Philippa Gregory - The Queen's Fool

The night was too long and the skies too dark for shamefulness. Under Daniel’s cloak we slid our breeches down and coupled with an easy confident delight that started breathless and became ecstasy. I had not known that it could feel like that. Watching other women and men court, even trembling beneath Lord Robert’s touch, I had not known that such pleasure was possible. We parted only to doze and within an hour we woke and moved together again. Only when we saw the sky lighten through the ropes to our left did I drift from arching desire and satisfaction into exhausted sleep.

I woke to a cold morning, and had to scramble into my clothes before the sailors could see what we had been about. At first I could see nothing but the dark outline of the land, and then slowly it became clearer to me. A stolid strong fort guarded the entrance to the harbor. “Fort Risban,” Daniel said, standing behind me so that I could lean back against his warm chest. “Do you see the port beyond?”

I raised myself up a little and giggled like a girl as I felt his body respond to my movement. “Where?” I asked, innocently enough.

He shifted me away from him with a little grunt of discomfort. “You are a coquette,” he said bluntly. “There. Ahead of you. That is the main port and the canals flow from it all around the city, so it is a moated city as well as a walled one.”

As the ship came into port I stayed at the side, watching the features of this town with the sense — familiar to so many of my people — that I would have to start my life over again, and make my home here all over again. These red-tiled rooftops just showing over the strong thickness of the city walls would become familiar to me, the cobbled streets between the high houses would be my routes to and from the baker, from the market, to my house. This strange aroma, the smell of a working port: old fish, the tarry odor of drying nets, the fresh hint of newly sawn wood, the clean tang of salt wind, all this would become the familiar taste on my lips and the perfume of my woolen cape. Soon all this would mean home to me, and in a little while I would cease to wonder how the queen was this morning, whether better or worse, how Elizabeth was faring, waiting patiently as she must surely do, and how my lord was, watching the sun rise from the arrow-slit window of his prison. All of those thoughts and loves and loyalties I must put behind me and greet my new life. I had left the court, I had deserted the queen, I had abandoned Elizabeth and I had taken my leave of the man I adored: my lord. Now I would live for my husband and my father and I would learn to belong to this new family: a husband, three sisters and my mother-in-law.

“My mother is waiting for us.” Daniel’s breath was warm against my hair as he leaned against me at the rail of the ship. I leaned back again and felt his cock stir inside his breeches at my touch and I pressed back, wanton and desiring him once more. I looked to where he was looking and saw her, formidable, arms folded across a broad chest, scrutinizing the deck of the ship as if to see whether her reluctant daughter-in-law had done her duty and arrived this time.

When she saw Daniel she raised a hand in greeting, and I waved back. I was too far away to see her face, but I imagined her carefully schooling her expression.

“Welcome to Calais,” she said to me as we came down the gangplank. Daniel she wordlessly enfolded into an adoring embrace.

He struggled to be free. “I have to see to them unloading the press,” he told her, and went back on board and swung down into the hold. Mrs. Carpenter and I were left alone on the quayside, an island of awkward silence among the men and women bustling around us.

“He found you then,” she said, with no great pleasure.

“Yes,” I said.

“And are you ready to marry him now?”

“Yes.”

“You’ll have to get out of those clothes,” she said. “They’re respectable people in Calais, they won’t like the sight of you in breeches.”

“I know,” I said. “I left in a hurry or I would have changed before I came.”

“That would have been better.”

We were silent again.

“Did you bring your wages?”

“Yes.” I was nettled by her tone. “All of my wages for the last two quarters.”

“It will cost you all of that to buy stockings and gowns and shifts and caps, you will be surprised at the price.”

“It can’t be more expensive than London.”

“Much more,” she said flatly. “So much has to be shipped in from England.”

“Why do we not buy French?” I asked.

She made a little face. “Hardly,” she said, but did not trouble to explain.

Daniel appeared and looked pleased that we were talking. “I think I have everything unloaded,” he said. “Your father is going to stay here with the things while I fetch a wagon.”

“I’ll wait with him,” I said hastily.

“No,” he said. “Go home with Mother, she can show you our house and you can get warm.”

He wanted to ensure that I was comfortable. He did not know that the last thing I wanted to do was to go home with his mother and sit with his sisters and wait for the men to finish their work and come home. “I’ll get the wagon with you then,” I said. “I’m not cold.”

At a glance from his mother he hesitated. “You can’t go to the carter’s yard dressed like that,” she said firmly. “You will shame us all. Wrap your cloak around you and come home with me.”

Home was a pretty enough little house in London Street squashed in beside others in a row near the south gate of the town. The top floor was divided into three bedrooms; Daniel’s three sisters shared the big bed in the room which faced the back of the house, his mother had a tiny room all to herself, and my father had the third. Daniel mostly lived with his tutor, but would sleep on a truckle bed in my father’s room when he stayed overnight. The next floor served as a dining room and sitting room for the family, and the ground floor was my father’s shop facing the street, and at the back a little kitchen and scullery. In the yard behind, Daniel and my father had built and thatched a roof, and the printing press would be reassembled and set up in there.

All three of Daniel’s sisters were waiting to greet us in the living room at the top of the stairs. I was acutely conscious of my travel-stained clothes and dirty face and hands, as I saw them look me up and down and then glance in silence at each other.

“Here are my girls,” their mother said. “Mary, Sarah and Anne.”

The three of them rose like a row of moppets and dipped a curtsey as one, and sat down again. In my pageboy livery I could not curtsey, I made a little bow to them and saw their eyes widen.

“I’ll put the kettle on,” Mrs. Carpenter said.

“I’ll help,” Anne said and dived out of the room. The other two and I regarded each other with silent dislike.

“Did you have a good crossing?” Mary asked.

“Yes, thank you.” The tranced night on the deck and Daniel’s insistent touch seemed to be a long way away now.

“And are you going to marry Daniel now?”

“Mary! Really!” her sister protested.

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t ask. It’s been a long enough betrothal. And if she is to be our sister-in-law we have a right to know.”

“It’s between her and Daniel.”

“It’s a matter for all of us.”

“Yes, I am,” I said, to bring their wrangling to an end.

They turned their bright inquisitive faces toward me. “Indeed,” said Mary. “You’ve left court then?”

“Yes.”

“And will you not go back?” the other one, Sarah, asked.

“No,” I said, keeping the regret from my voice.

“Won’t you find it awfully dull here, after living at court? Daniel said that you were the queen’s companion and spent all the day with her.”