Philippa Gregory - The Queen’s Fool

It was dreamlike, to go into the ruins of my old home. I saw streets and houses that I knew; but some of them were missing walls or roofs, and there had been a terrible toll paid by the thatched houses, they were all but destroyed.

I did not want to go down the street where my husband and I once lived, I was afraid of what I might find. If our house was still standing, and his mother and sisters were still there, I did not know how to reconcile with them. If I met his mother and she was angry with me and wanted to take Danny away from me I did not know what I would do or say. But if she was dead, and his house destroyed, it would be even worse.

Instead I went with the captain and the armed guard up to the castle under our white pennant of truce. We were expected; the commander came out civilly enough and spoke to the captain in rapid French. The captain bridled, understanding perhaps one word in three, and then leaned forward and said very loudly and slowly: “I have come for the English men, as has been agreed, as per the terms, and I expect them forthwith.”

When he had no response, he said it again, pitched a little higher.

“Captain, would you like me to speak for you, I can speak French?” I offered.

He turned to me with relief. “Can you? That might help. Why doesn’t the fool answer me?”

I stepped forward a little and said to the commander in French: “Captain Gatting offers his apologies but he cannot speak French. I can translate for you. I am Madame Carpenter. I have come for my husband who has been ransomed and the captain has come for the other men. We have a ship waiting in the harbor.”

He bowed slightly. “Madam, I am obliged to you. The men are mustered and ready. The civilians are to be released first and then the soldiers will march down to the harbor. Their weapons will not be returned. It is agreed?”

I translated for the captain and he scowled at me. “We ought to get the weapons back,” he said.

I shrugged. All I could think of was Daniel, waiting somewhere inside the castle for his release. “We can’t.”

“Tell him very well; but tell him that I’m not best pleased,” the captain said sourly.

“Captain Gatting agrees,” I said smoothly in French.

“Please come inside.” The commander led us over the drawbridge and into the inner courtyard. Another thick curtain wall with a portcullis doorway led to the central courtyard where about two hundred men were mustered, the soldiers in one block, the civilians in another. I raked the ranks for Daniel but I could not see him.

“Commandant, I am seeking my husband, Daniel Carpenter, a civilian,” I said. “I cannot see him, and I am afraid of missing him in the crowd.”

“Daniel Carpenter?” he asked. He turned and snapped an order at the man guarding the civilians.

“Daniel Carpenter!” the man bawled out.

In the middle of one of the ranks a man came forward. “Who asks for him?” said Daniel, my husband.

I closed my eyes for a moment as the world seemed to shift all around me.

“I am Daniel Carpenter,” Daniel said again, not a quaver in his voice, stepping forward on the very brink of freedom, greeting whatever new danger might threaten him without a moment’s hesitation.

The commander beckoned him to come forward and moved to one side so that I could see him. Daniel saw me for the first time and I saw him go very pale. He was older-looking, a little weary, he was thinner, but nothing worse than winter-pale and winter-thin. He was the same. He was my beloved Daniel with his dark curling hair and his dark eyes and his kissable mouth and that particular smile which was my smile; it only ever shone on me, it was at once desiring, steadfast, and amused.

“Daniel,” I whispered. “My Daniel!”

“Ah, Hannah,” he said quietly. “You.”

Behind us, the civilians were signing their names and marching out to freedom. I did not hear the shouted orders or the tramp of their feet. All I could see, all I could know, was Daniel.

“I ran away,” I said. “I am sorry. I was afraid and I did not know what to do. Lord Robert gave me safe passage to England and I went back to Queen Mary. I wrote to you at once. I would not have gone without you if there had been any time to think.”

Gently, he stepped forward and took my hand. “I have dreamed and dreamed of you,” he said quietly. “I thought you had left me for Lord Robert when you had the chance.”

“No! Never. I knew at once that I wanted to be with you. I have been trying to get a letter to you. I have been trying to reach you. I swear it, Daniel. I have thought of nothing and no one but you, ever since I left.”

“Have you come back to be my wife?” he asked simply.

I nodded. At this most important moment I found I lost all my fluency. I could not speak. I could not argue my case, I could not persuade him in any one of my many languages. I could not even whisper. I just nodded emphatically, and Danny on my hip, his arms around my neck, gave a gurgle of laughter and nodded too, copying me.

I had hoped Daniel would be glad and snatch me up into his arms, but he was somber. “I will take you back,” he said solemnly. “And I will not question you, and we will say no more about this time apart. You will never have a word of reproach from me, I swear it; and I will bring this boy up as my son.”

For a moment, I did not understand what he meant, and then I gasped. “Daniel, he is your son! This is your son by your woman. This is her son. We were running from the French horsemen and she fell, she gave him to me as she went down. I am sorry, Daniel. She died at once. And this is your boy, I passed him off as mine. He is my boy now. He is my boy too.”

