The Queen's Lady

by Barbara Kyle

  “Sir,” Honor blurted, “consider this. If man has created the concept of immortality simply to ease his fears of death, then surely we must ask whether other beliefs are not mere fabrications as well. Whether the fables of Heaven and Hell have been plumped up by generations of churchmen and legislators merely to keep citizens on the straight path. Even whether—”

  “No!” He threw up his hands and turned away. “Do not say it. Over that precipice I can never follow you.” He looked back at her, his face drawn as if with pity. “A godless universe? How can you bear to imagine it? How could we live on in such darkness? How find any structure for morality?”

  “But should we allow fear to create untruths?”

  “Some things are unknowable. They must be taken on faith.”

  “What you call faith Epicurus calls conjecture. Man can only conjecture whatever does not appear, he says, and he warns that when man does so, thought moves into a sphere where error is possible.”

  “Good heavens, child, Epicurus lived before God revealed the truth of Christianity!”

  “But men continue to tear one another’s throats for conjecturing—and in the name of God.”

  “I have always taught that it is madness to do so.”

  “And I revere you for that. Yet you remain loyal to a Church that burns people for questioning. For tasting of the tree of knowledge.”

  “For years I have begged the Church—popes and cardinals—to desist from such violence. Inquisitions and heresy-hunting are abominable to me.”

  “But the Church teaches—”

  “The Church, like every other institution, is flawed by the nature of human desires. By abuses and wicked practices. But these are not reflections of true Christian behavior. We must all advance in faith and love, and leave the unknowable to God.” He sighed heavily. “But my voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the age.”

  She held her tongue, for she saw that she had distressed him. He was an old soldier in the battle against intolerance, one of the first, and armed only with his eloquence. When all around him howled down his pacifism as cowardice, or as a lack of Christian steadfastness, he remained the only leader unwilling to kill for his beliefs. Tolerance remained his obsession, and his despair.

  “The hope,” Erasmus said with a strength of will that belied his weary face, “lies in all of us rejecting the externalities of religion. We must focus on its substance, on the desire for peace and brotherhood that is the truest imitation of Christ. No—” he shook his head—“I cannot repudiate a Church that has endured for fifteen hundred years, has brought the light of education and hope to millions, and still teaches at its core the blessed message of love for one another that Christ bequeathed us. The Church has been my mother, and until a better way is shown me, I will remain with Her.”

  Honor was moved by his conviction, ashamed at having aggravated him. He was not the enemy. It was pettiness to harass him. She touched his arm, offering peace, and there was a twinkle in her eye. “You remain with her but will not accept elevation in her ranks?” Upon Pope Clement’s death eight months before, the new Pope Paul III had immediately offered Erasmus the red hat of a cardinal.

  “No,” Erasmus smiled, relaxing, charmed by her finesse. “Not that. When God calls me from this raving world, I intend to die as I have lived. A free man.”

  The garden gate clattered. Again the birds on the ground lifted and hovered. “Pears and wine!” Marthe called as if she were hawking her wares.

  “Pears and wine,” Honor translated gently to Erasmus.

  He made a vinegar face and muttered, “The latter, no doubt, abominably watered. It was a splendid Burgundy, sent me by the Bishop of Cracow. Thank the Lord there’s nothing she can do to destroy a pear.”

  “Now, now,” Marthe cooed to the baby straddling her hip. “Enough of that, my pet. Not for you, my little darling.” She was waddling towards them with the dessert on a tray, and the baby was reaching across her ample bosom for the fruit. Marthe clattered the tray onto the table.

  “There she is,” Erasmus cried, rising. “Little Isabel!” He bent like a doting grandfather to tickle the baby’s chin.

  Marthe slapped his hand. “Don’t strangle the poor child!” She pivoted sharply to disengage him from the baby.

  “Witch!” Erasmus sputtered. “You’ll snap her neck doing that!”

  “Keep your claws off her!” Marthe warned.

  “I’ll take her,” Honor said with a laugh. She held out her arms, and the other two capitulated to her superior claim. She took Isabel onto her knee, kissed the soft cheek, and smiled into the bright, round eyes—as speedwell-blue as Richard Thornleigh’s.

