The Queen's Lady

by Barbara Kyle

  “I warn you again,” the Sergeant barked to the mob, “you are breaking the law.”

  “Pissing curfew,” an apprentice yelled. “That’s no real law.”

  Fuming, the Sergeant jerked a thumb at the simply dressed man beside him. “I’ll take my instruction on the law from the Undersheriff here, Master Thomas More, not from rabble. Now, quit this place! Or end your days as gallows fruit.”

  A young man hefting a bloodied cudgel at the front of the mob strode up to the Sergeant’s stallion. “And what about our grievance, then? What about the foreigners? There be hundreds of the buggers, snatching the crusts from our mouths.”

  “Aye,” another bleated from the ranks. “And a God-cursed lender from Mantua bled my master with interest of fifteen percent.”

  “They infect the city with plague and palsy,” the young man beside the stallion cried back to his mates. “Burn their kennels down, I say!”

  The apprentices stamped. Torches bobbed.

  The Sergeant swung up his sword above the young man’s head. The air sighed with the sudden movement. “Sodden bastards,” he shouted. “Quit this place!”

  Thomas More’s voice broke through. “Whoa, there!” His brown mare was dancing sideways. He jigged awkwardly at the reins, but the animal, apparently ignoring him, cut between the young man and the Sergeant, forcing them apart.

  “Pardon me, Sergeant,” More cried helplessly over his shoulder. “My horse is but green-broke.”

  The mare capered forward through the no-man’s-land between the two camps, seemingly out of More’s control. It veered into the front rank of apprentices, and several had to stagger backwards out of its way.

  “You there. Jamie Oates,” cried More. “Grab a-hold, boy.”

  A yellow-haired fifteen-year-old dashed out of the mob and grappled the bridle near the horse’s bit. It settled instantly and stood still.

  “I’m obliged to you, Jamie,” More said, displaying relief. The boy beamed up and respectfully touched his cap.

  More dismounted, turned, and shrugged a final apology. Then, before the bewildered eyes of both groups, he led his suddenly calm horse to a water trough at the mouth of the alley and allowed it to drink.

  Honor craned her neck to see as she and Ralph watched from the shadows.

  Above the horse’s slurping Jamie let go a jittery giggle with a nod at the aldermen. “Master More, you’ll have that mare pissing in their lordships’ path.”

  Nervous laughter rippled through the mob. The Sergeant, the soldiers, and the aldermen kept a stony silence. Thomas More smiled indulgently at the boy. Then he eased himself up to stand on the rim of the trough. From this narrow platform he could be seen by all. “Young Jamie Oates here knows you can’t keep a horse from pissing when it must,” he called out with wry good humour. “Jamie, you’re a quick, smart lad,” he went on, still loud enough for all to hear. “You’re apprenticed to Addison, are you not?”

  “Aye, sir. Master Addison. Finest smith in Thames Street,” the boy answered proudly.

  More smiled. “Jamie’s a credit to his master. He’ll make a fine ironsmith himself one day.” He paused for a moment while Jamie preened beside his friends.

  “And when that day comes, Jamie,” More continued courteously, “when you have apprentices of your own, what will you ask of them in return for the care you’ve given them? For their bed and board and instruction in a good trade, what’s a fair return? Will you expect loyalty and diligence? Or faithlessness and insurrection?”

  The boy’s grin vanished.

  A voice from the back of the mob shouted, “What good be his trade if foreigners take all the work?”

  “Aye,” cried another. “And you lawmen let them fleece us.” Complaints rumbled.

  More listened patiently, then held up his hands to ask for silence. “Jamie knows what kind of law I dispense. His master came before my court last month when a Flemish smelter claimed Addison had not paid him for a wagonload of iron. Jamie came to my court and gave testimony. Jamie, tell the men here what verdict I gave.”

  All eyes went to Jamie who was looking intently at the ground as if in search of a lost penny. More waited, his arms folded across his chest, his gray eyes gently fixed on the boy.

  Jamie answered petulantly like an unwilling pupil. “Master More gave the victory to my master.”

  “And…?” More coaxed.

  “And he ordered the Fleming to pay my barge fare back to the workshop.”

  “And…?”

  Jamie’s face reddened. “And ordered him to…to stand me and my master a pot of ale at the Golden Dog.”

