The Queen’s Fool

I had been so interested in these two, the young man like a god, the older man like a priest, that I had not looked at the third. This third man was all dressed in white, gleaming like enamelled silver, I could hardly see him for the brightness of the sun on his sparkling cloak. I looked for his face and could see only a blaze of silver, I blinked and still I could not see him. Then I came to my senses and realised that whoever they might be, they were all three looking in the doorway of the bookshop next door.

One swift glance at our own dark doorway showed me that my father was in the inside room mixing fresh ink, and had not seen my failure to summon customers. Cursing myself for an idle fool, I jumped forward into their path and said clearly, in my newly acquired English accent, ‘Good day to you, sirs. Can we help you? We have the finest collection of pleasing and moral books you will find in London, the most interesting manuscripts at the fairest of prices and drawings wrought with the most artistry and the greatest charm that …’

‘I am looking for the shop of Oliver Green, the printer,’ the young man said.

At the moment his dark eyes flicked to mine, I felt myself freeze, as if all the clocks in London had suddenly stopped still and their pendulums were caught silent. I wanted to hold him: there, in his red slashed doublet in the winter sunshine, forever. I wanted him to look at me and see me, me, as I truly was; not an urchin lad with a dirty face, but a girl, almost a young woman. But his glance flicked indifferently past me to our shop, and I came to my senses and held open the door for the three of them.

‘This is the shop of the scholar and bookmaker Oliver Green. Step inside, my lords,’ I invited them and I shouted, into the inner dark room: ‘Father! Here are three great lords to see you!’

I heard the clatter as he pushed back his high printer’s stool and came out, wiping his hands on his apron, the smell of ink and hot pressed paper following him. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘Welcome to you both.’ He was wearing his usual black suit and his linen at the cuffs was stained with ink. I saw him through their eyes for a moment and saw a man of fifty, his thick hair bleached white from shock, his face deep-furrowed, his height concealed in the scholar’s stoop.

He prompted me with a nod, and I pulled forward three stools from under the counter, but the lords did not sit, they stood looking around.

‘And how may I serve you?’ he asked. Only I could have seen that he was afraid of them, afraid of all three: the handsome younger man who swept off his hat and pushed his dark curled hair back from his face, the quietly dressed older man and, behind them, the silent lord in shining white.

‘We are seeking Oliver Green, the bookseller,’ the young lord said.

My father nodded his head. ‘I am Oliver Green,’ he said quietly, his Spanish accent very thick. ‘And I will serve you in any way that I can do. Any way that is pleasing to the laws of the land, and the customs …’

‘Yes, yes,’ the young man said sharply. ‘We hear that you are just come from Spain, Oliver Green.’

My father nodded again. ‘I am just come to England indeed, but we left Spain three years ago, sir.’

‘An Englishman?’

‘An Englishman now, if you please,’ my father said cautiously.

‘Your name? It is a very English name?’

‘It was Verde,’ he said with a wry smile. ‘It is easier for Englishmen if we call ourselves Green.’

‘And you are a Christian? And a publisher of Christian theology and philosophy?’

I could see the small gulp in my father’s throat at the dangerous question, but his voice was steady and strong when he answered. ‘Most certainly, sir.’

‘And are you of the reformed or the old tradition?’ the young man asked, his voice very quiet.

My father did not know what answer they wanted to this, nor could he know what might hang on it. Actually we might hang on it, or burn for it, or go to the block for it, however it was that they chose this day to deal with heretics in this country under the young King Edward.

‘The reformed,’ he said tentatively. ‘Though christened into the old faith in Spain, I follow the English church now.’ There was a pause. ‘Praise be to God,’ he offered. ‘I am a good servant of King Edward, and I want nothing more than to work my trade and live according to his laws, and worship in his church.’

I could smell the sweat of his terror as acrid as smoke, and it frightened me. I brushed the back of my hand under my cheek, as if to wipe away the smuts from a fire. ‘It’s all right. I am sure they want our books, not us,’ I said in a quick undertone in Spanish.

My father nodded to show he had heard me. But the young lord was on to my whisper at once. ‘What did the lad say?’

‘I said that you are scholars,’ I lied in English.

