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

      My father’s shop had the shutters up though it was only early in the afternoon. I quickened my step as I turned down the street and I felt for the first time a fear clutch at my heart at the thought that he was a mortal man, just like Robert Dudley, and that none of us could say how long we would live.

      Daniel was putting the bolt on the last shutter and he turned around at the rapid sound of my footsteps.

      ‘Good,’ he said shortly. ‘Come inside.’

      I put my hand on his arm. ‘Daniel, is he very ill?’

      He covered my hand briefly with his own. ‘Come inside.’

      I went into the shop. The counter was bare of books, the printing room quiet. I went up the rickety stairs at the rear of the shop and looked towards the little truckle bed in the corner of the room, fearing that I would see him there, too ill to stand.

      The bed was heaped with papers and a small pile of clothes. My father was standing before it. I recognised at once the signs of packing for a long journey.

      ‘Oh, no,’ I said.

      My father turned to me. ‘It’s time for us to go,’ he said. ‘Did they give you permission to come away for a week?’

      ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But they expect me back. I came running down here in terror that you were ill.’

      ‘That gives us a week,’ he said, disregarding my complaint. ‘More than enough time to get to France.’

      ‘Not again,’ I said flatly. ‘You said we were to stay in England.’

      ‘It’s not safe,’ Daniel insisted, coming into the room behind me. ‘The queen’s marriage is to go ahead, and Prince Philip of Spain will bring in the Inquisition. Already the gallows are up on the street corners, and there is an informer in every village. We cannot stay here.’

      ‘You said we would be English.’ I appealed past him to my father. ‘And the gallows are for traitors, not for heretics.’

      ‘She will hang traitors today and heretics tomorrow,’ Daniel said firmly. ‘She has discovered that the only way to make herself safe on the throne is through blood. She executed her own cousin, she will execute her own sister. Can you doubt that she would hesitate for a moment to hang you?’

      I shook my head. ‘She is not executing Elizabeth, she is struggling to show her mercy. It is not about Elizabeth’s religion, it is about her obedience. And we are obedient subjects. And she is fond of me.’

      Daniel took my hand and led me to the bed, which was covered with rolls of manuscript. ‘See these? Every one is now a forbidden book,’ he said. ‘These are your father’s fortune, they are your dowry. When your father came to England these were his library, his great collection, now they would serve only as evidence against him. What are we to do with them? Burn them before they burn us?’

      ‘Keep them safe for better times,’ I said, incurably the daughter of a librarian.

      He shook his head. ‘There is nowhere safe for them, and there is nowhere safe for their owner in a country ruled by Spain. We have to go away and take them with us.’

      ‘But where do we have to go now?’ I cried. It was the wail of a child who has been too long travelling.

      ‘Venice,’ he said shortly. ‘France, then Italy, and then Venice. I shall study at Padua, your father will be able to open a print shop in Venice, and we will be safe there. The Italians have a love of learning, the city is filled with scholars. Your father can buy and sell texts again.’

      I waited, I knew what was coming next. ‘And we will marry,’ he said. ‘We will marry as soon as we arrive in France.’

      ‘And your mother and your sisters?’ I asked. It was living with them that I dreaded as much as marriage.

      ‘They are packing now,’ he said.

      ‘When do we leave?’

      ‘In two days’ time, at dawn. Palm Sunday.’

      ‘Why so soon?’ I gasped.

      ‘Because they have come asking questions already.’

      I stared at Daniel, unable to take in the words, but already filled with horror as my worst fears started to take shape. ‘They came for my father?’

      ‘They came to my shop looking for John Dee,’ my father said quietly. ‘They knew that he sent books to Lord Robert. They knew that he had seen the princess. They knew that he had foretold the young king’s death, and that is treason. They wanted to see the books that he asked me to store here.’

      I was twisting my hands together. ‘Books? What books? Are they hidden?’

      ‘I have them safe in the cellar,’ he said. ‘But they will find them if they take up the floorboards.’

      ‘Why are you storing forbidden books?’ I cried out in frustrated anger. ‘Why store John Dee’s books for him?’

      His face was gentle. ‘Because all books are forbidden when a country turns to terror. The scaffolds on the corners, the list of things you may not read. These things always go together. John Dee and Lord Robert and even Daniel here and I, even you, my child, are all scholars steeped in knowledge that has suddenly become against the law. To stop us reading forbidden books they will have to burn every manuscript. But to stop us thinking forbidden thoughts they will have to cut off our heads.’

      ‘We are not guilty of treason,’ I said stubbornly. ‘Lord Robert is still alive, John Dee too. And the charges are treason, not heretical thinking. The queen is merciful …’

      ‘And what happens when Elizabeth confesses?’ Daniel snapped at me. ‘When she names her fellow traitors, not just Thomas Wyatt but Robert Dudley, John Dee, perhaps even you. Have you never taken a message or run an errand for her? Could you swear to it?’

      I hesitated. ‘She would never confess. She knows the price of confession.’

      ‘She is a woman.’ He dismissed her. ‘They will frighten her and then promise her forgiveness, and she will confess to anything.’

      ‘You know nothing about her, you know nothing about this!’ I flared up. ‘I know her. This is not a young woman who is easily frightened, and more than that, her fear does not lead her to tears. If she is afraid she will fight like a bated cat. She is not a girl who gives up and weeps.’

      ‘She is a woman,’ he said again. ‘And she is enmeshed with Dudley and Dee and Wyatt and the rest of them. I warned you of this. I told you that if you played a double game at court you would bring danger on yourself and danger to us all, and now you have led danger to our door.’

      I was breathless with rage. ‘What door?’ I demanded. ‘We have no door. We have the open road, we have the sea between us and France and then we have to cross France like a family of beggars because you, like a coward, are afraid of your own shadow.’

      For a moment I thought Daniel would strike me. His hand flew up and then he froze. ‘I am sorry you call me a coward before your father’s face.’ He spat out the words. ‘I am sorry you think so lowly of me, your husband-to-be, and the man trying to save you and your father from a traitor’s death. But whatever you think of me, I am commanding you to help your father pack and be ready.’

      I took a breath, my heart still hammering with rage. ‘I am not coming,’ I said flatly.

      ‘Daughter!’ my father started.

      I turned to him. ‘You go, Father, if you wish. But I am not running away from a danger that I don’t see. I am a favourite at the palace with the queen and I am in no danger from her, and too small a person to attract the attention of the council. I don’t believe you are in any danger either. Please don’t throw away what we have started here. Please don’t make us run away again.’