  Waves of laughter broke out at the confession.

  In the alley Ralph let out a snort of amusement. Honor had by this time wriggled out of his arms and clambered up onto his shoulder to get a better view, and she laughed as well, uncertain about what exactly had happened, but aware that, with nothing but his calm voice and words, Master More had made the rioters laugh and the soldiers smile. Even the fierce-looking Sergeant had lowered his sword.

  “That lawyer’s wind has cooled them,” Ralph chuckled. He winced as Honor steadied herself with a handful of his hair, then he clasped her dangling ankles and whispered with a grin, “And if that mare of his be only green-broke, as he claims, then I’m the Duchess of Buckingham.”

  “My friends,” More called out, suddenly earnest. “The Apostle urges obedience to authority. And I would not be in error if I told you that by raising arms tonight against the foreigners you have raised arms against God, and so endangered your immortal souls.”

  Several apprentices crossed themselves.

  “God has lent His office here on earth to the King,” More explained. “The foreigners dwell here with the King’s goodwill. So when you rise against the foreigners, you rise against the King. And when you rise against the King,”—he pointed heavenward—“what are you doing but rising against God?”

  He let this heavy question hang in the air. Honor had a sudden vision of the young King Henry, the eighth of that name, kneeling before a jeweled altar and forlornly praying for his erring subjects, his head bowed under the weight of his jeweled crown.

  When More spoke again his voice was gentle, reasonable. “Now, let us suppose that the King is merciful with all of you tonight. Let us say he does no more than banish you from the realm.”

  Again he paused to let the full horror of such a sentence take hold.

  “I ask you this: what country, after the disrespect for law that you have shown, would give you safe harbor? France? Flanders? Spain?” His eyebrows lifted in rhetorical expectation of an answer. “Say that some place will take you. Think now. In any land but England, it is you who would be called foreigners.”

  Several faces frowned at the dismaying paradox.

  “Would you then want to find yourselves in a nation of such barbarity that the people would not allow you even a roof over your heads?” His voice rose to a crescendo of indignation. “A land where they whetted their knives against your throats, and spurned you like dogs?”

  Honor looked over the top of Ralph’s head at the subdued apprentices. They scratched their chins and glanced at one another, some ashamed, some bewildered. Again, she marveled at how Master More had worked such an astonishing change on them.

  But the young man with the bloodied cudgel was unmoved. “Enough words,” he shouted. He snatched up a large stone, and with a cry of, “God curse all poxy foreigners!” he pitched it. It struck the Sergeant’s forehead. The Sergeant reeled back in his saddle, groping at the reins, blood trickling from the gash.

  Both sides froze.

  From a window a woman’s voice shrilled, “You’ll not murder the King’s men!” She and her neighbors began pelting down a shower of boots and bones upon the apprentices. The Sergeant bellowed, “Down with them!” and led his men in a charge. Cudgels flew, splitting lips and noses. Thomas More, dismayed, stepped down and backed away.

  Ralph’s arm swung around Honor again.
He toppled her over his shoulder like a bundle of cloth, edged around the fracas, and ran off down Cheapside.

  By the time Ralph pushed through the gate of Christopher Larke’s townhouse Honor was half asleep in his arms. Ralph hurried across the courtyard, and Honor stirred as he hushed the yapping dogs and headed for the kitchen door. There, under a hanging lantern, Ralph stopped to catch his breath. He lifted his face to let the breeze cool his sweat-dampened hair and shirt.

  Honor winced at a pain in her side. She found its source, a hard corner of the little book inside her sleeve. She pulled the book out. Under the lamplight its blue leather cover swirled with gilt-tooled leaves and petals. The leather was spattered with dried droplets of blood. She looked up at Ralph. “The foreigner man gave me this,” she whispered.

  The book was fastened with two small brass clasps. She pried them up. Leaves of creamy, thick vellum fluttered, then settled open at the title page. Honor’s eyes drifted below the incomprehensible letters to a drawing. It was a single, startlingly beautiful painting of a flower—a winding stem with toothed, oval leaves of spring green, and a blossom of four, joined petals. The petals burst out in glorious blue, a gay sky blue, bright and bold.

  “Speedwell,” Ralph whispered, smiling at the wildflower.

