The Queen's Lady (13 page)

Anne flushed. Looking contrite, she dropped to her knees among the cushions, flung back her hair and looked up at him. “Forgive me, my good lord. For my presumption you must blame this plague of the sweating sickness that has kept us apart for so long. Your presence is so dear to me, and the separation from you, until today, has chafed me so, it drives me to say cruel things. Things I do not mean.”

She lay back among the cushions, her hair spread across their gold brocade. Her long legs stretched sinuously under her skirt. Henry came to her and stood over her, fascinated. “Your Grace’s displeasure is my abiding sorrow,” Anne said softly. She extended her arms to him. “Forgive me?”

Instantly, he was on the floor beside her, kissing her mouth, groping inside her bodice, shoving it down to fondle her breast. She gently pushed him onto his back. She whispered in his ear, “Henry.” She never dared to speak his Christian name except in passion, and he shuddered at the intimate thrill it gave. Her breath was moist. Her tongue probed his ear. Her hand crept down to his groin, and her fingernail scraped along the satin of his codpiece. “Henry,” she murmured, “how I long to open my body to you. To discover
your
body . . .”

Suddenly, violently, she pulled away. She sat bolt upright and clamped her skirt around her knees. “But, of course, the Spanish Princess can do these things with you, for the Spanish Princess is your
wife
.”

“Damn you, wanton!” He snatched her shoulders and wrenched her around so quickly that her hair whipped his face. She did not flinch from his anger, nor from his strength, but stared at him levelly, like an equal. But tears were brimming in her eyes, and her breath was harsh. Henry relaxed his grip and shook his head in bewilderment. No woman had ever refused him before.

The door swung open. Henry and Anne squinted up like trapped felons in the glare of the cresset lamps on the stairwell.

Sir Thomas More stepped through the doorway.

Seeing Anne—the wild hair, the naked breast—More froze. He was aware of a rustling sound and realized that he had stopped so abruptly the top papers on his armload of documents were spilling over his rigid grasp. A couple of scrolls fell at his feet, and papers kept fluttering down.

Henry began to chuckle. Anne, tugging up her bodice, giggled. They looked at one another, then fell back on the cushions together, laughing like children.

More lowered his head and sharply turned to leave.

“Thomas, wait,” Henry sputtered. He was scuffling to his feet.

“I beg pardon, Your Grace,” More said, his head still bowed to avert his eyes. He tried to purge his voice of emotion. “I believed Your Grace to be listening to the entertainment in the hall. Had I known . . .”

“No matter, Thomas, no matter,” Henry said, still chuckling. He was helping Anne up as they both caught their breath. “The wretched fellows do not guard my door. It’s Wentworth’s blunder, not yours. Come in, come in. And close the door on that infernal light.”

“Sadly, it is true, Your Grace,” More said, bending for the fallen papers. “Sir James’s people are in disarray at the sudden honor of your visit.”

Henry swooped to help gather up the documents. “What’s all this?” he laughed. “Have you brought this confounded paperwork all the way from Westminster?” He turned back to Anne, smiling.

“Just the backlog from Wolsey’s desk,” More said. He straightened and tried to regain his composure by shuffling the papers back into order in his arms. But, compounded with his shock, he was uncomfortably conscious of his own unkempt appearance. He had ridden from London that morning and knew the hours of travel showed in his bloodshot eyes, while the dark stubble that glinted with silver on his chin betrayed how many more hours he had been alone at work after joining the royal party; he had not expected to see the King before tomorrow morning. “The Hanse merchants are pressing for an answer about their lawsuit,” he said as if to justify his earnestness, then added lamely, “but that can wait.”

Henry was ignoring him. He was kissing Anne’s fingers, lingering in her gaze. More watched. The lovers’ eyes were locked in a silent, private communion. Henry led her around him in a stately sweep as if they danced to some music only they could hear. His lips brushed her fingertips in farewell. She sailed past More with a mocking smile. He forced his gaze to the ground until she was gone.

Henry moved to More’s side, chuckling as he loaded the papers into his own arms in one unwieldy bundle. He dumped the lot onto the table. “No paperwork now, Thomas. Look at the night. The stars!” He gestured to the window as if the night sky were his private treasure hoard.

More smiled indulgently. “Your Grace is in a mood for stargazing?”

