My father glanced around. In the darkness of the garden an owl hooted, almost like a signal.

"Can you think of something? Won't they want you to think of something?"

"Father, I cannot make myself see things, I cannot command the Sight. It just comes or it does not."

"Did you see Lord Robert?"

"He winked at me." I leaned back against the cold stone and drew my warm new cloak around my shoulders.

"The king?"

"He was not even at dinner. He was sick, they sent his food to his rooms. They served a great dinner as if he were at the table but they sent a little plate to his rooms for him. The duke took his place at the head of the table, all but sitting on the throne."

"And does the duke have his eye on you?"

"He did not seem to see me at all."

"Has he forgotten you?"

"Ah, he doesn't have to look to know who is where, and what they are doing. He will not have forgotten me. He is not a man who forgets anything."

The duke had decided that there was to be a masque at Candlemas and gave it out as the king's command, so we all had to wear special costumes and learn our lines. Will Somers, the king's fool who had come to court twenty years ago when he was a boy the same age as me, was to introduce the piece and recite a rhyme, the king's choristers were to sing, and I was to recite a poem, specially composed for the occasion. My costume was to be a new livery, specially made for me in the fool's color of yellow. My hand-me-down livery was too tight on my chest. I was that odd androgynous thing, a girl on the threshold of being a woman. One day, in a certain light, as I turned my head before the mirror I could see the glimpse of a stranger, a beauty. Another day I was as plain as a slate.

The Master of the Revels gave me a little sword and ordered that Will and I should prepare for a fight, which would fit somewhere into the story of the masque.

We met for our first practice in one of the antechambers off the great hall. I was awkward and unwilling, I did not want to learn to fight with swords like a boy, I did not want to be the b.u.t.t of jokes by taking a public beating. No man at court but Will Somers could have persuaded me to it, but he treated our lesson as if he had been hired to improve my understanding of Greek. He behaved as if it was a skill I needed to learn, and he wanted me to learn well.

He started with my stance. Resting his hands on my shoulders, he gently smoothed them down, took my chin and raised it up. "Hold your head high, like a princess," he said. "Have you ever seen Lady Mary slouch? Ever seen Lady Elizabeth drop her head? No. They walk as if they are princesses born and bred; dainty like a pair of goats."

"Goats?" I asked, trying to raise my head without hunching up my shoulders.

Will Somers grinned at the laborious unfolding of the jest. "Up one minute, down the next," he said. "Heir one moment, b.a.s.t.a.r.d the next. Up the mountain and down again. Princesses and goats, all alike. You must stand like a princess, and dance like a goat."

"I have seen the Lady Elizabeth," I volunteered.

"Have you?"

"Once, when I was a little girl. My father brought me on a visit to London and I had to deliver some books to Admiral Lord Seymour."

Will put a gentle hand on my shoulder. "Least said, soonest mended," he advised quietly. Then he slapped his forehead and gave me his merry smile. "Here am I, telling a woman to mind her tongue! Fool that I am!"

The lesson went on. He showed me the swordsman's stance, hand on my hip for balance, how to slide forward with my leading foot always on the floor so that I should not trip or fall, how to move behind the sword and to let it retreat to me. Then we started on the feints and pa.s.ses.

Will first commanded me to stab at him. I hesitated. "What if I hit you?"

"Then I shall take a splinter, not a deadly cut," he pointed out. "It's only wood, Hannah."

"Get ready then," I said nervously and lunged forward.

To my amazement Will sidestepped me and was at my side, his wooden sword to my throat. "You're dead," he said. "Not so good at foresight after all."

I giggled. "I'm no good at this," I admitted. "Try again."

This time I lunged with a good deal more energy and caught the hem of his coat as he flicked to one side.

"Excellent," he said breathlessly. "And again."

We practiced until I could make a convincing stab at him and then he started to lunge at me and teach me to drop to one side or the other. Then he rolled out a thick carpet on the floor and showed me how to turn head over heels.

"Comical," he announced, sitting upright, his legs entwined like a child seated to read a book.

"Not very," I said.

"Ah, you're a holy fool, not a jester," he said. "You have no sense of the laughable."

"I have," I said, stung. "It's just that you are not funny."

