The Queen’s Fool. Philippa Gregory

      Lady Mary came to London for the Candlemas feast, as had been planned; it seemed that no-one had told her that her brother was too sick to rise from his bed. She rode in through the palace gate of Whitehall with a great train behind her, and was greeted at the very threshold of the palace by the duke, with his sons, including Lord Robert, at his side, and the council of England bowing low before her. Seated high on her horse, her small determined face looking down at the sea of humbly bowing heads, I thought I saw a smile of pure amusement cross her lips before she put down her hand to be kissed.

      I had heard so much about her, the beloved daughter of the king who had been put aside on the word of Anne Boleyn, the whore. The princess who had been humbled to dust, the mourning girl who had been forbidden to see her dying mother. I had expected a figure of tragedy: she had endured a life which would have broken most women; but what I saw was a stocky little fighter with enough wit about her to smile at the court, knocking their noses on their knees because, suddenly, she was the heir with formidable prospects.

      The duke treated her as if she were queen already. She was helped from her horse and led in to the banquet. The king was in his chamber, coughing and retching in his little bed; but they had the banquet anyway, and I saw the Lady Mary look round at the beaming faces as if to note that when the heir was in the ascendant, a king could lie sick and alone, and no-one mind at all.

      There was dancing after dinner but she did not rise from her seat, though she tapped her foot and seemed to enjoy the music. Will made her laugh a couple of times, and she smiled on him as if he were a familiar face in a dangerous world. She had known him when he was her father’s fool and given her brother carry-backs, and sung nonsense songs at her and sworn it was Spanish. When she looked around the court now at the hard faces of the men who had seen her insulted and humiliated by her own baby brother it must have been a small relief to know that Will Somers at least never changed in his unswerving good humour.

      She did not drink deeply, and she ate very little; she was not a famous glutton as her father had been. I looked her over, as did the court: this woman who might be my next mistress. She was a woman in her thirty-seventh year, but she still had the pretty colouring of a girl: pale skin and cheeks which readily flushed rosy pink. She wore her hood set back off her square honest face and showed her hair, dark brown with a tinge of Tudor red. Her smile was her great charm; it came slowly, and her eyes were warm. But what struck me most about her was her air of honesty. She did not look at all like my idea of a princess – having spent a few weeks at court I thought everyone there smiled with hard eyes and said one thing and meant the opposite. But this princess looked as if she said nothing that she did not mean, as if she longed to believe that others were honest too, that she wanted to ride a straight road.

      She had a grim little face in repose, but it was all redeemed by that smile: the smile of the best-beloved princess, the first of her father’s children, born when he was a young man who still adored his wife. She had quick dark eyes, Spanish eyes, from her mother and her rapid appreciation of everything around her. She held herself upright in her chair, the dark collar of her gown framing her shoulders and neck. She had a great jewelled cross at her throat as if to flaunt her religion in this most Protestant court, and I thought that she must be either very brave or very reckless to insist on her faith when her brother’s men were burning heretics for less. But then I saw the tremor in her hand when she reached for her golden goblet and I imagined that like many women she had learned to put on a braver face than she might feel.

      When there was a break in the dancing, Robert Dudley was at her side, whispering to her, and she glanced over to me and he beckoned me forward.

      ‘I hear you are from Spain, and my brother’s new fool,’ she said in English.

      I bowed low. ‘Yes, Your Grace.’

      ‘Speak Spanish,’ Lord Robert commanded me, and I bowed again and told her in Spanish that I was glad to be at court.

      When I looked up I saw the delight in her face at hearing her mother’s language. ‘What part of Spain?’ she asked eagerly in English.

      ‘Castile, Your Grace,’ I lied at once. I did not want any inquiries made of us and of my family’s destruction in our home of Aragon.

      ‘And why did you come to England?’

      I was prepared for the question. My father and I had discussed the dangers of every answer and settled on the safest. ‘My father is a great scholar,’ I said. ‘He wanted to print books from his library of manuscripts, and he wanted to work in London, which is such a centre of learning.’

      At once the smile left her, and her face grew harder. ‘I suppose he turns out copies of the Bible to mislead people who cannot begin to understand it,’ she said crossly.

      My gaze slid to Robert Dudley, who had bought one of my father’s Bibles newly translated into English.

      ‘In the Latin only,’ he said smoothly. ‘A very pure translation, Lady Mary, and with very few errors. I daresay Hannah will bring you one, if you would like.’

      ‘My father would be honoured,’ I said.

      She nodded. ‘And you are my brother’s holy fool,’ she said. ‘D’you have any words of wisdom for me?’

      I shook my head helplessly. ‘I wish I could see at will, Your Grace. I am much less wise than you, I should think.’

      ‘She told my tutor John Dee that she could see an angel walking with us,’ Robert put in.

      The Lady Mary looked at me with more respect.

      ‘But then she told my father that she saw no angels behind him.’

      Her face at once creased into laughter. ‘No! Did she? And what said your father? Was he sorry not to have an angel at his side?’

      ‘I don’t think he was very surprised,’ Robert said, smiling too. ‘But this is a good little maid, and I think she does have a true gift. She has been a great comfort to your brother in his illness. She has a gift