The Heretic’s Wife (63 page)

The spring day at Chelsea had turned chilly, as chilly as Dame Alice’s mood, Sir Thomas thought, as he looked out his study window at the river. His wife was not pleased that they were not going to Westminster.

“You are still the king’s councillor. We would have been given a seat of honor from which to watch the coronation.”

“You would not have wanted to go without a new gown, and you know we can no longer afford such an extravagance.”

“We are not as impoverished as you make us out to be. I still have some income, and you have your estates in Oxfordshire and Kent. Though I would have been content to wear an old gown to ease your mind.” But he could see in her eyes that she would not and she knew she would not.

“And our daughters—would they have been content?” he asked.

She sighed heavily. “It is not that we should be denied the spectacle—that’s not what concerns me. I am well content to keep me here while the king’s mistress is honored.” She reached out and touched his sleeve. “But the king will not wink at this slight from such a man as you.”

“Such a man as I?” Thomas laughed. “Henry will hardly notice. I am no longer of any importance to him.”

But Thomas doubted that was so. His old friend Cuthbert Tunstall had doubted it too, urging him to go, even sending him twenty pounds collected from his friends in the bishopric to purchase a new cloak for the occasion. He had kept the money—the cost of pen and ink had risen—but tried to explain to his cowardly friends that he had gone too far in matters of principle to stoop to curry favor now.

“What have you done to us, Thomas More?” Dame Alice asked quietly.

“I have done only that which my conscience told me, Alice. A man should be expected to do no less.”

“You will not reconsider then?”

“I will not reconsider.”

“You are not the only one who suffers for your conscience.” She went out slamming the door behind her.

Thomas was still standing at the window, pondering what would be the king’s next move and how he should counter, marveling how he and “the Defender of the Faith” came to be on opposite sides of the chessboard because of a woman, when he saw a horse and rider approach the house. He recognized the little tailor immediately. His spirits lifted as he went to the door to meet him.

“Master Holt? Come in. Come in. Good news, I hope. Have you brought the evidence?”

The tailor from Chelmsford smiled broadly.

“I have indeed, Sir Thomas. It is not just notes this time, but a sermon, completely disputing the sacred mass in every syllable, just as you asked for.”

“Good man. Good man,” Thomas said as he grabbed the rolled-up paper. His eyes scanned it with satisfaction. He felt the pull of neglected muscles as the smile spread across his face. “This should do it.” He draped his arm around William Holt’s shoulders in a moment of rare fellowship. “You will be rewarded in heaven, but you don’t have to wait that long,” he said, as he rummaged in his desk and produced the twenty pounds Cuthbert Tun-stall had sent him to purchase a new cloak.

William Holt looked at the money and shook his head. “No, my lord, I will take no pay. Truth is, it was harder than I thought. I liked the man. He didn’t seem like the bad sort I thought. You know he has a wife?”

“I had heard. Do you know where she is?”

“No. He never said.”

He did not look at Thomas but out the window. Thomas knew when he was being lied to, but he would let it go for now.

“When will Frith be tried?” Holt asked.

“Not for a few weeks. First, I’ll present this evidence to Bishop Stokesley who will show it to the king. Then even the archbishop cannot prevent a trial—and an inevitable conviction. You’ve done very well.”

“ ’Tis a pity,” the tailor said, shaking his head. “I’ll not enjoy seeing him burn.”

“Take heart, man. Think of his soul. When faced with the fire, he may even recant. He has that option.”

“I don’t think so. He doesn’t seem like the kind.”

“You are probably right,” Thomas said, feigning more sympathy than he felt. “Once a fanatical dogma claims a man, it’s as though his reason takes a holiday. But you need not be troubled. You have done your Church a great service. Take the twenty pounds. You have earned it.”

After William Holt reluctantly put the money in his pocket and left, Thomas read Frith’s sermon denying the Real Presence of Christ’s body in the Eucharist. With every word, Thomas’s excitement grew as he built a prosecutor’s case in his head. This should do it. Even the king could not stomach such heresy as this.

“There is nothing I can do for him. The man is a heretic. He denies the mass. He will have to stand trial,” Henry said two weeks later when he broke the news to Anne. He steeled himself for the angry outburst he knew was to follow.

“Most unfortunate,” was all she said.

She’d not been herself since the coronation. It’s the pregnancy, he told himself. Moods like quicksilver, though she’d always been quick-tempered. Lately he’d even come to wonder if she had the temperament to be queen. Katherine might have been barren but the people loved her, and she was always queenly in her demeanor. Sometimes Anne acted more like a fishwife than a queen. But the last few days, ever since the great tantrum after her coronation, she’d just been . . . distracted, listless. He hoped this strange mood wasn’t affecting the child.

In spite of his best efforts, all the expense, the pressure he’d exerted on all the nobles to treat her with deference and respect, the coronation had been a disappointment, and she had blamed him. But he could not make the people love her. Her progress through the streets of London had been met with small enthusiasm and sometimes even insults. Many had refused even to remove their caps in respect, causing the old woman who was always at her side to call out to some in the crowd that their scalps were scurvy, and they were ashamed to uncover them. Some in the crowd had returned the shouted insults, directing them at the new queen. From astride his noble mount, he had pretended not to hear, but caused his horse to prance and toss his golden harness to garner cheers so Anne would hear the cheers and think they were
for her. It seemed the best way. If he could not buy their favor with spectacle and free food and drink, he was sure he could not beat it into them.