  Honor’s fingers traced over the elegant characters of the title as if she might absorb their meaning by touch. What mysteries did such a beautiful book have to tell? she wondered. “Never show it to a priest!” the foreign man had warned, and then he had smiled, though he knew he was dying. Did his book hold some secret that had made him smile like that? Her eyes were drawn back to the flower, so fresh and lifelike beneath her stare. “Speedwell,” she repeated softly, and the blossom seemed almost to nod, as if trembling under her breath.

  “Peppers,” Honor declared suddenly, looking Ralph in the eye, “I’m going to learn to read.”

  He frowned. “Reading be for priests and clerks, not for ladies, mistress.” He clamped her nose between his knuckles and whispered with mock anger, “And what’s this ‘Peppers,’ if you please? That name was only for your lady mother to use, God rest her soul. Not wild little wenches like you.” Honor squirmed, trying to pry her nose out from his grip, and she giggled when he finally pretended that she had beaten him and won free.

  The kitchen door burst open. Honor’s stout nurse, Margaret, gasped. “You’re here!” She was disheveled and bleary-eyed. “Oh, little mistress, we’ve been looking everywhere. It’s your father. Struck with the Sweat, he is.”

  Her voice came high and frightened as she crossed herself. “Blessed Jesu, Ralph, the master lies a-dying!”

  Honor’s father was writhing on his bed.

  She stood near the doorway of the darkened chamber, Margaret on one side of her, Ralph on the other. Ralph tightly held her hand. Servants huddled along the walls. Some held apron corners or cloths to their noses to block the reek of putrid sweat.

  Honor knew about the sweating sickness. It had killed her only other close relatives, two uncles. It frequently struck London in spring, and everyone dreaded it for the appalling swiftness of the death it usually brought. “Merry at dinner, dead at supper,” she’d often heard the servants murmur. But they had meant the sweating sickness in other people’s houses. Now, it was here, in hers.

  On the pillow, her father’s face was a stranger’s face. His fair hair was dark with sweat. Red blotches mottled his cheeks. His eyes, which she had seen shed tears only when he laughed too hard, were seeping a milky discharge. He was moaning softly.

  A priest she had never seen before stood by the bed. It was clear he was a muscular young man, but his broad back was to her and she could not see his face. On the table beside him a single candle guttered, and its light glinted in a crescent along the top of his bald crown, shaved to create his priest’s tonsure. Below it, a fringe of black hair hung raggedly over his ears. The hem of his threadbare black cassock was crusted with mud. His scuffed boots had dropped clumps of horse dung onto the floor rushes.

  “Who is he?” Ralph whispered to Margaret.

  “Name’s Father Bastwick,” she whispered back. “The priest’s new curate at Nettlecombe. Dog-poor, as you can see. He just rode in, out of the night,” she said, wringing her hands. “He’s been badgering the master for the corpse present.”

  Honor understood the fear in Margaret’s voice. When Honor’s mother had died ten months before at their manor of Nettlecombe in Somerset, the old parish priest had requested the embroidered coffin cloth for his mortuary fee—the “corpse present”—as was his right. Unreasonable in grief, her father had refused. The priest denounced him from the pulpit. Her father had remained stubborn, and the feud had festered all these months.

  The young priest at the bedside suddenly said angrily, “By all the laws of custom and decree, you owe this debt to Holy Church.”

  Honor’s fingers tightened into a ball inside Ralph’s hand.

  Larke’s gaze wandered, unfocused. “Father,” he said through labored breaths, “never mind…all that. I ask you only…hear my confession. Prepare me…to meet my God.”

  “I marvel at your blasphemous intransigence, man,” the priest replied. “The amount is a trifle to you. The sapphire ring you wear would more than suffice. Pay the mortuary now. It is a surety against absolution of your sins.”

  “Never!” Larke cried with sudden violence. “No more grasping priests. You’re vultures, all. Get out!” Sapped by his outburst, his head lolled on the sweat-stained pillow.

  “Never?” Bastwick’s voice was steel. “Never, Master Larke, is a very long time.”

  He snatched up the candle with a vehemence that made the flame shrink and twist as if in terror. He strode to the middle of the room and raised the candle high in his outstretched arm. He plucked the silver crucifix from his chest. Drawing its chain over his head, he thrust it up also so that his arms formed a V above his head. The servants sucked in horrified breath. They recognized the stance for excommunication.

