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

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       Autumn 1554

      The queen said nothing to the king nor to the court, but Jane watched her with the devotion of a mother and next month, in September, when the queen did not bleed, she gave me a small triumphant nod and I grinned back. The queen told the king in secret, but anyone seeing his redoubled tenderness towards her must have guessed that she was carrying his child, and that it was a great hidden joy to them both.

      Their happiness illuminated the palace and for the first time I lived at a royal court that was alive with joy and delight in itself. The king’s train remained as proud and as glamorous as when they had first entered England, the phrase ‘as proud as a Don’ became an every day saying. No-one could see the richness of their velvets and the weight of their gold chains and not admire them. When they rode out to hunt they had the very best horses, when they gambled they threw down a small fortune, when they laughed together they made the walls shake and when they danced they showed us the beautiful formal dances of Spain.

      The ladies of England flooded to the queen’s service and were all lovesick for the Spanish. They all read Spanish poetry, sang Spanish songs, and learned the new Spanish card games. The court was alive with flirtation and music and dancing and parties and in the heart of it all was the queen, serene and smiling, with her young husband always lovingly at her side. We were the most intellectual, the most elegant, the richest court in the whole of Christendom, and we knew it. With Queen Mary glowing at the head of this radiant court we danced at a very pinnacle of self-satisfied pleasure.

      In October the queen was informed that Elizabeth was sick again. She asked me to read Sir Henry Bedingfield’s report to her as she rested on a day bed. Woodstock, and Elizabeth, and Elizabeth’s many ploys for attention seemed far away as the queen gazed dreamily out of the window at the garden where the trees were turning yellow and golden and bronze. ‘She can see my doctors if she insists,’ she said absently. ‘Would you go with them, Hannah? And see if she is as bad as she claims? I don’t want to be unkind to her. If she would just admit her part in the plot I would release her, I don’t want to be troubled with this, not now.’

      It was as if her own happiness was too great not to be shared.

      ‘But if she was to admit a fault, surely the council or the king would want her to face trial?’ I suggested.

      Queen Mary shook her head. ‘She could admit it privately to me, and I would forgive her,’ she said. ‘Her fellow plotters are dead or gone away, there is no plot left for her any more. And I am carrying an heir to the throne, an heir for England and for the whole Spanish empire, this will be the greatest prince the world has ever known. Elizabeth can admit her fault and I will forgive her. And then she should be married; the king has suggested his cousin, the Duke of Savoy. Tell Elizabeth that this time of waiting and suspicion can be at an end, tell her I am with child. Tell her I shall have my baby in early May. Any hopes she had of the throne will be over by next summer. Make sure she understands, Hannah. There has been bad blood between us but it can be over as soon as she consents.’

      I nodded.

      ‘Sir Henry writes that she attends Mass as good daughter of the church,’ she said. ‘Tell her I am glad of that.’ She paused. ‘But he tells me that when the time comes in the service to pray for me she never says “amen”.’ She paused. ‘What d’you make of such a thing? She never prays for me, Hannah.’

      I was silent. If the queen had been speaking in anger I might have tried to defend Elizabeth, and her pride and her independence of spirit. But the queen was not angry. She looked nothing more than wounded.

      ‘You know, I would pray for her, if our places were reversed,’ she said. ‘I remember her in my prayers because she is my sister. You could tell her that I pray for her every day, and I have done ever since I cared for her at Hatfield, because she is my sister and because I try to forgive her for plotting against me, and because I try to prepare myself for her release, and to teach myself to deal with her with charity, to judge her mercifully as I hope to be judged. I pray for her well being every day of her life; and then I hear she will not say so much as “amen” to a prayer for me!’

      ‘Your Grace, she is a young woman and very alone,’ I said quietly. ‘She has no-one to advise her.’ To tell the truth I was ashamed of Elizabeth’s stubbornness, and meanness of spirit.

      ‘See if you can teach her some of your wisdom, my fool,’ the queen suggested with a smile.

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