Philippa Gregory - The Queen’s Fool

He saw my eyes run down the page. There was only one thing I was looking for and it was how long this system would last. There were enough sentences to translate as many as a dozen letters; he was sending me away for weeks.

“I have to write in code?” I asked nervously.

His warm hand covered my cold fingers. “Only to prevent gossip,” he said reassuringly. “So that we can write privately to one another.”

“How long do I have to stay away?” I whispered.

“Oh, not for so very long.”

“Will you reply to me?”

He shook his head. “Only if I need to ask you something, and if I do, I will use this almanac also. My first letter will be the first twenty-six characters, my second the next set. Don’t keep my letters to you, burn them as soon as you have read them. And don’t make copies of yours to me.”

I nodded.

“If anyone finds this letter it is just something you brought from your father to me and forgot.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Do you promise to do this exactly as I ask?”

“Yes,” I said miserably. “When do I have to go?”

“Within three days,” the duke said from his place behind the table. “There’s a cart going to the Lady Mary with some goods for her. You can ride alongside that. You shall have one of my ponies, girl, and you can keep her at Lady Mary’s house for your return. And if something should happen that you think threatens me or Lord Robert, something very grave indeed, you can ride to warn us at once. Will you do that?”

“Why, what should threaten you?” I asked the man who ruled England.

“I shall be the one that wonders what might threaten me. You shall be the one to warn me if it does. You are to be Robert’s eyes and ears at the house of the Lady Mary. He tells me that he can trust you; make sure that he can.”

“Yes, sir,” I said obediently.

Lord Robert said that I might send for my father to say good-bye to him and he came downriver to Greenwich Palace in a fishing smack on the ebbing tide, with Daniel seated beside him.

“You!” I said without any enthusiasm, when I saw him help my father from the bobbing boat.

“Me,” he replied with the glimmer of a smile. “Constant, aren’t I?”

I went to my father and felt his arms come around me. “Oh, Papa,” I whispered in Spanish. “I wish we had never come to England at all.”

“Querida, has someone hurt you?”

“I have to go to the Lady Mary and I am afraid of the journey, and afraid of living at her house, I am afraid of…” I broke off, tasting the many lies on my tongue and realizing that I would never be able to tell anyone the truth about myself ever again. “I am just being foolish, I suppose.”

“Daughter, come home to me. I will ask Lord Robert to release you, we can close the shop, we can leave England. You are not trapped here…”

“Lord Robert himself asked me to go,” I said simply. “And I already said I would.”

His gentle hand caressed my cropped hair. “Querida, you are unhappy?”

“I am not unhappy,” I said, finding a smile for him. “I am being foolish. For look, I am being sent to live with the heir to the throne, and Lord Robert himself has asked me to go.”

He was only partly reassured. “I shall be here, and if you send for me I shall come to you. Or Daniel will come and fetch you away. Won’t you, Daniel?”

I turned in my father’s arms to look at my betrothed. He was leaning against the wooden railing that ran around the jetty. He was waiting patiently, but he was pale and he was scowling with anxiety.

“I would rather fetch you away now.”

My father released me and I took a step toward Daniel. Behind him, bobbing at the jetty, their boat was waiting for them. I saw the swirl of water and saw the tide was ready to turn; we could go upstream almost at once. He had timed this moment very carefully.

“I have agreed to go to serve Lady Mary,” I said quietly to him.

“She is a Papist in a Protestant country,” he said. “You could not have chosen a place where your faith and practices will be more scrutinized. It is me who is named for Daniel, not you. Why should you go into the very den of lions? And what are you to do for Lady Mary?”

He stepped closer to me so we could whisper.

“I am to be her companion, be her fool.” I paused and decided to tell him the truth. “I am to spy for Lord Robert and his father.”

His head was so close to mine that I could feel the warmth of his cheek against my forehead as he leaned closer to speak into my ear.

“Spy on Lady Mary?”

“Yes.”

“And you have agreed?”

I hesitated. “They know that Father and I are Jews,” I said.

He was silent for a moment. I felt the solidity of his chest against my shoulder. His arm came around my waist to hold me closer to him and I felt the warmth of his grip. A rare sense of safety came over me as he held me, and for a moment I stood still.

“They are going to act against us?”

