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‘You’re a maid,’ he scoffed. ‘All young maids say they don’t wish it.’
I shot a look at him which showed my resentment too clearly.
‘Oho! Have I offended you, Mistress Boy?’
‘I know my own mind, sir,’ I said quietly. ‘And I am not a maid like any other.’
‘Clearly. So what is your mind, Mistress Boy?’
‘I don’t wish to marry.’
‘And how shall you eat?’
‘I should like to have my own shop, and print my own books.’
‘And do you think a girl, even a pretty one in breeches, could manage without a husband?’
‘I am sure I could,’ I said. ‘Widow Worthing has a shop across the lanes.’
‘A widow has had a husband to give her a fortune, she didn’t have to make her own.’
‘A girl can make her own fortune,’ I said stoutly. ‘I should think a girl could command a shop.’
‘And what else can a girl command?’ he teased me. ‘A ship? An army? A kingdom?’
‘You will see a woman run a kingdom, you will see a woman can run a kingdom better than any in the world before,’ I fired back, and then checked at the look on his face. I put my hand over my mouth. ‘I didn’t mean to say that,’ I whispered. ‘I know that a woman should always be ruled by her father or husband.’
He looked at me as if he would hear more. ‘Do you think, Mistress Boy, that I will live to see a woman rule a kingdom?’
‘In Spain it was done,’ I said weakly. ‘Once. Queen Isabella.’
He nodded and let it go, as if drawing us both back from the brink of something dangerous. ‘So. D’you know your way to Whitehall Palace, Mistress Boy?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Then when Mr Dee has chosen the books he wants to see, you can bring them there, to my rooms. All right?’
I nodded.
‘How is your father’s shop prospering?’ he asked. ‘Selling many books? Many customers coming?’
‘Some,’ I said cautiously. ‘But it is early days for us yet.’
‘Your gift does not guide him in his business, then?’
I shook my head. ‘It is not a gift. It is more like folly, as he says.’
‘You speak out? And you can see what others cannot?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And what did you see when you looked at me?’
His voice was pitched very low, as if he would lead me to whisper a reply. I raised my eyes from his boots, his strong legs, his beautiful surcoat, to the soft folds of his white ruff, his sensuous mouth, his half-lidded dark eyes. He was smiling at me, as if he understood that my cheeks, my ears, even my hair felt hot as if he were the sun from Spain on my head. ‘When I first saw you, I thought I knew you.’
‘From before?’ he asked.
‘From a time to come,’ I said awkwardly. ‘I thought that I would know you, in the days ahead.’
‘Not if you are a lad!’ He smiled to himself at the bawdiness of his thought. ‘So what condition will I be in when you know me, Mistress Boy? Am I to be a great man? Am I to command a kingdom while you command a bookshop?’
‘Indeed, I hope you will be a great man,’ I said stiffly. I would say nothing more, this warm teasing must not lull me into thinking that it was safe to confide in him.
‘What d’you think of me?’ he asked silkily.
I took a quiet breath. ‘I think that you would trouble a young woman who was not in breeches.’
He laughed out loud at that. ‘Please God that is a true seeing,’ he said. ‘But I never fear trouble with girls, it is their fathers who strike me with terror.’
I smiled back, I could not help myself. There was something about the way his eyes danced when he laughed that made me want to laugh too, that made me long to say something extraordinarily witty and grown-up so that he would look at me and see me not as a child but as a young woman.
‘And have you ever foretold the future and it came true?’ he asked, suddenly serious.
The question itself was dangerous in a country that was always alert for witchcraft. ‘I have no powers,’ I said quickly.
‘But without exerting powers, can you see the future? It is given to some of us, as a holy gift, to know what might be. My friend here, Mr Dee, believes that angels guide the course of mankind and may sometimes warn us against sin, just as the course of the stars can tell a man what his destiny might be.’
I shook my head doltishly at this dangerous talk, determined not to respond to him.
He looked thoughtful. ‘Can you dance or play an instrument? Learn a part in a masque and say your lines?’
‘Not very well,’ I said unhelpfully.
He laughed at my reluctance. ‘Well, we shall see, Mistress Boy. We shall see what you can do.’
I gave my little boyish bow and took care to say nothing more.
