Philippa Gregory - The Queen’s Fool

“I will try to see him then. Perhaps he’ll help me return to England.”

Daniel went pale, his face even graver than before. “You cannot risk going back while the rules against heresy are so strong,” he said quietly. “They would be bound to examine you.”

“If I were under my lord’s protection I would be safe,” I said with simple confidence.

It cost him a good deal to acknowledge Lord Robert’s power. “I suppose so. But please, talk to me before you take a decision. His credit may not be so very good, you know, it is only one act of bravery in a long life of treason.”

I let the criticism go.

“Can I walk you to your door?” He offered me his arm and I took it and fell into step beside him. For the first time in months I felt a little of my own darkness lift and dissolve. The queen was with child, Lord Robert was free and honored for his bravery, England and Spain in alliance had defeated the French army. Surely, things would start coming right for me too.

“Mother tells me that she saw you in the marketplace in breeches,” Daniel remarked.

“Yes,” I said carelessly. “When there are so many soldiers and rough men and women on the streets I feel safer like that.”

“Would you come back to my house?” Daniel asked. “I would like to keep you safe. You could keep the shop on.”

“It’s making no money,” I conceded honestly. “I don’t stay away from you for the sake of the shop. I can’t come back to you, Daniel. I have made up my mind and I will not change it.”

We had reached my door. “But if you were in trouble or danger you would send for me,” he pressed me.

“Yes.”

“And you wouldn’t leave for England, or meet with Lord Robert, without telling me?”

I shrugged. “I have no plans, except I should like to see the queen again. She must be so happy, I should like to see her now, expecting her child. I should so like to see her in her joy.”

“Perhaps when the peace treaty is signed,” he suggested. “I could take you to London for a visit and bring you back, if you would like that.”

I looked at him attentively. “Daniel, that would be kind indeed.”

“I would do anything to please you, anything that would make you happy,” he said gently.

I opened my door. “Thank you,” I said quietly and slipped away from him before I should make the mistake of stepping forward into his arms.

There were rumors that the defeated French army had turned around and was regrouping on the borders of the English Pale and every stranger who came into Calais for the Christmas market was regarded as a spy. The French must come against Calais in revenge for St. Quentin, but the French must know, as we all knew, that the town could not be taken. Everyone was afraid that the ramparts outside the town would be mined, that even now the skilled French miners were burrowing like worms through the very fabric of English earth. Everyone was afraid that the guards would be suborned, that the fort would fall through treachery. But over all of this was a sort of blithe confidence that the French could not succeed. Philip of Spain was a brilliant commander, he had the flower of the English army in the field, what could the French do with an army like ours harassing their own borders, and an impregnable castle like ours behind them?

Then the rumors of a French advance became more detailed. A woman coming into my shop warned Marie that we should hide our books and bury our treasure.

“Why?” I demanded of Marie.

She was white-faced. “I am English,” she said to me. “My grandmother was pure English.”

“I don’t doubt your loyalty,” I said, incredulous that someone should be trying to prove their provenance to me, a mongrel by birth, education, religion and choice.

“The French are coming,” she said. “That woman is from my village and she was warned by her friend. She has come to hide in Calais.”

She was the first of many. A steady flow of people from the countryside outside the gates in the English Pale decided that their best safety lay inside the untouchable town.

The Company of Merchants who all but ran the town organized a great dormitory in Staple Hall, bought in food ahead of the French advance, warned all the fit young men and women of Calais that they must prepare for a siege. The French were coming, but the English and Spanish army would be hard behind them. We need fear nothing, but we should prepare.

Then in the night, without warning, Fort Nieulay fell. It was one of the eight forts that guarded Calais, and as such was only a small loss. But Nieulay was the fort on the River Hames which controlled the sea gates, which were supposed to flood the canals around the town so that no army could cross. With Nieulay in French hands we had nothing to defend us but the other forts and the great walls. We had lost the first line of defense.