‘Go inside, querida,’ my father said quickly to me. ‘You must forgive the child, my lords. My wife died just three years ago and the child is a fool, only kept to mind the door.’

‘The child speaks only the truth,’ the older man remarked pleasantly. ‘For we have not come to disturb you, there is no need to be afraid. We have only come to see your books. I am a scholar; not an inquisitor. I only wanted to see your library.’

I hovered at the doorway and the older man turned to me. ‘But why did you say three lords?’ he asked.

My father snapped his fingers to order me to go, but the young lord said: ‘Wait. Let the boy answer. What harm is it? There are only two of us, lad. How many can you see?’

I looked from the older man to the handsome young man and saw that there were, indeed, only two of them. The third, the man in white as bright as burnished pewter, had gone as if he had never been there at all.

‘I saw a third man behind you, sir,’ I said to the older one. ‘Out in the street. I am sorry. He is not there now.’

‘She is a fool but a good girl,’ my father said, waving me away.

‘No, wait,’ the young man said. ‘Wait a minute. I thought this was a lad. A girl? Why d’you have her dressed as a boy?’

‘And who was the third man?’ his companion asked me.

My father became more and more anxious under the barrage of questions. ‘Let her go, my lords,’ he said pitifully. ‘She is nothing more than a girl, a little maid with a weak mind, still shocked by her mother’s death. I can show you my books, and I have some fine manuscripts you may like to see as well. I can show you …’

‘I want to see them indeed,’ the older man said firmly. ‘But first, I want to speak with the child. May I?’

My father subsided, unable to refuse such great men. The older man took me by the hand and led me into the centre of the little shop. A glimmer of light through the leaded window fell on my face and he put a hand under my chin and turned my face one way and then the other.

‘What was the third man like?’ he asked me quietly.

‘All in white,’ I said through half-closed lips. ‘And shining.’

‘What did he wear?’

‘I could only see a white cape.’

‘And on his head?’

‘I could only see the whiteness.’

‘And his face?’

‘I couldn’t see his face for the brightness of the light.’

‘D’you think he had a name, child?’

I could feel the word coming into my mouth though I did not understand it. ‘Uriel.’

The hand underneath my chin was very still. The man looked into my face as if he would read me like one of my father’s books. ‘Uriel?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Have you heard that name before?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you know who Uriel is?’

I shook my head. ‘I just thought it was the name of the one who came in with you. But I never heard the name before I just said it.’

The younger man turned to my father. ‘When you say she is a fool, d’you mean that she has the Sight?’

‘She talks out of turn,’ my father said stubbornly. ‘Nothing more. She is a good girl, I send her to church every day of her life. She means no offence, she just speaks out. She cannot help it. She is a fool, nothing more.’

‘And why d’you keep her dressed like a boy?’ he asked.

My father shrugged. ‘Oh, my lords, these are troubled times. I had to bring her across Spain and France, and then through the Low Countries without a mother to guard her. I have to send her on errands and have her act as clerk for me. It would have been better for me if she had been a boy. When she is a woman full-grown, I will have to let her have a gown, I suppose, but I won’t know how to manage her. I shall be lost with a girl. But a young lad I can manage, as a lad she can be of use.’

‘She has the Sight,’ the older man breathed. ‘Praise God, I come looking for manuscripts and I find a girl who sees Uriel and knows his holy name.’ He turned to my father. ‘Does she have any knowledge of sacred things? Has she read anything more than the Bible and her catechism? Does she read your books?’

‘Before God, no,’ my father said earnestly, lying with every sign of conviction. ‘I swear to you, my lord, I have brought her up to be a good ignorant girl. She knows nothing, I promise you. Nothing.’

The older man shook his head. ‘Please,’ he said gently to me and then to my father, ‘do not fear me. You can trust me. This girl has the Sight, hasn’t she?’

‘No,’ my father said baldly, denying me for my own safety. ‘She’s nothing more than a fool and the burden of my life. More worry than she is worth. If I had kin to send her to – I would. She’s not worth your attention …’

‘Peace,’ the young man said gently. ‘We did not come to distress you. This gentleman is John Dee, my tutor. I am Robert Dudley. You need not fear us.’