“I know Frith was a favorite of yours,” he said. “Perhaps he’ll recant at the last minute.”

“Perhaps,” she said.

No, not like herself at all.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Jane Seymour as she laid out his wife’s nightrobe. When Anne looked at him hard, he turned his gaze away, but his mind lingered, wondering what Jane’s cool, fair flesh would feel like, wondering if he could make it blush with passion.

“Leave us,” Anne snapped, her dark eyes glittering with resentment. Henry was learning to recognize the beginnings of her temper flares. They always flamed first in her eyes.

The blond-haired beauty dropped her curtsy and backed out of the room, but not before her sympathetic gaze locked with Henry’s.

He left shortly after, with Anne’s shrewish voice calling after him, demanding he return. He went instead to the jousting field to practice—maybe a few nights alone would improve her temper—and then summoned Archbishop Cranmer to prepare for John Frith’s trial.

. . . [Y]our wife is well content with the will of God and would not, for her sake, have the glory of God hindered.

—E
XCERPT FROM
T
YNDALE’S
LETTER TO
J
OHN
F
RITH IN PRISON

J
ohn was not surprised to see Thomas Cromwell when he came to his cell a few days after the queen’s coronation. He’d noticed a difference in the way he was treated lately. He’d been allowed no visitors and given no candles, nor pen nor paper, not even a book to read, except for a copy of Thomas More’s answer to John’s sermon on the Eucharist, which just magically appeared in his cell.

He had torn into that greedily, exultant at the poor argument More made. Surely, all thinking men would see the faulty logic contained therein. It was the poorest writing he’d ever seen from More’s pen. And then it had occurred to him what the existence of such a document meant. If More was answering his discourse on the Eucharist, then that meant he had a copy of John’s sermon. He had been betrayed! He should have never trusted the tailor, should have heeded Tyndale’s warnings not to write on the subject. Thomas More had laid yet another trap, and this time John, like a fool, had stepped right into it. In the last week he’d had plenty of time to think about what that meant.

“Leave us,” Cromwell said to the chamberlain. “Shut the door behind you. I will call when I am ready.”

“You are not the bearer of good news, I would guess,” John said to his visitor.

A frown wrinkled Cromwell’s brow. “A copy of your sermon has come into the hands of the king.”

“I wonder how that happened,” John said.

“His Majesty may have defied the pope, but he will not stretch to turn his back on the mass. Archbishop Cranmer has set your heresy trial. There is nothing else to be done.” There was more accusation in his tone than sympathy. “Now that you have handed your enemies the torch with which to light your fire.”

“What about the queen’s influence?”

“The queen is distracted by her pregnancy and distressed that she is not embraced by the populace as their rightful queen. Rumor says that she has quarreled with the king. She’ll not be inclined to interfere, I think, despite her sympathy. The evidence against you is too strong.”

A raven landed on the casement and, jerking its head, pecked at an unfortunate insect. It peered into the room and flew off with a raucous caw and a flap of its wings.

“Will I be tortured first?” John could not look at the secretary. He did not want him to see the fear that must show in his eyes. Was it a sin to be afraid?

Cromwell didn’t smile, but for the first time since entering John’s cell, his demeanor softened.

“Not with Cranmer in charge and More’s influence on the wane. And under the new law, Stokesley can’t get to you. The way I see it, you have three choices.” He placed his hand on John’s shoulder. “You can recant, deny what you have written, promise to embrace the doctrine of the Real Presence in the Eucharist, and throw yourself on the Church’s mercy, in which case you’ll probably be allowed to go back to your wife in Antwerp after they have made a public spectacle of you.” He paused and added bluntly, “Or you can burn.”

That was pretty much the conclusion John had come to in this last week. He knew which course, if God granted him courage, he would choose. He’d lacked only one thing, and that had been provided him in the same letter from Tyndale warning him ironically yet again not to write on the Eucharist. In John’s letters to and from Kate, they had never broached the subject
of his execution, if to speak it was to make it possible. They wrote only of their love and longing for each other. But Tyndale in an early letter had written of a possible outcome, telling him to be of courage. In answer to John’s query about how Kate was taking his imprisonment, Tyndale had responded that she had said that she would not have him deny his faith on her account. He was free to make up his own mind. But what freedom really, when he had professed, like the apostle Paul, to be Christ’s slave?

The room was very quiet as Cromwell waited for him to consider these two possibilities.

“You said a third. Or did I misunderstand?”

Cromwell shrugged and glanced toward the door. “You can escape.”

“Not many men have escaped from the Tower. Not a likely choice.” He remembered that Tom Lasser had once tried to convince him of the possibility of concocting an escape scheme. But it would have been at the captain’s risk. John had refused to consider it.

Cromwell cocked his head as though listening for some outside noise, then lowered his voice so that John had to strain to hear even in the silence.

“First you are to be examined by the archbishop at his palace in Croydon. You will be in the custody of Cranmer’s men. At some point you will be given a chance to escape.” Then he added meaningfully, “The guards will not give chase.”