It was a merry, joyful summertime court and I spent the afternoon and night in that happy company. It left me sick and chilled to the bone. I slept in a little bed with my arms tight around my child, and the next day we rode back to the queen.

I made sure I did not count how many great men and women we passed on the road to Hatfield, going in the opposite direction. I did not need to add to the sour taste of sickness in my mouth. Long before this day, I had seen the court move from a sick king to a waiting heir and I knew how light is the fidelity of courtiers. But even so, even though I had known it, there was something about the turn of this tide that felt more like the dishonorable turning of a coat.


I found the queen walking by the river, no more than a handful of courtiers behind her. I marked who they were: half of them at least were the dourest most solid Catholics whose faith would never change whoever was on the throne; a couple of Spanish noblemen, hired by the king to stay at court and bear his wife company; and Will Somers, faithful Will Somers, who called himself a fool but had never, in my hearing, said a foolish word.

“Your Grace,” I said, and swept her my curtsey.

The queen took in my appearance, the mud on my cloak, the child at my side.

“You have come straight from Hatfield?”

“As you commanded.”

“Can someone take the child?”

Will stepped forward and Danny beamed. I set him down and he gave his quiet little gurgle of pleasure and toddled toward Will.

“I am sorry to bring him to Your Grace, I thought you might like to see him,” I said awkwardly.

She shook her head. “No, Hannah, I do not ever want to see him.” She gestured for me to walk beside her. “Did you see Elizabeth?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she say of the ambassador?”

“I spoke to one of her women.” I was anxious not to identify Lord Robert as the favorite at this treacherous alternative court. “She said that the ambassador had visited to pay his compliments.”

“And what else?”

I hesitated. My duty to be honest to the queen and my desire not to hurt her seemed to be in utter conflict. I had puzzled about this for all of the ride back to court and I had decided that I should be as faithless as the rest of them. I could not bring myself to tell her that her own husband was proposing marriage to her own sister.

“He was pressing the suit of the Duke of Savoy,” I said. “Elizabeth herself assured me that she would not marry him.”

“The Duke of Savoy?” she asked.

I nodded.

The queen reached out her hand and I took it and waited, not knowing what she would say to me. “Hannah, you have been my friend for many years, and a true friend, I think.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Hannah, sometimes I think I have run mad, quite mad, with jealousy and unhappiness.”

Her dark eyes filled with tears. I held tightly to her hand. “What is it?”

“I am doubting him. I am doubting my own husband. I am doubting our marriage vows. If I doubt this then my world will fall apart, and yet I do doubt.”

I did not know what to say. Her grip on my hand was painful but I did not flinch. “Queen Mary?”

“Hannah, answer me a question and then I will never think of this again. But answer me truly, and tell no one.”

I gulped, wondering what terror was opening up beneath my feet. “I will, Your Grace.” Inwardly I promised myself that if the question endangered me, or Danny, or my lord, I would allow myself to lie. The familiar tremor of fear of court life was making my heart flutter, I could hear it pounding in my ears. The queen was white as a shroud, her eyes madly intent.

“Was there any suggestion that the king was pressing his own suit?” she whispered, so low that I could hardly hear her. “Even though he is my husband, even though he is forsworn before God, the Pope, and our two kingdoms? Please tell me, Hannah. I know that it is the question of a madwoman. I know that I am his wife and he could not be doing this. But I have become filled with the thought that he is courting her, not as a pastime, not as a flirtation: but for his wife. I have to know. I am tortured by this fear.”

I bit my lip, and she needed nothing more. With the quick apprehension of a woman seeing her worst fear, she knew it at once.

“Dear God, it is so,” she said slowly. “I thought that my suspicion of him was part of my illness, but it is not. I can see it on your face. He is courting my sister for marriage. My own sister? And my own husband?”

I clasped her cold hand between my own. “Your Grace, this is a matter of policy for the king,” I said. “Like making a will to provide for the future. He has to provide in the case of your accident or death. He is trying to secure England for Spain. It is his duty to keep England safe, and in the true faith. And if you were to die, sometime in the future, if he were to marry Elizabeth after your death then England would remain Roman Catholic – and that is what you and he wanted to secure.”

