The Queen's Fool

Summer 1558

Almost by default, I found myself back in the queen’s service. She was so anxious and suspicious of everyone around her that she would be served only by people who had been with her from the earliest days. She hardly seemed to notice that I had been away from her for more than two years, and was now a woman grown, and dressed like a woman. She liked to hear me read to her in Spanish, and she liked me to sit by her bed while she slept. The deep sadness that had invaded her with the failure of her second pregnancy meant that she had no curiosity about me. I told her that my father had died, that I had married my betrothed, and that we had a child. She was interested only that my husband and I were separated – he in France, safe, I hoped, while I was in England. I did not name the town of Calais, she was as mortified by the loss of the town, England’s glory, as she was shamed by the loss of the baby.

“How can you bear not to be with your husband?” she asked suddenly, after three long hours of silence one gray afternoon.

“I miss him,” I said, startled at her suddenly speaking to me. “But I hope to find him again. I will go to France as soon as it is possible, I will go and look for him. Or I hope he will come to me. If you would help me send a message it would ease my heart.”

She turned toward the window and looked out at the river. “I keep a fleet of ships ready for the king to come to me,” she said. “And horses and lodgings all along the road from Dover to London. They are all waiting for him. They spend their lives, they earn their livings in waiting for him. A small army of men does nothing but wait for him. I, the Queen of England, his own wife, waits for him. Why does he not come?”

There was no answer that I could give her. There was no answer that anyone could give her. When she asked the Spanish ambassador he bowed low and murmured that the king had to be with his army – she must understand the need of that – the French were still threatening his lands. It satisfied her for a day, but the next day, when she looked for him, the Spanish ambassador had gone.

“Where is he?” the queen asked. I was holding her hood, waiting for her maid to finish arranging her hair. Her beautiful chestnut hair had gone gray and thin now, when it was brushed out it looked sparse and dry. The lines on her face and the weariness in her eyes made her seem far older than her forty-two years.

“Where is who, Your Grace?” I asked.

“The Spanish ambassador, Count Feria?”

I stepped forward and handed her hood to her maid, wishing that I could think of something clever to divert her. I glanced at Jane Dormer who was close friends with the Spanish count and saw a swift look of consternation cross her face. There would be no help from her. I gritted my teeth and told her the truth. “I believe he has gone to see the princess.”

The queen turned around to look at me, her eyes shocked. “Why, Hannah? Why would he do that?”

I shook my head. “How would I know, Your Grace? Does he not go to present his compliments to the princess now and then?”

“No. He does not. For most of his time in England she has been under house arrest, a suspected traitor, and he himself urged me to execute her. Why would he go to pay his compliments now?”

None of us answered. She took the hood from the waiting woman’s hands and put it on, meeting her own honest eyes in the mirror. “The king will have ordered him to go. I know Feria, he is not a man to plot willfully. The king will have ordered him to go.”

She was silent for a moment, thinking what she should do. I kept my gaze down, I could not bear to look up and see her, facing the knowledge that her own husband was sending messages to her heir, to her rival, to his mistress.

When she turned back to us her expression was calm. “Hannah, a word with you, please,” she said, extending her hand.

I went to her side and she took my arm and leaned on me slightly as we walked from the room to her presence chamber. “I want you to go to Elizabeth,” she said quietly, as they opened the doors. There was hardly anyone outside waiting to see her. They were all at Hatfield. “Just go as if for a visit. Tell her you have recently come back from Calais and wanted to see how she did. Can you do that?”

“I would have to take my son,” I temporized.

“Take him,” she nodded. “And see if you can find out from Elizabeth herself, or from her ladies, what Count Feria wanted with her.”

“They may tell me nothing,” I said uncomfortably. “Surely, they will know I serve you.”

“You can ask,” she said. “And you are the only friend that I can trust who will gain admission to Elizabeth. You have always passed between us. She likes you.”

“Perhaps the ambassador was making nothing more than a courtesy visit.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But it may be that the king is pressing her to marry the Prince of Savoy. She has sworn to me that she will not have him but Elizabeth has no principles, she has only appearances. If the king promised to support her claim to be my heir, she might think it worth her while to marry his cousin. I have to know.”

