The Queen's Fool Part 40

I waited outside while Daniel took my father's pulses and laid his cool hands on my father's forehead, and asked him gently how he did. I heard their low-voiced exchange, the rumble of male communion, saying everything by speaking words which said nothing, a code which women can never understand.

Then Daniel came out, his face grave and tender. He ushered me downstairs and did not speak until we were in the shop once more, with the wooden door to the staircase closed behind us.

"Hannah, I could cup him, and physic him, and torment him a dozen different ways but I don't think I, or any other doctor, could cure him."

"Cure him?" I repeated stupidly. "He's just tired."

"He is dying," my husband said gently.

For a moment I could not take it in. "But Daniel, that's not possible! There's nothing wrong with him!"

"He has a growth in his belly which is pressing against his lungs and his heart," Daniel said quietly. "He can feel it himself, he knows it."

"He is just tired," I protested.

"And if he feels any worse than tired, if he feels pain, then we will give him physic to take the pain away," Daniel a.s.sured me. "Thank G.o.d he feels nothing but tired now."

I went to the shop door and opened it, as if I wanted a customer. What I wanted was to run away from these awful words, to run from this grief which was unfolding steadily before me. The rain, dripping from the eaves of all the houses down the streets, was running through the cobbles to the gutter in little rivulets of mud. "I thought he was just tired," I said again, stupidly.

"I know," Daniel said.

I closed the door and came back into the shop. "How long d'you think?"

I thought he would say months, perhaps a year.

"Days," he said quietly. "Perhaps weeks. But no more, I don't think."

"Days?" I said uncomprehendingly. "How can it be days?"

He shook his head, his eyes compa.s.sionate. "I am sorry, Hannah. It will not be long."

"Should I ask someone else to look at him?" I demanded. "Perhaps your tutor?"

He took no offense. "If you wish. But anyone would say the same thing. You can feel the lump in his belly, Hannah, this is no mystery. It is pressing against his belly, his heart and his lungs. It is squeezing the life out of him."

I threw up my hands. "Stop," I said unhappily. "Stop."

He checked at once. "I am sorry," he said. "But he is in no pain. And he is not afraid. He is prepared for his death. He knows it is coming. He is only anxious about you."

"Me!" I exclaimed.

"Yes," he said steadily. "You should a.s.sure him that you are provided for, that you are safe."

I hesitated.

"I myself have sworn to him that if you are in any difficulty or in any danger that I will care for you before any other. I will protect you as my wife for as long as you live."

I held on to the handle of the door so that I did not pitch myself into his arms and wail like a bereaved child. "That was kind of you," I managed to say. "I don't need your protection, but it was kind of you to rea.s.sure him."

"You have my protection whether you need it or not," Daniel said. "I am your husband, and I do not forget it."

He took up his cape from the stool before the fire and swung it around his shoulders. "I shall come tomorrow, and every day at noon," he said. "And I shall find a good woman to sit with him so that you can rest."

"I will care for him," I fired up. "I don't need any help."

He paused in the doorway. "You do need help," he said gently. "This is not something you can do well on your own. And you shall have help. I shall help you, whether you like it or not. And you will be glad of it when this is all over, even if you resist it now. I shall be kind to you, Hannah, whether you want me or not."

I nodded; I could not trust myself to speak. Then he went out of the door into the rain and I went upstairs to my father and took up the Bible in Hebrew and read to him some more.

As Daniel had predicted, my father slipped away very quickly. True to his word, Daniel brought a night nurse so that my father was never alone, never without a candle burning in his room and the quiet murmur of the words he loved to hear. The woman, Marie, was a stocky French peasant girl from devout parents and she could recite all the psalms, one after another. At night my father would sleep, lulled by the rolling cadences of the le-de-France. In the day I found a lad to mind the shop while I sat with him and read to him in Hebrew. Only in April did I find a new volume which had a small surviving snippet of the prayers for the dead. I saw his smile of acknowledgment. He raised his hand, I fell silent.

"Yes, it is time," was all he said. His voice was a thread. "You will be well, my child?"

I put the book on the seat of my chair and knelt at his bedside. Effort-fully he put his hand on my head for a blessing. "Don't worry about me," I whispered. "I will be all right. I have the shop and the press, I can earn a living, and Daniel will always look after me."

He nodded. Already he was drifting away, too far to give advice, too far to remonstrate. "I bless you, querida," he said gently.

"Father!" My eyes were filled with tears. I dropped my head to his bed.

"Bless you," he said again and lay quietly.

