The Queen’s Fool. Philippa Gregory

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      John Dee and I read together every morning like devoted scholars. Mostly he commanded me to read the Bible in Greek and then the same passage in Latin so that he might compare the translations. He was working on the oldest parts of the Bible, trying to unravel the secrets of the real making of the world from the flowery speech. He sat with his head resting in his hand, jotting notes as I wrote, sometimes raising his hand to ask me to pause as a thought struck him. It was easy work for me, I could read without comprehension, and when I did not know how to pronounce a word (and there were many such words) I just spelled it out, and Mr Dee would recognise it. I could not help but like him, he was such a kind and gentle man; and I had a growing admiration for his immense ability. He seemed to me to be a man of almost inspired understanding. When he was alone he read mathematics, he played games with codes and numbers, he created acrostics and riddles of intense complexity. He exchanged letters and theories with the greatest thinkers of Christendom, forever staying just ahead of the Papal Inquisitions, which forbade the very questions that everyone’s work suggested.

      He had invented a game of his own that only Lord Robert and he could play, called Chess on Many Floors, for which Mr Dee had invented a chess board on three levels made of thick bevelled glass, where the players could go up and down as well as along. It made a game of such difficulty that he and Lord Robert would play the same round for weeks at a time. Other times he would retreat into his inner study and be silent for all the afternoon or all the morning and I knew that he was gazing in the scrying mirror and trying to see what might exist in the world just beyond our own, the world of the spirits which he knew must be there, but which he glimpsed only occasionally.

      In his inner chamber he had a small stone bench, with a little fireplace hollowed out of the stone. He would light a charcoal fire, and suspend above it great glass vessels filled with herbs in water. A complicated network of glass tubes would drain liquor from one bottle to the other and then would stand and cool. Sometimes he would be in there for hours and all I would hear, as I copied page after page of numbers for him, was the quiet clink of one flask against another as he poured liquid into a vessel, or the hiss of the bellows as he heated the little fire.

      In the afternoons Will Somers and I practised our sword fighting, leaving aside the comical tricks and concentrating on proper fighting, until he told me that I was a commendable swordsman for a fool, and that if I ever found myself in trouble I might use a sword to fight my way out: ‘Like a proud hidalgo’, he said.

      Although I was glad to learn a useful skill, we thought that the lessons would have been for nothing since the king continued to be so sick; until in May we were commanded to the great wedding feasts at Durham House in the Strand. The duke wanted a memorable wedding for his family and Will and I were part of an elaborate dinner entertainment.

      ‘You would think it a royal wedding,’ Will said slyly to me.

      ‘How, royal?’ I asked.

      He put his finger to his lips. ‘Jane’s mother, Frances Brandon, is King Henry’s niece, the daughter of his sister. Jane and Katherine are royal cousins.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘And so?’

      ‘And Jane is to marry a Dudley.’

      ‘Yes,’ I said, following this not at all.

      ‘Who more royal than the Dudleys?’ he demanded.

      ‘The king’s sisters,’ I pointed out. ‘Jane’s own mother. And others too.’

      ‘Not if you measure in terms of desire,’ Will explained sweetly. ‘In terms of desire there is no-one more royal than the duke. He loves the throne so much he practically tastes it. He almost gobbles it up.’

      Will had gone too far for me. I got to my feet. ‘I don’t understand,’ I said flatly.

      ‘You are a wise child to be so dense,’ he said and patted my head.