The Queen's Lady

by Barbara Kyle

  More sighed with concern as he held the meat again between the bars. “Cecily thinks he pines for his mother. I begin to believe she’s right. He will not eat.” He winked at her, adding, “Lenten fast or no.”

  The young monkey’s head began to rock back and forth, mechanically, mindlessly. Its finger felt for its shin and picked at the raw wound. Honor turned her head, sickened by the animal’s misery.

  More abandoned his attempt to feed it. He dropped the meat inside the cage. “Most unnatural,” he said.

  A parrot’s squawk mimicked him. “Unnatural! Unnatural!” it shrilled in absurd repetition. It made them laugh together, glad to be diverted from the monkey’s wretchedness.

  Farther along the row, under the parrot’s hanging cage, a young wildcat, an ocelot, was scrabbling at its metal bars. They moved to it and stood on either side of the waist-high cage, admiring the beauty of the cat’s spotted coat.

  “Can you stay a few days?” More asked. “Until Good Friday at least?”

  Honor shook her head. “I’m only passing, sir.” She knew that Holy Week was his favorite time of year. He always tried to be home for it and loved having his family gathered together. “I’m sorry. My barge is waiting and I must be gone almost immediately,” she said, then added, knowing it would make him happy, “On the Queen’s business.”

  He beamed. “Good!” He threw up his hands as if to forestall her saying more, and protested, “No, no, I would not ask you on what business.”

  “And I would not tell you,” she smiled.

  He laughed. “That’s right. Not me…not anyone.” Suddenly, with a quick motion across the top of the cage he caught up her hand. “Child, it brings me joy to see you serve her Grace so faithfully. I know Richmond must be a dull place for you. So many of her giddy young ladies have been dismissed or have deserted her. But she has told me how she leans on you in this hard time, and finds comfort in your company. You make me very proud.”

  Honor blushed. Her devotion to the Queen was an act of love, and no hardship; she did not feel she merited such praise. Yet she drank it in, for nothing pleased her as much as the good opinion of Sir Thomas.

  His face clouded. “Some of us are bound by other loyalties, and must needs keep silent in the King’s great matter. But my heart is with your noble lady. We must all pray that she weathers this storm.” The light in his eyes sharpened into alarm. “I shudder for the fate of the Church in this realm if the Queen should ever be usurped in title by the Lady Anne.” Suddenly, he looked down at her hand. “You feel cold, child. Are you ill?”

  She shook her head with an embarrassed smile, realizing how tightly wound up with anticipation she was. “No, sir, not ill.” She withdrew her hand. “But I come with a question that concerns me mightily.”

  He seemed amused by her earnestness. “Then we must seek an answer. Mightily.”

  “Sir,” she said, “what can you tell me of a man named Roger Pym?”

  He looked mildly surprised. “I expected a rather different query,” he said. “One about my note, perhaps. Did you receive it? About the latest candidate for your hand? A marquis’s son—though the youngest—is not to be scoffed at, you know.”

  Again she shook her head, this time with impatience. “Later. But now, what do you know of Roger Pym?”

  “Pym?” he mused. “The name does not—”

  “He was burned at Smithfield the week before Michaelmas.”

  “A heretic?” This appeared to surprise him even more. “Let me see. September,” he murmured, as if opening a file in his mind. “Yes, I recall the case. Pym. A drayman. From Coventry.”

  She barely waited for him to finish. “His burning was a mistake, wasn’t it? A miscarriage of justice.”

  More frowned. “I certainly hope not. I am not aware of any.”

  She was taken aback. Was he sworn, as a Royal Councilor, not to divulge such details? She had not considered that. “Oh, sir, do tell me. It concerns me directly. Father Bastwick acted from the lowest of personal motives in this, for revenge. He hates me for ruining him, hates everyone connected with me. But I know he went too far and condemned an innocent man. Please, tell me how he managed it.”

  More looked confused. “Who?”

  “Father Bastwick.”

  “That accomplice in your abduction?”

  “Yes. He serves now in Bishop Tunstall’s court, but—”

  “Does he? In Cuthbert’s court?” More’s frown of confusion deepened into real concern. “I must put a word in Cuthbert’s ear if that is so. Bastwick’s a bad priest and a bad man.”

