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 person standing before me, a corpulent squire from Somerset, shifted his position and blocked my view and I could only hear the soaring voices of the queen’s choristers singing the Wedding Mass and then the soft gasp as Bishop Gardiner raised the couple’s clasped hands to show that the wedding was completed and England’s virgin queen was now a married woman.

      I thought I would see the prince clearly at the wedding feast but as I was hurrying on my way to the hall, I heard the rattle of the weapons of the Spanish guard and I stepped back into a window embrasure as the men at arms marched down and then came the bustle of his court after them, the prince himself at the centre. And then, amid all this hustle of excitement, something happened to me. It was caused by the flurry of silks and velvets, embroidery and diamonds, the dark full richness of the Spanish court. It was caused by the scent of the pomade they wore on their hair and beards, and the perfumed pomander that every man had pinned with a golden buckle to his belt. It was the clink of the priceless inlaid breastplates of the soldiery, the tap of the beautifully forged swords against the stone of the walls. It was the rapid interchange of the language, which was like the coo in a dovecote of home to me who had been a stranger in a strange land for so very long. I smelled the Spaniards and saw them and heard them and sensed them in a way that I had never apprehended anything before, and I stumbled back, feeling for the cold wall behind me to steady me, almost fainting, overwhelmed with a homesickness and a longing for Spain that was so strong that it was almost like a gripe in my belly. I think I even cried out, and one man heard me, one man turned dark familiar eyes and looked towards me.

      ‘What is it, lad?’ he asked, seeing my golden pageboy suit.

      ‘It’s the queen’s holy fool,’ one of his men remarked in Spanish. ‘Some toy that she affects. A boy-girl, a hermaphrodite.’

      ‘Good God, a wizened old maid served by no maid at all,’ someone quipped, his accent Castilian. The prince said ‘Hush,’ but absentmindedly, as if he was not defending a new wife but reprimanding a familiar offence.

      ‘Are you sick, child?’ he asked me in Spanish.

      One of his companions stepped forward and took my hand. ‘The prince asks are you sick?’ he demanded in careful English.

      I felt my hand tremble at his touch, the touch of a Spanish lord on my Spanish skin. I expected him to know me at once, to know that I understood every word he said, that my reply in Spanish was readier on my tongue than my English.

      ‘I am not sick,’ I said in English, speaking very quietly and hoping that no-one would hear the vestiges of my accent. ‘I was startled by the prince.’

      ‘You startled her only,’ he laughed, turning to the prince and speaking in Spanish. ‘God grant that you may startle her mistress.’

      The prince nodded, indifferent to me, as a servant beneath his notice, and walked on.

      ‘She’s more likely to startle him,’ someone remarked quietly from the back. ‘God save us, how are we to put our prince to bed with such an aged dame?’

      ‘And a virgin,’ someone else replied. ‘Not even a warm and willing widow who knows what she’s been missing. This queen will freeze our lord, he’ll wilt at her bedside.’

      ‘And she’s so dull,’ the first one persisted.

      The prince heard that, he halted and looked back at his retinue. ‘Enough,’ he said clearly, speaking in Spanish, thinking that only they would understand. ‘It is done. I have wedded her, and I shall bed her, and if you hear that I cannot do it you can speculate then as to the cause. In the meantime let us have peace. It is not fair dealing to the English to come into the country and insult their queen.’

      ‘They don’t deal fair to us …’ someone started.

      ‘A country of idiots …’

      ‘Poor and bad-tempered …’

      ‘And grasping!’

      ‘Enough,’ he said.

      I followed them down the gallery to the steps leading to the great chamber. I followed them as if drawn on a chain, I could not have parted from them if my life had depended on it. I was back with my own people, hearing them speak, even though every word they said was a slander against the only woman who had been kind to me, or against England, my second home.

      It was Will Somers who caught me out of my trance. He took me by the arm as I was about to follow the Spaniards into the great hall and gave me a little shake. ‘How now, maid? In a dream?’

      ‘Will,’ I said and grabbed on to his sleeve as if to steady myself. ‘Oh, Will!’

      ‘There,’ he said, gently patting me on the back as if I were an overwrought pageboy. ‘Silly little maid.’

      ‘Will, the Spanish …’

      He drew me away from the main doors and put a warm arm around my shoulder.

      ‘Take care, little fool,’ he warned me. ‘The very walls of Winchester have ears and you never know who you are offending.’

      ‘They’re so …’ I could not find the words. ‘They’re so … handsome!’ I burst out.

      He laughed aloud, released me and clapped his hands. ‘Handsome, is it? You, besotted with the señors just like Her Grace, God bless her?’

      ‘It’s their …’ I paused again. ‘It’s their perfume,’ I said simply. ‘They smell so wonderful.’

      ‘Oh little maid, it is time you were wed,’ he said in mock seriousness. ‘If you are running after men and sniffing at their spoor like a little bitch on the hunt then one day you will make your kill and you’ll be a holy fool no longer.’

      He paused for a moment, measuring me. ‘Ah, I had forgot. You were from Spain, weren’t you?’

      I nodded. There was no point in fooling a fool.

      ‘They make you think of your home,’ he predicted. ‘Is that it?’

      I nodded.

      ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘This is a better day for you than for those Englishmen who have spent their lives hating the Spanish. You will have a Spanish master once more. For the rest of us, it’s like the end of the world.’

      He drew me a little closer. ‘And how is the Princess Elizabeth?’ he asked softly.

      ‘Angry,’ I said. ‘Anxious. She was ill in June, you’ll have heard that she wanted the queen’s physicians, and grieved when they did not come.’

      ‘God keep her,’ he said. ‘Who’d have thought that she would be there this day, and that we would be here? Who’d have thought that this day would come?’

      ‘Tell me news in return,’ I started.

      ‘Lord Robert?’

      I nodded.

      ‘Still imprisoned, and there’s no-one to speak for him at court, and no-one to listen anyway.’

      There СКАЧАТЬ