"I have been the most comical man in England for nearly twenty years," he insisted. "I came to court when Henry loved Anne Boleyn and once boxed my ears for jesting against her. But the joke was on her, later. I was the funniest man in England before you were born."

"Why, how old are you?" I asked, looking into his face. The laughter lines were deeply engraved on either side of his mouth, crow's feet by his eyes. But he was lithe and lanky as a boy.

"As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth," he said.

"No, really."

"I am thirty-three. Why, d'you want to marry me?"

"Not at all. Thank you."

"You would wed the wittiest fool in the world."

"I would rather not marry a fool."

"Now that is inevitable. A wise man is a bachelor."

"Well, you don't make me laugh," I said provocatively.

"Ah, you're a girl. Women have no sense of the ludicrous."

"I have," I insisted.

"It is well known that women, not being in the image of G.o.d, can have no sense of what is funny and what is not."

"I have! I have!"

"Of course women do not!" he triumphed. "For why else would a woman ever marry a man? Have you ever seen a man when he desires a woman?"

I shook my head. Will put the wooden sword between his legs and made a little rush to one side of the room and then the other. "He can't think, he can't speak, he can't command his thoughts or his wishes, he runs everywhere behind his c.o.c.k like a hound behind a scent, all he can do is howl. How-oww-oww-owwl!"

I was laughing out loud as Will raced around the room, straining backward as if to restrain his wooden sword, leaning back as if to take the weight of it. He broke off and smiled at me. "Of course women have no wit," he said. "Who with any wit would ever have a man?"

"Well, not I," I said.

"G.o.d bless you and keep you a virgin then, Maid-Boy. But how shall you get a husband if you will not have a man?"

"I don't want one."

"Then you are a fool indeed. For without a husband how shall you have a living?"

"I shall make my own."

"Then again you are a fool, for the only living you can make is from fooling. That makes you a fool three times over. Once for not wanting a husband, twice for making a living without him, and thrice since the living you make is from fooling. At least I am just a fool, but you are a triple fool."

"Not at all!" I rejoined, falling in with the rhythm of his speech. "Because you have been a fool for years, you have been a fool for two generations of kings, and I have only been one for a few weeks."

He laughed at that and slapped me on the shoulder. "Take care, Maid-Boy, or you will not be a holy fool but a witty fool and I tell you, clowning and jesting every day is harder work than saying something surprising once a month."

I laughed at the thought of my work being to say something surprising once a month.

"Up and at it!" Will Somers said, pulling me to my feet. "We have to plan how you are going to murder me amusingly by Candlemas."

We had our sword dance planned in good time and it did seem very funny. At least two practices ended in us both having fits of giggles as we mistimed a lunge and cracked heads together, or both feinted at the same time, and fell backward, and toppled over. But one day the Master of the Revels put his head into the room and said: "You won't be needed. The king is not having a masque."

I turned with the play-sword still in my hand. "But we're all ready!"

"He's sick," the Master said dourly.

"And is the Lady Mary still coming to court?" Will asked, pulling on his jerkin against the cold draught of air whistling in through the open door.

"Said to be," the Master said. "She'll get better rooms and a better cut of the meat this time, don't you think, Will?"

He shut the door before Will could reply, and so I turned and asked, "What does he mean?"

Will's face was grave. "He means that those of the court who move toward the heir and away from the king will be making their move now."

"Because?"

"Because flies swarm to the hottest dung heap. Plop, plop, buzz."

"Will? What d'you mean?"

"Ah, child. Lady Mary is the heir. She will be queen if we lose the king, G.o.d bless him, poor lad."

"But she's a heret-"

"Of the Catholic faith," he corrected me smoothly.

"And King Edward..."

"His heart will break to leave the kingdom to a Catholic heir but he can do nothing about it. It's how King Henry left it. G.o.d bless him, he must be rolling in his shroud to see it come to this. He thought that King Edward would grow to be a strong and merry man and have half a dozen little princes in the nursery. It makes you think, doesn't it? Is England ever to get any peace? Two young l.u.s.ty kings: Henry's father, Henry himself, handsome as the sun, each of them, lecherous as sparrows, and they leave us with nothing but a lad as weak as a girl, and an old maid to come after him?"

