“I have to have someone on my side,” she whispered, as if she had not heard me. “Someone who cares about me, someone who understands the danger I am in. Someone to protect me.”
“Prince Philip of Spain will not…” I began but she raised her hand to silence me.
“Hannah, I have nothing else to hope for but him. I hope that he comes to me, despite all the wicked slander against him, despite the danger to us both. Despite the threats that they will kill him the moment he sets foot in this kingdom. I hope to God that he has the courage to come to me and make me his wife and keep me safe. For as God is my witness, I cannot rule this kingdom without him.”
“You said you would be a virgin queen,” I reminded her. “You said you would live as a nun for your people and have no husband but them and no children but them.”
She turned away from the window, from the view of the cold river and the iron sky. “I said it,” she concurred. “But I did not know then what it would be like. I did not know then that being a queen would bring me even more pain than being a princess. I did not know that to be a virgin queen, as I am, means to be forever in danger, forever haunted by the fear of the future, and forever alone. And worse than everything else: forever knowing that nothing I do will last.”
The queen’s dark mood lasted till dinnertime and she took her seat with her head bowed and her face grim. A deadened silence fell over the great hall, no one could be merry with the queen under a cloud, and everyone had their own fears. If the queen could not hold her throne, who could be sure of the safety of his house? If she were to be thrown down and Elizabeth to take her place then the men who had just restored their chapels and were paying for Masses to be sung would have to turn their coats again. It was a quiet anxious court, everyone looking around, and then there was a ripple of interest as Will Somers rose up from his seat, straightened his doublet with a foppish flick of his wrists and approached the queen’s table. When he knew that all eyes were upon him he dropped elegantly to one knee and flourished a kerchief in a bow.
“What is it, Will?” she asked absently.
“I have come to proposaloh matrimonioh,” Will said, as solemn as a bishop, with a ridiculous pronunciation of the words. The whole court held its breath.
The queen looked up, the glimmer of a smile in her eyes. “Matrimony? Will?”
“I am a proclaimed bacheloroh,” he said, from the back of the hall there was a suppressed giggle. “As everybody knowsohs. But I am prepared to overlookoh it, on this occasionoh.”
“What occasion?” The queen’s voice trembled with laughter.
“On the occasion of my proposaloh,” he said. “To Your Grace, of matrimonioh.”
It was dangerous ground, even for Will.
“I am not seeking a husband,” the queen said primly.
“Then I will withdraw,” he said with immense dignity. He rose to his feet and stepped backward from the throne. The court held its breath for the jest, the queen too. He paused; his timing was that of a musician, a composer of laughter. He turned. “But don’t you go thinkingoh,” he waved a long bony forefinger at her in warning, “don’t you go thinkingoh that you have to throw yourself away on the son of a mere emperororoh. Now you know you could have me, you know.”
The court collapsed into a gale of laughter, even the queen laughed as Will, with his comical gangling gait, went back to his seat and poured himself an extra large bumper of wine. I looked across at him and he raised it to me, one fool to another. He had done exactly what he was supposed to do: to take the most difficult and most painful thing and turn it into a jest. But Will could always do more than that, he could take the sting from it, he could make a jest that hurt no one, so that even the queen, who knew that she was tearing her country apart over her determination to be married, could smile and eat her dinner and forget the forces massing against her for at least one evening.
I went home to my father leaving a court humming with gossip, walking through a city seething with rebellion. The rumors of a secret army mustering to wage war against the queen were everywhere. Everyone knew of one man or another missing from his home, run off to join the rebels. Lady Elizabeth was said to be ready and willing to marry a good Englishman – Edward Courtenay – and had promised to take the throne as soon as her sister was deposed. The men of Kent would not allow a Spanish prince to conquer and subdue them. England was not some dowry which a princess, a half-Spanish princess, could hand over to Spain. There were good Englishmen that the queen should take if she had a mind to marry. There was handsome young Edward Courtenay with a kinship to the royal line on his own account. There were Protestant princelings all over Europe, there were gentlemen of breeding and education who would make a good king-consort to the queen. Assuredly she must marry, and marry at once, for no woman in the world could rule a household, much less a kingdom, without the guidance of a man; a woman’s nature was not fitted to the work, her intelligence could not stretch to the decisions, her courage was not great enough for the difficulties, she had no steadfastness in her nature for the long haul. Of course the queen must marry, and give the kingdom a son and heir. But she should not marry, she should never even have thought of marrying a Spanish prince. The very notion was treason to England and she must be mad for love of him, as everyone was saying, even to think of it. And a queen who could set aside common sense for her lust was not fit to rule. Better to overthrow a queen maddened by desire in her old age than suffer a Spanish tyrant.
My father had company in the bookshop. Daniel Carpenter’s mother was perched on one of the stools at the counter, her son beside her. I knelt for my father’s blessing, and then made a little bow to Mrs. Carpenter and to my husband-to-be. The two parents looked at Daniel and I, as prickly as cats on a garden wall, and tried, without success, to hide their worldly-wise amusement at the irritability of a young couple during courtship.
“I waited to see you and hear the news from court,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “And Daniel wanted to see you, of course.”
The glance that Daniel shot at her made it clear that he did not wish her to explain his doings to me.
“Is the queen’s marriage to go ahead?” my father asked. He poured me a glass of good Spanish red wine and pulled up a stool for me at the counter of the shop. I noted with wry amusement that my work as fool had made me a personage worthy of respect, with a seat and my own glass of wine.
“Without doubt,” I said. “The queen is desperate for a helper and a companion, and it is natural she should want a Spanish prince.”
I said nothing about the portrait which she had hung in her privy chamber, on the opposite wall from the prie-dieu, and which she consulted with a glance at every difficult moment, turning her head from a statue of God to a picture of her husband-to-be and back again.
My father glanced at Mrs. Carpenter. “Please God it makes no difference to us,” he said. “Please God she does not bring in Spanish ways.”
She nodded, but she failed to cross herself as she should have done. Instead she leaned forward and patted my father’s hand. “Forget the past,” she said reassuringly. “We have lived in England for three generations. Nobody can think that we are anything but good Christians and good Englishmen.”
“I cannot stay if it is to become another Spain,” my father said in a low voice. “You know, every Sunday, every saint’s day, they burned heretics, sometimes hundreds at a time. And those of us who had practiced Christianity for years were put on trial alongside those who had hardly pretended to it. And no one could prove their innocence! Old women who had missed Mass because they were sick, young women who had been seen to look away when they raised the Host, any excuse, any reason, and you could be informed against. And always, always, it was those who had made money, or those who had advanced in the world and made enemies. And with my books and my business and my reputation for scholarship, I knew they would come for me, and I started to prepare. But I did not think they would take my parents, my wife’s sister, my wife before me…” He broke off. “I should have thought of it, we should have gone earlier.”