The Queen's Fool Part 38

I heard the clock strike four and then half past before the side door opened and Daniel came out, calling a farewell and closing the door behind him. He had a flask of some green liquid in one hand, and when he came to the gate he started in the wrong direction, away from home. I was in a sudden terror that he was going to visit his lover, and that I, like some suspicious wife, would be caught spying on him. At once I crossed the road and ran up to him.

"Daniel!"

"Hannah!" His pleasure in seeing me was unfeigned. But after one glance at my white face he said: "Is there something wrong? Are you ill?"

"No," I said, my lip trembling. "I just wanted to see you."

"And now you do," he said easily. He drew my hand through his arm. "I have to take this to Widow Jerrin's house, will you come with me?"

I nodded, and fell into step beside him. I could not keep up. The fullness of my petticoats under my gown prevented me from striding out as I had done when I was a pageboy. I lifted my skirts out to one side but they still hobbled me as if I was a mare, hog-tied in the horse-breaking ring. Daniel slowed down and we walked in silence. He stole a glance at me and guessed from my grim expression that all was not well, but he decided to deal first with the delivery of the medicine.

The widow's house was one of the older buildings inside the crisscrossing streets of the old town. The houses were packed in under the sheltering bulk of the castle, all the little alleyways overshadowed by the jutting first storeys of the houses that lined them, running north and south and intersected by the next road going east-west.

"When we first came here, I thought I would never find my way round," he said, making conversation. "And then I learned the names of the taverns. This has been an English town for two hundred years, remember. Every street corner has a *Bush' or a *Pig and Whistle' or a *Travelers Rest.' This street has a tavern called *The Hollybush.' There it is." He pointed to the building with a battered sign swinging outside it.

"I'll only be a moment." He turned to a narrow doorway and tapped on the door.

"Ah, Dr. Daniel!" came a woman's croaking voice from within. "Come in, come in!"

"Ma'am, I cannot," he said with his easy smile. "My wife is waiting for me and I will walk home with her."

There was a laugh from inside the house and a remark that she was a lucky girl to have him, and then Daniel emerged, pocketing a coin.

"Now," he said. "Shall I walk you home around the city walls, m'lady? Get a breath of sea air?"

I tried to smile at him but I was too heartsore. I let him lead me to the end of the street and then along a lane. At the very end of the lane was the towering wall of the town, shallow stone steps running up the inside. We climbed them, up and up, until we got to the ramparts and could look northward toward the horizon where England lay. England, the queen, the princess, my lord: they all seemed a long way away. It seemed to me in that moment that I had known a better life as a fool to a queen than I had being a fool to Daniel and to his stone-hearted mother and his poisonous sisters.

"Now," he said, matching his steps to mine as we walked along the wall, seagulls crying over our heads and the waves slapping at the stones. "What is the matter, Hannah?"

I did not turn the conversation round and round like a woman would do. I went straight to the heart of it, as if I were still a troubled pageboy and not a betrayed wife. "Your mother tells me that you have got a Calais woman with child," I said bluntly. "And that you see her and her child three times a week."

I could feel his stride falter, and when I looked up at him he had lost the color from his cheeks. "Yes," he said. "That's true."

"You should have told me."

He nodded, marshaling his thoughts. "I suppose I should have done. But if I had told you, would you have married me and come to live with me here?"

"I don't know. No, probably not."

"Then you see why I did not tell you."

"You cozened me and married me on a lie."

"I told you that you were the one great love of my life, and you are. I told you that I thought we should marry to provide for my mother and for your father, and I still think that we did the right thing. I told you that we should marry so that we might live together, as the Children of Israel, and I could keep you safe."

"Safe in a hovel!" I burst out.

Daniel recoiled at that: the first time that I had told him directly that I despised his little house. "I am sorry that is what you think of your home. I told you that I hope to provide better for us later."

"You lied to me," I said again.

"Yes," he said simply. "I had to."

"Do you love her?" I asked. I could hear the pitiful note in my own voice and I pulled my hand from his arm, filled with resentment that love should have brought me so low that I was whimpering at betrayal. I took a step away from him so he could not wrap me close and console me. I did not want to be a girl in love any more.

"No," he said bluntly. "But when we first came to Calais, I was lonely and she was pretty and warm and good company. If I had any sense I would not have gone with her, but I did."

"More than once?" I asked, wounding myself.

"More than once."

"And I suppose you didn't make love to her with a hand over her mouth so your mother and sisters couldn't hear?"

"No," he said shortly.

"And her son?"

His face warmed at once. "He is a baby of about five months old," he said. "Strong, and l.u.s.ty."

"Does she take your name?"

"No. She keeps her own."

"Does she live with her family?"

"She is in service."

"They allow her to keep her child?"

"They have a kindness for her, and they are old. They like to have a child around the house."

"They know that you are the father?"

He nodded his head.

I rocked with shock. "Everyone knows? Your sisters, the priest? Your neighbors? The people who came to our wedding feast and wished me well? Everyone?"