Henry was unlatching a door in the far wall. “I am, my friend, I am.” He grinned over his shoulder. “And for your council, Thomas.”

More sighed, then followed.

The door opened onto a stone staircase that wound up the octagonal tower of the gatehouse. After several turns it brought them to a door that opened onto the tower’s flat roof. They stepped out into the night.

The waning moon was a paring of silver among the silver stars. The roof was rimmed with a shoulder-high wall, notched with crenellations that had been added for defense during the civil strife of sixty years before. From these battlements, archers had once rained down death on any foe who dared breach the moat to attempt entry at the main gates. The house sprawled around a central courtyard where a troop of men had spilled out from rooms crammed with Henry’s entourage. They lounged at a campfire, tossing dice, and their laughter drifted up to the roof.

Henry sucked in a deep breath of the cool air, a relief after the hot day. Above his head a flag gorgeous with the Tudor arms rippled from a pole in the center of the roof. He looked up at it and frowned. “Can’t get a clear view here.”

He moved to the far wall where a bridge of wooden slats connected this gatehouse tower to a twin tower. Normal access to the other tower was along a guard walk topping the wall above the gate. But much of the masonry on the guard walk had crumbled dangerously away—its disrepair was a result of the long peace—and so the makeshift bridge had been strung out to span the thirty feet between the towers.

Henry stepped onto the rickety bridge and beckoned More to follow him. More tensed. “Your Grace, the bridge does not look strong . . .”

But Henry was already halfway across. The slats creaked underfoot. On the wall-walk fifteen feet directly below him, shards of jagged rubble glinted like fangs above the faint ground-floor torchlight. Henry stomped on. Safe on the other side, he turned and laughed. “It’s fine. Come on!”

More followed, stepping gingerly. He slid his hands in jerks along the rough rope barriers on either side. Once across he breathed more freely.

Henry flopped down in the center of the tower. He stretched out on his back and bent one arm to cushion his head. “What a night.” He pointed up. “Look, Thomas, the Pleiades dancing. There.”

More sat beside him and drew up his knees and faced the stars. A feeling of contentment crept over him. A shared love of astronomy had been a bond between him and the King for years. He could recall many a balmy evening they had spent together on the lead roofs of Greenwich palace, pointing out constellations and discussing the movements of the sun and the planets through their crystal compartments that encapsulated the earth. “The seven daughters of Atlas,” he mused. “But Electra, the ‘lost Pleiad,’ never among them.”

“No need for Electra,” Henry said. “Her sisters do a fine job, twinkling down at a man like ripe virgins.”

More laughed softly. “Your Grace is merry tonight.”

“I am, Thomas, I am. The air here is clean. Hunting’s been superb. I’ll say that for Wentworth. Best hunting all summer. And I’ve been on the move since Whitsuntide, you know, outrunning the cursed Sweat.”

More sighed. He knew. He had followed the King through most of his panicked moves after the sweating sickness had broken out in Greenwich in June. Henry had fled the palace and ordered the poor of the town herded out in an attempt to halt the disease. While the Queen had stoically remained at Bridewell, Henry had shunted around the country from one friend’s house to another, his host’s purse invariably emptied by the honor of victualing the huge retinue of gentlemen, servants, clerks and musicians that crowded in after the King. He had kept his doctor at his elbow, hurried several times a day to Mass, and every evening confessed his sins. He feared sleeping alone, and had his friend, Francis Bryant, sleep on a straw pallet at the foot of his bed. More shook his head. What lengths we go to, he thought, to try to outfox death.

“At Hampton last night,” Henry murmured, “Robert Wode-house died.”

“I heard,” More said, lowering his voice in sympathy. He thought he read fear on the King’s face: the dread of his own mortality.

Henry sat up. “We were boys together—Robert, Will Parr, and I. Trained together. Entered the jousting lists together.” He managed a weak smile. “Robert even unseated me. Once.” The smile crumbled. “He was two years younger than I.” Absently, he fingered the walnut-sized emerald on a golden chain around his neck. The laughter from the men at the campfire sifted over the battlements.

“All quiet now, eh, Thomas?” Henry said, jerking his chin in the direction of the laughter. “But it was not always so. During the Troubles, Wentworth’s grandfather was murdered below this very tower. Did you know? He’d betrayed York, you see. Fed information to the Lancastrians so they could ambush a Yorkist brigade on the road to St. Albans. A week later Edward of York marched into London and took the crown. But not before his knights had settled the score with old Wentworth. Hacked him to pieces on his own drawbridge.” He shook his head. “My God, the bloody roses, Red and White. My mother told me all about the terrors of those days, Thomas.”