Next day, carrying a parcel of books and a carefully rolled scroll of manuscript, I walked across the town, past the Temple Bar and past the green fields of Covent Garden to Whitehall Palace. It was cold with a sleety rain which forced my head down and made me pull my cap low over my ears. The wind off the river was as icy as if it were coming straight from the Russias, it blew me up King’s Street to the very gates of Whitehall Palace.
I had never been inside a royal palace before, and I had thought I would just give the books to the guards on the gate, but when I showed them the note that Lord Robert had scrawled, with the Dudley seal of the bear and staff at the bottom, they bowed me through as though I were a visiting prince, and ordered a man to guide me.
Inside the gates, the palace was like a series of courtyards, each beautifully built, with a great garden in the middle set with apple trees and arbours and seats. The soldier from the gate led me across the first garden and gave me no time to stop and stare at the finely dressed lords and ladies who, wrapped in furs and velvets against the cold, were playing at bowls on the green. Inside the door, swung open by another pair of soldiers, there were more fine people in a great chamber, and behind that great room another, and then another. My guide led me through door after door until we came to a long gallery and Robert Dudley was at the far end of it, and I was so relieved to find him, the only man I knew in the whole palace, that I ran a few steps towards him and called out: ‘My lord!’
The guard hesitated, as if he would block me from getting any closer, but Robert Dudley waved him aside. ‘Mistress Boy!’ he exclaimed. He got to his feet and then I saw his companion. It was the young king, King Edward, fifteen years of age and beautifully dressed in plush blue velvet but with a face the colour of skimmed milk and thinner than any lad I had ever seen before.
I dropped to my knee, holding tight to my father’s books and trying to doff my cap at the same time, as Lord Robert remarked: ‘This is the girl-boy. Don’t you think she would be a wonderful player?’
I did not look up but I heard the king’s voice, thinned with pain. ‘You take such fancies, Dudley. Why should she be a player?’
‘Her voice,’ Dudley said. ‘Such a voice, very sweet, and that accent, part Spanish and part London, I could listen to her forever. And she holds herself like a princess in beggar’s clothes. Don’t you think she’s a delightful child?’
I kept my head down so that he should not see my delighted beam. I hugged the words to my skinny chest: ‘a princess in beggar’s clothes’, ‘a sweet voice’, ‘delightful’.
The young king returned me to the real world. ‘Why, what part should she play? A girl, playing a boy, playing a girl. Besides, it’s against Holy Writ for a girl to dress as a boy.’ His voice tailed away into a cough which shook him like a bear might shake a dog.
I looked up and saw Dudley make a little gesture towards the young man as if he would hold him. The king took his handkerchief from his mouth and I saw a glimpse of a dark stain, darker than blood. Quickly, he tucked it out of sight.
‘It’s no sin,’ Dudley said soothingly. ‘She’s no sinner. The girl is a holy fool. She saw an angel walking in Fleet Street. Can you imagine it? I was there, she truly did.’
The younger man turned to me at once, his face brightened with interest. ‘You can see angels?’
I kept down on my knee and lowered my gaze. ‘My father says I am a fool,’ I volunteered. ‘I am sorry, Your Grace.’
‘But did you see an angel in Fleet Street?’
I nodded, my eyes downcast. I could not deny my gift. ‘Yes, sire. I am sorry. I was mistaken. I didn’t mean to give offence …’
‘What can you see for me?’ he interrupted.
I looked up. Anyone could have seen the shadow of death on his face, in his waxy skin, in his swollen eyes, in his bony thinness, even without the evidence of the stain on his handkerchief and the tremor of his lips. I tried to tell a lie but I could feel the words coming despite myself. ‘I see the gates of heaven opening.’
Again, Robert Dudley made that little gesture, as if he would touch the boy, but his hand fell to his side.
The young king was not angry. He smiled. ‘This child tells the truth when everyone else lies to me,’ he said. ‘All the rest of you run around finding new ways to lie. But this little one …’ He lost his breath and smiled at me.
‘Your Grace, the gates of heaven have been opened since your birth,’ Dudley said soothingly. ‘As your mother ascended. The girl’s saying nothing more than that.’ He shot me an angry look. ‘Aren’t you?’
The young king gestured to me. ‘Stay at court. ‘You shall be my fool.’