She shook her head, as if she were trying to hear my rapid words but none of them made any sense to her. “Dearest God, this is the very worst thing that could ever have happened to me,” she said quietly. “I saw my mother pushed from her throne and shamed by a younger woman who took the king from her and laughed as she did it. And now this woman’s daughter, the very same bastard daughter, does just the same thing to me.”

She broke off and looked at me. “No wonder I couldn’t believe it. No wonder I thought it was my own mad suspicion,” she said. “It is the thing I have feared all my life. Ending up like my own mother, neglected, abandoned, with a Boleyn whore in triumph on the throne. When will this wickedness stop? When will the witchcraft of the Boleyns be defeated? They cut off her head and yet here is her daughter rising up like a serpent with the same poison in her mouth!”

I gave her hand a little tug. “Your Grace, don’t give way. Not here. Not here before all these people.”

I was thinking of her, and I was thinking of Elizabeth’s court who would laugh till they cried if they heard that the queen had broken down because she had heard at last what all of Europe had known for months – that her husband had betrayed her.

She shook from head to toe with the effort; but she drew herself up, she blinked back the tears. “You are right,” she said. “I will not be shamed. I will say nothing more. I will think nothing more. Walk with me, Hannah.”

I glanced back at Danny. Will was seated on the ground with the boy astride his knees, showing him how he could wiggle his ears. Danny’s chuckle was delighted. I took the queen’s arm and matched my stride to her slow pace. The court fell in behind us, yawning.

The queen looked out over the swiftly moving water. There were few ships coming and going, trade was bad for England, at war with France and with the fields yielding less and less each year.

“You know,” the queen whispered to me, “you know, Hannah, I loved him from the moment I first saw his portrait. D’you remember?”

“Yes,” I said, also remembering my warning that he would break her heart.

“I adored him when I met him, d’you remember our wedding day, when he looked so handsome and we were so happy?”

I nodded again.

“I worshipped him when he took me to bed and lay with me. He gave me the only joy I had ever known in all my life. Nobody knows what he was to me, Hannah. Nobody will ever know how much I have loved him. And now you tell me that he is planning to marry my worst enemy when I am dead. He is looking forward to my death and his life after it.”

She stood quietly for a few moments as her court halted aimlessly behind her, looking from her to me and wondering what fresh bad news I had brought. Then I saw her stiffen, and her hand went to her eyes, as if she had a sudden pain. “Unless he does not wait for my death,” she said quietly.

A quick glance at my white face told her the rest of the story. She shook her head. “No, never,” she whispered. “Not this. He would never divorce me? Not as my father did to my mother? With no grounds except lust for another woman? And she a whore, and the daughter of a whore?”

I said nothing.

She did not cry. She was Queen Mary who had been Princess Mary, who had learned as a little girl to keep her head up and her tears back and if her lips were bitten to ribbons and her mouth was filled with blood then what did it matter, as long as she did not cry where anyone could see her?

She just nodded, as if she had taken a hard knock to the head. Then she beckoned to Will Somers and he came forward, Daniel at his side, and gently took her outstretched hand.

“You know, Will,” she said softly, “it’s a funny thing, worthy of your wit, but it seems to me that the greatest terror of my life, which I would have done anything to avoid, would have been to end my life as my mother ended hers: abandoned by my husband, childless, and with a whore in my place.” She looked at him and smiled though her eyes were dark with tears. “And now look, Will, isn’t it ridiculous? Here I am, and it has come to me. Can you make a joke about that?”

Will shook his head. “No,” he said shortly. “I can find no joke in that. Some things are not funny.”

She nodded.

“And, in any case, women have no sense of humor,” he said staunchly.

She could not hear him. I could see that she was still taking in the horror that her nightmare had come true. She would be like her mother, abandoned by the king, living out her life in heartbreak.

“I suppose one can see why that might be,” Will remarked. “Women’s lack of humor. Given the present circumstances.”

The queen released him and turned to me. “I am sorry I was unkind about your boy,” she said. “He is a fine boy, I am sure. What is his name?”