Philippa Gregory - The Queen’s Fool

The harbor was almost blocked by incoming ships; as soon as the men marched from the fields outside the town toward the outlying forts, the camp immediately filled with more soldiers. The day the cavalry troops clattered through the town I thought that our chimney pot would be shaken from the roof by the noise. Other women of my age lined the streets, cheering and waving as the men went by, throwing flowers and eyeing the officers; but I kept my head down. I had seen enough death; my heart did not leap to the whistle of the pipes and the urgent rattle of the drums. I saw Daniel’s sisters walking arm-in-arm on the ramparts in their best dresses, managing to look modestly down and all around them at the same time, desperate for some attention from any passing English officer. I could not imagine feeling desire. I could not imagine the excitement that seemed to have gripped everyone but me. All I felt was worry about my stock if the men ran out of control, and gratitude that I had chosen by luck a house which was one yard inside the city gate instead of one yard outside.

By midsummer the English army, marshaled, half trained and wholly wild for a fight, moved out of Calais, led by King Philip himself. They launched an attack on St. Quentin, and in August stormed the town and won it from the French. It was a resounding victory against a hated enemy. The citizens of Calais, ambitious to reclaim the whole of the lost English lands in France, went mad with joy at this first sign, and every returning soldier was laden with flowers and had a horn of wine pressed into his willing hand and was blessed as the savior of his nation.

I saw Daniel at church on Sunday when the priest preached the victory of God’s chosen people over the treacherous French, and then, to my amazement, he prayed for the safe delivery of the queen of a son and heir to the throne. For me, it was better news even than the taking of St. Quentin, and for the first time in long months I felt my heart lift. When I thought of her carrying a child in her womb again I felt my downturned face lift up and smile. I knew how glad she must be, how this must bring her back to the joy she had felt in early marriage, how she must think now that God had forgiven the English and she might become a gentle queen and a good mother.

When Daniel came up to me as we all left church he saw the happiness on my face and smiled. “You did not know of the queen’s condition?”

“How could I know?” I said. “I see nobody. I hear only the most general of gossip.”

“There is news of your old lord too,” he said levelly. “Have you heard?”

“Robert Dudley?” I could feel myself sway against the shock of his name. “What news?”

Daniel put a hand under my elbow to steady me. “Good news,” he said quietly though I could see it brought little joy for him. “Good news, Hannah, be calm.”

“Is he released?”

“He and half a dozen other men accused of treason were released some time ago and fought with the king.” The twist of Daniel’s mouth indicated that he thought Lord Robert would serve his own cause first. “Your lord raised his own company of horse a month ago…”

“He came through the town? And I didn’t know?”

“He fought at St. Quentin and was mentioned in dispatches for bravery,” Daniel said shortly.

I felt myself glow with pleasure. “Oh! How wonderful!”

“Yes,” Daniel said without enthusiasm. “You won’t try to find him, Hannah? The countryside is unsafe.”

“He’ll go home through Calais, won’t he? When the French sue for peace?”

“I should think so.”

“I will try to see him then. Perhaps he’ll help me return to England.”

Daniel went pale, his face even graver than before. “You cannot risk going back while the rules against heresy are so strong,” he said quietly. “They would be bound to examine you.”

“If I were under my lord’s protection I would be safe,” I said with simple confidence.

It cost him a good deal to acknowledge Lord Robert’s power. “I suppose so. But please, talk to me before you take a decision. His credit may not be so very good, you know, it is only one act of bravery in a long life of treason.”

I let the criticism go.

“Can I walk you to your door?” He offered me his arm and I took it and fell into step beside him. For the first time in months I felt a little of my own darkness lift and dissolve. The queen was with child, Lord Robert was free and honored for his bravery, England and Spain in alliance had defeated the French army. Surely, things would start coming right for me too.

“Mother tells me that she saw you in the marketplace in breeches,” Daniel remarked.

“Yes,” I said carelessly. “When there are so many soldiers and rough men and women on the streets I feel safer like that.”

“Would you come back to my house?” Daniel asked. “I would like to keep you safe. You could keep the shop on.”

“It’s making no money,” I conceded honestly. “I don’t stay away from you for the sake of the shop. I can’t come back to you, Daniel. I have made up my mind and I will not change it.”

We had reached my door. “But if you were in trouble or danger you would send for me,” he pressed me.

“Yes.”

“And you wouldn’t leave for England, or meet with Lord Robert, without telling me?”

I shrugged. “I have no plans, except I should like to see the queen again. She must be so happy, I should like to see her now, expecting her child. I should so like to see her in her joy.”

“Perhaps when the peace treaty is signed,” he suggested. “I could take you to London for a visit and bring you back, if you would like that.”

I looked at him attentively. “Daniel, that would be kind indeed.”

“I would do anything to please you, anything that would make you happy,” he said gently.

I opened my door. “Thank you,” I said quietly and slipped away from him before I should make the mistake of stepping forward into his arms.

