The Queen's Lady

by Barbara Kyle

  It was madness. Women snatched up children and were in turn snatched by officers. Men dropped under cudgel blows. Honor saw Sydenham running to reach his wife. Mrs. Sydenham stretched out her hand to him. As their fingers touched, a young officer lunged for Sydenham and hauled him sideways. He pinned Sydenham’s belly against a vat, and scraped his cheek bloody along the surface. Mrs. Sydenham was engulfed by screeching people herding for the rear door. Honor glimpsed Edward among them, his orange hair flying. She could see that the first people outside were instantly trapped by officers in the alley, but a few who went after broke through and bolted into the night. It was the only way out. She groped her way around a vat, eyes on the door.

  From behind, an arm locked around her head, covering her eyes. She was jerked backwards, lost her balance, and fell against her attacker. As he hauled her by the head, she had to clutch his sleeve to keep her neck from being wrenched. His other hand pushed brutally down on the top of her head, forcing her to the ground. She was dragged along the floor on her back, then bumped over a ridge that banged her backbone, then hauled into a narrow passage. Her captor crammed himself behind her and stopped. They lay together on their sides, her back against his chest. She felt his leg kick at something, then heard a sound like a metal door snapping shut.

  His arm dropped from her forehead to her waist, pinning her arm. His other hand clamped her mouth. His palm was slippery with sweat. She sucked breaths through her nose. The smell of the place was foul, but she could see nothing in the pitch blackness around them. They lay with knees bent, as tightly packed as spoons, breathing together and sweating together in a grotesque parody of spent lovers. Honor could hear screams and scuffles outside their fetid cage.

  The man’s hand on her mouth lifted, but hovered as if ready to muzzle her again. “They’ll leave soon,” he breathed. “Hold on!” Even in a whisper the sterling voice was unmistakable. Frish, the preacher.

  “Where…”—she coughed—“…where are we?”

  “Under the vat. Sydenham built a false bottom. For the Bibles.”

  Of course! The hides, the smell…it was animal fat, rendered for soap-making. This was the same stench that had drifted over Smithfield from the butchers’ yards the day Ralph was burned. The rancid reek of death. Nausea swelled in her and she almost retched.

  “Hold on,” he urged. “Just hold on!”

  Outside, the cool rain tasted delicious. Honor and Frish crouched in a muddy alley against a wall of the emptied warehouse. A lantern in the neighbor’s stable yard cast the faintest of beams over them. The downpour had lightened, and Honor lifted her face with closed eyes to let it drizzle her skin and wash her clean.

  “‘As cold waters to a thirsty soul,’” Frish murmured, watching her.

  “Proverbs,” Honor said, and found herself smiling, for despite the cramps in her muscles and the residue of nausea and fear, she was aware of a light-headed clarity, an exhilaration that came with the joy of escape. She ran her tongue over salty lips. It was good to be alive!

  She looked at Frish. Instantly, he lowered his eyes. It was the first time she had seen him close-up. His frame was very slight, his features small, his face fragile-looking. And every inch of it was cratered with pockmarks. Under her gaze he hunched into himself, and she realized that he was used to people shrinking from his ravaged face. Down from his makeshift pulpit, alone with her, all his sparkle and fire was snuffed out.

  “Lady,” he stammered, “I thank you. For the warning you brought. Mrs. Sydenham told me only that much. May I…”—he plucked at his frayed sleeve—“may I know your name?”

  Honor hesitated. “Brother, it is I who must thank you,” was all she could muster. But her gratitude was heartfelt, for she could imagine the consequences if she had been caught: at the very least, expulsion in disgrace from the Queen’s employ and shame brought on Sir Thomas, and at the worst…she shuddered, thinking of the worst. “What happened to Master Sydenham?” she asked. “And his wife and son?”

  “I saw Edward run out the back. Then I looked for you. In those clothes, you were not difficult to spot. I only hope the Sydenhams escaped, too, after Edward.”

  Honor watched him, wondering…

  “Brother,” she blurted, “did you know Ralph Pepperton?”

  “Pepperton? No.”

  That was all.