  Marthe and Erasmus crowded in, prattling and cooing. The baby crowed with delight. Honor could not help laughing. “And to think, little one, that I worried you’d grow up without a family.”

  “A child cannot have family enough,” Erasmus said definitively. “I never knew my own father. My poor parents—did I tell you?…”

  Marthe groaned, sensing he was beginning a long-winded, incomprehensible story, and turned and waddled back to the house. Erasmus, triumphant, lifted the baby into his arms. “My poor parents,” he continued to Honor, “had desperately wanted to marry, but my mother’s family forced them apart as soon as her condition became apparent, and then spread the evil lie to my father that his beloved had died. In grief, he took priest’s vows.”

  Honor had to smile. Erasmus had recited this romantic tale for so many years, he had convinced himself of its authenticity. But Johannes Froben had told her the facts. Erasmus, it seemed, had conveniently forgotten both that his father was already a priest when his parents had met, and that the couple’s long-standing relationship had also produced a brother for Erasmus—one three years his senior.

  Erasmus plumped the baby back on Honor’s lap and sat with a deep, self-pitying sigh. “And I, orphaned, and dumped into a foul monastery.”

  Honor wrapped her arms loosely around her daughter and nuzzled her neck. She brushed her lips absently over the silken head. Above the garden, the light was fading. “Monasteries,” she mused, her thoughts dragged again by the tide of memory. “You hated the experience, yet Sir Thomas always spoke fondly of his years with the Carthusian monks.”

  “Ah, the Carthusians,” Erasmus murmured with a shiver. He and Honor exchanged glances. At the beginning of May, the latest report from England had deeply shaken them both. The four Carthusian monks who had also refused to take the Oath had been dragged out of the Tower on hurdles. At Tyburn, before a great crowd, they were butchered—first hanged until they choked, then cut down still living and, one by one in front of the others, castrated, disemboweled, and beheaded. The monks had been the only other men in England besides Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher who had refused the Oath. The barbarous method of their execution was the standard penalty for traitors.

  The baby whimpered. Erasmus was pulling himself slowly to his feet. Lost in thought, he tugged his heavy robe about him as Honor loosened her bodice to feed the baby. “I wish,” Erasmus said, “that More had never meddled in this dangerous business. It is perilous striving with princes!” He sighed heavily. “I feel the chill. I shall go in.”

  He heard the baby’s sucking and looked back at the contented child and mother. “Ah, the picture of peace,” he said, smiling fondly. “Yes, stay, my dear. Enjoy the last of the light. I want to check a reference in Cicero before I retire.” As he padded across the flagstones the birds fluttered up again in a mass and finally made their exodus over the garden wall.

  For some time Honor remained in the garden. The baby lay dreaming in her arms, the rosebud mouth still sucking gently in sleep. The sky glowed darkly, as blue as a cave of sapphires, and it made black lace of the ivy that tendriled the tops of the walls.

  No, she thought, Erasmus was wrong. She was not the picture of peace. Her thoughts did not bring peace. When she lay down, the finger of guilt that pressed on her forehead throughout the night would not b
ring peace. And her bold rhetoric to Erasmus? What good was all her fearless prattle about the universe when she could not even resolve the turmoil in her own breast? Confusion, anger, guilt. The King and Cromwell had lured Sir Thomas into their prison. But she had given them the key.

  35

  The Cardinal’s Hat

  King Henry stood with arms outstretched like a crucified man as the tailor’s apprentice tugged at the measuring tape around his waist. “What do you mean, adjustments?” Henry growled. He glared down, and the flesh of his neck folded upon itself. “You mean I am grown fat?”

  The nervous master tailor snatched the tape from his apprentice. “Pardon, Your Majesty! My idiot boy here must have made an error.” He cuffed the apprentice on the back of the head, then personally measured the King. The tape read fifty-four inches: a mammoth gain since Christmas. Sweat erupted on the tailor’s forehead. Twenty years ago, when he had been an apprentice himself, the King’s waist had been a trim thirty-four inches. An inch for every year since! He swallowed and shot a grin up at the flabby royal jowls. “In any case, sire, what is an inch or two to your expert craftsmen? A mere nothing.” He shuffled backwards, flicking his hands at his two apprentices, the order to pack up. “I promise Your Majesty the new armor will look splendid.”