There were rumors that the defeated French army had turned around and was regrouping on the borders of the English Pale and every stranger who came into Calais for the Christmas market was regarded as a spy. The French must come against Calais in revenge for St. Quentin, but the French must know, as we all knew, that the town could not be taken. Everyone was afraid that the ramparts outside the town would be mined, that even now the skilled French miners were burrowing like worms through the very fabric of English earth. Everyone was afraid that the guards would be suborned, that the fort would fall through treachery. But over all of this was a sort of blithe confidence that the French could not succeed. Philip of Spain was a brilliant commander, he had the flower of the English army in the field, what could the French do with an army like ours harassing their own borders, and an impregnable castle like ours behind them?

Then the rumors of a French advance became more detailed. A woman coming into my shop warned Marie that we should hide our books and bury our treasure.

“Why?” I demanded of Marie.

She was white-faced. “I am English,” she said to me. “My grandmother was pure English.”

“I don’t doubt your loyalty,” I said, incredulous that someone should be trying to prove their provenance to me, a mongrel by birth, education, religion and choice.

“The French are coming,” she said. “That woman is from my village and she was warned by her friend. She has come to hide in Calais.”

She was the first of many. A steady flow of people from the countryside outside the gates in the English Pale decided that their best safety lay inside the untouchable town.

The Company of Merchants who all but ran the town organized a great dormitory in Staple Hall, bought in food ahead of the French advance, warned all the fit young men and women of Calais that they must prepare for a siege. The French were coming, but the English and Spanish army would be hard behind them. We need fear nothing, but we should prepare.

Then in the night, without warning, Fort Nieulay fell. It was one of the eight forts that guarded Calais, and as such was only a small loss. But Nieulay was the fort on the River Hames which controlled the sea gates, which were supposed to flood the canals around the town so that no army could cross. With Nieulay in French hands we had nothing to defend us but the other forts and the great walls. We had lost the first line of defense.

The very next day we heard the roar of cannon and then a rumor swept through the town. Fort Risban, the fort which guarded the inner harbor of Calais, had fallen too, even though it was newly built and newly fortified. Now the harbor itself lay open to French shipping, and the brave English boats which bobbed at anchor in the port could be taken at any moment.

“What shall we do?” Marie asked me.

“It’s only two forts,” I said stoutly, trying to hide my fear. “The English army will know we are under siege and come to rescue us. You’ll see, within three days they will be here.”

But it was the French army which drew up in lines before the walls of Calais and it was the French arquebusiers who flung a storm of arrows which arched over the top of the walls and killed at random people running in the streets, desperate to get inside their houses.

“The English will come,” I said. “Lord Robert will come and attack the French from the rear.”

We bolted the shutters on the shop and shrank inside to the back room, in a terror that the great gates, so close to our little shop, would be a focus for attack. The French brought up siege engines. Even hidden as we were in the back room of the shop I could hear the pounding of the great ram against the barred gates. Our men on the ramparts above were firing down, desperately trying to pick off the men who were pounding the defenses, and I heard a roar and a hiss as a great vat of boiling tar was tipped over the walls and showered on the attackers below, I heard their screams as they were scalded and burned, their upturned faces getting the brunt of the pain. Marie and I, desperate with fear, crouched behind the shop door as if the thin planks of wood would shield us. I did not know what to do, or where to go for safety. For a moment I thought of running through the streets to Daniel’s house but I was too afraid to unbolt the front door, and besides the streets were in turmoil with cannon shot overarching the city walls and falling within the streets, burning arrows raining down on the straw roofs and our reinforcements running up through the narrow streets to the walls.

Then the clatter of hundreds of horses’ hooves was in the street outside our door and I realized that the English army, garrisoned inside the town, was gathering for a counterattack. They must think that if they could dislodge the French from the gates of the city, that the surrounding countryside could be retaken and the pressure relieved from the town defenses.

We could hear the horses go by and then the silence while they assembled at the gate. I realized that for them to get out, the gate would have to be thrown open, and for that time my little shop would be right in the center of the battle.

It was enough. I whispered to Marie in French, “We have to get out of here. I am going to Daniel, d’you want to come with me?”

“I’ll go to my cousins, they live near the harbor.”

I crept to the door and opened it a crack. The sight as I peered through was terrifying. The street outside was absolute chaos, with soldiers running up the stone steps to the ramparts laden with weapons, wounded men being helped down. Another great vat of tar was being heated over an open fire only yards from the thatch of a neighboring house. And from the other side of the gate came the dreadful clamor of an army beating against the door, scaling the walls, firing upward, pulling cannon into place and firing shot, determined to breach the walls and get into the town.

I threw open the door and almost at once heard a most dreadful cry from the walls immediately above the shop as a hail of arrows found an unprotected band of men. Marie and I fled into the street. Behind us, and then all around us, came a dreadful crash. The French siege engine had catapulted a great load of stone and rubble over the wall. It rained down on our street like a falling mountain. Tiled roofs shed their load like a pack of cards spilling to the floor, stones plunged through thatch, knocked chimney pots askew, and they rolled down the steeply canted roofs and plunged to the cobblestones to smash around us with a sound like gunfire. It was as if the very skies were raining rocks and fires, as if we would be engulfed in terror.

“I’m off!” Marie shouted to me, plunging away down a lane which led toward the fish quay.