“When d’you want me to go?” I asked unwillingly.

“At first light tomorrow,” she said. “And don’t write to me, I am surrounded by spies. I will wait for you to tell me what she is planning when you come back to me.”

Queen Mary released my arm and went on alone into dinner. As the noblemen and the gentry rose to their feet as she walked toward the high table in the great hall I noticed how small she seemed: a diminutive woman overwhelmed by her duties in a hostile world. I watched her step up to her throne, seat herself and look around her depleted court with her tight determined smile and thought – not for the first time – that she was the most courageous woman I had ever known. A woman with the worst luck in the world.

It was a merry ride to Hatfield for Danny and me. He rode the horse astride before me until he grew too tired, and then I strapped him to my back and he slept, rocked by the jolting. I had an escort of two men to keep me safe; since the epidemic of illness of the winter, and the hardship of one bad harvest after another, the roads were continually threatened by highwaymen, bandits or just vagrants and beggars who would shout for money and threaten violence. But with the two men trotting behind us, Daniel and I were lighthearted. The weather was fine, the rain had stopped at last, and the sun was so hot by midday that we were pleased to break our fast in a field, sheltering in a wood, or sometimes by a river or stream. I let Danny paddle his feet, or sit bare-arsed in the water while it splashed around him. He was steady on his feet now, he made little rushes forward and back to me, and he continually demanded to be lifted upward to see more, to touch things, or simply to pat my face and turn my gaze this way and that.

As we rode I sang to him, the Spanish songs of my childhood, and I was certain that he heard me. His little hand would wave in time to the music, he would give a little wriggle of pleasure when I started singing, but he never joined in the tune. He remained as silent as a leveret in hiding, as a fawn in the bracken.

The old palace at Hatfield had been the royal nursery for generations, chosen for its clean air and proximity to London. It was an old building, small-windowed and dark-beamed, and the men led the way to the front door so that Danny and I might dismount and go inside while they took the horses away to the ramshackle stable block at a little distance from the house.

There was no one in the hall to greet us but a boy bringing in logs for the fire which was kept going, even in midsummer. “They’re all in the garden,” he said. “Acting a play.”

His gesture directed me to a door at the rear of the hall and with Danny in my arms I opened it, followed the stone corridor to another door and then stepped out into the sunshine.

What playacting there had been was clearly over, and what was left was a romp. Veils of cloth of gold and silver and overturned chairs were scattered around the orchard, and Elizabeth’s ladies were running in all directions from a man in the center of the circle with a dark scarf over his face to blindfold him. As I watched he caught a flying skirt and drew a girl to him but she wriggled free and ran away laughing. They gathered around him and with much giggling and cooing they turned him round and round until he was dizzy and then they retreated. Again he dashed and lunged, while they ran this way and that, giggling with that heady mixture of girlish playfulness and female arousal. Among them, her red hair flying loose, her hood cast away, her face flushed and laughing, was the princess. She was not the Elizabeth I had seen white-faced with terror. She was not the princess I had seen bloated on her bed, sick to her very bones with fear. She was a princess coming into the midsummer of her life, coming into her womanhood, coming to the throne. She was a fairytale princess, beautiful, powerful, willful, infallible.

“Well, glory be,” I whispered to myself, as skeptical as any fool.

As I watched she tapped the blindfolded man on the shoulder and made to run back again. This time he was too quick for her. His hand flashed out, she sprang back just too slowly, he snatched her at the waist and though she struggled he held her close. He must have felt her panting against him. He must have smelled the perfume in her hair. He must have known her at once.

“I have caught you!” he called out. “Who is it?”

“You have to guess! You have to guess!” the ladies cried.

He ran his hand over her forehead, her hair, her nose, her lips. “A beauty,” he said certainly. He was rewarded by a gale of shocked laughter.

Impertinently, he let his hand stray down over her chin, down her neck, he took her throat in his hand. I saw the color flame into Elizabeth’s cheeks and I realized she was on fire with desire at his touch. She did not step back from him, she did not move to check him. She was ready to stand before him and let him finger her all over, watched by all her court.

I moved a little forward to see this man better, but the blindfold covered all of his face, I could see only his thick dark hair and the strong square shoulders. I thought I knew who this man was.