‘I have to go home to my father, Your Grace,’ I said as quietly and as humbly as I could, ignoring Lord Robert’s glare. ‘I only came today to bring Lord Robert his books.’
‘You shall be my fool and wear my livery,’ the young man ruled. ‘Robert, I am grateful to you for finding her for me. I shan’t forget it.’
It was a dismissal. Robert Dudley bowed and snapped his fingers for me, turned on his heel and went from the room. I hesitated, wanting to refuse the king, but there was nothing to do but bow to him and run after Robert Dudley as he crossed the huge presence chamber, negligently brushing off the couple of men who tried to stop him and ask after the health of the king. ‘Not now,’ he said.
He went down a long gallery, towards double doors guarded by more soldiers with pikes, who flung them open as we approached. Dudley passed through to their salute and I went after him at a run, like some pet greyhound scampering at its master’s heels. Finally we came to a great pair of doors where the soldiers wore the Dudley livery and we went in.
‘Father,’ Dudley said and dropped to one knee.
There was a man at the fireplace of the great inner hall, looking down into the flames. He turned and made an unemotional blessing over his son’s head with two fingers. I dropped to my knee too, and stayed down even when I felt Robert Dudley rise up beside me.
‘How’s the king this morning?’
‘Worse,’ Robert said flatly. ‘Cough bad, he brought up some black bile, breathless. Can’t last, Father.’
‘And this is the girl?’
‘This is the bookseller’s daughter, calls herself twelve, I’d guess older, dresses like a lad but certainly a girl. Has the Sight, according to John Dee. I took her into the king as you ordered, begged her for a fool. She told him that she saw the gates of heaven opened for him. He liked it. She is to be his fool.’
‘Good,’ the duke said. ‘And have you told her of her duties?’
‘I brought her straight here.’
‘Stand, fool.’
I rose to my feet and took my first look at Robert Dudley’s father, the Duke of Northumberland, the greatest man in the kingdom. I took him in: a long bony face like a horse, dark eyes, balding head half-hidden by a rich velvet cap with a big silver brooch of his coat of arms: the bear and staff. A Spanish beard and moustache round a full mouth. I looked into his eyes and saw – nothing. This was a man whose face could hide his thoughts, a man whose very thoughts could conspire to hide his thoughts.
‘So?’ he asked of me. ‘What do you see with those big black eyes of yours, my girl-boy fool?’
‘Well, I don’t see any angels behind you,’ I said abruptly and was rewarded by an amused smile from the duke and a crack of laughter from his son.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Well done.’ He turned to me. ‘Listen, fool – what’s your name?’
‘Hannah Green, my lord.’
‘Listen, Hannah the Fool, you have been begged for a fool and the king has accepted you, according to our laws and customs. D’you know what that means?’
I shook my head.
‘You become his, like one of his puppies, like one of his soldiers. Your job, like a puppy and not like a soldier, is to be yourself. Say the first thing that comes into your head, do whatever you wish. It will amuse him. It will amuse us, and it will set before us all the work of the Lord, which will please him. You will tell the truth in this court of liars, you will be our innocent in this wicked world. Understand?’
‘How am I to be?’ I was absolutely confounded. ‘What d’you want of me?’
‘You are to be yourself. Speak as your gift commands you. Say whatever you wish. The king has no holy fool at present and he likes an innocent at court. He has commanded you. You are now a royal fool. One of the household. You will be paid to be his fool.’
I waited.
‘Do you understand, fool?’
‘Yes. But I don’t accept.’
‘You can’t accept or not accept. You’ve been begged for a fool, you have no legal standing, you have no voice. Your father has handed you over to Lord Robert here, and he has given you to the king. You are now the king’s.’
‘If I refuse?’ I could feel myself trembling.
‘You can’t refuse.’
‘If I run away?’
‘Punished according to the king’s wishes. Whipped like a puppy. You were your father’s property, now you are ours. And we have begged you for a fool to the king. He owns you. D’you understand?’
‘My father would not sell me,’ I said stubbornly. ‘He would not let me go.’
‘He cannot stand against us,’ Robert said quietly behind me. ‘And I promised him that you would be safer here than out on the street. I gave him my word and he accepted. The business was done while we ordered the books, Hannah. It is finished.’
‘Now,’ continued the duke. ‘Not like a puppy, and not like a fool, you have another task to do.’
I waited.