Daniel hesitated. "It's a small town, Hannah. Yes, I should think everyone knows of it." He tried to smile. "And now I should think everyone knows that you are rightly angry with me, and that I am begging your pardon. You have to get used to being part of a family, part of a town, part of the People. You are not Hannah on her own any more. You are a daughter and a wife, and one day, I hope you will be a mother."

"Never!" I said, the word wrung out of me by my anger and my disappointment in him. "Never."

He caught me to him and held me close. "Don't say that," he said. "Not even in rage with me when you would say anything to hurt me back. Not even when I deserve punishment. You know I waited for you and loved you and trusted you even when I thought you were in love with another man and might never come to me. Now you are here and we are married, and I thank G.o.d for it. And now you are here we shall make a life, however difficult it has been for us to be together. I shall be your husband and your lover and you will forgive me."

I wrenched myself from his grip and faced him. I swear if I had had a sword I would have run him through. "No," I said. "I will never lie with you again. You are false, Daniel, and you called on me to trust you with lies in your mouth. You are no better than any man and I thought you were. You told me that you were."

He would have interrupted me but the words were pouring out of my mouth like a shower of stones. "And I am Hannah on my own. I don't belong in this town, I don't belong with the People, I don't belong with your mother or your family and you have showed me that I don't belong with you. I deny you, Daniel. I deny your family, and I deny your people. I will belong to no one and I will be alone."

I turned on my heel and marched away from him, the tears running hot down my cold cheeks. I was expecting to hear him hurrying after me but he did not come. He let me go and I strode away as if I would walk home across the foam-crested gray waves to England, all the way to Robert Dudley, and tell him that I would be his mistress this very night if he desired it, since I had nothing left to lose. I had tried an honorable love and it had been nothing but lies and dishonesty: a hard road and paid with a false coin at the end.

I strode furiously along the walls until I had done a whole circuit of the town and found myself back overlooking the sea once more at the spot where we had quarreled. Daniel had gone, I had not expected to find him where I had left him. He would have gone home to his supper, and appeared to his family as composed and in control of his feelings as always. Or perhaps he would have gone to dine with his other woman, the mother of his child, as his mother had told me he did, twice a week, in the evenings, when I had stood at the window to watch for him coming and felt sorry for him, working late.

My feet, in the stupid high-heeled girls' shoes that I now had to wear, were aching from my forced march around the town walls and I limped down the narrow stone stairs to the sally port, through the little gate to the quayside. A handful of fis.h.i.+ng boats was making ready to set sail on the evening tide, one of the many small traders who regularly crossed the sea between France and England was loading up with goods: a cart filled with household goods for a family returning to England, barrels of wine for London vintners, baskets of late peaches, early plums, currants, great parcels of finished cloth. A woman at the quayside was parting with her mother, the woman embraced her daughter, pulling her hood up over the girl's head, as if to keep her warm until they could be together again. The girl had to tear herself away and run up the gangplank and then she leaned over the side of the s.h.i.+p to kiss her hand and wave. The girl might be going into service in England, she might be leaving home to marry. I thought self-pityingly that I had not been sent out into the world with a mother's blessing. No one had planned my wedding thinking of my preferences. My husband had been chosen by the matchmaker to make a safe home for my father and for me, and to give Daniel's mother a grandson. But no home could be safe for us, and she already had a grandson of five months old.

I had a moment's impulse to run to the s.h.i.+p's master and ask him what he would take for my pa.s.sage. If he would let me owe him the fare I could pay when I reached London. I had a desire, like a knife in the belly, to run to Robert Dudley, to return to the queen, to get back to the court where I was valued by many, and desired by my lord, and where n.o.body could ever betray me and shame me, where I could be the mistress of myself. I had been a fool: a servant, lower than a lady in waiting, less than a musician, on a par perhaps with a favored lap dog; but even as that I had been freer and prouder than I was, standing on the quayside with no money in my pocket, with nowhere to go but Daniel's home, knowing that he had been unfaithful to me in the past and could be again.

It was dusk by the time I opened the door and stepped over the threshold of our house. Daniel was in the act of swinging on his cape as I came into the shop, my father waiting for him.

"Hannah!" my father exclaimed, and Daniel crossed the room in two strides and took me into his arms. I let him hold me but I looked past him to my father.

"We were coming out to look for you. You're so late!" my father exclaimed.

"I am sorry," I said. "I didn't think you would be worried about me."

"Of course we were worried." Daniel's mother came halfway down the stairs and leaned over the rail to scold me. "A young lady can't go running around town at dusk. You should have come home at once."

I shot her a thoughtful look, but I said nothing.

"I am sorry," Daniel said, his mouth close to my ear. "Let me talk with you. Don't be distressed, Hannah."

I glanced up at him, his dark face was scowling with anxiety.

"Are you all right?" my father asked.

"Of course," I said. "Of course I am."

