Philippa Gregory - The Queen’s Fool

However united the queen and her sister had appeared when Elizabeth had kneeled before her, the Lady Elizabeth continued to carry her brother’s prayer book on a little chain at her waist, was never seen except in the soberest of gowns, and rarely appeared at Mass. She could not have shown the world more plainly that she was the Protestant alternative to the queen to whom she had just sworn lifelong loyalty. As ever, with Elizabeth, there was nothing that the queen could specifically criticize, it was the very air of her: the way she always set herself slightly apart, the way she always seemed to carry herself as if she, regretfully, could not wholly agree.

After several days of this the queen sent a brisk message to Elizabeth that she was expected to attend Mass, with the rest of the court, in the morning. A reply came as we were preparing to leave the queen’s presence chamber. The queen, putting out her hand for her missal, turned her head to see one of Elizabeth’s ladies in waiting standing in the doorway with a message from Lady Elizabeth.

“She begs to be excused today, and says she is not well.”

“Why, what is the matter with her?” the queen asked a little sharply. “She was well enough yesterday.”

“She is sick in her stomach, she is in much pain,” the lady replied. “Her lady in waiting, Mrs. Ashley, says she is not well enough to go to Mass.”

“Tell Lady Elizabeth that I expect her at my chapel this morning, without fail,” the Lady Mary said calmly as she turned back to her lady in waiting and took her missal; but I saw her hands shaking as she turned the pages to find the place.

We were on the threshold of the Lady Mary’s apartments, the guard just about to fling open the door so that we could walk along the gallery filled with well-wishers, spectators and petitioners, when one of Elizabeth’s other ladies slipped in through a side door.

“Your Grace,” she whispered, poised with a message.

The queen did not even turn her head. “Tell Lady Elizabeth that I expect to see her at Mass,” she said and nodded to the guard. He flung open the door and we heard the little gasp of awe that greeted the queen wherever she went. The people dropped into curtseys and bows and she went through them, her cheeks blazing with two spots of red which meant that she was angry, and the hand which held her coral rosary beads trembling.

Lady Elizabeth came late into Mass, we heard her sigh as she crept through the crowded gallery, almost doubled-up with discomfort. There was a mutter of concern for the young girl, crippled with pain. She slipped into the pew behind the queen and we heard her loud whisper to one of her ladies: “Martha, if I faint, can you hold me up?”

The queen’s attention was on the priest who celebrated the Mass with his back to her, his entire attention focused on the bread and wine before him. To Mary, as to the priest, it was the only moment of the day that had any true significance; all the rest was worldly show. Of course, the rest of us sinners could hardly wait for the worldly show to recommence.

Lady Elizabeth left the church in the queen’s train, holding her belly and groaning. She could hardly walk, her face was as deathly white as if she had powdered it with rice powder. The queen stalked ahead, her expression grim. When she reached her apartments she ordered the doors shut on the public gallery to close out the murmurs of concern at Lady Elizabeth’s pallor and her enfeebled progress and the cruelty of the queen insisting on such an invalid attending Mass when she was so very ill.

“That poor girl should be abed,” one woman said clearly to the closing door.

“Indeed,” the queen said to herself.

It was as dark as midnight, though it was still only six in the evening, the mist peeling like a black shroud off the corpse of the cold river. The smell in my nostrils was the scent of despair from the massive wet weeping walls of the Tower of London, surely the most gloomy palace that any monarch ever built. I presented myself to the postern gate and the guard held up a flaming torch to see my white face.

“A young lad,” he concluded.

“I’ve got books to deliver to Lord Robert,” I said.

He withdrew the torch and the darkness flooded over me, then the creak of the hinges warned me that he was opening the gate outward and I stepped back to let the big wet timbers swing open, and then I stepped forward to go in.

“Let me see them,” he said.

I proffered the books readily enough. They were works of theology defending the Papist point of view, licensed by the Vatican and authorized by the queen’s own council.

“Go through,” the guard said.

I walked on the slippery cobblestones to the guardhouse, and from there along a causeway, the rank mud shining in the moonlight on either side, and then up a flight of wooden steps to the high doorway in the fortress wall of the white tower. If there was an attack or a rescue attempt, the soldiers inside could just kick the outside steps away, and they were unreachable. No one could get my lord out.