  “I must go,” she declared suddenly. “I have been away too long. If Her Grace finds me gone—”

  “Her Grace? Do you mean . .? Have you a place at court?”

  “Yes,” she said, drawn by his stare. Despite his ugliness, his pale blue eyes shone with a power both mesmerizing and disturbing. “I wait on the Queen.”

  “I knew you were worth a risk!” Enthusiasm lit up his face, sweeping away all his shyness. “Lady, hear me. I have come from exile with Tyndale in Antwerp—”

  “Exile?” she interrupted cautiously.

  He shrugged as if to say that his personal situation was of no importance. “Arrested for preaching in Lincoln. I slipped the Bishop’s bonds. But,” he resumed in earnest, “I’ve returned to rouse support for the English Brethren. So many of us are poor—scholars, bookbinders, glaziers, bricklayers. Oh, we’ve attracted a sprinkling of well-to-do merchants like good Master Sydenham—God help him, now. But we need more friends, powerful friends. And with your ear at court you could do much to help us find them. No, do not draw back!” His small hands grabbed her shoulders. “I am not mad, I promise you. I know that there are men at court who would support us. You could sound them out. I have heard whispers that an influential gentleman sympathizes with us—a man on Cardinal Wolsey’s staff, no less. A Master Cromwell. Alas, I cannot reach such men. But you can. And there are others. Even the Lady Anne Boleyn, so I have heard—”

  “What?” She pulled out of his grasp. “You’d have me plot with my mistress’s enemy? Brother,” she said severely, “I was glad to bring a warning tonight for I would not see any of you burn. But I assure you I am not one of you. For God’s sake, you are a heretic!”

  Frish smiled as he would at a child, and murmured, “For God’s sake, indeed.” He cocked his head at her and asked in a matter-of-fact tone, “Mistress, did you never catch your father in a lie?”

  Warily, she asked, “Your meaning, Brother?”

  “I’ll tell you a story,” said Frish. “My father was a tenant farmer. I labored in his field from the day I could lift a load. When I was nine, the landlord stopped by our cottage to see my father, and when he left, my father told me the landlord had accused me of stealing some of his pears. I was desolate, not only because I was innocent, but also because the landlord had always been a friend to me, always told me I had promise. My father beat me for the theft. Years later I found out that the landlord, who had no son, had not come that day with any such accusation, but rather with an offer to pay for an education for me. My father, you see, preferred to retain my labor.” He looked Honor in the eye. “The Church keeps us from God, mistress. It frightens us and punishes us in order to keep us enslaved. But I have caught the Church in its lie.”

  Again, she saw Bastwick standing over her own father, punishing him with the terror of hell, all for a mortuary.

  “Are you so sure you are not one of us?” Frish asked gently.

  She could find no words. Objections and denials withered under those fiercely pure eyes.

  He lowered his head, disappointed by her silence. His body slumped again into meek self-consciousness. “Forgive me,” he mumbled, “I’ve made a mistake. I’ll go.” He stood. “You will not want me to escort you. I would only endanger you further.”

  He flipped the hood of his tunic over his fair head. Instantly, it cut off the beam from his eyes. Without another word he left her side, his footsteps falling noiselessly. As he passed beyond the lantern’s feeble halo, clouds blotted the moon, as if some massive hand in heaven covered it to shield him, allowing him to go in darkness.

  But Honor heard his clear voice as he called back softly
from the end of the alley, “God be with you!”

  10

  Chelsea in Autumn

  “Is the litter for the Cardinal, Master DeVille?” Honor asked, looking down at the activity in the courtyard.

  She was standing at a window of the library in the Bishop of London’s palace. Cardinal Campeggio, the Pope’s special envoy, had been a guest here since his arrival in London the week before. Now, his retinue was assembling for a move to quarters across the city. The palace was attached to St. Paul’s, and in the shadow of the cathedral’s spire servants and clerks jostled and shouted among horses, mules, and baggage carts, while at the center of the commotion the Cardinal’s horse litter sat motionless. Honor glanced over her shoulder at the young cleric writing at a book-strewn table. “Is the Cardinal ill?”