He held her firmly, and there was a little whisper almost of dismay from her ladies as he gripped her with one hand at the waist, and with the other traced the border of the neck of her gown, his fingertips brushing the tops of her breasts. Slowly, tantalizingly, he slid his hand down the front of her gown over the embroidered stomacher, past the girdle at her waist, over the thick skirt of her gown at the front as if he would pat her sex, shielded by petticoats, as if he would touch her like a whore. Still the princess did not stop him, still she did not step back from him. She stood stock-still pressed against this man with his one hand around her waist, pulling her close to him as if she were a loose-lived maid who would offer a squeeze and a kiss. She did not resist even when his hand went down the front of her gown, to her very crotch beneath her petticoats, and then round her back to take hold of her buttocks in his hand, then he slid his other hand down from her waist, so that he was embracing her, so that he had her arse in both hands, as if she were his own woman.

Elizabeth gave a little soft moan and twisted from his grip, almost falling back amongst her ladies. “Who was it? Who was it?” they chanted, relieved that she had freed herself from his embrace.

“I give up,” he said. “I cannot play some foolish game. I have touched the very curves of heaven.”

He pulled the blindfold from his eyes and I saw his face. His eyes met Elizabeth’s. He knew exactly who it had been in his arms, he had known from the moment he had caught her, as he had intended to do; as she had intended him to do. He had caressed her in front of all the court, caressed her as an accepted lover, and she had let him stroke her as if she were a whore. She smiled at him, her knowing desirous smile, and he smiled back.

Of course, the man was my lord Robert Dudley.

“And what are you doing here, child?” he asked me before dinner, walking on the terrace, the ladies of Elizabeth’s little court observing our progress while pretending not to watch.

“Queen Mary sent me to pay her compliments to Elizabeth.”

“Oho, my little spy, are you at work again?”

“Yes, and most unwillingly.”

“And what does the queen want to know?” He paused for a moment. “Anything about William Pickering? About me?”

I shook my head. “Nothing that I know of.”

He drew me to a stone seat. There was honeysuckle growing on the wall behind me and the smell was very sweet. He reached over and plucked a flower. The petals, scarlet and honey, lolled like the tongue of a snake. He brushed my neck with it. “So what does the queen want?”

“She wants to know what Count Feria was doing here,” I said simply. “Is he here?”

“Left yesterday.”

“What did he want?”

“He brought a message from the king. Queen Mary’s own beloved husband. A faithless dog, isn’t he, the randy old Spaniard?”

“Why d’you say that?”

“Mistress Boy, I have a wife who does me no service, and shows me no kindness, but not even I would court her own sister under her nose and shame her while she was still living.”

I swayed in my seat and took hold of his hand which was still playing with the flower. “He is courting Elizabeth?”

“The Pope has been approached to give permission for their marriage,” he said flatly. “How is that for Spanish punctilio for you? If the queen lives then it’s my guess that Philip will apply for an annulment of their marriage and marry Elizabeth. If the queen dies, then Elizabeth is heir to the throne and an even richer plum for the picking. He will snap her up within the year.”

I looked at him, my face quite blank with horror. “This cannot be,” I said, appalled. “It’s a betrayal. It’s the worst thing he could do to her. The worst thing he could do to her in all the world.”

“It’s an unexpected move,” he said. “Disagreeable for a loving wife.”

“The queen would die of grief and shame. To be put aside, as her mother was put aside? And for Anne Boleyn’s daughter?”

He nodded. “As I said, a faithless Spanish dog.”

“And Elizabeth?”

He glanced over my shoulder and he rose to his feet. “You can ask her yourself.”

I slid into a curtsey, and then came up. Elizabeth’s black eyes snapped at me. She did not like to see me seated beside Robert Dudley with him stroking my neck with honeysuckle flowers.

“Princess.”

“I heard you were back. My lord said that you had become a woman. I did not expect to see you quite so…”

I waited.

“Fat,” she said.

Instead of being insulted, as she intended, I giggled out loud at the childish jealous rudeness of her.

At once her eyes danced too. Elizabeth never sulked.

“Whereas you, Princess, are more beautiful than ever,” I said smoothly.