Another soldier was waiting in the doorway. He led me inside and then rapped at an inner door and swung it open to admit me.

At last I saw him, my Lord Robert, leaning over his papers, a candle at his elbow, the golden light shining on his dark head, on his pale skin, and then the slow-dawning radiance of his smile.

“Mistress Boy! Oh! My Mistress Boy!”

I dropped to one knee. “My lord!” was all I could say before I burst into tears.

He laughed, pulled me to my feet, put his arm around my shoulders, wiped my face, all in one dizzying caress. “Come now, child, come now. What’s wrong?”

“It’s you!” I gulped. “You being here. And you look so…” I could not bear to say “pale,” “ill,” “tired,” “defeated,” but all those words were true. “Imprisoned,” I found at last. “And your lovely clothes! And… and what’s going to happen now?”

He laughed as if none of it mattered, and led me over to the fire, seated himself on a chair and pulled up a stool so that I was facing him, like a favorite nephew. Timidly, I reached forward and put my hands on his knees. I wanted to touch him to be sure that he was real. I had dreamed of him so often, and now he was here before me; unchanged but for the deep lines scored on his face by defeat and disappointment.

“Lord Robert…” I whispered.

He met my gaze. “Yes, little one,” he said softly. “It was a great gamble and we lost, and the price we will pay is a heavy one. But you’re not a child; you know that it’s not an easy world. I will pay the price when I have to.”

“Will they…?” I could not bear to ask him if it was his own death that he was facing with this indomitable smile.

“Oh, I should think so,” he said cheerfully. “Very soon. I would, if I were the queen. Now tell me the news. We don’t have much time.”

I pulled my stool a little closer, marshaling my thoughts. I did not want to tell him the news, which was all bad, I wanted to look into his drawn face, and touch his hand. I wanted to tell him that I had longed to see him, and that I had written him letter after letter in the code which I knew he would have lost, and sent them all into the flames of the fire.

“Come on,” he said eagerly. “Tell me everything.”

“The queen is considering if she should marry, you’ll know that, I suppose,” I said, low-voiced. “And she has been ill. They have proposed one man after another. The best choice is Philip of Spain. The Spanish ambassador tells her that it will be a good marriage but she is afraid. She knows she cannot rule alone but she is afraid of a man ruling over her.”

“But she will go ahead?”

“She might withdraw. I can’t tell. She is half sick with fear at the thought of it. She is afraid of having a man in her bed, and afraid for her throne without one.”

“And Lady Elizabeth?”

I glanced at the thick wooden door and dropped my low voice to an even quieter murmur. “She and the queen cannot agree these days,” I said. “They started very warmly, Lady Mary wanted Elizabeth at her side all the time, acknowledged her as her heir; but they cannot live happily together now. Lady Elizabeth is no longer the little girl of the queen’s teaching, and in debate she is her master. She is as quick-witted as an alchemist. The queen hates argument about sacred things and Lady Elizabeth has ready arguments for everything and accepts nothing. She looks at everything with hard eyes…” I broke off.

“Hard eyes?” he queried. “She has beautiful eyes.”

“I mean she looks hard at things,” I explained. “She has no faith, she never closes her eyes in awe. She is not like my lady, you never see her amazed at the raising of the Host. She wants to know everything as a fact, she trusts nothing.”

Lord Robert nodded at the accuracy of the description. “Aye. She was always one to take nothing on trust.”

“The queen forced her to Mass and Lady Elizabeth went with her hand on her belly, sighing for pain. Then, when the queen pressed her again, she said that she had converted. The queen wanted the truth from her. She asked her to tell the secrets of her heart: if she believed in the Holy Sacrament or no.”

“The secrets of Elizabeth’s heart!” he exclaimed, laughing. “What can the queen be thinking of? Elizabeth allows no one near the secrets of her heart. Even when she was a child in the nursery she would barely whisper them to herself.”

“Well, she said she would give out in public that she is convinced of the merits of the old religion,” I said. “But she doesn’t do so. And she goes to Mass only when she has to. And everyone says…”

“What do they say, my little spy?”

“That she is sending out letters to true Protestants, that she has a network of supporters. That the French will pay for an uprising against the queen. And that, at the very least, she only has to wait until the queen dies and then the throne is all hers anyway, and she can throw off all disguise and be a Protestant queen as she is now a Protestant princess.”