“He is mine?” he asked wonderingly. He looked at the child for the first time and saw, as anyone would have to see, the dark eyes which were his own, and the brave little smile.

“He is mine too,” I said jealously. “He knows that he is my boy.”

Daniel gave a little half laugh, almost a sob, and put his arms out. Danny reached for his father and went confidingly to him, put his plump little arms around his neck, looked him in the face and leaned back so he could scrutinize him. Then he thumped his little fist on his own chest and said, by way of introduction: “Dan’l.”

Daniel nodded, and pointed to his own chest. “Father,” he said. Danny’s little half-moon eyebrows raised in interest.

“Your father,” Daniel said.

He took my hand and tucked it firmly under his arm, as he held his son tightly with the other. He walked to the dispatching officer and gave his name and was ticked off their list. Then together we walked toward the open portcullis.

“Where are we going?” I asked, although I did not care. As long as I was with him and Danny, we could go anywhere in the world, be it flat or round, be it the center of the heavens or wildly circling around the sun.

“We are going to make a home,” he said firmly. “For you and me and Daniel. We are going to live as the People, you are going to be my wife, and his mother, and one of the Children of Israel.”

“I agree,” I said, surprising him again.

He stopped in his tracks. “You agree?” he repeated comically.

I nodded.

“And Daniel is to be brought up as one of the People?” he confirmed.

I nodded. “He is one already,” I said. “I had him circumcised. You must instruct him, and when he is older he will learn from my father’s Hebrew Bible.”

He drew a breath. “Hannah, in all my dreams, I did not dream of this.”

I pressed against his side. “Daniel, I did not know what I wanted when I was a girl. And then I was a fool in every sense of the word. And now that I am a woman grown, I know that I love you and I want this son of yours, and our other children who will come. I have seen a woman break her heart for love: my Queen Mary. I have seen another break her soul to avoid it: my Princess Elizabeth. I don’t want to be Mary or Elizabeth, I want to be me: Hannah Carpenter.”

“And we shall live somewhere that we can follow our beliefs without danger,” he insisted.

“Yes,” I said, “in the England that Elizabeth will make.”

The characters of Hannah and her family are invented, but there were Jewish families concealing their faith in London as elsewhere in Europe, throughout this period. I am indebted to Cecil Roth’s moving history and to the broadcaster and filmmaker Naomi Gryn for giving me a small insight into these courageous lives. Most of the other characters in this novel are real, created by me in this fiction to match the historical record as I understand it. Below is a list of some of my sources, and for the history of Calais I am also indebted to the French historian Georges Fauquet who was generous with his time and his knowledge.

Billington, Sandra. A Social History of the Fool. London: Macmillan, 1984.

Braggard, Philippe, Johan Termote, and John Williams, editors. Walking the Walls, Historic Town Defences in Kent, C &frac;te d’Opale and West Flanders. Kent, UK: Kent County Council, 1999.

Brigden, Susan. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors 1485-1603. London: Allen Lane, 2000.

Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religions and the Lifecycle in Tudor and Stuart England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Darby, H.C. A New Historical Geography of England before 1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Doran, John. A History of Court Fools. London: Richard Bentley, 1858.

Fontaine, Raymond. Calais, ville d’histoire et de tourisme. Broché: Syndicat d’initiative de France, 2002.

Green, Dominic. The Double Life of Doctor Lopez: Spies, Shakespeare and the Plot to Poison Elizabeth I. London: Century, 2003.

Guy, John. Tudor England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Haynes, Alan. Sex in Elizabethan England. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1997.

Hibbert, Christopher. The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1991.

Loades, David. The Tudor Court. London: B. T. Batsford, 1986.

Marshall, Peter. The Philosopher’s Stone: A Quest for the Secrets of Alchemy. London: Macmillan, 2001.

Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth. London: Jonathan Cape, 1934.

Plowden, Alison. Marriage with My Kingdom: The Courtships of Elizabeth I. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1999.

– – -. The Young Elizabeth: The First Twenty-five Years of Elizabeth I. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1999.

– – -. Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners. Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1998.

Ridley, Jasper. Elizabeth I. London: Constable, 1987.

Roth, Cecil. A History of the Marranos. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1932.

Somerset, Anne. Elizabeth I. London: Orion, 1997.

Starkey, David. Elizabeth . London: Vintage, 2001.

Turner, Robert. Elizabethan Magic: The Art and the Magus. Boston: Element Books, 1989.

Weir, Alison. Children of England. London: Pimlico, 1997.

– – -. Elizabeth the Queen. London: Pimlico, 1999.

Welsford, Enid. The Fool: His Social and Literary History. London: Faber and Faber, 1935.

Woolley, Benjamin. The Queen’s Conjuror: The Science and Magic of Doctor Dee. London: HarperCollins, 2001.

Yates, Frances. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979.

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