Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2: The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen. Philippa Gregory
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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.’
In the evening, before dinner, I was summoned to the queen’s rooms and found her in conference with the king and with the new arrival and greatest favourite: the archbishop and papal legate, Cardinal Reginald Pole. I was in the presence chamber before I saw him, for if I had known he was there I would never have crossed the threshold. I was immediately, instinctively afraid of him. He had sharp piercing eyes, which would look unflinchingly at sinners and saints alike. He had spent a lifetime in exile for his beliefs and he had no doubt that everyone’s convictions could and should be tested by fire as his had been. I thought that if he saw me, even for one second, he would smell me out and know me for a Marrano – a converted Jew – and that in this new England of Catholic conviction that he and the king and the queen were making, they would exile me back to my death in Spain at the very least, and execute me in England if they could.
He glanced up as I came into the room and his gaze flicked indifferently over me, but the queen rose from the table and held out her hands in greeting. I ran to her and dropped to my knee at her feet.
‘Your Grace!’
‘My little fool,’ she said tenderly.
I looked up at her and saw at once the changes in her appearance made by her pregnancy. Her colour was good, she was rosy-cheeked, her face plumper and rounder, her eyes brighter from good health. Her belly was a proud curve only partly concealed by the loosened panel of her stomacher and the wider cut of her gown and I thought how proudly she must be letting out the lacing every day to accommodate the growing child. Her breasts were fuller too, her whole face and body proclaimed her happiness and her fertility.
With her hand resting on my head in blessing she turned to the two other men. ‘This is my dear little fool Hannah, who has been with me since the death of my brother. She has come a long way with me to share my joy now. She is a faithful loving girl and I use her as my little emissary with Elizabeth, who trusts her too.’ She turned to me. ‘She is here?’
‘Just arrived,’ I said.
She tapped my shoulder to bid me rise and I warily got to my feet and looked at the two men.
The king was not glowing like his wife, he looked drawn and tired as if the days of winding his ways through English politics and the long English winter were a strain on a man who was used to the total power and sunny weather of the Alhambra.
The cardinal had the narrow beautiful face of the true ascetic. His gaze, sharp as a knife, went to my eyes, my mouth, and then my pageboy livery. I thought he saw at once, in that one survey, my apostasy, my desires, and my body, growing into womanhood despite my own denial and my borrowed clothes.
‘A holy fool?’ he asked, his tone neutral.
I bowed my head. ‘So they say, Your Excellency.’ I flushed with embarrassment, I did not know how he should be addressed in English. We had not had a cardinal legate at court before.
‘You see visions?’ he asked. ‘Hear voices?’
It was clear to me that any grand claims would be greeted with utter scepticism. This was not a man to be taken in with mummer’s skills.
‘Very rarely,’ I said shortly, trying to keep my accent as English as possible. ‘And unfortunately, never at times of my choosing.’
‘She saw that I would be queen,’ Mary said. ‘And she foretold my brother’s death. And she came to the attention of her first master because she saw an angel in Fleet Street.’
The cardinal smiled and his dark narrow face lit up at once, and I saw that he was a charming man as well as a handsome one. ‘An angel?’ he queried. ‘How did he look? How did you know him for an angel?’
‘He was with some gentlemen,’ I said uncomfortably. ‘And I could hardly see him at all for he was blazing white. And he disappeared. He was just there for a moment and then he was gone. It was the others who named him for an angel. Not me.’
‘A most modest soothsayer,’ the cardinal smiled. ‘From Spain by your accent?’
‘My father was Spanish but we live in England now,’ I said cautiously. I felt myself take half a step towards the queen and instantly froze. There should be no flinching, these men would detect fear quicker than anything else.
But the cardinal was not much interested in me. He smiled at the king. ‘Can you advise us of nothing, holy fool? We are about God’s business as it has not been done in England for generations. We are bringing the country back to the church. We are making good what has been bad for so long. And even the voices of the people in the Houses of Parliament are guided by God.’
I hesitated. It was clear to me that this was more rhetoric than a question demanding an answer. But the queen looked to me to speak.
‘I would think it should be done gently,’ I said. ‘But that is my opinion, not the voice of my gift. I just wish that it could be done gently.’
‘It should be done quickly and powerfully,’ the queen said. ‘The longer it takes the more doubts will emerge. Better to be done once and well than with a hundred small changes.’
The two men looked unconvinced. ‘One should never offend more men than