  “He suffers from gout,” Percy DeVille answered without glancing up from his ledger. He was cataloging a shipment of books just arrived from Florence. DeVille was an assistant to the Bishop’s librarian, and Honor had dealt with him on several occasions, borrowing rare books for the Queen. “It took him weeks to get here from Dover in that litter,” he added.

  Honor looked out again and caught a glimpse of the pale, balding man frowning out from the brocaded interior of the curtained couch. “Perhaps delay is his strategy,” she said.

  “Strategy?” DeVille asked, finally looking up.

  “His best hope is that, given time, the King will change his mind about the divorce. Then the Pope would not have to act at all.”

  “Change his mind?” DeVille smirked over the rim of his eyeglasses. “Don’t let affection for the Queen cloud your reason, Mistress Larke.”

  Honor turned from the window. “While your own affection bends toward the King?”

  “Only toward the Church, mistress,” he murmured, “only toward the Church.” His pen scratched another entry.

  Honor glanced at a far corner where a couple of priests, the only other people in the library, stood chatting. She was waiting for them to leave. A week ago she had paid DeVille to check the Bishop’s records for information about Ralph’s death, and she had come this afternoon to hear what he had discovered. But the priests were laughing softly, making no haste to go. She moved to DeVille’s table and restlessly fingered the cover of a large, beautifully embossed volume of Cicero. “And in the King’s ‘great matter,’ which way does the Church’s affection bend?” she asked.

  He raised an eyebrow. “Fishing, Mistress Larke?”

  “Only for what will rise to the bait, Master DeVille.”

  He chuckled. “I’m afraid you’ll take no great catch from these waters. Though I will say this much—under normal circumstances the King’s case would be strong, based as it is on the scriptural injunction in Leviticus.”

  “But the Queen’s case is surely stronger,” Honor argued. “The former Pope dispensed with Leviticus in a papal bull that allowed the marriage. It’s there in black and white.”

  “But the question is, can a Pope legally dispense with a scriptural injunction?”

  “Come now, Master DeVille. Historically Popes have issued hundreds of such dispensations, and all sorts of royal marriages have been contracted on the strength of them. How can a papal dispensation be called illegal?”

  “That,” he murmured cryptically, “is the heart of the matter.” He frowned at his dulled pen, took up a knife, and began to whittle the quill tip. “I understand from what one of the lawyers let drop that even the King is shrewdly skirting this issue. I hear he is planning to keep Leviticus in the background, and will argue to Cardinal Campeggio simply that the wording of the Pope’s bull of dispensation was faulty, and therefore void.”

  Honor flipped through the Cicero to mask her excitement at the news of this legal twist; it would greatly interest the Queen. “You mean, then,” she said, “that the King dares not attack the fundamental principle of papal authority.”

  “Not if he hopes to win.”

  “As you think he shall?”

  DeVille smiled and examined the sharpened quill. “If I possessed the art of divination, Mistress Larke, I would not be a poor assistant librarian.” He shrugged. “Who knows how Campeggio will rule in the name of Rome? As I suggested, normal arguments apply under normal circumstances, not the crisis we face today, what with the Emperor breathing down the Pope’s neck. And look at it from the Pope’s point of view. The King’s demand for a divorce has led his Holiness into the jaws of a trap. He is being asked to declare that the judgment of a former Pope was wrong. If he admits that, he will be admitting to all Europe that a Pope has erred, and that is precisely what the arch-heretic Luther has been raving about, saying Popes have always subverted the eternal law of God and substituted their own corrupt judgments.”

  “How does Luther come into this?”

  “Great heaven, mistress, look about you. The Emperor’s German lands are awash with Lutheran heresy. That outlaw monk has brought the German people to the brink of anarchy. Luther and his followers threaten to tear Christendom apart. A false move now by Pope Clement could lead to a fatal rift.”

  “I cannot pretend to bewail such considerations if they help the Queen’s cause,” Honor said sincerely. Then she dismissed the idea with a flick of her hand. “But all that disorder is happening in the German lands. This divorce is an English wrangle.”

  “But it is a sticking point for the Church. On the one hand, to grant the divorce may rupture Christian unity. On the other hand, if the King’s desire is not satisfied many are afraid he will create a rift here, between England and Rome, to the great harm of the English people. And then how quickly might the spread of Lutheran heresy infect our weakened island?”

