Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2: The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory
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we would stay here,’ I whispered. ‘You told me this was to be my home.’
‘Querida, we have to go,’ he said quietly. ‘I truly believe they will come: first for the rebels, and then for the Protestants, and then for us.’
I lifted my head and I stepped back from him. ‘Father, I cannot spend my life running away. I want a home.’
‘My daughter, we are the people who have no home.’
There was a silence. ‘I don’t want to be one of the people without a home,’ I said. ‘I have a home at court, and friends at court, and my place there. I don’t want to go to France and then Italy.’
He paused. ‘I was afraid you would say that. I don’t want to force you. You are free to take your own decision, my daughter. But it is my wish that you come with me.’
Daniel walked the few paces to the attic window, then he turned and looked at me. ‘Hannah Verde, you are my betrothed wife and I order you to come with me.’
I drew myself up and faced him. ‘I will not come.’
‘Then our betrothal will be ended.’
My father raised a hand in dissent, but he said nothing.
‘So be it,’ I said. I felt cold.
‘It is your wish that our betrothal is ended?’ he asked again, as if he could not believe that I would reject him. That hint of arrogance helped me to my decision.
‘It is my wish that our betrothal is ended,’ I said, my voice as steady as his own. ‘I release you from your promise to me, and I ask you to release me.’
‘That’s easily done,’ he flared. ‘I release you, Hannah, and I hope that you never have cause to regret this decision.’ He turned on his heel and went to the stair. He paused. ‘But nonetheless, you will help your father,’ he said, still commanding me, I noticed. ‘And if you change your mind you may come with us. I would not be vengeful. You can come as his daughter and as a stranger to me.’
‘I shan’t change my mind,’ I said fiercely. ‘And I don’t need you to tell me to help my father. I am a good daughter to him and I would be a good wife to the right man.’
‘And who would the right man be?’ Daniel sneered. ‘A married man and a convicted traitor?’
‘Now, now,’ my father said gently. ‘You have agreed to part.’
‘I am sorry you think so badly of me,’ I said icily. ‘I shall care for my father and I will help him leave when you bring the wagon.’
Daniel clattered down the stairs and then we heard the shop door bang, and he was gone.
Over the next two days we worked in an almost unbroken silence. I helped my father tie his books together, the manuscripts we rolled into scrolls and packed in barrels, and pushed them behind the press in the printing room. He could take only the core of his library; the rest of the books would have to follow later.
‘I wish you would come too,’ he said earnestly. ‘You’re too young to be left here on your own.’
‘I’m under the protection of the queen,’ I said. ‘And hundreds of people at court are the same age as me.’
‘You are one of the chosen to bear witness,’ he said in a fierce whisper. ‘You should be with your people.’
‘Chosen to witness?’ I demanded bitterly. ‘More like chosen never to have a home. Chosen to be always packing our most precious things and leaving the rest behind? Chosen to be always one skip ahead of the fire or the hangman’s noose?’
‘Better one skip ahead,’ my father said wryly.
We worked all through the last night, and when he would not stop to eat, I knew that he was mourning for me as a daughter that he had lost. At dawn I heard the creaking of wheels in the street and I looked out of the downstairs window, and there was the dark shape of the wagon lumbering towards us with Daniel leading a stocky pair of horses.
‘Here they are,’ I said quietly to my father, and started to heave the boxes of books through the door. The wagon halted beside me and Daniel gently put me aside. ‘I’ll do that,’ he said. He lifted the boxes into the back of the cart, where I saw the glimpse of four pale faces: his mother and his three sisters. ‘Hello,’ I said awkwardly, and then went back to the shop.
I felt so wretched I could hardly carry the boxes from the rear of the printing shop out to the cart and hand them over to Daniel. My father did nothing. He stood with his forehead leaning against the wall of the house.
‘The press,’ he said quietly.
‘I will see that it is taken down, sheeted and stored safely,’ I promised. ‘Along with everything else. And when you decide to come back, it will be here for you and we can start again.’
‘We won’t come back,’ Daniel said. ‘This country is going to be a Spanish dominion. How can we be safe here? How can you be safe here? Do you think the Inquisition has no memory? Do you think your names are not on their records as heretics and runaways? They will be here in force, there will be courts in every city up and down the land. Do you think you and your father will escape? Newly arrived from Spain? Named Verde? Do you really think you will pass as an English girl called Hannah Green? With your speech, and your looks?’
I put my hands to my face, I nearly put them over my ears.
‘Daughter,’ my father said.
It was unbearable.
‘All right,’ I said furiously, in anger and despair. ‘Enough! All right! I’ll come.’
Daniel said nothing in his triumph, he did not even smile. My father muttered, ‘Praise God,’ and picked up a box as if he were a twenty-year-old porter and loaded it on the back of the wagon. Within minutes everything was done and I was locking the front door of the shop with the key.
‘We’ll pay the rent for the next year,’ Daniel decided. ‘Then we can fetch the rest of the stuff.’
‘You’ll carry a printing press across England, France and Italy?’ I asked nastily.
‘If I have to,’ he said. ‘Yes.’
My father climbed in the back of the wagon and held out his hand for me. I hesitated. The three white faces of Daniel’s sisters turned to me, blank with hostility. ‘Is she coming now?’ one of them asked.
‘You can help me with the horses,’ Daniel said quickly and I left the tailgate of the wagon and went to the head of the nearest horse.
We led them, slipping a little clumsily on the cobbles of the side street, until we came out to the solid track of Fleet Street and headed towards the city.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
‘To the docks,’ he said. ‘There is a ship waiting on the tide, I have booked our passage to France.’
‘I have money for my own passage,’ I said.
He threw me a dark smile. ‘I already paid for you. I knew you would come.’
I gritted my teeth at his arrogance and tugged on the reins of the big horse and said, ‘Come on then!’ as if the horse were to blame, and as it felt the even ground of the street under its hooves it started a steady walk and I swung up on to the driving box of the wagon. A few moments later and Daniel joined me.
‘I did not mean to taunt you,’ he said stiffly. ‘I only meant that I knew you would do the right thing. You could not leave your father and your People, and choose to live among strangers forever.’
I shook my head. In the cold morning light with the fog curling off the Thames I could see the great palaces that faced out over the river,