“No.”

“But you are a hostage.”

“In a way. It feels more as if Lord Robert knows my secret and trusts me with his. I feel bound to him.”

He nodded for a moment, I craned my neck to look up into his scowling face. For a moment I thought he was angry then I realized that he was thinking hard. “Does he know my name?” he demanded. “Of my mother, of my sisters? Are we all at risk?”

“He knows I am betrothed, but not of you by name. And he knows nothing of your family,” I said, with quick pride. “I have not brought danger to your door.”

“No, you keep it all to yourself,” he said with a brief unhappy smile. “And if you were questioned you could not keep it secret for long.”

“I would not betray you,” I said quickly.

His face was troubled. “No one can remain silent on the rack, Hannah. A pile of stones will crush the truth out of most people.” He looked down the river over my head. “Hannah, I should forbid you to go.”

He felt my instantaneous move of disagreement. “Don’t quarrel with me for nothing, for clumsy words,” he said quickly. “I did not mean forbid like a master. I meant I should beg you not to go – is that better? This road leads straight into danger.”

“I am in danger whatever I do,” I said. “And this way, Lord Robert will protect me.”

“But only while you do his bidding.”

I nodded. I could not tell him that I had volunteered to walk into this danger, and I would have risked worse for love of Lord Robert.

Gently he released me. “I am sorry you are here, and unprotected,” he said. “If you had sent for me I would have come sooner. This is a burden that you shouldn’t have to bear alone.”

I thought of the terror of my childhood, of my wild apprenticeship in fear on our flight through Europe. “It is my burden.”

“But you have kin now, you have me,” he said with the pride of a young man made head of his family too young. “I shall bear your burdens for you.”

“I bear my own,” I said stubbornly.

“Oh yes, you are your own woman. But if you would condescend to send for me if you are in danger, I would come and perhaps be allowed to help you escape.”

I giggled at that. “I promise that I will.” I held out my hand to him in a gesture which suited my boy’s clothing. But he took my hand and drew me close to him again and bent his head. Very gently he kissed me, full on the lips, and I felt the warmth of his mouth on mine.

He released me and stepped back to the boat. I found I was slightly dizzy, as if I had gulped down strong wine. “Oh, Daniel!” I breathed, but he was climbing into the boat and did not hear me. I turned to my father and caught him hiding his smile.

“God bless you, daughter, and bring you home safe to us,” he said quietly. I knelt on the wooden pier for my father’s blessing and felt his hand come down on my head in the familiar, beloved caress. He took my hands and raised me up. “He is an attractive young man, isn’t he?” he demanded, a chuckle behind his voice. Then he wrapped his cape around himself and went down the steps to the fishing smack.

They cast off and the little boat traveled swiftly across the darkening water, leaving me alone on the wooden pier. The mist hanging on the river and the gathering dark hid their silhouette, and all I could hear was the splash of the oars and the creak of the rowlocks. Then that sound was gone too and all that was left was the smack and suck of the rising tide and the quiet whistle of the wind.

Lady Mary was at her house at Hunsdon, in the county of Hertford-shire. It took us three days to get to her, riding northward out of London, on a winding road through muddy valleys and then climbing arduously through hills called the North Weald, journeying some of the way with another band of travelers, and staying overnight on the road, once at an inn, once at a grand house that had been a monastery and was now in the hands of the man who had cleansed it of heresy at some profit to himself. These days they could offer us no rooms better than a hayloft over the stable, and the carter complained that in the old days this had been a generous house of good monks where any traveler might be sure of a good dinner and a comfortable bed, and a prayer to help him on his way. He had stayed here once when his son had been sick nearly to death and the monks had taken him into their care and nursed him back to health with their own herbs and skills. They had charged him not a penny, but said that they were doing the work of God by serving poor men. The same story could have been told up and down the country at every great monastery or abbey on the roads. But now all the religious houses were in the possession of the great lords, the men of court who had made their fortunes by advising that the world would be a better place if wealth was stripped from the English church and poured into their own pockets. Now the feeding of the poor at the monastery gates, the making of free medicines in the nunnery hospitals, the teaching of the children and the care of the old people of the village had gone the way of the beautiful statues, the illuminated manuscripts, and the great libraries.