  The parrot flapped and gurgled overhead. More smiled and raised his hand to touch it.

  Honor watched him stroke the bird’s head. Did he know nothing about Ralph’s trial after all, then? Had Bridget Sydenham been mistaken in directing her here? “Sir, are you not aware that Father Bastwick arrested and interrogated Roger Pym?”

  “No, he did not,” More said, glancing over his shoulder at her. “I did.”

  The parrot screeched, “I did!”

  Honor blinked. “What?”

  “I conducted both his interrogations, as a matter of fact. Alongside Bishop Tunstall, of course. Though,”—he held up a finger to correct himself—“Cuthbert did excuse himself from some part of the second session, ill with a headache as I recall. The job was left to me and his archdeacon. We sent the wretch to the fire.”

  Honor’s fingers curled around the cage bars at her hips in a contraction as involuntary as a cramp. “You?”

  More’s eyes ranged over a trio of birdcages beside the parrot. “Yes,” he said absently. “I remember I gave Holt a bonus after that case. He did good work tracking the man.” He looked at her, as though suddenly curious. “Why do you ask? Did you know Pym?”

  In Honor’s grip the iron bars felt suddenly hot. “He was…”—sweat pricked her in palm and groin—“…my father’s servant.”

  “You never spoke of him.”

  “I spoke of Ralph Pepperton.” A fog was swirling in her head. “That was his name…when I knew him.”

  More nodded. “Ah, yes. Your merry stories of ‘Ralph.’” He shook his head sadly. “And he ended his days a heretic. Heavens, what a plague Luther has spawned. And somehow, I don’t know why it is, servants seem the most easily infected. Why, even in this house—”

  “Ralph was more than a servant. He was my friend.”

  “Ah, child, that is hard, I know,” he said with feeling. “To watch a friend fall into such gross error is hard, indeed. I am truly sorry.” He squeezed her elbow tenderly, and then, as if to put the unpleasantness behind them, beckoned her to follow him across the aisle to look at a new acquisition. “A hyena,” he said, enthralled. “Gardiner sent it to me all the way from Tunis!”

  But Honor did not move. The fog in her head seemed to be solidifying, pressing down on her brain like a slab of rock. She watched as he dipped a cup into a barrel of water, opened the hyena’s cage and placed the cup inside. The animal shuffled closer in its chains.

  “His arrest,” she began. “How…?” She had to stop to swallow. “How did it happen?”

  More shrugged, watching the hyena drink. “How does it always happen? Sometimes it’s drunkards whispering blasphemy in the alehouse, sometimes it’s a grubby Lutheran pamphlet handed around at a brothel—”

  “No,” she interrupted, aware of the dullness of her voice, flat as axe-steel. “I mean, what cause did you have to arrest him?”

  “Oh. Well, the first time, we intercepted him transporting contraband. Driving a dray out of the city onto the northern road at dusk.”

  “Contraband?”

  “Bibles.” He reached up to a peg for a satchel of meat scraps he had apparently brought from the house. “English translation by William Tyndale. Pym had hidden them under ox hides. I interrogated him the next day.” He flipped open the satchel. The stench of decaying meat snaked up into Honor’s nostrils. The chained ocelot, excited by the scent, circled and pawed
at its door beside her.

  “But you are a layman,” she said. “Surely only the Church is empowered to interrogate.”

  “Oh, no. The law gives authority to lay officials to help interrogate suspects, in the company of clergymen of course. The anti-Lollard statutes are quite clear on the point.”

  “So,” she said numbly. “You questioned him.”

  “And charged him.”

  “With what?”

  More gave her a startled smile, as though the answer was obvious. “English Bibles? Heresy, of course.” He fed the hyena. “His replies were shocking.”

  “You found him guilty?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he recanted?”

  More nodded. “Most of them do, you know.” He crossed back to her side of the aisle, opened the ocelot’s cage, and tossed in some meat. The frantic cat pounced on it. “They are not keen to die for their fantasies if they can escape the fire by perjuring themselves. Pym evaded us that time.”

