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

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      ‘You saw an angel behind Robert Dudley,’ she reminded me.

      I smiled. ‘I did.’

      ‘What was it like?’

      I giggled, I couldn’t help it. ‘Lady Elizabeth, I was so taken with Lord Robert that I hardly noticed the angel.’

      She sat up, quite forgetting her pose of illness, and laughed with me. ‘He is very … he is so … he is indeed a man you look at.’

      ‘And I only realised it was an angel afterwards,’ I said to excuse myself. ‘At the time I was just overwhelmed by the three of them, Mr Dee, Lord Robert, and the third.’

      ‘And do your visions come to pass?’ she asked keenly. ‘You scried for Mr Dee, didn’t you?’

      I hesitated with a sense of the ground opening into a chasm under my feet. ‘Who says so?’ I asked cautiously.

      She smiled at me, a flash of small white teeth as if she were a bright fox. ‘Never mind what I know. I am asking what you know.’

      ‘Some things that I see have come to pass,’ I said, honestly enough. ‘But sometimes the very things I need to know, the most important things in the world, I cannot tell. Then it is a useless gift. If it had warned me – just once –’

      ‘What warning?’ she asked.

      ‘The death of my mother,’ I said. I would have bitten back the words as soon as they were spoken. I did not want to tell my past to this sharp-minded princess.

      I glanced at her face but she was looking at me with intense sympathy. ‘I did not know,’ she said gently. ‘Did she die in Spain? You came from Spain, did you not?’

      ‘In Spain,’ I said. ‘Of the plague.’ I felt a sharp twist of pain in my belly at lying about my mother, but I did not dare to think of the fires of the Inquisition with this young woman watching me. It was as if she could have seen the flicker of their reflected flames in my eyes.

      ‘I am sorry,’ she said, very low. ‘It is hard for a young woman to grow up without a mother.’

      I knew she was thinking of herself for a moment, and of the mother who had died on the scaffold with the names of witch, adulteress and whore. She put away the thought. ‘But what made you come to England?’

      ‘We have kin here. And my father had arranged a marriage for me. We wanted to start again.’

      She smiled at my breeches. ‘Does your betrothed know that he will be getting a girl who is half-boy?’

      I made a little pout. ‘He does not like me at court, he does not like me in livery, and he does not like me in breeches.’

      ‘But do you like him?’

      ‘Well enough as a cousin. Not enough for a husband.’

      ‘And do you have any choice in the matter?’

      ‘Not much,’ I said shortly.

      She nodded. ‘It’s always the same for all women,’ she said, a hint of resentment in her voice. ‘The only people who can choose their lives are those in breeches. You do right to wear them.’

      ‘I’ll have to put them aside soon,’ I said. ‘I was allowed to wear them when I was little more than a child but I …’ I checked myself. I did not want to confide in her. She had a gift, this princess, the Tudor gift, of opening confidences.

      ‘When I was your age, I thought I would never know how to be a young woman,’ she said, echoing my thought. ‘All I wanted to do was to be a scholar, I could see how to do that. I had a wonderful tutor and he taught me Latin and Greek and all the spoken languages too. I wanted to please my father so much, I thought he would be proud of me if I could be as clever as Edward. I used to write to him in Greek – can you imagine? The greatest dread of my life was that I would be married and sent away from England. The greatest hope of my life was that I might be a great and learned lady and be allowed to stay at court. When my father died I thought I would be always at court: my brother’s favourite sister, and aunt to his many children, and together we would see my father’s work complete.’

      She shook her head. ‘Indeed, I should not want your gift of Sight,’ she said. ‘If I had known that I would come to this, under the shadow of my sister’s displeasure, and my beloved brother dead, and my father’s legacy thrown away …’

      Elizabeth broke off and then turned to me, her dark eyes filled with tears. She stretched out her hand palm upwards, and I could see that she was shaking slightly. ‘Can you see my future?’ she asked. ‘Will Mary greet me as a sister and know that I have done no wrong? Will you tell her that I am innocent in my heart?’

      ‘If she can, she will.’ I took her hand, but kept my eyes on the pale face which had so suddenly blanched. She leaned back against the richly embroidered pillows. ‘Truly, Princess, the queen would be your friend. I know this. She would be very happy to hear of your innocence.’

      She pulled her hand away. ‘Even if the Vatican named me a saint, she would not be happy,’ she said. ‘And I will tell you why. It isn’t my absence from court, it isn’t even my doubts about her religion. It is the rage that lives between sisters. She will never forgive me for what they did to her mother, and for what they did to her. She will never forgive me for being my father’s darling and the baby of the court. She will never forgive me for being the best beloved daughter. I remember her as a young woman, sitting at the foot of my bed and staring at me as if she would hold the pillow over my face, though she was singing me a lullaby all the time. She has loves and hates, all mixed up. And the last thing she wants at court is a younger sister to show her up.’

      I said nothing; it was too shrewd an assessment.

      ‘A younger sister who is prettier than her,’ Elizabeth reminded me. ‘A younger sister who looks like a pure Tudor and not like a half-caste Spaniard.’

      I turned my head. ‘Have a care, Princess.’

      Elizabeth laughed, a wild little laugh. ‘She sent you here to see into my heart. Didn’t she? She has great faith in God working his purpose in her life. Telling her what is to be. But her God is very slow in bringing her joy, I think. That long long wait for the throne and then a rebellious kingdom at the end of it. And now a wedding but a bridegroom who is in no hurry to come, but instead stays at home with his mistress. What do you see for her, fool?’

      I shook my head. ‘Nothing, Your Grace. I cannot see to command. And in any case, I am afraid to look.’

      ‘Mr Dee believes that you could be a great seer, one who might help him unveil the mysteries of the heavens.’

      I turned my head, afraid that my face might show the sudden vivid image I had in my mind’s eye, the dark mirror, and the words spilling out of my mouth, telling of the two queens who would rule England. A child, but no child, a king but no king, a virgin queen all-forgotten, a queen but no virgin. I did not know who these might be. ‘I have not spoken with Mr Dee for many months,’ I said cautiously. ‘I hardly know him.’

      ‘You once spoke to me without my invitation, you mentioned his name, and others,’ she said, her voice very low.

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