Daniel took his cape from his shoulders. "You say, *of course,'" he complained. "But the town is full of the roughest of soldiers, and you are dressed as a woman now, you don't have the protection of the queen and you don't even know your way around."

I disengaged myself from Daniel's arms and pulled out a stool from the shop counter. "I survived crossing half of Christendom," I said mildly. "I should think I could manage for two hours in Calais."

"You're a young lady now," my father reminded me. "Not a child pa.s.sing as a boy. You shouldn't even be out on your own in the evening."

"Shouldn't be out at all except to go to market or church," Daniel's mother supplemented robustly from her perch on the stairs.

"Hush," Daniel said gently to her. "Hannah is safe, that's the main thing. And hungry, I'm sure. What do we have left for her, Mother?"

"It's all gone," she said unhelpfully. "You had the last of the potage yourself, Daniel."

"I didn't know that was all there was!" he exclaimed. "Why didn't we save some for Hannah?"

"Well, who knew when she would come home?" his mother asked limpidly. "Or whether she was dining out somewhere?"

"Come on," Daniel said impatiently to me, pulling at my hand.

"Where to?" I asked, slipping from the stool.

"I am taking you to the tavern to get dinner."

"I can find her some bread and a slice of beef," his mother offered at once at the prospect of the two of us going out alone together to dine.

"No," Daniel said. "She's to have a proper hot dinner and I'll take a mug of ale. Don't wait up for us, Mother, nor you, sir." He slung his cloak around my shoulders and swept me out of the door before his mother could suggest that she came too, and we were out in the street before his sisters had time to remark that I was not properly dressed for an evening out.

We walked in silence to the tavern at the end of the road. There was a tap room at the front of the building but a good parlor for travelers at the back. Daniel ordered some broth and some bread, a plate of meats and two mugs of small ale, and we sat down in one of the high-backed settles, and for the first time since I had come to Calais I felt that we might talk alone and uninterrupted for more than a s.n.a.t.c.hed moment.

"Hannah, I am so sorry," he said as soon as the maid had put our drinks before us, and gone. "I am deeply, deeply sorry for what I have done."

"Does she know you are married?"

"Yes, she knew I was betrothed when we first met, and I told her I was going to England to fetch you and we would be married when we returned."

"Does she not mind?"

"Not now," he said. "She has become accustomed."

I said nothing. I thought it most unlikely that a woman who had fallen in love with a man and borne his child would become accustomed within a year to him marrying someone else.

"Did you not want to marry her when you knew she was carrying your child?"

He hesitated. The landlord came with the broth and bread and meat and fussed around the table, which gave us a chance for silence. Then he left and I took a spoonful of broth and a mouthful of bread. It was thick in my mouth but I was not going to look as if I had lost my appet.i.te through heartache.

"She is not one of the People," Daniel said simply. "And, in any case, I wanted to marry you. When I knew she was with child I was ashamed of what I had done; but she knew I did not love her, and that I was promised to you. She did not expect me to marry her. So I gave her a sum of money for a dowry and I pay her every month for the boy's keep."

"You wanted to marry me, but not enough to stay away from other women," I remarked bitterly.

"Yes," he admitted. He did not flinch from the truth even when it was told baldly out of the mouth of an angry woman. "I wanted to marry you, but I did not stay away from another woman. But what about you? Is your conscience utterly clear, Hannah?"

I let it go, though it was a fair accusation. "What's the child named?"

He took a breath. "Daniel," he said and saw me flinch.

I took a mouthful of broth and crammed the bread down on top of it and chewed, though I wanted to spit it at him.

"Hannah," he said very gently.

I bit into a piece of meat.

"I am sorry," he said again. "But we can overcome this. She makes no claims against me. I will support the child but I need not go and see her. I shall miss the boy, I hoped to see him grow up, but I will understand if you cannot tolerate me seeing her. I will give him up. You and I are young. You will forgive me, we will have a child of our own, we will find a better house. We will be happy."

I finished my mouthful and washed it down with a swig of ale. "No," I said shortly.

"What?"

"I said, *No.' Tomorrow I shall buy a boy's suit and my father and I will find new premises for the bookshop. I shall work as his apprentice again. I shall never wear high-heeled shoes again, as long as I live. They pinch my feet. I shall never trust a man again, as long as I live. You have hurt me, Daniel, and lied to me and betrayed me and I will never forgive you."

He went very white. "You cannot leave me," he said. "We are married in the sight of G.o.d, our G.o.d. You cannot break an oath to G.o.d. You cannot break your pledge to me."

I rose to it as if it were a challenge. "I care nothing for your G.o.d, nor for you. I shall leave you tomorrow."

We spent a sleepless night. There was nowhere to go but home and we had to lie side by side, stiff as bodkins in the darkness of the bedroom with his mother alert behind one wall, and his sisters agog on the other side. In the morning I took my father out of the house and told him that my mind was made up and that I would not live with Daniel as his wife.