  “But that’s absurd. The King is renowned for his orthodoxy. The Pope himself awarded him his title of Defender of the Faith.”

  “Ah, but that was before the Lady bewitched him. Now, who can say where this will lead us?” DeVille laid down the pen, peeled off his spectacles, and rubbed his eyes. “What a kettle the King has set to boiling. And all,” he snorted, “for a woman. By the way, have you heard the people’s name for her? The goggle-eyed whore. Though it is my belief she has not yet earned that epithet.”

  “Goggle-eyed, or whore?” Honor asked dryly.

  “The latter. No, I believe she has kept her royal lover from proceeding to the ultimate conjunction. You look surprised, Mistress Larke,” he said with satisfaction, “and I daresay most of the court, like you, accepts that the Lady shares the King’s bed. But I think not. She is shrewd, if nothing else. She has learned from her sister’s experience the value of soiled goods.”

  Honor considered this. Anne Boleyn’s sister had once been the King’s mistress, and when he had tired of her he had married her to one of his gaming cronies and shunted her off to a backwater. Honor knew Anne to be ambitious. DeVille, she realized, could be right. However, gossip about the King’s private life was not what she had come here for. Impatiently, she glanced again at the two priests still talking in the corner.

  But DeVille continued in a self-important whisper, “And I will tell you something else about the Lady. Many of the English bishops fear her.”

  “Why should they?”

  “She has many admirers among the rogues at court, and several of them are tainted with suspicion of heresy. Seeing the Church has no love for her, she encourages these men. Now, if Queen Catherine were cast aside and this shrewish woman rises up in her place, what evil might she then brew against the Church?”

  Honor was surprised. Two weeks before, in the alley of Sydenham’s warehouse, Brother Frish had spoken of high-placed supporters of the Brethren, but she had dismissed it as wishful thinking on his part. “But can a few mischief-makers really be such a threat?” she asked.

  “More than a few, mistress. And they support others elsewhere in the city who are hard at work. My lord Bishop’s agents recently uncovered a site of their trade in forbidden books. English Bibles, even.”

  Honor stiffened. “Really?�
�� she asked. “Where?”

  “Coleman Street, I believe. There was a raid, and the ringleader was arrested.”

  “What will happen to him?”

  “He’ll do penance round the cathedral if he abjures. If he gives trouble at his examination they’ll hold him in the Lollard’s Tower for a while.” He jerked his head toward the southwest tower of St. Paul’s.

  Honor suffered a moment of alarm. Would Sydenham, under examination, implicate her? The thought was quickly subdued by a pang of shame; she knew enough of men to recognize one who could be trusted. About Sydenham’s own safety she was not concerned: the soft-hearted, portly merchant was not the stuff of martyrs. He would abjure, and hurry home.

  She went to the window and looked out again. A chill fingered its way up her backbone: Bastwick had entered the courtyard. She knew that he worked in the Bishop’s palace, but it was a large and crowded place and she had not really expected to see him. She watched him as he approached the litter with a large velvet cushion and offered it to Cardinal Campeggio, presumably for his gouty foot. The Cardinal reached out to accept the gift. Bastwick remained by his side, smiling and engaging him in conversation. Honor’s eyes narrowed. Why this ingratiating behavior? It reminded her of the way he used to minister to Lady Philippa. What web was he weaving now?

  She heard a door close and turned. The two priests had finally left the library. “Now, Master DeVille,” she said urgently. She hurried to a chair by his side and sat. “Tell me. What have you been able to discover?”

  He glanced around to make sure they were alone. “Nothing,” he said. “Sorry.”

  For a moment, she did not understand. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing of what you were after. There is no entry, no mention whatever, of a Ralph Pepperton in the Bishop’s records for September.”

  “But how can that be?” Could Bastwick have tampered with the records? she wondered. It was an action he might take if he had overstepped his power in persecuting Ralph. And he had committed forgery at least once before, in the documents concerning her wardship. “But did you check the date? What entry was made for the burnings at Smithfield on September twenty-second?”