“I hope so. And what were you talking about with your heads so close together?”

“About you,” I said simply. “The queen sent me to find out how you did. And I was glad to come and see you.”

“I warned you not to leave it too late,” she said, her gesture taking in the waiting women, the lounging handsome men, the courtiers from London who saw me recognize them and looked a little abashed. A couple of members of the queen’s council stepped back from my scrutiny; with them was an envoy of France, and a minor prince or two.

“I see your ladyship keeps a merry court,” I said evenly. “As you should. And I cannot join you, even if you would condescend to have me. I have to serve your sister. She does not have a merry court, she has few friends. I would not leave her now.”

“Then you must be the only person in England who has not deserted her,” she said cheerfully. “I took on her cook last week. Does she get anything to eat at all?”

“She manages,” I said dryly. “And even the Spanish ambassador, Count Feria, her greatest friend and trusted councillor, was missing from court when I left.”

She shot a quick look at Robert Dudley and I saw him nod permission for her to speak.

“I refused his request,” she said gently. “I have no plans to marry anyone. You can assure the queen of that, for it is true.”

I gave her a little curtsey. “I am glad not to have to take her any news which would make her yet more unhappy.”

“I wish she would feel some distress for the people of the country,” Elizabeth said sharply. “The burning of heretics goes on, Hannah, the agony of innocent people. You should tell the queen that her sadness at the loss of a child who never was is nothing compared with the grief of a woman who sees her son go to the stake. And there are hundreds of women who have been forced to watch that.”

Robert Dudley came to my rescue. “Shall we dine?” he asked lightly. “And there will be music after dinner. I demand a dance.”

“Only one?” she queried, her mood lifting at once.

“Only one,” he said.

She made a little flirtatious pouting face.

“The one that starts when the music starts after dinner and ends when the sun comes up and no one can dance another step,” he said. “That one.”

“And what shall we do then, when we have danced ourselves to a standstill?” she asked provocatively.

I looked from her to him, I could hardly believe the intimacy of their tone. Anyone who heard them would have thought them to be lovers in the very first days of their desire.

“We will do whatever you wish, of course,” he said, his voice like silk. “But I know what I would wish.”

“What?” she breathed.

“To lie with…”

“With?”

“The morning sun on my face,” he finished.

Elizabeth stepped a little closer to him and whispered a phrase in Latin. I kept my expression deliberately blank. I had understood the Latin as readily as Lord Robert, she had whispered that she wanted kisses in the morning… From the sun, of course.

She turned to her court. “We will dine,” she announced out loud. She walked alone, head up, toward the doors to the great hall. As she went into the dark interior she paused and threw a glance at Lord Robert over her shoulder. I saw the invitation in her look, and almost like a moment of dizziness, I recognized that look. I had seen that very same look before, to the queen’s husband King Philip. And I had seen that look before then, when she had been a girl and I had been a child: to Lord Thomas Seymour, her stepmother’s husband. It was the same look, it was the invitation of the same desire. Elizabeth liked to choose her lovers from the husbands of other women, she liked to arouse desire from a man whose hands were tied, she liked to triumph over a woman who could not keep her husband, and more than anything in the world, she liked to throw that look over her shoulder and see a man start forward to go to her side – as Lord Robert started now.

Elizabeth’s court was a young merry optimistic court. It was the court of a young woman waiting for her fortune, waiting for her throne, certain, now, that it would come to her. It hardly mattered that the queen had not named her as heir; all the time-serving, self-serving men of the queen’s court and council had already pledged their allegiance to this rising star. Half of them had sons and daughters in her service already. The visit from Count Feria was nothing more than another straw in the wind which was blowing smoothly and sweetly toward Hatfield. It told everyone that the queen’s power, like her happiness, like her health, had waned. Even the queen’s husband had transferred to her rival.

It was a merry, joyful summertime court and I spent the afternoon and night in that happy company. It left me sick and chilled to the bone. I slept in a little bed with my arms tight around my child, and the next day we rode back to the queen.

I made sure I did not count how many great men and women we passed on the road to Hatfield, going in the opposite direction. I did not need to add to the sour taste of sickness in my mouth. Long before this day, I had seen the court move from a sick king to a waiting heir and I knew how light is the fidelity of courtiers. But even so, even though I had known it, there was something about the turn of this tide that felt more like the dishonorable turning of a coat.

