They made sure that these stories did not reach the queen but I was certain that if she knew she would put a stop to the cruelty. A woman waiting for her own child to be born does not send another pregnant woman to the stake. I took my chance one morning, when she was walking.
“Your Grace, may I speak with you?”
She turned and smiled. “Yes, Hannah, of course.”
“It is a matter of state and I am not qualified to judge,” I said cautiously. “And I am a young woman, and perhaps I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?” she asked.
“The news from London is very cruel,” I said, taking the plunge. “I am sorry if I speak out of turn, but there is much cruelty being done in your name and your advisors do not tell you of it.”
There was a little ripple at my temerity. At the back of the group of ladies I saw Will Somers roll his eyes at me.
“Why, what do you mean, Hannah?”
“Your Grace, you know that many of the great Protestants of the land have gone quietly to Mass and their priests have put away their wives and become obedient to the new laws. It is only their servants and the foolish people in the villages who do not have the wit to tell a lie when they are examined. Surely you would not want the simple people of your country to be burned for their faith? Surely, you would want to show them mercy?”
I expected her smile of acknowledgment, but the face she turned to me was scowling. “If there are families who have turned their coat and not their faith then I want their names,” she said, her voice hard. “You are right: I don’t seek to burn servants, I want them all, masters and men, to turn again to the church. I would be a sorry Queen of England if I did not insist on the same law for rich and for poor. If you know the name of a priest with a wife in hiding, Hannah, then you had better tell me now or you will be risking your own immortal soul.”
I had never seen her so cold.
“Your Grace!”
It was as if she did not hear me. She put her hand on her heart and she cried out: “Before God, Hannah, I will save this country from sin even though it cost life after life. We have to turn back to God and from heresy and if it takes a dozen fires, if it takes a hundred fires, we will do it. And if you, even you, are hiding a name then I will have it from you, Hannah. There will be no exceptions made. Even you shall be questioned. If you will not tell, I shall have you questioned…”
I could feel the color draining from my face and my heart start to race. After surviving so long, to put myself into danger, to step up to the rack! “Your Grace!” I stammered. “I am innocent…”
There was a scream from the back of the court and we all turned to look. A lady in waiting was running, holding her skirts away from her pounding feet, toward the queen. “Your Grace!” she whimpered. “Save me! It is the fool! He is run mad!”
Will Somers was bent down in a squat, his great long legs folded up. Beside him in the grass was a frog, emerald green, blinking his fat eyes. Will blinked too, mirroring his actions.
“We are racing,” he said with dignity. “Monsieur le Frog and I have a wager that I shall get to the end of the orchard before him. But he is playing a long game. He is trying to out-strategy me. I would wish someone to tickle him with a stick.”
The court was convulsed, the woman who had screamed had turned and was laughing too. Will, squatting like a frog, knees up around his ears, goggle-eyes blinking, was inescapably funny. Even the queen was smiling. Someone fetched a stick and stood behind the frog and gave it a little poke.
At once the frightened thing leaped forward. Will leaped too in a great unexpected bound. Will was clearly in the lead with his first hop. With a roar the courtiers ran into two lines to form a track, and someone prodded the frog once more. This time he was more alarmed and took three great bounds and started to crawl as well. The ladies flapped their skirts to keep him on course as Will bounded behind him, but the frog was clearly gaining. Another touch of the stick and he was off again, Will in hot pursuit, people shouting odds and bets, the Spaniards shaking their heads at the folly of the English but then laughing despite themselves and throwing down a purse of coins on the frog.
“Someone tickle Will!” came a shout. “He’s lagging back.”
One of the men found a stick and went behind Will who leaped a little faster, to keep out of the way. “I’ll do it!” I said and snatched the stick from him and mimed a great beating when the stick hit the ground behind Will and never so much as touched his breeches.
He went as fast as he could have done, but the frog was thoroughly frightened and seemed to know that the thick thorn hedge threaded with bean flowers at the end of the orchard was a safe haven. He bounded toward it and Will arrived a mere toad’s nose behind. There was a great roar of applause and a chink of coins being exchanged. The queen held her belly and laughed out loud, and Jane Dormer slipped an arm around her waist to support her, and smiled to see her mistress so happy for once.
Will unfolded himself from the ground, his gangling legs stretching out at last, his face creased with a smile as he took his bow. The whole court moved on, talking and laughing about Will Somers’s race with a frog, but I delayed him, a hand on his arm.
“Thank you,” I said.
He looked at me steadily, no trace of the fool about either of us. “Child, you cannot change a king, you can only make him laugh. Sometimes, if you are a very great fool, you can make him laugh at himself, and then you may make him a better man and a better king.”
“I was clumsy,” I confessed. “But Will, I spoke to a woman today and the things that she told me would have made you weep!”
“Far worse in France,” he said quickly. “Worse in Italy. You of all people should know, child, that it is worse in Spain.”
That checked me. “I came to England thinking that this was a country that would be more merciful. Surely the queen is not a woman to burn a priest’s wife.”
He dropped an arm over my shoulders. “Child, you are a fool indeed,” he said gently. “The queen has no mother to advise her, no husband who loves her, and no child to distract her. She wants to do right and she is told by everyone around her that the best way to bring this country to heel is to burn a few nobodies who are destined for hell already. Her heart might ache for them but she will sacrifice them to save the rest, just as she would sacrifice herself for her own immortal soul. Your skill, my skill, is to make sure that it never occurs to her to sacrifice us.”
I turned a face to him which was as grave as he would have wished. “Will, I have trusted her. I would trust her with my life.”
“You do rightly,” he said in mock approbation. “You are a very true fool. It is only a fool who trusts a king.”
In July the court should have been on progress, traveling round the great houses of England, enjoying the hunting and the parties and the pleasures of the English summer, but still the queen said nothing about when we might leave. Our setting out had been delayed day after day waiting for the birth of the prince, and now, twelve weeks late, nobody truly believed that the prince would come.
Nobody said anything to the queen – that was the worst of it. Nobody asked her how she was feeling, whether she was ill, if she was bleeding or sick. She had lost a child which meant more to her than the world itself, and nobody asked her how she did, or if they could comfort her. She was surrounded by a wall of polite silence, but they smiled when she had gone by, and some of them laughed behind their hands and said that she was an old and foolish woman and that she had mistaken the drying-up of her courses for a pregnancy! and what a fool she was! and what a fool she had made of the king! and how he must hate her for making him the laughingstock of Christendom!