Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

“Dead?” My voice was so low that Will could not have heard the word, he guessed the meaning from my aghast face.

“Lost,” he said. “Disappeared. Which is probably worse.”

Since I did not know what a lost man might say before he disappeared I never slept more than a few hours every night, waking up with a start at every sound outside the door, thinking that they had come for me. I started to dream of the day they had come for my mother, and between my childhood terror for her and my own fears for myself I was in a sorry state.

Not so the Princess Elizabeth. She might never have heard of John Dee. She lived her life at the court with all the Tudor glamour she could exploit, walking in the garden, eating her dinner in the hall, attending Mass sitting one place behind her sister, and always, always, meeting the glance of the king with an unspoken promise.

Their desire for each other lit up the court. It was an almost palpable heat. When she walked into the room everyone could see him tense like a hound when he hears the hunting horn. When he walked behind her chair she would give a little involuntary shiver, as if the very air between them had caressed the nape of her neck. When they met by accident in the gallery they stood three feet apart, as if neither of them dared to go within arm’s length, and they skirted each other, moving one way and then another as if in a dance to music that only they could hear. If she turned her head to one side he would look at her neck, at the pearl swinging from her earlobe, as if he had never seen such a thing before. When he turned his head she would covertly steal a glance at his profile, and her lips would part in a little sigh as she looked at him. When he helped her down from the saddle of her horse, he held her against him after her feet had touched the ground and the two of them were shaking by the time he released her.

There was not a word spoken between them that the queen could not have heard, there was no caress that anyone could see. The simple proximity of day-to-day life was enough to set them both aflame, his hands on her waist, her hands on his shoulders in a dance, the moment when they stood close, eyes locked. There was no doubt that this woman would escape any punishment while this king was ruling the country. He could barely let her out of his sight, he was not likely to send her to the Tower.

The queen had to watch all this. The queen, worn thin to gauntness, with a flat belly, had to watch her younger sister summon the king by merely raising her plucked eyebrow. The queen had to watch the man she still passionately loved at another woman’s beck and call, and that woman, Elizabeth, the unwanted sister who had stolen Mary’s father, was now seducing her husband.

Queen Mary never showed a flicker of emotion. Not when she leaned from her chair and made a smiling remark to Philip and then realized that he had not even heard her, he was so absorbed in watching Elizabeth dance. Not when Elizabeth brought him a book she was reading and composed a Latin motto for the dedication, extempore before the whole court. Not when Elizabeth sang him a tune which she had written for him, not when Elizabeth challenged him to a race while out hunting, and the two of them outstripped the court and were missing for half an hour. Mary had all the dignity of her mother, Katherine of Aragon, who had seen her own husband besotted by another woman for six long years and for the first three of them had sat on her throne and smiled at them both. Just as her mother had done, Mary smiled at Philip with love and understanding, and smiled at Elizabeth with courtesy; and only I, and the few people who really loved her, would have known that her heart was breaking.

I had a letter from my father in August, asking me when I would join them at Calais. Indeed, I was anxious to go. I could not sleep in England now, the place that I had sought as my home was no longer a haven. I wanted to be with my own people, I wanted to be with my father. I wanted to be far from Bishop Bonner and the smoke of Smithfield.

I went to Elizabeth first. “Princess, my father asks me to join him in Calais, do I have your permission to go?”

Her pretty face scowled at once. Elizabeth was a great collector of servants, she never liked anyone to leave. “Hannah, I have need of you.”

“God bless you, Princess, but I think you are well served,” I said with a smile. “And you did not give me a very warm welcome when I came to you at Woodstock.”

“I was ill then,” she said irritably. “And you were Mary’s spy.”

“I have never spied on anyone,” I said, conveniently forgetting my work for Lord Robert. “The queen sent me to you, as I told you. Now I see that you are respected and well-treated at court, I can leave you, you don’t need me.”

“I shall decide what service I need and what I can do without,” she said at once. “Not you.”

I made my little pageboy bow. “Please, Princess, let me go to my father and my betrothed.”

She was diverted by the thought of my marriage, as I knew she would be. She smiled at me, the true Tudor charm shining through her irritability. “Is that what you are after? Ready to put off your motley and go to find your lover? Do you think you are ready to be a woman, little fool? Have you studied me enough?”

“You would not be my study if I wanted to be a good wife,” I said sharply.

She gave a ripple of laughter. “Thank God, no. But what have you learned from me?”

“How to torment a man to madness, how to make a man follow you without even turning your head, and how to get down from your horse so you press against every inch of him.”

She threw back her head and laughed, a loud genuine laugh. “You’ve learned well,” she said. “I only hope you get as much joy from these skills as I do.”

“But what profit?” I asked.

The glance Elizabeth shot me was one of acute calculation. “Some amusement,” she conceded. “And real profit. You and I have slept safer in our beds because the king is in love with me, Hannah. And my path to the throne has been a little clearer since the most powerful man in the world swore he would support me.”

“You have his promise?” I asked, amazed at her.

She nodded. “Oh, yes. My sister is betrayed more deeply than she knows. Half her country is in love with me, and now her husband too. My advice to you, as you go to your husband, is never to trust him and never love him more than he loves you.”

I shook my head, smiling. “I mean to be a good wife,” I said. “He is a good man. I mean to leave this court and go to him and become a good and steady wife to him.”

“Ah, you can’t be that,” she said bluntly. “You’re not a woman grown yet. You’re afraid of your own power. You’re afraid of his desire. You’re afraid of your own desire. You’re afraid of being a woman.”

I said nothing, though it was the truth.

“Oh, go then, little fool. But when you are bored, and you will be bored, you can come back to me again. I like having you in my service.”

I bowed and took myself off to the queen’s rooms.

The moment I opened the door I knew that there was something wrong. My first thought was that Queen Mary was ill, somehow fatally ill and yet not attended. The room was empty of her women, she was all but alone. The room was gloomy; with the shutters closed, it was cold, as the summer heat did not penetrate the thick walls. She was crouched on the floor, doubled-up, folded over her knees, her forehead pressed on the cold hearthstone at the empty fireside. Only Jane Dormer was with her, seated in the shadows behind her, in stubborn silence. When I went to the queen and knelt before her I saw her face was wet with tears.

“Your Grace!”

“Hannah, he is leaving me,” she said.