I found the queen walking by the river, no more than a handful of courtiers behind her. I marked who they were: half of them at least were the dourest most solid Catholics whose faith would never change whoever was on the throne; a couple of Spanish noblemen, hired by the king to stay at court and bear his wife company; and Will Somers, faithful Will Somers, who called himself a fool but had never, in my hearing, said a foolish word.

“Your Grace,” I said, and swept her my curtsey.

The queen took in my appearance, the mud on my cloak, the child at my side.

“You have come straight from Hatfield?”

“As you commanded.”

“Can someone take the child?”

Will stepped forward and Danny beamed. I set him down and he gave his quiet little gurgle of pleasure and toddled toward Will.

“I am sorry to bring him to Your Grace, I thought you might like to see him,” I said awkwardly.

She shook her head. “No, Hannah, I do not ever want to see him.” She gestured for me to walk beside her. “Did you see Elizabeth?”

“Yes.”

“And what did she say of the ambassador?”

“I spoke to one of her women.” I was anxious not to identify Lord Robert as the favorite at this treacherous alternative court. “She said that the ambassador had visited to pay his compliments.”

“And what else?”

I hesitated. My duty to be honest to the queen and my desire not to hurt her seemed to be in utter conflict. I had puzzled about this for all of the ride back to court and I had decided that I should be as faithless as the rest of them. I could not bring myself to tell her that her own husband was proposing marriage to her own sister.

“He was pressing the suit of the Duke of Savoy,” I said. “Elizabeth herself assured me that she would not marry him.”

“The Duke of Savoy?” she asked.

I nodded.

The queen reached out her hand and I took it and waited, not knowing what she would say to me. “Hannah, you have been my friend for many years, and a true friend, I think.”

“Yes, Your Grace.”

She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Hannah, sometimes I think I have run mad, quite mad, with jealousy and unhappiness.”

Her dark eyes filled with tears. I held tightly to her hand. “What is it?”

“I am doubting him. I am doubting my own husband. I am doubting our marriage vows. If I doubt this then my world will fall apart, and yet I do doubt.”

I did not know what to say. Her grip on my hand was painful but I did not flinch. “Queen Mary?”

“Hannah, answer me a question and then I will never think of this again. But answer me truly, and tell no one.”

I gulped, wondering what terror was opening up beneath my feet. “I will, Your Grace.” Inwardly I promised myself that if the question endangered me, or Danny, or my lord, I would allow myself to lie. The familiar tremor of fear of court life was making my heart flutter, I could hear it pounding in my ears. The queen was white as a shroud, her eyes madly intent.

“Was there any suggestion that the king was pressing his own suit?” she whispered, so low that I could hardly hear her. “Even though he is my husband, even though he is forsworn before God, the Pope, and our two kingdoms? Please tell me, Hannah. I know that it is the question of a madwoman. I know that I am his wife and he could not be doing this. But I have become filled with the thought that he is courting her, not as a pastime, not as a flirtation: but for his wife. I have to know. I am tortured by this fear.”

I bit my lip, and she needed nothing more. With the quick apprehension of a woman seeing her worst fear, she knew it at once.

“Dear God, it is so,” she said slowly. “I thought that my suspicion of him was part of my illness, but it is not. I can see it on your face. He is courting my sister for marriage. My own sister? And my own husband?”

I clasped her cold hand between my own. “Your Grace, this is a matter of policy for the king,” I said. “Like making a will to provide for the future. He has to provide in the case of your accident or death. He is trying to secure England for Spain. It is his duty to keep England safe, and in the true faith. And if you were to die, sometime in the future, if he were to marry Elizabeth after your death then England would remain Roman Catholic – and that is what you and he wanted to secure.”

She shook her head, as if she were trying to hear my rapid words but none of them made any sense to her. “Dearest God, this is the very worst thing that could ever have happened to me,” she said quietly. “I saw my mother pushed from her throne and shamed by a younger woman who took the king from her and laughed as she did it. And now this woman’s daughter, the very same bastard daughter, does just the same thing to me.”

