“Your Grace, there are wiser heads than mine to advise you,” I said with difficulty. In the brightness of the fire I could almost see the flame of the princess’s hair, the dazzle of her confident smile.
“None I trust more. None who comes with your gift.”
I hesitated. “Is she coming to court?”
Mary shook her head. “She won’t come. She says she is ill. She says she is near death with sickness, a swelling of the belly and of her limbs. She is too ill to get out of bed. Too ill to be moved. It is an old illness of hers, a real one, I believe. But it always comes on at certain times.”
“Certain times?”
“When she is very afraid,” Mary said quietly, “and when she has been caught out. The first time she was sick like this was when they executed Thomas Seymour. Now I think she fears being accused of another plot. I am sending my doctors to see her, and I want you to go too.”
“Of course.” I did not know what else I could say.
“Sit with her, read to her, be her companion as you have been mine. If she is well enough to come to court, you can travel with her and keep her spirits up on the journey. If she is dying you can comfort her, send for a priest and try to turn her thoughts to her salvation. It is not too late for her to be forgiven by God. Pray with her.”
“Anything else?” My voice was a thread of sound. The queen had to lean forward to hear me.
“Spy on her,” she said flatly. “Everything she does, everyone she sees, everyone in that household of hers who are all heretics and liars, every one. Every name you hear mentioned, every friend they hold dear. Write to me every day and tell me what you have learned. I have to know if she is plotting against me. I have to have evidence.”
I clasped my hands tight around my knees and felt the tremble in my legs and the quiver in my fingers. “I cannot be a spy,” I breathed. “I cannot betray a young woman to her death.”
“You have no other master now,” she reminded me gently. “Northumberland is dead and Robert Dudley in the Tower. What else can you do but my bidding?”
“I am a fool, not a spy,” I said. “I am your fool, not your spy.”
“You are my fool and you shall give me the gift of your counsel,” she ordered. “And I say, go to Elizabeth, serve her as you serve me, and report to me everything you see and hear, but more importantly wait for your gift to speak. I think you will see through her lies and be able to tell me what is in her heart.”
“But if she is sick and dying…”
For a moment the hard lines around her mouth and eyes softened. “If she dies then I will have lost my only sister,” she said bleakly. “I will have sent inquisitors to her when I should have gone myself and held her in my arms. I don’t forget that she was a baby when I first cared for her, I don’t forget that she learned to walk holding on to my fingers.” She paused for a moment, smiling at the thought of those fat little hands clutching at her for support, and then she shook her head, as if she would dismiss the love she had for that little red-headed toddler.
“It comes too pat,” she said simply. “Tom Wyatt is arrested, his army fails, and Elizabeth takes to her bed too ill to write, too ill to reply to me, too ill to come to London. She is as ill as she was when Jane was put on the throne and I wanted her at my side. She is always ill when there is danger. She has been plotting against me and she has suffered nothing but a reverse; not a change of heart. I have to know if she and I can live together as queen and heir, as sisters; or that the worst has come to me and she is my enemy and will stop at nothing till my death.” She turned her dark honest gaze back to me. “You can tell me that,” she said. “It is no dishonor to warn me if she hates me and would have me dead. You can bring her to London, or write to me that she is indeed ill. You shall be my eyes and ears at her bedside and God will guide you.”
I surrendered to her conviction. “When do I leave?”
“Tomorrow at dawn,” the queen said. “You can visit your father tonight if you wish, you need not come to dinner.”
I rose to my feet and gave her a little bow. She put out her hand to me. “Hannah,” she said quietly.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“I wish you could see into her heart and see that she is able to love me, and able to turn to the true faith.”
“I hope I see that too,” I said fervently.
Her mouth was working, holding back tears. “But if she is faithless, you must tell me, even though it will break my heart.”
“I will.”
“If she can be saved then we could rule together. She could be my sister at my side, the first of my subjects, the girl who is to come after me.”
“Please God.” “Amen,” she said quietly. “I miss her. I want her safe with me. Amen.”
I sent a message to tell my father that I would come to visit him, and that I would bring our dinner. As I tapped on the door I saw that he was working late, the illuminated printing room was bright at the rear of the dark shop. The light poured into the shop when he opened the press room door and came out, holding his candle high.
“Hannah! Mi querida!”
In a moment he had the bolt shot aside and I tumbled in, setting down my basket of food to hug him and then kneeling before him for his blessing.
“I brought you dinner from the palace,” I said.
He chuckled. “A treat! I shall eat like a queen.”
“She eats very badly,” I said. “She’s not a good doer at all. You should eat like a councillor if you want to grow fat.”
He pushed the door shut behind me, turned his head and shouted toward the print room. “Daniel! She is here!”
“Is Daniel here?” I asked nervously.
“He came to help me set some text for a medical book, and when I said that you were coming, he stayed on,” my father said happily.
“There isn’t enough for him,” I said ungraciously. I had not forgotten that we had parted on a quarrel.
My father smiled at my petulance but said nothing as the door of the print room opened and Daniel came out, wearing an apron over his black breeches, the front bib stained with black ink, his hands dirty.
