Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

“Occupation?”

“Fool to the queen,” I said.

There was a splashing noise in the room, a childish damp warmth in my breeches, and a shameful stable smell. I had pissed myself for fear. I bowed my head, mortification overlaying my terror.

The clerk raised his head as if alerted by the warm sharp smell. He turned and observed me. “Oh, I can vouch for this girl,” he said as if it were a matter of very little interest.

It was John Dee.

I was beyond recognizing him, beyond wondering how he came to be the bishop’s clerk having been the bishop’s prisoner. I just met his neutral look with the blank eyes of a girl too frightened to think for herself.

“Can you?” asked the bishop doubtfully.

John Dee nodded. “She is a holy fool,” he said. “She once saw an angel in Fleet Street.”

“That must be heretical,” the bishop maintained.

John Dee considered it for a moment, as if it were not a matter of life and death to me. “No, a true vision I think, and Queen Mary thinks the same. She will not be best pleased when she discovers we have arrested her fool.”

That gave the bishop pause. I could see him hesitate. “The queen’s orders to me are to root out heresy wherever I find it, in her household, in the streets, and to show no favor. The girl was arrested with a royal warrant.”

“Oh well, as you wish,” John Dee said negligently.

I opened my mouth to speak but no words came. I could not believe that he would defend me so halfheartedly. Yet here he was, turning his back to me once more and copying my name into the Inquisition’s ledger.

“Details,” Bishop Bonner said.

“Subject was seen to look away at the elevation of the Host on the morning of 27 December,” John Dee read in a clerkly mutter. “Subject asked the queen to show mercy to heretics before the court. Subject is a familiar to Princess Elizabeth. Subject has a knowledge of learning and languages unbecoming in a woman.”

“How d’you plead?” Bishop Bonner asked me.

“I did not look from the elevation of the Host…” I started, my voice weary and hopeless. If John Dee was not going to support me then I was a dead woman on this one charge alone. And once they started to investigate my journey across Europe and the family of my betrothed, I would be identified as a Jew and that would mean the death of me, of my father, of Daniel, of his family, and of their friends, men and women I did not even know, families in London, in Bristol, in York.

“Oh! This is nothing but malice,” John Dee exclaimed impatiently.

“Eh?” the bishop said.

“Malicious complaint,” John Dee said briskly and pushed the ledger away. “Do they really think we have the time for maids’ gossip? We are supposed to be rooting out heresy here, and they bring us the quarrels of waiting maids.”

The bishop glanced at the paper. “Sympathy with heretics?” he queried. “That’s enough for burning.”

John Dee raised his head and smiled confidently at his master. “She’s a holy fool,” he said, laughter in his voice. “It’s her task in life to ask the questions that no sane man would ask. She talks nonsense, she is supposed to talk nonsense, shall we ask her to account for singing fiddle-dee-dee? Billycock sat on billycock hill? I think we should send out a very stiff letter to say that we will not be mocked by nonsensical accusations. We will not be used for the settling of servants’ rivalries. We are hunting out enemies of the faith, not tormenting half-wit girls.”

“Let her go?” the bishop asked, his eyebrows raised.

“Sign here,” John Dee said, sliding a paper across the desk. “Let’s get rid of her and get on with our work. The child is a fool, we would be fools to question her.”

I held my breath.

The bishop signed.

“Take her away,” John Dee said wearily. He swung round in his seat to face me. “Hannah Verde, also known as Hannah the Fool, we are releasing you from an inquiry into heresy. No charge to answer. D’you have wit enough to understand that, child?”

“Yes, sir,” I said very quietly.

John Dee nodded to the jailor. “Release her.”

I pushed myself up from the chair, my legs were still too weak to hold me. The guard slid a hand around my waist and kept me on my feet. “The women in my cell,” I said quietly to John Dee. “One is dying, and the other has had her fingernails ripped out.”

John Dee burst into a crack of laughter as if I had told him the most delightfully bawdy jest, and Bishop Bonner gave forth a great bellow.

“She is priceless!” the bishop shouted. “Anything else I can do for you, fool? Any complaints about your breakfast? About your bed?”

I looked from the red roaring face of the bishop to the twinkling smile of his clerk and shook my head. I bowed my head to the bishop, and to the man I had once been honored to know, and I left them with their bloodstained hands to interrogate innocent people and send them out to be burned.

I did not see how to get back to the court at Greenwich. When they turned me roughly out into the dirty street I wandered around at the back of St. Paul’s and stumbled blindly until I felt I had put a safe distance between the tower’s ominous reaching shadow and my frightened weaving steps. Then I slumped in a doorway like a vagrant and shook, as if I had the ague. A householder shouted at me to clear off and take the plague with me, and I moved on one doorway and collapsed again.

The bright sunshine burned into my face and showed me that it was past midday. After a long time on the cold step, I pushed myself up and walked a short way. I found I was crying like a baby and had to stop once more. Step by step I went on, pausing when my legs buckled underneath me until I found my way to our little shop off Fleet Street and hammered on our neighbor’s door.

“Dear God, what has become of you?”

I managed a twisted smile. “I have a fever,” I said. “I forgot my key, and lost my way. Would you let me in?”

He stepped back from me. In these times of hardship everyone was afraid of infection. “Do you need food?”

“Yes,” I said, too low for pride.

“I will leave you something on the doorstep,” he said. “Here’s the key.”

I took it wordlessly, and staggered to the shop. It turned in the lock and I stepped into the shuttered room. At once the precious scent of printers’ ink and dry paper surrounded me. I stood, inhaling it, the very perfume of heresy, the familiar beloved odor of home.

I heard the scrape and clink of a dish on the doorstep and went to fetch a pie and a little mug of ale. I ate sitting on the floor behind the counter, hidden from the shuttered windows, my back against the warm folios, smelling the perfume of the cured-leather binding.

As soon as I had eaten, I put the bowl back on the doorstep and locked the door. Then I went into my father’s print shop and store room and cleared the volumes from the bottom shelf. I did not want to sleep in my own little trestle bed. I did not even want to sleep in my father’s bed. I wanted to be closer to him than that. I had a superstitious terror that if I went to bed I would be dragged from sleep by Bishop Bonner again, but if I was in hiding with my father’s beloved books then they would keep me safe.

I put myself to sleep on the bottom shelf of his books collection. I tucked a couple of folio volumes under my cheek for a pillow and gathered some French quarto volumes to hold me into the shelf. Like a lost text myself, I curled up in the shape of a G and closed my eyes and slept.

In the morning, when I woke, I was determined on my future. I found a piece of manuscript paper and wrote a letter to Daniel, a letter I thought I would never write.

Dear Daniel,It is time for me to leave the court and England. Please come for me and the printing press at once. If this letter miscarries or I do not see you within a week, I shall come on my own.Hannah