Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2: The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory

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СКАЧАТЬ suddenly stepped out of a doorway and blocked my way. I gasped in alarm.

      ‘Hush, it’s me, Daniel.’

      ‘How did you know I was here?’

      ‘I went to your father’s shop and he told me you were taking books into the Tower for Lord Robert.’

      ‘Oh.’

      He fell into step beside me. ‘Surely you don’t need to serve him now.’

      ‘No,’ I said. ‘He has released me.’ I very much wished that Daniel would go away so that I could think of the kiss on my neck and the warmth of Lord Robert’s breath against my ear.

      ‘So you won’t serve him again,’ he said pedantically.

      ‘I just said,’ I snapped. ‘I am not serving him now. I am delivering books for my father. It just happened to be to Lord Robert. I did not even see him. I just took them in and gave them to a guard.’

      ‘Then when did he release you from his service?’

      ‘Months ago,’ I lied, trying to recover.

      ‘When he was arrested?’

      I rounded on him. ‘What does it matter to you? I am released from his service, I serve Queen Mary now. What more d’you need to know?’

      His temper rose with mine. ‘I have a right to know everything that you do. You are to be my wife, your name will be mine. And while you insist on running from court to Tower, you put yourself into danger, and the rest of us into danger too.’

      ‘You’re in no danger,’ I retorted. ‘What would you know of it? You’ve never done anything or been anywhere. The world has turned upside down and back again while you have stayed safe at home. Why should you be in danger?’

      ‘I’ve not played off one master against another, and shown a false face and spied and given false witness, if that’s what you mean,’ he said sharply. ‘I did not ever think those were great and admirable acts. I have kept my faith and buried my father according to my faith. I have supported my mother and my sisters, and I have saved money against the day of my marriage. Our marriage. While you run around the dark streets, dressed as a pageboy, serve in a Papist court, visit a condemned traitor, and reproach me for having done nothing.’

      I pulled my hand away from him. ‘Don’t you see he’s going to die?’ I shouted, and then I was aware that the tears were streaming down my face. Angrily, I rubbed them away with my sleeve. ‘Don’t you know that they’re going to execute him and no-one can save him? Or at best they’ll leave him in there to wait and wait and wait and die of waiting? He can’t even save himself? Don’t you see that everyone I love seems to be taken from me, for no crime? With no way of saving them? Don’t you think I miss my mother every day of my life? Don’t you think I smell smoke every night in my dreams and now this man … this man …’ I broke off in tears.

      Daniel caught me by the shoulders, not in an embrace, but with a firm grip to hold me at arm’s length so that he could read my face with a long impartial measuring glance. ‘This man is nothing to do with the death of your mother,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing to do with someone dying for their faith. So don’t dress up your lust as sorrow. You have been serving two masters, sworn enemies. One of them was bound to end up in there. If it was not Lord Robert then it would have been Queen Mary. One of them was bound to triumph, one of them was bound to die.’

      I wrenched myself from his grip, pulling away from his hard unsympathetic eyes, and started to trudge for home. After a few moments I heard him come after me.

      ‘Would you be weeping like this if it had been Queen Mary in there, with her head on the block?’ he asked.

      ‘Ssshhh,’ I said, always cautious. ‘Yes.’

      He said nothing, but his silence showed his great scepticism.

      ‘I have done nothing dishonourable,’ I said flatly.

      ‘I doubt you,’ he said, as coldly as me. ‘If you have been honourable it has only been for lack of opportunity.’

      ‘Whoreson,’ I said under my breath so he could not hear, and he marched me home in silence and we parted at my doorway with a handshake which was neither cousinly nor loving. I let him go, I would have been glad to throw a large volume at his retreating upright head. Then I went in to my father and wondered how long it would before Daniel came to see him to say that he wanted to be released from our betrothal, and what would happen to me then.

      As Fool to the queen I was expected to be in her chambers every day, at her side. But as soon as I could be absent for an hour without attracting notice, I took a chance, and went to the old Dudley rooms to look for John Dee. I tapped on the door and a man in strange livery opened it and looked suspiciously at me.

      ‘I thought the Dudley household lived here,’ I said timidly.

      ‘Not any more,’ he said smartly.

      ‘Where will I find them?’

      He shrugged. ‘The duchess has rooms near the queen. Her sons are in the Tower. Her husband is in hell.’

      ‘The tutor?’

      He shrugged. ‘Gone away. Back to his father’s house, I should think.’

      I nodded and took myself back to the queen’s rooms, and sat by her feet on a small cushion. Her little dog, a greyhound, had a cushion that matched mine; and dog and I sat, noses parallel, watching with the same brown-eyed incomprehension, while the courtiers came and made their bows and applied for land and places and favours of grants of money, and sometimes the queen patted the dog and sometimes she patted me; and dog and I stayed mum, and never said what we thought of these pious Catholics who had kept the flame of their faith so wonderfully hidden for so long. Well-hidden while they proclaimed the Protestant religion, hidden while they saw Catholics burned, waiting till this moment, like daffodils at Easter, to burst forth and flower. To think that there were so many believers in the country, and nobody knew them till now!

      When they were all gone she walked up to a window embrasure where no-one could hear us and beckoned for me. ‘Hannah?’

      ‘Yes, Your Grace?’ I went to her side at once.

      ‘Isn’t it time you were out of your pageboy livery? You will be a woman soon.’

      I hesitated. ‘If you will allow it, Your Grace, I would rather go on dressed as a pageboy.’

      She looked at me curiously. ‘Don’t you long for a pretty gown, and to grow your hair, child? Don’t you want to be a young woman? I thought I would give you a gown for Christmas.’

      I thought of my mother plaiting my thick black hair and winding the plaits around her fingers and telling me I would become a beauty, a famously beautiful woman. I thought of her chiding me for my love of rich cloth, and how I had begged for a green velvet gown for Hanukah.

      ‘I lost my love of finery when I lost my mother,’ I said quietly. ‘There’s no pleasure in it for me without her to choose and fit the dresses on me, and tell me that they suit me. I don’t even want long СКАЧАТЬ