“Good evening,” I said, unsmiling.
“Good evening,” he replied.
“Now!” my father said in pleasurable anticipation of his dinner. He drew three high stools up to the counter as Daniel went out to the yard to wash his hands. I unpacked the basket. A venison pasty, a loaf of manchet bread still warm from the oven, a couple of slices of beef carved from the spit and wrapped in muslin, and half a dozen slender roasted chops of lamb. Two bottles of good red wine had gone into my basket from the queen’s own cellar. I had brought no vegetables; but from the sweet kitchen I had stolen a bowl of syllabub. We put the syllabub with cream to one side to eat later, and spread the rest of the feast on the table. My father opened the wine as I fetched three tankards from the cupboard under the counter and a couple of horn-handled knives.
“So, what news?” my father asked as we started to eat.
“I am to go to Princess Elizabeth. She is said to be sick. The queen wants me to be her companion.”
Daniel looked up, but said nothing.
“Where is she?” my father asked.
“At her house at Ashridge.”
“Are you going alone?” he asked with concern.
“No. The queen is sending her doctors and a couple of her councillors. I should think we might be as many as ten in the party.”
He nodded. “I am glad. I don’t think the roads are safe. Many of the rebels got away and are heading back for their homes and they are angry men, and armed.”
“I’ll be well guarded,” I said. I gnawed on a chop bone and glanced up to see Daniel watching me. I put it to one side, having quite lost my appetite.
“When will you come back?” Daniel asked quietly.
“When Princess Elizabeth is fit to travel,” I said.
“Have you heard from Lord Robert?” my father asked.
&nbs
p; “I am released from his service,” I said stiffly. I kept my eyes on the countertop, I did not want either of them to see my pain. “He is preparing for his death.”
“It must come,” my father said simply. “Has the queen signed the warrant for the execution of his brother and Lady Jane?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But it will be any day now.”
He nodded. “Hard times,” he said. “And who would have thought that the queen could have raised the city and defeated the rebels?”
I shook my head.
“She can hold this country,” my father said. “While she can command the hearts of the people as she does, she can be queen. She might even be a great queen.”
“Have you heard from John Dee?” I asked.
“He’s traveling,” my father said. “Buying manuscripts by the barrel. He sends them back to me here for safekeeping. He’s right to stay far from London, his name was mentioned. Most of the rebels have been his friends before now.”
“They were all men of the court,” I contradicted him. “They knew everyone. Queen Mary herself befriended Edward Courtenay. At one time they said she would marry him.”
“I heard it was him who named the others?” Daniel asked.
I nodded.
“Neither a good subject nor a good friend,” Daniel ruled.
“A man with temptations we cannot imagine,” I said smartly. Then I thought of the Edward Courtenay I knew: a weak mouth and a flushed complexion. A boy pretending to be a man, and not even a pleasant boy. A braggart hoping to leap higher by courting Queen Mary or Lady Elizabeth, or anyone who would help him rise.
“Forgive me,” I said to my betrothed. “You are right. He is neither a good subject nor a good friend, he’s not even much of a boy.”
His smile warmed his face, and warmed me. I took a piece of bread and felt a sense of ease. “How is your mother?” I asked politely.
“She has been ill in this cold wet weather, but she is well now.”
“And your sisters?”
“They are well. When you come back from Ashridge I should like you to come to my house to meet them.”
I nodded. I could not imagine meeting Daniel’s sisters.
“There will soon come a time when we all live together,” he said. “It would be better if you meet now, so that you can all become accustomed.”
I said nothing. We had not parted as a betrothed couple but clearly Daniel wanted to ignore that quarrel, as he had overlooked others. Our betrothal was still unbroken, then. I smiled at him. I could not imagine living in his house with his mother ordering things as they had always been done and his sisters fluttering around him as the favored child: the son.
“Do you think they will admire my breeches?” I asked provocatively.
I saw him flush. “No, not particularly,” he said shortly. He leaned back on the counter and took a sip of wine. He looked toward my father. “I think I’ll finish that page now,” he said. He stepped down from the stool and reached for his printer’s apron.
“Shall I bring your syllabub out later?” I asked.
He looked at me, his eyes dark and hard. “No,” he said. “I have no taste for things that are sweet and sour at the same time.”
Will Somers was in the stable yard while they were saddling up the horses for our journey, cracking jokes with the men.
“Will, are you coming with us?” I asked hopefully.
He shook his head. “Not I! Too cold for me! I’d have thought it no job for you either, Hannah Green.”
I made a face. “The queen asked it of me. She asked me to look into Elizabeth’s heart.”
“Into her heart?” he repeated comically. “First find it!”
“What else could I do?” I demanded.
“Nothing but obey.”
“And what should I do now?”
“The same.”
I drew a little closer. “Will, d’you think she was really plotting to throw down the queen and put herself on the throne?”
He smiled his little world-weary smile. “Fool, there is not a doubt of it. And you a fool even to question it.”
“Then if I say she is pretending to be ill, if I report that she is a liar, I bring her to her death.”
