ready then,” I said nervously and lunged forward.

To my amazement Will sidestepped me and was at my side, his wooden sword to my throat. “You’re dead,” he said. “Not so good at foresight after all.”

I giggled. “I’m no good at this,” I admitted. “Try again.”

This time I lunged with a good deal more energy and caught the hem of his coat as he flicked to one side.

“Excellent,” he said breathlessly. “And again.”

We practiced until I could make a convincing stab at him and then he started to lunge at me and teach me to drop to one side or the other. Then he rolled out a thick carpet on the floor and showed me how to turn head over heels.

“Comical,” he announced, sitting upright, his legs entwined like a child seated to read a book.

“Not very,” I said.

“Ah, you’re a holy fool, not a jester,” he said. “You have no sense of the laughable.”

“I have,” I said, stung. “It’s just that you are not funny.”

“I have been the most comical man in England for nearly twenty years,” he insisted. “I came to court when Henry loved Anne Boleyn and once boxed my ears for jesting against her. But the joke was on her, later. I was the funniest man in England before you were born.”

“Why, how old are you?” I asked, looking into his face. The laughter lines were deeply engraved on either side of his mouth, crow’s feet by his eyes. But he was lithe and lanky as a boy.

“As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth,” he said.

“No, really.”

“I am thirty-three. Why, d’you want to marry me?”

“Not at all. Thank you.”

“You would wed the wittiest fool in the world.”

“I would rather not marry a fool.”

“Now that is inevitable. A wise man is a bachelor.”

“Well, you don’t make me laugh,” I said provocatively.

“Ah, you’re a girl. Women have no sense of the ludicrous.”

“I have,” I insisted.

“It is well known that women, not being in the image of God, can have no sense of what is funny and what is not.”

“I have! I have!”

“Of course women do not!” he triumphed. “For why else would a woman ever marry a man? Have you ever seen a man when he desires a woman?”

I shook my head. Will put the wooden sword between his legs and made a little rush to one side of the room and then the other. “He can’t think, he can’t speak, he can’t command his thoughts or his wishes, he runs everywhere behind his cock like a hound behind a scent, all he can do is howl. How-oww-oww-owwl!”

I was laughing out loud as Will raced around the room, straining backward as if to restrain his wooden sword, leaning back as if to take the weight of it. He broke off and smiled at me. “Of course women have no wit,” he said. “Who with any wit would ever have a man?”

“Well, not I,” I said.

“God bless you and keep you a virgin then, Maid-Boy. But how shall you get a husband if you will not have a man?”

“I don’t want one.”

“Then you are a fool indeed. For without a husband how shall you have a living?”

“I shall make my own.”

“Then again you are a fool, for the only living you can make is from fooling. That makes you a fool three times over. Once for not wanting a husband, twice for making a living without him, and thrice since the living you make is from fooling. At least I am just a fool, but you are a triple fool.”

“Not at all!” I rejoined, falling in with the rhythm of his speech. “Because you have been a fool for years, you have been a fool for two generations of kings, and I have only been one for a few weeks.”

He laughed at that and slapped me on the shoulder. “Take care, Maid-Boy, or you will not be a holy fool but a witty fool and I tell you, clowning and jesting every day is harder work than saying something surprising once a month.”

I laughed at the thought of my work being to say something surprising once a month.

“Up and at it!” Will Somers said, pulling me to my feet. “We have to plan how you are going to murder me amusingly by Candlemas.”

We had our sword dance planned in good time and it did seem very funny. At least two practices ended in us both having fits of giggles as we mistimed a lunge and cracked heads together, or both feinted at the same time, and fell backward, and toppled over. But one day the Master of the Revels put his head into the room and said: “You won’t be needed. The king is not having a masque.”

I turned with the play-sword still in my hand. “But we’re all ready!”

“He’s sick,” the Master said dourly.

“And is the Lady Mary still coming to court?” Will asked, pulling on his jerkin against the cold draught of air whistling in through the open door.

“Said to be,” the Master said. “She’ll get better rooms and a better cut of the meat this time, don’t you think, Will?”

He shut the door before Will could reply, and so I turned and asked, “What does he mean?”

Will’s face was grave. “He means that those of the court who move toward the heir and away from the king will be making their move now.”

“Because?”

“Because flies swarm to the hottest dung heap. Plop, plop, buzz.”

“Will? What d’you mean?”

“Ah, child. Lady Mary is the heir. She will be queen if we lose the king, God bless him, poor lad.”

“But she’s a heret—”

“Of the Catholic faith,” he corrected me smoothly.

“And King Edward…”

“His heart will break to leave the kingdom to a Catholic heir but he can do nothing about it. It’s how King Henry left it. God bless him, he must be rolling in his shroud to see it come to this. He thought that King Edward would grow to be a strong and merry man and have half a dozen little princes in the nursery. It makes you think, doesn’t it? Is England ever to get any peace? Two young lusty kings: Henry’s father, Henry himself, handsome as the sun, each of them, lecherous as sparrows, and they leave us with nothing but a lad as weak as a girl, and an old maid to come after him?”