At their names my father grew even more anxious, as well he might. The handsome young man was the son of the greatest man in the land: Lord John Dudley, protector of the King of England himself. If they took a liking to my father’s library then we could find ourselves supplying books to the king, a scholarly king, and our fortune would be made. But if they found our books seditious or blasphemous or heretical, too questioning, or too filled with the new knowledge, then we could be thrown into prison or into exile again or to our deaths.

‘You’re very gracious, sir. Shall I bring my books to the palace? The light here is very poor for reading, there is no need to demean yourselves to my little shop …’

The older man did not release me. He was still holding my chin and looking into my face.

‘I have studies of the Bible,’ my father went on rapidly. ‘Some very ancient in Latin and Greek and also books in other languages. I have some drawings of Roman temples with their proportions explained, I have a copy of some mathematical tables for numbers which I was given but of course I have not the learning to understand them, I have some drawings of anatomy from the Greek …’

Finally the man called John Dee let me go. ‘May I see your library?’

I saw my father’s reluctance to let the man browse the shelves and drawers of his collection. He was afraid that some of the books might now, under some new ruling, be banned as heretical. I knew that the books of secret wisdom in Greek and Hebrew were always hidden, behind the sliding back of the bookshelf. But even the ones on show might lead us into trouble in these unpredictable times. ‘I will bring them out to you here?’

‘No, I will come inside.’

‘Of course, my lord,’ he surrendered. ‘It will be an honour to me.’

He led the way into the inner room and John Dee followed him. The young lord, Robert Dudley, took a seat on one of the stools and looked at me with interest.

‘Twelve years old?’

‘Yes, sir,’ I lied promptly, although in truth I was nearly fourteen.

‘And a maid, though dressed as a lad.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘No marriage arranged for you?’

‘Not straight away, sir.’

‘But a betrothal in sight?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And who has your father picked out for you?’

‘I am to marry a cousin from my mother’s family when I am sixteen,’ I replied. ‘I don’t particularly wish it.’

‘You’re a maid,’ he scoffed. ‘All young maids say they don’t wish it.’

I shot a look at him which showed my resentment too clearly.

‘Oho! Have I offended you, Mistress Boy?’

‘I know my own mind, sir,’ I said quietly. ‘And I am not a maid like any other.’

‘Clearly. So what is your mind, Mistress Boy?’

‘I don’t wish to marry.’

‘And how shall you eat?’

‘I should like to have my own shop, and print my own books.’

‘And do you think a girl, even a pretty one in breeches, could manage without a husband?’

‘I am sure I could,’ I said. ‘Widow Worthing has a shop across the lanes.’

‘A widow has had a husband to give her a fortune, she didn’t have to make her own.’

‘A girl can make her own fortune,’ I said stoutly. ‘I should think a girl could command a shop.’

‘And what else can a girl command?’ he teased me. ‘A ship? An army? A kingdom?’

‘You will see a woman run a kingdom, you will see a woman can run a kingdom better than any in the world before,’ I fired back, and then checked at the look on his face. I put my hand over my mouth. ‘I didn’t mean to say that,’ I whispered. ‘I know that a woman should always be ruled by her father or husband.’

He looked at me as if he would hear more. ‘Do you think, Mistress Boy, that I will live to see a woman rule a kingdom?’

‘In Spain it was done,’ I said weakly. ‘Once. Queen Isabella.’

He nodded and let it go, as if drawing us both back from the brink of something dangerous. ‘So. D’you know your way to Whitehall Palace, Mistress Boy?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then when Mr Dee has chosen the books he wants to see, you can bring them there, to my rooms. All right?’

I nodded.

‘How is your father’s shop prospering?’ he asked. ‘Selling many books? Many customers coming?’

‘Some,’ I said cautiously. ‘But it is early days for us yet.’

‘Your gift does not guide him in his business, then?’

I shook my head. ‘It is not a gift. It is more like folly, as he says.’

‘You speak out? And you can see what others cannot?’

‘Sometimes.’

‘And what did you see when you looked at me?’

His voice was pitched very low, as if he would lead me to whisper a reply. I raised my eyes from his boots, his strong legs, his beautiful surcoat, to the soft folds of his white ruff, his sensuous mouth, his half-lidded dark eyes. He was smiling at me, as if he understood that my cheeks, my ears, even my hair felt hot as if he were the sun from Spain on my head. ‘When I first saw you, I thought I knew you.’