He looked at me and I saw him rub his face, as if to brush off some wetness round his eyes. "Means nothing to you," he said gruffly. "Newly come from Spain, d.a.m.ned black-eyed girl. But if you were English, you'd be a worried man now; if you were a man, and if you were a sensible man instead of being a girl and a fool at that."

He swung open the door and set off into the great hall on his long legs, nodding at the soldiers who shouted a good-natured greeting to him.

"And what will happen to us?" I demanded in a hissed whisper, trotting after him. "If the young king dies and his sister takes the throne?"

Will threw me a sideways grin. "Then we shall be Queen Mary's fools," he said simply. "And if I can make her laugh it will be a novelty indeed."

My father came to the side gate that night and he brought someone with him, a young man dressed in a cape of dark worsted, dark ringlets of hair falling almost to his collar, dark eyes, and a shy boyish smile. It took me a moment to recognize him; he was Daniel Carpenter, my betrothed. It was only the second time I had ever seen him, and I was embarra.s.sed that I failed to recognize him and then utterly shamed to be seen by him in my pageboy livery in golden yellow, the color of the holy fool. I pulled my cape around me, to hide my breeches, and made him an awkward little bow.

He was a young man of twenty years old, training to be a physician like his father, who had died only last year. His kin had come to England from Portugal eighty years ago as the d'Israeli family. They changed their name to the most English one they could find, hiding their education and their foreign parentage behind the name of a working man. It was typical of their satirical wit to choose the occupation of the most famous Jew of all - Jesus. I had spoken to Daniel only once before, when he and his mother welcomed us to England with a gift of bread and some wine, and I knew next to nothing about him.

He had no more choice in this marriage than I, and I did not know if he resented it as much, or even more. They had chosen him for me because we were sixth cousins, twice removed, and within ten years of each other's age. That was all that was required and it was better than it might have been. There were not enough cousins and uncles and nephews in England for anyone to be very particular as to whom they might marry. There were no more than twenty families of Jewish descent in London, and half as many again scattered around the towns of England. Since we were bound to marry among ourselves we had very little choice. Daniel could have been fifty years of age, half blind, half dead even, and I would still have been wedded to him and bedded by my sixteenth birthday. More important than anything else in the world, more important than wealth or fitness for each other, was that we would be bound to each other in secrecy. He knew that my mother had been burned to death as a heretic accused of secret Jewish practices. I knew that beneath his smart English breeches he was circ.u.mcised. Whether he had turned to the risen Jesus in his heart and believed the words of the sermons that were preached at his local church every day and twice on Sundays would be something I might discover about him later, as in time he must learn about me. What we knew for certain of each other was that our Christian faith was new, but our race was very old, and that we had been the hated ones of Europe for more than three hundred years and that Jews were still forbidden to set foot in most of the countries of Christendom, including this one, this England, which we would call our home.

"Daniel asked to see you alone," my father said awkwardly, and he stepped back a little, out of earshot.

"I heard that you had been begged for a fool," Daniel said. I looked at him and watched his face slowly color red till even his ears were glowing. He had a young man's face, skin as soft as a girl's, a down of a dark moustache on his upper lip, which matched his silky dark eyebrows over deep-set dark eyes. At first glance he looked more Portuguese than Jewish, but the heavy-lidded eyes would have betrayed him to one who was looking.

I slid my gaze from his face and took in a slight frame with broad shoulders, narrow waist, long legs: a handsome young man.

"Yes," I said shortly. "I have a place at court."

"When you are sixteen you will have to leave court and come home again," he said.

I raised my eyebrows at this young stranger. "Who gives this order?"

"I do."

I allowed a frosty little silence to fall. "I don't believe you have any command over me."

"When I am your husband..."

"Then, yes."

"I am your betrothed. You are promised to me. I have some rights."

I showed him a sulky face. "I am commanded by the king, I am commanded by the Duke of Northumberland, I am commanded by his son Lord Robert Dudley, I am commanded by my father; you might as well join in. Every other man in London seems to think he can order me."

He gave a little gulp of involuntary laughter and at once his face was lighter, like a boy's. He clipped me gently on my shoulder as if I were his comrade in a gang. I found I was smiling back at him. "Oh, poor maid," he said. "Poor set-upon maid."

I shook my head. "Fool indeed."

"Don't you want to come away from all these commanding men?"

I shrugged. "I am better living here, than being a burden on my father."

"You could come home with me."