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

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       Spring 1555

      To everyone’s surprise the queen weakened first. As the bitter winter melted into a wet spring, Elizabeth was bidden to court, without having to confess, without even writing a word to her sister, and I was ordered to ride in her train, no explanation offered to me for the change of heart and none expected. For Elizabeth it was not the return she might have wanted; she was brought in almost as a prisoner, we travelled early in the morning and late in the afternoon so that we would not be noticed, there was no smiling and waving at any crowds. We skirted the city, the queen had ordered that Elizabeth should not ride down the great roads of London, but as we went through the little lanes I felt my heart skip a beat in terror and I pulled up my horse in the middle of the lane, and made the princess stop.

      ‘Go on, fool,’ she said ungraciously. ‘Kick him on.’

      ‘God help me, God help me,’ I babbled.

      ‘What is it?’

      Sir Henry Bedingfield’s man saw me stock-still, turned his horse and came back. ‘Come on now,’ he said roughly. ‘Orders are to keep moving.’

      ‘My God,’ I said again, it was all I could say.

      ‘She’s a holy fool,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Perhaps she is having a vision.’

      ‘I’ll give her a vision,’ he said, and took the bridle and pulled my horse forward.

      Elizabeth came up alongside. ‘Look, she’s white as a sheet and shaking,’ she said. ‘Hannah? What is it?’

      I would have fallen from my horse but for her steadying hand on my shoulder. The soldier rode on the other side, dragging my horse onward, his knee pressed against mine, half-holding me in the saddle.

      ‘Hannah!’ Elizabeth’s voice came again as if from a long way away. ‘Are you ill?’

      ‘Smoke,’ was all I could say. ‘Fire.’

      Elizabeth glanced towards the city, where I pointed. ‘I can’t smell anything,’ she said. ‘Are you giving a warning, Hannah? Is there going to be a fire?’

      Dumbly, I shook my head. My sense of horror was so intense that I could say nothing but, as if from somewhere else, I heard a little mewing sound like that of a child crying from a deep unassuageable distress. ‘Fire,’ I said softly. ‘Fire.’

      ‘Oh, it’s the Smithfield fires,’ the soldier said. ‘That’s upset the lass. It’s that, isn’t it, bairn?’

      At Elizabeth’s quick look of inquiry he explained. ‘New laws. Heretics are put to death by burning. They’re burning today in Smithfield. I can’t smell it but your little lass here can. It’s upset her.’ He clapped me on the shoulder with a heavy kindly hand. ‘Not surprising,’ he said. ‘It’s a bad business.’

      ‘Burning?’ Elizabeth demanded. ‘Burning heretics? You mean Protestants? In London? Today?’ Her eyes were blazing black with anger but she did not impress the soldier. As far as he was concerned we were little more value than each other. One girl dumb with horror, the other enraged.

      ‘Aye,’ he said briefly. ‘It’s a new world. A new queen on the throne, a new king at her side, and a new law to match. And everyone who was reformed has reformed back again and pretty smartly too. And good thing, I say, and God bless, I say. We’ve had nothing but foul weather and bad luck since King Henry broke with the Pope. But now the Pope’s rule is back and the Holy Father will bless England again and we can have a son and heir and decent weather.’

      Elizabeth said not one word. She took her pomander from her belt, put it in my hand and held my hand up to my nose so I could smell the aromatic scent of dried orange and cloves. It did not take away the stink of burning flesh, nothing would ever free me from that memory. I could even hear the cries of those on the stakes, begging their families to fan the flames and to pile on timber so that they might die the quicker and not linger, smelling their own bodies roasting, in a screaming agony of pain.

      ‘Mother,’ I choked, and then I was silent.

      We rode to Hampton Court in an icy silence and we were greeted as prisoners with a guard. They bundled us in the back door as if they were ashamed to greet us. But once the door of her private rooms was locked behind us Elizabeth turned and took my cold hands in hers.

      ‘I could not smell smoke, nobody could. The soldier only knew that they were burning today, he could not smell it,’ she said.

      Still I said nothing.

      ‘It was your gift, wasn’t it?’ she asked curiously.

      I cleared my throat, I remembered that curious thick taste at the back of my tongue, the taste of the smoke of human flesh. I brushed a smut from my face, but my hand came away clean.

      ‘Yes,’ I admitted.

      ‘You were sent by God to warn me that this was happening,’ she said. ‘Others might have told me, but you were there; in your face I saw the horror of it.’

      I nodded. She could take what she might from it. I knew that it was my own terror she had seen, the horror I had felt as a child when they had dragged my own mother from our house to tie her to a stake and light the fire under her feet on a Sunday afternoon as part of the ritual of every Sunday afternoon, part of the promenade, a pious and pleasurable tradition to everyone else; the death of my mother, the end of my childhood for me.

      Princess Elizabeth went to the window, knelt and put her bright head in her hands. ‘Dear God, thank you for sending me this messenger with this vision,’ I heard her say softly. ‘I understand it, I understand my destiny today as I have never done before. Bring me to my throne that I may do my duty for you and for my people. Amen.’

      I did not say ‘amen’, though she glanced around to see if I had joined in her prayer; even in moments of the greatest of spirituality, Elizabeth would always be counting her supporters. But I could not pray to a God who could allow my mother to be burned to death. I could not pray to a God who could be invoked by the torchbearers. I wanted neither God nor His religion. I wanted only to get rid of the smell in my hair, in my skin, in my nostrils. I wanted to rub the smuts from my face.

      She rose to her feet. ‘I shan’t forget this,’ she said briefly. ‘You have given me a vision today, Hannah. I knew it before, but now I have seen it in your eyes. I have to be queen of this country and put a stop to this horror.’