Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2: The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory
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the girl was only sixteen,’ he said, half to himself. He rose to his feet, hardly aware of me. ‘I should have stopped it,’ he said. ‘I should have kept Jane safely out of it, whatever plots my father made …’
He looked out of the window at the dark courtyard below where his own father had been executed, begging for mercy, offering evidence against Jane, against his sons, anyone, if he could be spared. When he had knelt before the block, the blindfold over his eyes had slipped down and he had pulled it up and then groped about on his hands and knees, pleading with the headsman to wait until he was ready. It was a miserable end; but not as miserable as the death he had given to the young king in his charge, who had been innocent of everything.
‘I was a fool,’ Robert said bitterly. ‘Blinded by my own ambition. I am surprised you did not foresee it, child, I would have thought the heavens would have been rocking with laughter over the Dudley hubris. I wish to God you had warned me in time.’
I stood, my back to the fire. ‘I wish I had done,’ I said sadly. ‘I would have done anything to save you from being here.’
‘And shall I stay here till I rot?’ he asked quietly. ‘Can you foresee that for me? Some nights I hear the rats skitter on the floor and I think, this is all I will ever hear, this square of blue sky through the window will be all I ever see. She will not behead me, but she will cut off my youth.’
In silence, I shook my head. ‘I listen and listen, and once I asked her directly. She said that she wanted no blood spilt that could be spared. She won’t execute you and she must let you go free when Lady Jane goes free.’
‘I wouldn’t if I were her,’ he said quietly. ‘If I were her, I would rid myself of Elizabeth, of Jane, of my brother and of me; and name Mary Stuart as the next heir, French or not. One clean cut. That’s the only way to get this country back into the Papist church and keep it there, and soon she will realise it. She has to wipe us out, this generation of Protestant plotters. If she does not she will have to cut off one head after another and watch others rise.’
I crossed the room and stood behind him. Timidly I put my hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked at me as if he had forgotten my presence. ‘And you?’ he asked gently. ‘Safe in royal service now?’
‘I am never safe,’ I said in a low voice. ‘You know why. I never can be safe. I never can feel safe. I love the queen and no-one questions who I am or where I have come from. I am known as her fool, as if I had been with her all my life. I should feel safe, but I always feel as if I am creeping across thin ice.’
He nodded. ‘I’ll take your secret with me to the scaffold if I go that way,’ he promised. ‘You have nothing to fear from me, child. And I have told no-one who you were or where you came from.’
I nodded. When I looked up he was watching me, his dark eyes warm. ‘You’ve grown, Mistress Boy,’ he remarked. ‘Soon be a woman. I shall be sorry not to see it.’
I had nothing to say. I stood dumbly before him. He smiled as if he knew only too well the churn of my emotions. ‘Ah, little fool. I should have left you in your father’s shop that day, and not drawn you into this.’
‘My father told me to bid you farewell.’
‘Aye, he is right. You can leave me now. I will release you from your promise to love me. You are no longer my vassal. I let you go.’
It was little more than a joke to him. He knew as well as I did that you cannot release a girl from her promise to love a man. She either gets herself free or she is bound for life.
‘I’m not free,’ I whispered. ‘My father told me to come to see you and to say goodbye. But I am not free. I never will be.’
‘Would you serve me still?’
I nodded.
Lord Robert smiled and leaned forward, his mouth so close to my ear that I could feel the warmth of his breath. ‘Then do this one last thing for me. Go to Lady Elizabeth. Bid her be of good cheer. Tell her to study with my old tutor, John Dee. Tell her to seek him out, and study with him, without fail. Then find John Dee and tell him two things. One: I think he should make contact with his old master, Sir William Pickering. Got that?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Sir William. I know of him.’
‘And two: tell him to meet also with James Crofts and Tom Wyatt. I think they are engaged in an alchemical experiment that is near to John Dee’s heart. Edward Courtenay can make a chemical wedding. Can you remember all of that?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But I don’t know what it means.’
‘All the better. They are to make gold from the basest of metal, and cast down silver to ash. Tell him that. He’ll know what I mean. And tell him that I will play my part in the alchemy, if he will get me there.’
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Just remember the message,’ he said. ‘Tell it back to me.’
I repeated it, word for word, and he nodded. ‘And finally, come back to me just once, for one last time, and tell me what you can see in John Dee’s mirror. I need to know. Whatever becomes of me, I need to know what will happen to England.’
I nodded, but he did not let me go at once. He put his lips to my neck, just below my ear, a little brush of a kiss, a little breath of a kiss. ‘You’re a good girl,’ he said. ‘And I thank you.’
He let me go then, and I stepped back, backwards and backwards from him as if I could not bear to turn away. I tapped on the door behind me, and the guard swung it open. ‘God bless you and keep you safe, my lord,’ I said. Lord Robert turned his head and gave me a smile which was so sweet that it broke my heart even as the door closed and hid him from me.
‘God speed, lad,’ he replied evenly, to the closing door, and then it was shut and I was in the darkness and the cold and without him once more.
In the street outside I took to my heels and started to run home. A shadow 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