The Queen's Fool Part 19

"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 appet.i.te.

"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.

"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 ma.n.u.scripts 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 ap.r.o.n.

"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 m.u.f.fle 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 angels."

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.

She turned her head away. "I am too tired," she said. "You can come back when I am better."

I rose from my kneeling position by the bed and stepped backward. Kat Ashley jerked her head toward the door to send me from the room.

"And you can tell those who have come to take her that she is near death!" she said bluntly. "You can't threaten her with the scaffold, she is slipping away all on her own!" A half sob escaped her and I saw that she was drawn as tight as a lute string with anxiety for the princess.

"No one is threatening her," I said.

She gave a little snort of disbelief. "They have come to take her, haven't they?"

"Yes," I said unwillingly. "But they have no warrant, she is not under arrest."

"Then she shall not leave," she said angrily.

"I'll tell them she is too ill to travel," I said. "But the physicians will want to see her, whatever I say."

She made a little irritable puffing noise and stepped closer to the bed to straighten the quilt. I glimpsed a quick bright glance from beneath Elizabeth's swollen eyelids, as I bowed again and let myself out of the room.

Then we waited. Good G.o.d, how we waited. She was the absolute mistress of delay. When the physicians said she was well enough to leave she could not choose the gowns she would bring, then her ladies could not pack them in time for us to set off before dusk. Then everything had to be unpacked again since we were staying another day, and then Elizabeth was so exhausted she could see no one at all the next day, and the merry dance of Elizabeth's waiting began again.

During one of these mornings, when the big trunks were being laboriously loaded into the wagons, I went to the Lady Elizabeth to see if I could a.s.sist her. She was lying on a daybed, in an att.i.tude of total exhaustion.

"It is all packed," she said. "And I am so tired I do not know if I can begin the journey."

The swelling of her body had reduced but she was clearly still unwell. She would have looked better if she had not powdered her cheeks with rice powder and, I swear, darkened the shadows under her eyes. She looked like a sick woman enacting the part of a sick woman.