The very next day we heard the roar of cannon and then a rumor swept through the town. Fort Risban, the fort which guarded the inner harbor of Calais, had fallen too, even though it was newly built and newly fortified. Now the harbor itself lay open to French shipping, and the brave English boats which bobbed at anchor in the port could be taken at any moment.

“What shall we do?” Marie asked me.

“It’s only two forts,” I said stoutly, trying to hide my fear. “The English army will know we are under siege and come to rescue us. You’ll see, within three days they will be here.”

But it was the French army which drew up in lines before the walls of Calais and it was the French arquebusiers who flung a storm of arrows which arched over the top of the walls and killed at random people running in the streets, desperate to get inside their houses.

“The English will come,” I said. “Lord Robert will come and attack the French from the rear.”

We bolted the shutters on the shop and shrank inside to the back room, in a terror that the great gates, so close to our little shop, would be a focus for attack. The French brought up siege engines. Even hidden as we were in the back room of the shop I could hear the pounding of the great ram against the barred gates. Our men on the ramparts above were firing down, desperately trying to pick off the men who were pounding the defenses, and I heard a roar and a hiss as a great vat of boiling tar was tipped over the walls and showered on the attackers below, I heard their screams as they were scalded and burned, their upturned faces getting the brunt of the pain. Marie and I, desperate with fear, crouched behind the shop door as if the thin planks of wood would shield us. I did not know what to do, or where to go for safety. For a moment I thought of running through the streets to Daniel’s house but I was too afraid to unbolt the front door, and besides the streets were in turmoil with cannon shot overarching the city walls and falling within the streets, burning arrows raining down on the straw roofs and our reinforcements running up through the narrow streets to the walls.

Then the clatter of hundreds of horses’ hooves was in the street outside our door and I realized that the English army, garrisoned inside the town, was gathering for a counterattack. They must think that if they could dislodge the French from the gates of the city, that the surrounding countryside could be retaken and the pressure relieved from the town defenses.

We could hear the horses go by and then the silence while they assembled at the gate. I realized that for them to get out, the gate would have to be thrown open, and for that time my little shop would be right in the center of the battle.

It was enough. I whispered to Marie in French, “We have to get out of here. I am going to Daniel, d’you want to come with me?”

“I’ll go to my cousins, they live near the harbor.”

I crept to the door and opened it a crack. The sight as I peered through was terrifying. The street outside was absolute chaos, with soldiers running up the stone steps to the ramparts laden with weapons, wounded men being helped down. Another great vat of tar was being heated over an open fire only yards from the thatch of a neighboring house. And from the other side of the gate came the dreadful clamor of an army beating against the door, scaling the walls, firing upward, pulling cannon into place and firing shot, determined to breach the walls and get into the town.

I threw open the door and almost at once heard a most dreadful cry from the walls immediately above the shop as a hail of arrows found an unprotected band of men. Marie and I fled into the street. Behind us, and then all around us, came a dreadful crash. The French siege engine had catapulted a great load of stone and rubble over the wall. It rained down on our street like a falling mountain. Tiled roofs shed their load like a pack of cards spilling to the floor, stones plunged through thatch, knocked chimney pots askew, and they rolled down the steeply canted roofs and plunged to the cobblestones to smash around us with a sound like gunfire. It was as if the very skies were raining rocks and fires, as if we would be engulfed in terror.

“I’m off!” Marie shouted to me, plunging away down a lane which led toward the fish quay.

I could not even shout a blessing, the smell of the smoke from burning buildings caught in the back of my throat like the stab of a knife and choked me into silence. The smell of smoke – the very scent of my nightmares – filled the air, filled my nostrils, my lungs, even my eyes, so that I could not breathe and my eyes were filled with tears so that I could not see.

From the ramparts above me I heard a high shriek of terror and I looked up to see a man on fire, the burning arrow still caught in his clothing, as he dived to the floor and rolled, trying to extinguish the flames, screaming like a heretic as his body burned.