I levered myself back to my chair and blinked my eyes. Through the blur of tears I could hardly see the words. Then I started to read. "Magnified and sanctified be the name of G.o.d throughout the world which He has created according to His will. May He establish His kingdom during the days of your life and during the life of all of the house of Israel, speedily, yea soon; and say ye, Amen."

In the night when the nurse knocked on my door I was dressed, seated on my bed, and waiting for her to call me. I went to his bedside and saw his face, smiling, illuminated and without fear. I knew he was thinking of my mother and if there was any truth in his faith, or even in the faith of the Christians, then he would be greeting her soon in heaven. I said quietly to the nurse, "You can go and fetch the doctor Daniel Carpenter," and heard her patter down the stairs.

I sat beside his bed and took his hand in mine and felt the slow pulse flutter like the heart of a small bird under my fingers. Downstairs, the door quietly opened and shut and I heard two pairs of footsteps come in.

Daniel's mother stood in the bedroom doorway. "I don't intrude," she said quietly. "But you won't know how things should be done."

"I don't," I said. "I have read the prayers."

"That's right," she said. "You've done it right, and I can do the rest. You can watch, and learn, so you know how it is done. So that you can do it for me, or for another, when my time comes."

Quietly she approached the bed. "How now, old friend?" she said. "I have come to bid you farewell."

My father said nothing but he smiled at her. Gently she slid her arm under his shoulders and raised him up, turned him on his side so that he could face the wall, his back to the room. Then she sat by his side and recited all the prayers for the dying that she could remember.

"Good-bye, Father," I said softly. "Good-bye, Father. Good-bye."

Daniel cared for me as he had promised he would. As son-in-law, all my father's goods became his by right; but he signed them over to me in the same day. He came to the house and helped me to clear the few possessions that my father had kept through our long travels, and he asked Marie to stay on for the next few months. She could sleep downstairs in the kitchen, and would keep me company, and keep me safe at nights. Mrs. Carpenter frowned her disapproval at my unfeminine independence; but she managed to hold her peace.

She made the preparations for the Requiem Ma.s.s and then the secret Jewish ceremony, done the same day, behind our closed door. When I thanked her she waved me away. "These are the ways of our People," she said. "We have to remember them. We have to perform them. If we forget them, we forget ourselves. Your father was a great scholar among our People, he had books that had been all but forgotten and he had the courage to keep them safe. If it were not for men like him then we would not know the prayers that I said at his bedside. And now you know how it is done, and you can teach your children, and the way of our People can be handed down."

"It must be forgotten," I said. "In time."

"No, why?" she said. "We remembered Zion by the rivers of Babylon, we remember Zion in the gates of Calais. Why should we ever forget?"

Daniel did not ask me if I would forgive him and if we could start again as man and wife. He did not ask me if I was longing for a touch, for a kiss, longing to feel alive like a young woman in springtime and not always like a girl fighting against the world. He did not ask me if I felt, since my father was dead, that I was terribly alone in the world, and that I would always be Hannah alone, neither of the People, nor a wife, and now, not even a daughter. He did not ask me these things, I did not volunteer them, and so we parted kindly on my doorstep, with a sense of sadness and regret, and I imagine he went home and called on the way at the house of the plump fair-haired mother of his son, and I went into my house and closed my door and sat in darkness for a long time.

The cold months were always hard for me, my Spanish blood was still too thin for the damp days of a northern coastal winter, and Calais was little better than London had been under driving rain and gray skies. Without my father I felt as if some of the chill of the sea and the skies had crept into the very blood of my veins, and into my eyes, since I wept unaccountably for no reason. I gave up dining properly, but ate like a printer's lad with a hacked-off slice of bread in one hand and a cup of milk in the other. I did not observe the dietary restrictions as my father liked us to do, I did not light the candle for the Sabbath. I worked on the Sabbath, and I printed secular books and jest books and texts of plays and poems as if learning did not matter any more. I let my faith drift away with my hopes of happiness.

I could not sleep well at night but during the day I could hardly set type for yawning. Trade in the shop was slow; when the times were so uncertain no one cared for any books except prayer books. Many times I went down to the harbor and greeted travelers coming from London and asked them for news, thinking that perhaps I should go back to England and see if the queen would forgive me and welcome me back to her service.

The news they brought from England was as dark as the afternoon skies. King Philip was visiting his wife in London but he had brought her little joy, and everyone said he had only gone home to see what he could have from her. There was some vile gossip that he had taken his mistress with him and they danced every day under the queen's tortured gaze. She would have had to sit on her throne and see him laughing and dancing with another woman, and then endure him raging against her council who were dragging their heels in the war against France.