  “What then?”

  “Well, I had a feeling about that fellow,” he said, watching the animal eat. “I’ve seen his kind before. A relapsed heretic is like a dog returning to its vomit. I knew he’d slip.”

  Honor felt the knot in her stomach tighten. She was piecing the story together. He had said a moment ago that he had given his bailiff a bonus. “So, you set Holt to track him,” she said almost to herself.

  He nodded. “And I was right. Not three weeks later Holt caught him in a dockside tavern rattling heresy to a rabble of lousels. Hectoring them, like a hag in her cups, that the miracle of transubstantiation is the Church’s lie. Holt snatched his arm before the ale even reached his lips.”

  “And took him…to the Bishop’s prison?” She dreaded to hear him contradict her.

  “No, here.” He gave a quick snort of satisfaction. “Sitting in my lockup he wasn’t so keen to babble his blasphemies, I can tell you.”

  Honor had to force down a swell of nausea. Ralph had been chained here, at Chelsea! Mauled by Holt! She took a deep breath to steady herself. “What did he say at the second interrogation?”

  “Nothing.” The wry, good humor drained from More’s face. “Pym was a hard man. Hard and stubborn. Absolutely refused to talk, though I kept him in my lockup for weeks. Oh, he muttered some insolence about his convictions belonging to himself alone. Then, not a word more.”

  “What more did you want?”

  “Answers. About the printer of the Bibles. About his contacts in Coventry. About the hive of heretics—the so-called Brethren—that infest Coleman Street. But he uttered not a syllable.”

  “Not even in his own defense?”

  More gave her a look of gentle admonishment. “Child, there is no defense. The Church, once struck, may turn her other cheek, but if that other cheek is smitten she must protect herself.” He added pedantically, “On the penalty for a relapsed heretic the law of 1401, De heretico comburendo, is unequivocal.”

  “Death by burning,” Honor whispered. Her heart had contracted in her chest, a cold ball of steel. “And Holt’s testimony was all your proof?”

  “Holt’s and his brother’s,” More answered, scooping out the last scraps of fat to the gorging ocelot. “I would have preferred the corroboration of a more sober man than the brother, but it sufficed. In heresy cases the law requires two witnesses.”

  “The law,” she whispered, trembling. Disgust was funneling up into her throat. It spewed out, uncontrolled. “How can you talk of a law that murders justice? You, who taught me to revere the law! You, who trumpet the goodness of equity, of the judge’s duty to temper harsh laws with clemency. How can you praise the law when it is used to cut down good men and destroy them?”

  More looked up, clearly astonished. “For heaven’s sake, child, the man was a colporteur of banned books. True, in civil law where only handfuls of coins are at stake a judge may exercise clemency. But we talk here of souls. Pym was a heretic, far more dangerous than any thief or murderer.”

  “Dangerous?” she breathed, incredulous. “For encouraging people to read for themselves the word of God?”

  Abruptly, he shut the ocelot’s cage. His voice became stern. “The word of William Tyndale, you mean—a clean contrary thing.”

  “But it is scripture still. How can you kill people for reading scripture?”

  For several moments he only stared at her. “Naturally, after the death of a childhood friend,” he said tightly, as if to remind himself, “you are distraught. Also, I must not forget that you, of course, are not familiar with Tyndale’s wickedness.” His voice became calm again, like that of a patient teacher. “Let me uncover to you some of his errors. His translation—”

  “I don’t care about that. It’s your wickedness I have uncovered!” She took a step to leave, but he moved in front of her to block her way. She was trapped between the cages. “Let me pass,” she cried.

  But he would not. “I understand your grief,” he said steadily, “but I cannot allow you to continue on in ignorance of the blasphemies of these men. Hear what abominations Tyndale has written, for God’s sake. The Greek word ‘presbyter’ he has rendered not as ‘priest’ but as ‘elder’—as if any old man may dispense the sacraments. With this alone he blasts away fifteen hundred years of the ascendancy of the priesthood. He translates ‘ecclesia’ not as ‘church’—our Holy Mother Church—but as ‘congregation.’ As if Holy Communion were an idle gathering of friends. Worse, for ‘penance’ he substitutes mere ‘repentance.’ The church has always, everywhere, demanded that sinners do penance, but Tyndale tells us that if we will only repent in our hearts, God is satisfied. Don’t you see? These are the lies that Pym was spreading.”