He nodded.
“Will, I cannot do that to a woman such as the princess. It would be like shooting a lark.”
“Then miss your aim,” he said.
“I should lie to the queen and say that the princess is innocent?”
“You have a gift of Sight, don’t you?” he demanded.
“I wish I did not.”
“It is time to cultivate the gift of blindness. If you have no opinion, you cannot be asked to account for it. You are an innocent fool, be more innocent than fool.”
I nodded, a little cheered. One of the men brought my horse out of the stable and Will cupped his hand to throw me up into the saddle.
“Up you go,” he said. “Higher and higher. Fool and now councillor. It must be a lonely queen indeed who turns to a fool for counsel.”
It took us three days to travel the thirty miles to Ashridge, struggling, heads bowed through a storm of sleet, always freezing cold. The councillors led by Lady Elizabeth’s own cousin, Lord William Howard, were afraid of rebels on the roads and we had to go at the marching pace of our guards while the wind whipped down the rutted track which was all there was of a road, and the sun peeped, a pale wintry yellow, through dark clouds.
We reached the house by noon and we were glad to see the curl of smoke from the tall chimneys. We clattered round to the stable yard and found no grooms to take the horses, no one ready to serve us. Lady Elizabeth kept only a small staff, one Master of Horse and half a dozen lads, and none of them was ready to greet a train such as ours. We left the soldiers to make themselves as comfortable as they could be, and trooped round to the front door of the house.
The princess’s own cousin hammered on the door and tried the handle. It was bolted and barred from the inside. He stepped back and looked around for the captain of the guard. It was at that moment that I realized his orders were very different from mine. I was here to look into her heart, to restore her to the affection of her sister. He was here to bring her to London, alive or dead.
“Knock again,” he said grimly. “And then break it down.”
At once the door yielded, swung open to our knock by an unenthusiastic pair of menservants who looked anxiously at the great men, the doctors in their furred coats and the men at arms behind them.
We marched into the great hall like enemies, without invitation. The place was in silence, extra rushes on the floor to muffle the sound of the servants’ feet, a strong smell of mint purifying the air. A redoubtable woman, Mrs. Kat Ashley, Elizabeth’s best servant and protector, was at the head of the hall, her hands clasped together under a solid bosom, her hair scraped back under an imposing hood. She looked the royal train up and down as if we were a pack of pirates.
The councillors delivered their letters of introduction, the physicians theirs. She took them without looking at them.
“I shall tell my lady that you are here but she is too sick to see anyone,” she said flatly. “I will see that you are served such dinner as we can lay before you; but we have not the rooms to accommodate such a great company as yourselves.”
“We will stay at Hillham Hall, Mrs. Ashley,” Sir Thomas Cornwallis said helpfully.
She raised her eyebrow as if she did not think much of his choice and turned to the door at the head of the hall. I fell into step behind her. At once she rounded on me.
“And where d’you think you’re going?”
I looked up at her, my face innocent. “With you, Mrs. Ashley. To the Lady Elizabeth.”
“She’ll see no one,” the woman ruled. “She is too ill.”
“Then let me pray at the foot of her bed,” I said quietly.
“If she is so very ill she will want the fool’s prayers,” someone said from the hall. “That child can see an
gels.”
Kat Ashley, caught out by her own story, nodded briefly and let me follow her out of the door, through the presence chamber and into Elizabeth’s private rooms.
There was a heavy damask curtain over the door to shut out the noise from the presence chamber. There were matching curtains at the window, drawn tight against light and air. Only candles illuminated the room with their flickering light and showed the princess, red hair spread like a hemorrhage on the pillow, her face white.
At once I could see she was ill indeed. Her belly was as swollen as if she were pregnant but her hands as they lay on the embroidered coverlet were swollen too, the fingers fat and thick as if she were a gross old lady and not a girl of twenty. Her lovely face was puffy, even her neck was thick.
“What is the matter with her?” I demanded.
“Dropsy,” Mrs. Ashley replied. “Worse than she has ever had it before. She needs rest and peace.”
“My lady,” I breathed.
She raised her head and peered at me from under swollen eyelids. “Who?”
“The queen’s fool,” I said. “Hannah.”
She veiled her eyes. “A message?” she asked, her voice a thread.
“No,” I said quickly. “I am come to you from Queen Mary. She has sent me to be your companion.”
“I thank her,” she said, her voice a whisper. “You can tell her that I am sick indeed and need to be alone.”
“She has sent doctors to make you better,” I said. “They are waiting to see you.”
“I am too sick to travel,” Elizabeth said, speaking strongly for the first time.
I bit my lip to hide my smile. She was ill, no one could manifest a swelling of the very knuckles of their fingers in order to escape a charge of treason. But she would play her illness as the trump card it was.
“She has sent her councillors to accompany you,” I warned her.
“Who?”
“Your cousin, Lord William Howard, among others.”
I saw her swollen lips twist in a bitter smile. “She must be very determined against me if she sends my own kin to arrest me,” she remarked.
“May I be your companion during your illness?” I suggested.