The Queen's Fool

Winter 1556-1557

Of course within days the word was out that I had fainted in church because I was pregnant, and for the next weeks I had women coming into the printing shop and asking for volumes which were stored on high shelves so that I would have to come out from behind the counter and stretch up, so that they could see my belly.

By winter they had to acknowledge that they were wrong and that the bookseller’s daughter, the odd changeling woman, had not yet received her comeuppance. By Christmas it was all but forgotten and by the long cold spring I was almost accepted as yet another eccentric in this town of runaways, vagabonds, ex-pirates, camp followers and chancers.

Besides, there were greater interests for the most inveterate gossips that year. King Philip’s long desire to drag his wife’s country into war against France had finally triumphed over her better sense, and England and France were declared enemies. Even sheltered as we were behind the stout walls of Calais it was terrifying to think that the French army could ride up to the bastions which encircled the Pale. The opinion of our customers was divided between those who thought the queen a fool ruled by her husband and mad to take on the might of France, and those who thought that this was a great chance for England and Spain to defeat the French as they had done once before, and this time to divide the spoils.

The spring storms kept ships in port and made news from England late and unreliable. I was not the only person who waited every day on the quayside and called to incoming ships: “What’s the news? What’s the news in England?” The spring gales threw rain and saltwater against the tiles and windows of the house and chilled my father to his very bones. Some days he was too cold and weary to get out of bed at all and I would kindle a little fire in the grate in his bedroom and sit by his bed and read to him from the precious scraps of our Bible. On our own, and quietly, lit only by candlelight, I would read to him in the rolling sonorous language of our race. I read to him in Hebrew and he lay back on his pillows and smiled to hear the old words that promised the land to the People, and safety at last. I hid from him as best as I could the news that the country we had chosen for our refuge was now at war with one of the strongest kingdoms in Christendom, and when he asked I emphasized that at least we were inside the town walls and that whatever might happen elsewhere to the English in France, or to the Spanish just down the road at Gravelines, at least we knew that Calais would never fall.

In March, as the town went mad for King Philip who traveled through the port on his way to Gravesend, I paid little attention to the rumors of his plans for war and his intentions toward the Princess Elizabeth. I was growing very anxious for my father, who did not seem to be getting any stronger. After two weeks of worry, I swallowed my pride and sent for the newly licensed Dr. Daniel Carpenter, who had set up an independent practice at a little shop on the far side of the quay. He came the moment that the street urchin delivered my message, and he came very quietly and gently as if he did not want to disturb me.

“How long has he been ill?” he asked me, shaking the sea fret off his thick dark cape.

“He is not really ill. He seems tired more than anything else,” I said, taking the cape from him and spreading it before the little fire to dry. “He doesn’t eat much, he will take soup and dried fruit but nothing else. He sleeps by day and night.”

“His urine?” Daniel asked.

I fetched the flask that I had kept for his diagnosis and he took it to the window and looked at the color in the daylight.

“Is he upstairs?”

“In the back bedroom,” I said and followed on my lost husband’s heels up the stairs.

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 assured me. “Thank God 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 compassionate. “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 assure 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 reassure 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 Île-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 God 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 Mass 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.