‘From before?’ he asked.

‘From a time to come,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I thought that I would know you, in the days ahead.’

‘Not if you are a lad!’ He smiled to himself at the bawdiness of his thought. ‘So what condition will I be in when you know me, Mistress Boy? Am I to be a great man? Am I to command a kingdom while you command a bookshop?’

‘Indeed, I hope you will be a great man,’ I said stiffly. I would say nothing more, this warm teasing must not lull me into thinking that it was safe to confide in him.

‘What d’you think of me?’ he asked silkily.

I took a quiet breath. ‘I think that you would trouble a young woman who was not in breeches.’

He laughed out loud at that. ‘Please God that is a true seeing,’ he said. ‘But I never fear trouble with girls, it is their fathers who strike me with terror.’

I smiled back, I could not help myself. There was something about the way his eyes danced when he laughed that made me want to laugh too, that made me long to say something extraordinarily witty and grown-up so that he would look at me and see me not as a child but as a young woman.

‘And have you ever foretold the future and it came true?’ he asked, suddenly serious.

The question itself was dangerous in a country that was always alert for witchcraft. ‘I have no powers,’ I said quickly.

‘But without exerting powers, can you see the future? It is given to some of us, as a holy gift, to know what might be. My friend here, Mr Dee, believes that angels guide the course of mankind and may sometimes warn us against sin, just as the course of the stars can tell a man what his destiny might be.’

I shook my head doltishly at this dangerous talk, determined not to respond to him.

He looked thoughtful. ‘Can you dance or play an instrument? Learn a part in a masque and say your lines?’

‘Not very well,’ I said unhelpfully.

He laughed at my reluctance. ‘Well, we shall see, Mistress Boy. We shall see what you can do.’

I gave my little boyish bow and took care to say nothing more.

Next day, carrying a parcel of books and a carefully rolled scroll of manuscript, I walked across the town, past the Temple Bar and past the green fields of Covent Garden to Whitehall Palace. It was cold with a sleety rain which forced my head down and made me pull my cap low over my ears. The wind off the river was as icy as if it were coming straight from the Russias, it blew me up King’s Street to the very gates of Whitehall Palace.

I had never been inside a royal palace before, and I had thought I would just give the books to the guards on the gate, but when I showed them the note that Lord Robert had scrawled, with the Dudley seal of the bear and staff at the bottom, they bowed me through as though I were a visiting prince, and ordered a man to guide me.

Inside the gates, the palace was like a series of courtyards, each beautifully built, with a great garden in the middle set with apple trees and arbours and seats. The soldier from the gate led me across the first garden and gave me no time to stop and stare at the finely dressed lords and ladies who, wrapped in furs and velvets against the cold, were playing at bowls on the green. Inside the door, swung open by another pair of soldiers, there were more fine people in a great chamber, and behind that great room another, and then another. My guide led me through door after door until we came to a long gallery and Robert Dudley was at the far end of it, and I was so relieved to find him, the only man I knew in the whole palace, that I ran a few steps towards him and called out: ‘My lord!’

The guard hesitated, as if he would block me from getting any closer, but Robert Dudley waved him aside. ‘Mistress Boy!’ he exclaimed. He got to his feet and then I saw his companion. It was the young king, King Edward, fifteen years of age and beautifully dressed in plush blue velvet but with a face the colour of skimmed milk and thinner than any lad I had ever seen before.

I dropped to my knee, holding tight to my father’s books and trying to doff my cap at the same time, as Lord Robert remarked: ‘This is the girl-boy. Don’t you think she would be a wonderful player?’

I did not look up but I heard the king’s voice, thinned with pain. ‘You take such fancies, Dudley. Why should she be a player?’

‘Her voice,’ Dudley said. ‘Such a voice, very sweet, and that accent, part Spanish and part London, I could listen to her forever. And she holds herself like a princess in beggar’s clothes. Don’t you think she’s a delightful child?’

I kept my head down so that he should not see my delighted beam. I hugged the words to my skinny chest: ‘a princess in beggar’s clothes’, ‘a sweet voice’, ‘delightful’.