  Henry’s grunt was sour with self-pity. “Body of God, they used to call me splendid, not my armor.” He looked forlornly around the room, begging comfort, but Anne was staring out the window and Bastwick, writing at a desk, seemed not to have heard the conversation.

  “Splendid, indeed, Your Majesty,” the tailor agreed, herding his underlings on ahead. He crept backwards out of the bedchamber, bowing and murmuring. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Good day, Your Majesty…” His voice finally dwindled away.

  Anne turned to Henry and burst out in anger. “Well? Is it true? About Mary?” Moments ago she had stormed in with the question boiling in her mouth but had bitten it back until the tailor had gone. “Tell me!”

  Henry clenched his teeth.

  “The whole palace is whispering of it, you know,” Anne said. “That you actually went crawling to your daughter. That she’s refused to take the Oath. Again.”

  “Madam, this is not the time to indulge your spleen. I am to meet the new papal envoy any moment now, and—”

  “Just tell me if it’s true.”

  Henry mustered what cold civility he could. “It is.”

  “By all that’s holy!” Anne exploded. “If I had a child that obstinate I’d bash her head against the wall till it was soft as a baked apple. How can you grovel so before her insults?”

  “Good heavens,” Henry said, nonplused, “Mary is of my blood.”

  “You have another daughter. Elizabeth is of our blood. And she is not a bastard.”

  Henry’s voice roared out, “But still, madam, I have no son!”

  The room seemed to buckle at his sudden fury. Bastwick’s fingers involuntarily squeezed his pen. Anne’s face turned pale as chaff. She crossed to the door, her brocaded skirt hissing over the carpet, and swept out.

  “Bah!” Henry flopped into the chair across from Bastwick and clawed at the pearl-crusted collar that chafed him. For the audience with the new Pope’s envoy he was dressed very finely in a ruby-studded, white satin doublet and gold-embroidered, red taffeta gown. “You are fortunate in your celibacy, Father.” He sighed gloomily. “I was intended for the Church, you know. Sometimes I think it is a life I should have preferred, had my brother Arthur lived to rule.”

  Bastwick murmured over his writing, “God had more glorious plans for you, Your Majesty.”

  Henry toyed with a quill, as fidgety as a schoolboy. “That I would not know,” he grumbled. “God keeps His plans secret from me.” He tossed the quill aside. “Curse the woman, she goes too far with Mary! She’s stripped her of her household, you know. Forced her to act as lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth, too. Mary, a Princess of nineteen, waiting on a baby. Anne hopes to break her.” He chewed his lip for a moment, brooding. “And people are whispering. They’re saying Mary’s sickness last month was the result of poison from Anne’s hand.”

  Calmly, Bastwick dipped his quill. “The people are cattle, sire. They also say,” he added contemptuously, “that the Queen is a witch.”

  Henry was gazing at his hand. His eyes, between puffy lids above and puffy pouches below, were slits like those of a lizard. “She does have a sixth finger, you know. A pulpy, half-formed thing. She’s clever and hides it with her long sleeves.” He looked up. Fear glinted in the eyes caged behind the flesh. “Is that not a sign of Satan, Father?”

  Bastwick cleared his throat diplomatically. “The Queen is not unwise to fear your many enemies.”

  “But is my daughter really my enemy?” Henry whined.

  “Your Majesty,” Bastwick said patiently, “I have told you of the plots that the Emperor’s ambassador is breeding, and all his evil hopes are founded on the Dowager Princess and the Lady Mary. Those two are the lightning rods through which the Emperor’s might will strike at you.”

  Henry slumped lower in the chair.

  “In the North,” Bastwick continued, “we know Thomas Dacre of Greystock has pledged support for the Dowager Princess. Now, we suspect the Earl of Northumberland and the barons Lord Hussey and Thomas Darcy as well.”

  “How the nest of vipers grows.”