“Terrors ended by your father, happily,” More ventured. But he saw that Henry was not listening.

“The realm was virtually lawless then,” Henry went on anxiously. “And all because the King was an imbecile. A pitiful half-wit who couldn’t dress himself. Poor King Harry of Lancaster.” He turned to More, his face pallid in the scant moonlight. “If I leave no heir, Thomas, will the horrors start again? The mighty factions my father hoped to curb are straining again at their leashes. Some have snapped them, and nip at my very heels. Look at Buckingham. True, I cut off his treasonous scheming along with his head, but what of Norfolk? And the grasping Percys? What of the villainous dogs in Scotland, panting for an empty English throne? I must leave an heir, Thomas. Without a son I consign my realm to bloody civil war.”

“Princess Mary . . .”

“Bah! A woman’s hand cannot rule this stubborn people. Even if she could, she must one day marry some prince of Spain or France or Portugal, and then her obedience to her husband would reduce England to a sniveling fiefdom, the vassal of a foreigner.”

“I think not, Your Grace. Your subjects have been accustomed for too many generations to liberty and the rule of English law.”

Henry suddenly roared, “I must have a son!”

More flinched. At the King’s outburst the laughter below at the campfire hushed.

Henry hauled himself up and stalked to the wall and looked out over the dark valley.

More had stood when the King did, the ingrained habit of obedience. He watched the breeze tug the silken skirt of the King’s gold tunic, and waited. The air was heavy with a melancholy smell of smoke and dying vegetation. Today’s the Feast of St. Michael, More thought with a shiver. The end of summer.

The men’s chatter from the courtyard slowly resumed.

Henry waved wearily behind his back. “Sit down, man,” he said, staring out. “Sit down.”

More sat. An owl hooted from the forest.

Henry’s hand slapped irritably against the stone parapet. “How I detest this waiting for a judgment. God’s wounds, I’ll breathe easier when the thing is done, Thomas. The infernal waiting. It’s enough to kill a man.”

“Your Grace may not have to wait so very much longer,” More said quietly.

Henry swung around. “What say you?” He moved in, wide-eyed with hope. “Thomas, what have you heard?”

“Only a rumor, sire,” More said. He was far from happy to be the messenger of such news. Yet, he asked himself, how could he in conscience conceal it? “Just before supper your goldsmith arrived. He told me he had met a merchant on the road who’d come from Dover, having crossed from Calais. The merchant said he had seen Cardinal Campeggio’s entourage arrive at Calais from Rome.”

Henry smacked his hands together, exulting. For months he had been pressing the Pope to send Cardinal Campeggio as a special envoy to judge the divorce. “I knew it,” he cried. “Knew it in my bones when Anne arrived today. Campeggio, soon in England! Ha! Making that Italian the Bishop of Salisbury was the best day’s work I ever did.” He laughed. “God smiles on me, Thomas.”

“He always has, Your Grace.” More made no attempt to hide the affection in his voice.

Henry smiled. He came and sat again beside his friend. “Thomas, I didn’t bring you up here just to stargaze. I wanted to seek your council on this great matter. Until now I’ve not asked your opinion outright. And”—he chuckled—“God knows you’ve not been forward in voicing it.”

More’s palms prickled.

Henry went on. “Everyone else has had his say, ad infinitum. But you—you’ve kept mightily quiet. Well, I’m asking now. It’s important. Give me your thoughts.”

More tried to keep his face neutral but he feared the racing of his heart betrayed him. Fool! he chided himself. You knew the question would come one day.

Henry gently grasped the back of More’s neck and leaned in to him as if to impart a confession. “I won’t deny I dearly want you behind me in this, Thomas. In fact, there’s no man’s support I’d rather have.”

The sincerity, the generosity, unbalanced More’s shaky composure. He lowered his head to collect his thoughts. But his thoughts were in turmoil. Where did his duty lie? Should he march behind his King, right or wrong? Or leap in front to block him from this perilous false step? A pang of arthritis shot through his knee. He rubbed it. “These old bones bring news, too,” he said, and offered an apologetic smile. “They tell me autumn nears.”