The young king returned me to the real world. ‘Why, what part should she play? A girl, playing a boy, playing a girl. Besides, it’s against Holy Writ for a girl to dress as a boy.’ His voice tailed away into a cough which shook him like a bear might shake a dog.

I looked up and saw Dudley make a little gesture towards the young man as if he would hold him. The king took his handkerchief from his mouth and I saw a glimpse of a dark stain, darker than blood. Quickly, he tucked it out of sight.

‘It’s no sin,’ Dudley said soothingly. ‘She’s no sinner. The girl is a holy fool. She saw an angel walking in Fleet Street. Can you imagine it? I was there, she truly did.’

The younger man turned to me at once, his face brightened with interest. ‘You can see angels?’

I kept down on my knee and lowered my gaze. ‘My father says I am a fool,’ I volunteered. ‘I am sorry, Your Grace.’

‘But did you see an angel in Fleet Street?’

I nodded, my eyes downcast. I could not deny my gift. ‘Yes, sire. I am sorry. I was mistaken. I didn’t mean to give offence …’

‘What can you see for me?’ he interrupted.

I looked up. Anyone could have seen the shadow of death on his face, in his waxy skin, in his swollen eyes, in his bony thinness, even without the evidence of the stain on his handkerchief and the tremor of his lips. I tried to tell a lie but I could feel the words coming despite myself. ‘I see the gates of heaven opening.’

Again, Robert Dudley made that little gesture, as if he would touch the boy, but his hand fell to his side.

The young king was not angry. He smiled. ‘This child tells the truth when everyone else lies to me,’ he said. ‘All the rest of you run around finding new ways to lie. But this little one …’ He lost his breath and smiled at me.

‘Your Grace, the gates of heaven have been opened since your birth,’ Dudley said soothingly. ‘As your mother ascended. The girl’s saying nothing more than that.’ He shot me an angry look. ‘Aren’t you?’

The young king gestured to me. ‘Stay at court. ‘You shall be my fool.’

‘I have to go home to my father, Your Grace,’ I said as quietly and as humbly as I could, ignoring Lord Robert’s glare. ‘I only came today to bring Lord Robert his books.’

‘You shall be my fool and wear my livery,’ the young man ruled. ‘Robert, I am grateful to you for finding her for me. I shan’t forget it.’

It was a dismissal. Robert Dudley bowed and snapped his fingers for me, turned on his heel and went from the room. I hesitated, wanting to refuse the king, but there was nothing to do but bow to him and run after Robert Dudley as he crossed the huge presence chamber, negligently brushing off the couple of men who tried to stop him and ask after the health of the king. ‘Not now,’ he said.

He went down a long gallery, towards double doors guarded by more soldiers with pikes, who flung them open as we approached. Dudley passed through to their salute and I went after him at a run, like some pet greyhound scampering at its master’s heels. Finally we came to a great pair of doors where the soldiers wore the Dudley livery and we went in.

‘Father,’ Dudley said and dropped to one knee.

There was a man at the fireplace of the great inner hall, looking down into the flames. He turned and made an unemotional blessing over his son’s head with two fingers. I dropped to my knee too, and stayed down even when I felt Robert Dudley rise up beside me.

‘How’s the king this morning?’

‘Worse,’ Robert said flatly. ‘Cough bad, he brought up some black bile, breathless. Can’t last, Father.’

‘And this is the girl?’

‘This is the bookseller’s daughter, calls herself twelve, I’d guess older, dresses like a lad but certainly a girl. Has the Sight, according to John Dee. I took her into the king as you ordered, begged her for a fool. She told him that she saw the gates of heaven opened for him. He liked it. She is to be his fool.’

‘Good,’ the duke said. ‘And have you told her of her duties?’

‘I brought her straight here.’

‘Stand, fool.’

I rose to my feet and took my first look at Robert Dudley’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, the greatest man in the kingdom. I took him in: a long bony face like a horse, dark eyes, balding head half-hidden by a rich velvet cap with a big silver brooch of his coat of arms: the bear and staff. A Spanish beard and moustache round a full mouth. I looked into his eyes and saw – nothing. This was a man whose face could hide his thoughts, a man whose very thoughts could conspire to hide his thoughts.