She broke off and looked at me. “No wonder I couldn’t believe it. No wonder I thought it was my own mad suspicion,” she said. “It is the thing I have feared all my life. Ending up like my own mother, neglected, abandoned, with a Boleyn whore in triumph on the throne. When will this wickedness stop? When will the witchcraft of the Boleyns be defeated? They cut off her head and yet here is her daughter rising up like a serpent with the same poison in her mouth!”

I gave her hand a little tug. “Your Grace, don’t give way. Not here. Not here before all these people.”

I was thinking of her, and I was thinking of Elizabeth’s court who would laugh till they cried if they heard that the queen had broken down because she had heard at last what all of Europe had known for months – that her husband had betrayed her.

She shook from head to toe with the effort; but she drew herself up, she blinked back the tears. “You are right,” she said. “I will not be shamed. I will say nothing more. I will think nothing more. Walk with me, Hannah.”

I glanced back at Danny. Will was seated on the ground with the boy astride his knees, showing him how he could wiggle his ears. Danny’s chuckle was delighted. I took the queen’s arm and matched my stride to her slow pace. The court fell in behind us, yawning.

The queen looked out over the swiftly moving water. There were few ships coming and going, trade was bad for England, at war with France and with the fields yielding less and less each year.

“You know,” the queen whispered to me, “you know, Hannah, I loved him from the moment I first saw his portrait. D’you remember?”

“Yes,” I said, also remembering my warning that he would break her heart.

“I adored him when I met him, d’you remember our wedding day, when he looked so handsome and we were so happy?”

I nodded again.

“I worshipped him when he took me to bed and lay with me. He gave me the only joy I had ever known in all my life. Nobody knows what he was to me, Hannah. Nobody will ever know how much I have loved him. And now you tell me that he is planning to marry my worst enemy when I am dead. He is looking forward to my death and his life after it.”

She stood quietly for a few moments as her court halted aimlessly behind her, looking from her to me and wondering what fresh bad news I had brought. Then I saw her stiffen, and her hand went to her eyes, as if she had a sudden pain. “Unless he does not wait for my death,” she said quietly.

A quick glance at my white face told her the rest of the story. She shook her head. “No, never,” she whispered. “Not this. He would never divorce me? Not as my father did to my mother? With no grounds except lust for another woman? And she a whore, and the daughter of a whore?”

I said nothing.

She did not cry. She was Queen Mary who had been Princess Mary, who had learned as a little girl to keep her head up and her tears back and if her lips were bitten to ribbons and her mouth was filled with blood then what did it matter, as long as she did not cry where anyone could see her?

She just nodded, as if she had taken a hard knock to the head. Then she beckoned to Will Somers and he came forward, Daniel at his side, and gently took her outstretched hand.

“You know, Will,” she said softly, “it’s a funny thing, worthy of your wit, but it seems to me that the greatest terror of my life, which I would have done anything to avoid, would have been to end my life as my mother ended hers: abandoned by my husband, childless, and with a whore in my place.” She looked at him and smiled though her eyes were dark with tears. “And now look, Will, isn’t it ridiculous? Here I am, and it has come to me. Can you make a joke about that?”

Will shook his head. “No,” he said shortly. “I can find no joke in that. Some things are not funny.”

She nodded.

“And, in any case, women have no sense of humor,” he said staunchly.

She could not hear him. I could see that she was still taking in the horror that her nightmare had come true. She would be like her mother, abandoned by the king, living out her life in heartbreak.

“I suppose one can see why that might be,” Will remarked. “Women’s lack of humor. Given the present circumstances.”

The queen released him and turned to me. “I am sorry I was unkind about your boy,” she said. “He is a fine boy, I am sure. What is his name?”

Will Somers took Daniel’s hand and drew him toward her.

“Daniel Carpenter, Your Grace.” I could see she was holding herself together by a thread of will.

“Daniel.” She smiled at him. “You be a good boy when you grow up and a faithful man.” Her voice quavered for only a moment. She rested her beringed hand on his head. “God bless you,” she said gently.

That night as I waited for Danny to fall asleep I took a page of pressed notepaper and wrote to his father.