I wanted to go to her. I thought that she must feel desperately friendless in a court that had become all Spanish and wickedly joyful once more, headed by a new mistress of the king's and laughing at the English lack of sophistication. But the other news from England was that the burning of heretics was continuing without mercy, and I knew there was no safety for me in England - nor anywhere, come to that.

I resolved to stay in Calais, despite the cold, despite my loneliness, stay and wait, and hope that someday soon I should feel more able to decide, that someday soon I should recover my optimism, that someday, one day, I should find once more my sense of joy.

Summer 1557 By early summer the streets were filled with the sound of recruiting officers marching along, drumming and whistling for lads to volunteer for the English army to fight the French. The harbor was a continual bustle of s.h.i.+ps coming and going, unloading weapons and gunpowder and horses. In the fields outside the city a little camp had sprung up and soldiers were marched here and there, and bawled at, and marched back again. All I knew was that the extra traffic through the city gate did not bring much extra trade. The officers and men of this ramshackle hastily recruited army were not great scholars, and I was afraid of their bright acquisitive gaze. The town became unruly with the hundreds of extra men coming through and I took to wearing a pair of dark breeches, tucked my hair up under my cap, and donned a thick jerkin, despite the summer heat. I carried a dagger in my boot and I would have used it if anyone had come against me or broken into the shop. I kept Marie, my father's nurse, as my lodger and she and I bolted the door at six o'clock every night and did not open it until the morning, blowing out our candles if we heard brawling in the street.

The harbor was almost blocked by incoming s.h.i.+ps; as soon as the men marched from the fields outside the town toward the outlying forts, the camp immediately filled with more soldiers. The day the cavalry troops clattered through the town I thought that our chimney pot would be shaken from the roof by the noise. Other women of my age lined the streets, cheering and waving as the men went by, throwing flowers and eyeing the officers; but I kept my head down. I had seen enough death; my heart did not leap to the whistle of the pipes and the urgent rattle of the drums. I saw Daniel's sisters walking arm-in-arm on the ramparts in their best dresses, managing to look modestly down and all around them at the same time, desperate for some attention from any pa.s.sing English officer. I could not imagine feeling desire. I could not imagine the excitement that seemed to have gripped everyone but me. All I felt was worry about my stock if the men ran out of control, and grat.i.tude that I had chosen by luck a house which was one yard inside the city gate instead of one yard outside.

By midsummer the English army, marshaled, half trained and wholly wild for a fight, moved out of Calais, led by King Philip himself. They launched an attack on St. Quentin, and in August stormed the town and won it from the French. It was a resounding victory against a hated enemy. The citizens of Calais, ambitious to reclaim the whole of the lost English lands in France, went mad with joy at this first sign, and every returning soldier was laden with flowers and had a horn of wine pressed into his willing hand and was blessed as the savior of his nation.

I saw Daniel at church on Sunday when the priest preached the victory of G.o.d's chosen people over the treacherous French, and then, to my amazement, he prayed for the safe delivery of the queen of a son and heir to the throne. For me, it was better news even than the taking of St. Quentin, and for the first time in long months I felt my heart lift. When I thought of her carrying a child in her womb again I felt my downturned face lift up and smile. I knew how glad she must be, how this must bring her back to the joy she had felt in early marriage, how she must think now that G.o.d had forgiven the English and she might become a gentle queen and a good mother.

When Daniel came up to me as we all left church he saw the happiness on my face and smiled. "You did not know of the queen's condition?"

"How could I know?" I said. "I see n.o.body. I hear only the most general of gossip."

"There is news of your old lord too," he said levelly. "Have you heard?"

"Robert Dudley?" I could feel myself sway against the shock of his name. "What news?"

Daniel put a hand under my elbow to steady me. "Good news," he said quietly though I could see it brought little joy for him. "Good news, Hannah, be calm."

"Is he released?"

"He and half a dozen other men accused of treason were released some time ago and fought with the king." The twist of Daniel's mouth indicated that he thought Lord Robert would serve his own cause first. "Your lord raised his own company of horse a month ago..."

"He came through the town? And I didn't know?"

"He fought at St. Quentin and was mentioned in dispatches for bravery," Daniel said shortly.

I felt myself glow with pleasure. "Oh! How wonderful!"

"Yes," Daniel said without enthusiasm. "You won't try to find him, Hannah? The countryside is unsafe."

"He'll go home through Calais, won't he? When the French sue for peace?"

"I should think so."

"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.

Winter 1557a1558 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 hara.s.sing 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 ca.n.a.ls 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 s.h.i.+pping, and the brave English boats which bobbed at anchor in the port could be taken at any moment.