  “By the authority of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost,” Bastwick intoned, “and of our Lady St. Mary, God’s Mother in heaven, and of all the other virgins, and St. Michael and all the angels, and St. Peter and all the apostles, and St. Stephen and all the martyrs, and of all the holy saints of heaven, we accurse thee.”

  The servants dropped to their knees, crossing themselves.

  “We ban and depart thee from all good deeds and prayers of Holy Church, and of all these saints, and damn thee unto the pain of hell.”

  “No!” Larke bolted upright.

  “We curse thee by the authority of the court of Rome, within and without, sleeping or walking, going or sitting, standing or riding, lying above earth or under earth, speaking and crying and drinking, in wood, in water, in field, in town.”

  “No!” Larke was thrashing his way out of the sheets. He thudded onto the floor. He crawled towards Bastwick, whimpering. Honor lurched to go to him, but Ralph held her back. She thought his grip would crush her hand.

  The V of Bastwick’s outstretched arms glinted at either end with flame and silver. “Accurse him Father and Son and Holy Ghost. Accurse him, angels and archangels and all the nine orders of heaven. Accurse him, patriarchs and prophets and apostles and all God’s holy disciples, and all holy innocents, martyrs, confessors, virgins, monks, canons, and priests. Let him have no mass or matins, nor none other good prayers that be done in Holy Church.”

  Grunting across the floor, Larke reached Bastwick’s feet. “No! I beg you…” Sobs choked him.

  “Let the pains of hell be his mead with Judas that betrayed our Lord Jesus Christ. And let him be cast forever out of the book of life.” Bastwick threw down the candle, extinguishing it, and spat on the ground beside Larke to complete the anathema. “Fiat. Fiat. Amen.”

  Larke moaned and clawed at the hem of the priest’s cassock. Honor could not bear it. She broke free and ran to her father’s bowed back and threw herself on it, her arms around his nec
k.

  Larke’s head snapped up. “The demons!” he screamed, delirious. “The demons are on me!” He clawed at the weight on his back to rid himself of the devils, and threw Honor to the floor. Gasping, she caught his eyes—yellow, bloodshot, wild with terror—and she saw he did not know her. He let out a harrowing yelp and grappled Bastwick’s legs, weeping. His weeping turned to convulsive choking. He gasped. Breath would not come. His fingers clawed at his throat. Blood engorged his face. His mouth opened and closed in wordless horror. His fingers petrified into a sudden rigor and he fell to the floor, dead.

  Bastwick looked down at the body. He bent over and lifted the lifeless hand. He pried off the sapphire ring, then said to the dead man, as if sealing a bargain agreeable to both parties, “This jewel, as I told you, will suffice.” He closed his fist around the ring, turned, and walked toward the door.

  Margaret ran forward and snatched up Honor and clutched her to her bosom. “Blessed Jesu, little mistress, what’s to become of you now?”

  Bastwick whirled around. “Who’s this child?” he demanded.

  “The master’s only babe, Father,” Margaret wailed. “And what’s to become of her now?”

  Bastwick did not answer. But he fixed his stare on Honor as if discovering a thing he had been searching for. She stared back, straight into the brilliant, black eyes that bored into hers.

  Jerome Bastwick studied the sapphire ring on his finger and shut out the morning tavern voices around him. Outside the tavern, the city streets were uncharacteristically quiet; the night’s rioting had been quelled by the Earl of Surrey who had marched troops into the city in the early hours. But Bastwick did not concern himself with the lull outside nor the voices inside that murmured over the night’s events. He was absorbed by the ring. He twisted it on his finger, entranced by its beauty as pale sunlight from the window struck various hues of purple fire over the jewel’s facets.

  A yapping whippet bitch scrabbled past him. Bastwick lifted his head to reality: to the half-dozen men in the loft cursing over a cockfight; to the reek of the floor rushes, spongily matted with ale dregs and spittle, and rank with decaying fish and dog urine; to the scratch of fingernails against stubble coming from his broken-toothed companion across the table. Over the breakfast remains of beef and bread, Sir Guy Tyrell was considering the bargain Bastwick had just proposed. A dangerous bargain, but one that held sweet promise for them both.