Dear Husband,

Living here, in the saddest court in Christendom with a queen who has never done anything but what she believed to be right and yet has been betrayed by everyone in the world that she loved, even those who were sworn before God to love her, I think of you and your long years of faithfulness to me. And I pray that one day we can be together again and you will see that I have learned to value love and to value fidelity; and to love and be faithful in return.

Your wife

Hannah Carpenter

Then I took the page, kissed his name at the top, and dropped it in the fire.

The court was due to leave for Whitehall Palace in August. The usual progress had been abandoned for the queen’s pregnancy, and now that there was no child it was almost as if she had abandoned the summer as well. Certainly there was no good weather to invite the court into the country. It was cold and raining every day, the harvest would be bad again and there would be starvation up and down the land. It would be another bad year of Mary’s reign, another year when God did not smile on England.

There was less fuss about moving than usual; there were fewer people traveling with the queen this year, fewer than ever before, and they had fewer goods, and hangers-on. The court was shrinking.

“Where is everybody?” I asked Will, bringing my horse beside his as we rode into the city at the head of the court train, just behind the queen in her litter.

“Hatfield,” he growled crossly.

The change of air did nothing for the queen, who complained that very night of a fever. She did not dine in the great hall of Whitehall Palace but took to her room and had two or three dishes brought to her. She hardly ate at all. I went past the great hall on my way to her chambers and stopped to glance in the door. For a moment I had a sudden powerful picture in my mind, almost as bright as a seeing: the empty throne, the greedily eating court, the ladies unsupervised, the servants kneeling to the empty throne and serving the royal dinner to the absent monarch on plates that would never be touched. It had been like this when I had first come to court, five years ago. But then it had been King Edward, sick and neglected in his rooms while the court made merry. Now it was my Queen Mary.

I stepped back and bumped into a man walking behind me. I turned with an apology. It was John Dee.

“Dr. Dee!” My heart thudded with fright. I dropped him a curtsey.

“Hannah Green,” he said, bowing over my hand. “How are you? And how is the queen?”

I glanced around to see that no one was in earshot. “Ill,” I said. “Very hot, aching in all her bones, weeping eyes and running nose. Sad.”

He nodded. “Half the city is sick,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve had one day of clear sunshine in the whole of this summer. How is your son?”

“Well, and I thank God for it,” I said.

“Has he spoken a word yet?”

“No.”

“I have been thinking of him and of our talk about him. There is a scholar I know, who might advise you. A physician.”

“In London?” I asked.

He took out a piece of paper. “I wrote down his direction, in case I should meet you today. You can trust him with anything that you wish to tell him.”

I took the piece of paper with some trepidation. No one would ever know all of John Dee’s business, all of his friends.

“Are you here to see my lord?” I asked. “We expect him tonight from Hatfield.”

“Then I shall wait in his rooms,” he said. “I don’t like to dine in the hall without the queen at its head. I don’t like to see an empty throne for England.”

“No,” I said, warming to him despite my fear, as I always did. “I was thinking that myself.”

He put his hand on mine. “You can trust this physician,” he said. “Tell him who you are, and what your child needs, and I know he will help you.”

Next day I took Danny on my hip and I walked toward the city to find the house of the physician. He had one of the tall narrow houses by the Inns of Court, and a pleasant girl to answer the door. She said he would see me at once if I would wait a moment in his front room, and Danny and I sat among the shelves which were filled with odd lumps of rock and stone.

He came quietly into the room and saw me examining a piece of marble, a lovely piece of rock, the color of honey.

“Do you have an interest in stones, Mistress Carpenter?” he asked.

Gently, I put the piece down. “No. But I read somewhere that there are different rocks occurring all over the world, some side by side, some on top of another, and no man has ever yet explained why.”

He nodded. “Nor why some carry coal and some gold. Your friend Mr. Dee and I were considering this the other day.”

I looked at him a little more closely, and I thought I recognized one of the Chosen People. He had skin that was the same color as mine, his eyes were as dark as mine, as dark as Daniel’s. He had a strong long nose and the arched eyebrows and high cheekbones that I knew and loved.