  “Daily, I fear. In the West George Neville, Lord Abergavenny—”

  “Neville? Body of God, I beheaded his father-in-law Buckingham fourteen years ago. Is this another of the family come to hound me?” Henry sighed, suddenly marooned in the past. “I can’t recall…what was it Buckingham did, all those years ago? Treason, of course, but what exactly was the plot Wolsey uncovered? Strange how the details blur.”

  “In the Southeast,” Bastwick plowed on, “there is a formidable array whispering against you, Your Majesty, led by Sir Thomas Burgoyne and the Earl of Rutland. And Lord Edmund Bray, I have heard, has reported to the Imperial ambassador that at least twenty great gentlemen and over a hundred knights are eager to take up defense for the old Queen and the old religion. Then there’s the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the Marquis of Exeter, and the Poles—both Henry Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey—and even, in exile Reginald—”

  “I know, I know. Catherine always hoped for a marriage there, Reginald Pole and Mary.”

  “You must never allow that, Your Majesty. As things stand, these men grumble treason in separate corners of the realm, but behind an alliance of Pole, with his Plantagenet royal blood, and the Lady Mary, whom many feel to be your true heir, your enemies would swiftly unite.”

  Henry groaned. “It’s true. Inside my very realm enemies surround me. And outside, England stands in such weak isolation. The French have walked away from talks for a marriage between Mary and the Dauphin. The Scots are seeking an alliance with the Emperor. Where are the allies I need? Where are the friends? And now,” he cried, “my own daughter cannot be trusted.”

  “No more than the Dowager Princess,” Bastwick warned.

  Henry wagged a finger. “Now there, Father, you are in error. The old woman is a trial, to be sure, with her whimpering letters from her sickbed, but she has never evaded my authority. Nor ever will, not even to save her life. That,” he said with a sneer, “is why the people love her.” He pointed to a paper on the table lying apart from Bastwick’s tidy sheaves. “Just look at that, you’ll see what I mean.”

  Bastwick quickly read the letter. Catherine was again begging her husband’s permission that Mary be allowed to live with her. She concluded with:

  For my part, I pardon you everything, and devoutly pray God that he will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend you unto our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

  Henry snorted. “Pitiful, is it not?”

  “Oh, take heed, Your Majesty,” Bastwick said warmly. “The lady Catherine is a proud, stubborn woman of v
ery high courage. If she took it into her head to take her daughter’s part she could with little effort muster a great array and wage a war against you as fierce as any her mother, Isabella, ever waged in Spain.”

  Henry’s eyes narrowed. The war Isabella had waged in Spain had overturned the throne of Castile.

  “With or without her outright encouragement,” Bastwick urged, “these rebel lords are prepared to rally around her standard, confident that under her they can consolidate their gains, confident of a leader whose views about the old religion are their own, and whose personal popularity is their best link to the masses. And if these lords do rise up against you in her name, the Emperor can do no other than send support for his aunt. The Bishop of Rome as well.”

  At the mention of the Pope, under whose edict he remained an excommunicate, Henry’s fingers curled around the arms of his chair as if to throttle them. He looked at Bastwick with a flash of irritation and disbelief. “But how could Catherine manage it, marooned out in the fens at Kimbolton? God’s blood, she’s more closely watched than a virgin. And since my officers replaced her staff, she refuses even to leave her private rooms. She’s more strictly imprisoned by her own pride than by any order of mine.”

  “I beg Your Majesty to look about you with more care,” Bastwick pleaded. “The Dowager Princess may not lead, but in her name others will.”

  Henry frowned like a man reaching a sturdy-looking bridge he has been told is rotten: he was cautious, yet unwilling to yield to a danger so invisible. “But who? I know the men you mention. Northumberland. George Talbot. Edmund Bray. Courtney of Exeter. I know their natures. Without a rallying call from Catherine, which I tell you she will never give, none of these lords would dare to move.”

  “And the men who are not lords?”

  “You mean the drunkards in the taverns? All that tap talk about the bad harvests since I put away the old Queen?” Henry waved a heavy hand, dismissing the threat. “Cromwell is dealing with that. Hanged men say no slander.”