  “I see that you killed him for splitting hairs!” Her voice rose, shrill, choked with disbelief. “For quibbles over words.” Again, she tried to push past him. His arms shot out, stretching to the cage tops of either side of her and pinning her to the spot.

  “Quibbles?” he cried. “Girl, you know not what you say.” He reined in his shock, but his arms still barred her way. “I grant that an English Bible may not be a bad thing in itself. But if such a book were someday to be made, it must be authorized by the Church, and its translation undertaken by learned men. This reckless, individual, headlong search for God in the maze of scripture lures men into appalling error. All the heretics, Lutheran and Lollard and Anabaptist alike, wail that salvation comes only from the Bible—‘sola scrip-tura,’ they cry—but it is a Bible interpreted by their own perverted minds.”

  “If interpretation is what this bloodshed is over,” she snapped, “then who is to say which mind is perverted? Could it be your own?”

  She saw that she had stunned him. She was glad.

  “Look at Erasmus,” she cried. “He is as learned a man as you, and he welcomes a vernacular Bible. He wishes learning were more common, so that scripture could be read by every fisherman and plowboy. Even by Turks and whores.”

  “My old Dutch friend is often swept away in his enthusiasms,” More said sourly. “No. I tell you, it is Holy Church which instructs Christians how to live, not the Bible. Christians could be pure in their faith even if the Bible had never been written. Doctrine has passed orally from one generation to the next, through Holy Mother Church, God’s instrument on earth. ‘Quod semper, quod ubique, quod omnibus.’ ‘What has been believed always, everywhere, and by all.’ Tradition. Founded by the Apostles and continuing, unbroken, to the present day. Christ founded a church. He did not write a book!”

  “Unbroken tradition?” she blinked. “Listen to yourself. The Church was in schism for decades, with three Popes at one time. The Greek Church, with millions of believers, is still schismatic. And doctrine has changed. The command for circumcision withdrawn…dietary laws…the formula of baptism…even the teaching of the immaculate conception of the Virgin…all modified.”

  More’s smile was indulgent. “Your knowledge of the decrees of the Church’s general councils does you credit. I a
m glad that your studies here were not in vain. And the supremacy of those councils is the very point I wish to impress on you. You see, the Church resolves her crises internally, in councils that represent all Christendom, just as in secular government Parliament decides for the realm. To let every individual decide changes in doctrine—or in law—is worse than madness.”

  Pinned between the cages she found she was shaking. She was furious at his power to hold her, furious at her own impotence to smash through his complacency.

  But he seemed to read her silence as a sign that her hysteria was spent. “That’s right,” he said gently, “listen to reason.” He removed his hands from the cage tops, though his body still blocked her way. He smiled. “Goodness, what would happen if I let every coarse fellow who grumbled against a judgment in the law courts traipse into my library and rummage through my legal books until he found a word or phrase to exonerate him from the law’s penalties? Well, the heretics do just that. They catch at a word or a phrase from Holy Scripture, hoping it will release them from their duty to God. But the Church has ruled, and Christians must obey.”

  His eyes shone with a sincerity that she had seen countless times in the exuberant discussions that had been the joy of her life here, eyes that beckoned her to follow into the trimmed and sheltered lanes of accepted belief. But her mind screamed that these convincing words were spoken by the man who had murdered Ralph, and she bled inside as belief and rationality tore at each other, ravaging her heart. “Obey,” she repeated hollowly.

  “Yes,” he smiled. “It is our duty.”

  “And if I dare to question, will you burn me too?”

  His smile vanished. “Do not mock, child,” he said with chilling firmness. “A great principle of authority is at stake here. If ignorant people root through the Bible for the answers they want, they call the Church false. They spark the fuse of sedition, for the Church is an essential pillar and prop of the social order. Never forget that without the Church, there is anarchy.”