I took a breath and I took my courage and started without hesitation. “My name was Hannah Verde. I came from Spain with my father when I was a child. Look at the color of my skin, look at my eyes. I am one of the People.” I turned my head and stroked my finger down my nose. “See? This is my child, my son, he is two, he needs your help.”

The man looked at me as if he would deny everything. “I don’t know your family,” he said cautiously. “I don’t know what you mean by the People.”

“My father was a Verde in Aragon,” I said. “An old Jewish family. We changed our name so long ago I don’t know what it should have been. My cousins are the Gaston family in Paris. My husband has taken the name of Carpenter now, but he comes from the d’Israeli family. He is in Calais.” I checked when I found that my voice shook slightly at his name. “He was in Calais when the town was taken. I believe he is a prisoner now. I have no recent news of him. This is his son. He has not spoken since we left Calais, he is afraid, I think. But he is Daniel d’Israeli’s son, and he needs his birthright.”

“I understand you,” he said gently. “Is there any proof you can give me of your race and your sincerity?”

I whispered very low. “When my father died, we turned his face to the wall and we said: “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.”

The man closed his eyes. “Amen.” And then opened them again. “What do you want with me, Hannah d’Israeli?”

“My son will not speak,” I said.

“He is mute?”

“He saw his wet nurse die in Calais. He has not spoken since that day.”

He nodded and took Daniel on to his knee. With great care he touched his face, his ears, his eyes. I thought of my husband learning his skill to care for the children of others, and I wondered if he would ever again see his own son, and if I could teach this child to say his father’s name.

“I can see no physical reason that he should not speak,” he said.

I nodded. “He can laugh, and he can make sounds. But he does not say words.”

“You want him circumcised?” he asked very quietly. “It is to mark him for life. He will be known as a Jew then. He will know himself as a Jew.”

“I keep my faith in my heart now,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. “When I was a young woman I thought of nothing, I knew nothing. I just missed my mother. Now that I am older and I have a child of my own I know that there is more than the bond of a mother and her child. There is the People and our faith. Our little family lives within our kin. And that goes on. Whether his father is alive or dead, whether I am alive or dead, the People go on. Even though I have lost my father and my mother and now my husband, I acknowledge the People, I know there is a God, I know his name is Elohim. I still know there is a faith. And Daniel is part of it. I cannot deny it for him. I should not.”

He nodded. “Give him to me for a moment.”

He took Daniel into an inner room. I saw the dark eyes of my son look a little apprehensively over the strange man’s shoulder, and I tried to smile at him reassuringly as he was carried away. I went to the window and held on to the window latch. I clutched it so tightly that it marked my palms and I was not aware of it until my fingers had cramped tight. I heard a little cry from the inner room and I knew it was done, and Daniel was his father’s son in every way.

The rabbi brought my son out to me and handed him over. “I think he will speak,” was all he said.

“Thank you,” I replied.

He walked to the front door with me. There was no need for him to caution me, nor for me to promise him of my discretion. We both knew that on the other side of the door was a country where we were despised and hated for our race and for our faith, even though our race was the most lost and dispersed people in the world, and our faith was almost forgotten: nothing left but a few half-remembered prayers and some tenacious rituals.

“Shalom,” he said gently. “Go in peace.”

“Shalom,” I replied.

There was no joy at the court in Whitehall, and the city, which had once marched out for Mary, now hated her. The pall of smoke from the burnings at Smithfield poisoned the air for half a mile in every direction; in truth it poisoned the air for all of England.

She did not relent. She knew with absolute certainty that those men and women who would not accept the holy sacraments of the church were doomed to burn in hell. Torture on earth was nothing compared with the pains they would suffer hereafter. And so anything that might persuade their families, their friends, the mutinous crowds who gathered at Smithfield and jeered the executioners and cursed the priests, was worth doing. There were souls to be saved despite themselves and Mary would be a good mother to her people. She would save them despite themselves. She would not listen to those who begged her to forgive rather than punish. She would not even listen to Bishop Bonner who said that he feared for the safety of the city and wanted to burn the heretics early in the morning before many people were about. She said that whatever the risk to her and to her rule, God’s will must be done and be seen to be done. They must burn and they must be seen to burn. She said that pain was the lot of man and woman and was there any man who would dare to come to her, and ask her to let her people avoid the pain of sin?