The Queen's Lady (25 page)

The barge bumped alongside the pier. Honor climbed in and directed the boatman to Barnard’s Castle wharf. As they glided out into the traffic of the river, she settled herself and unfolded the paper. She glanced down at the signature: “Bridget S.”

Mistress,

I heartily recommend me unto you, not forgetting the courageous service you performed for me and mine, albeit in the end my untrusting heart did lead us all to ruin. Because I would not heed your warning, precious moments were lost and my lord was captured. He has lain these long months in the Lollard’s Tower. But right glad I am his heart is ever cheerful in the love of the Lord, Our Savior.

Honor was shocked. She had not known that Sydenham was being held in the prison of St. Paul’s. She had been so sure he would recant and be sent home.

Mistress, these trials are my lord’s and mine and I will not trouble you with our woe. The meat of my dispatch is this. I have this day had talk with Brother F. He inquired after you. Speaking of the infamous night that has blighted the happiness of me and mine, he told me you had asked after one Ralph Pepperton. Naturally, Brother F. knew no such name. Indeed, there are perhaps only two persons who can satisfy you in this, each holding one piece of the puzzle. The first of those two is myself, for I know that the man you refer to once called himself Ralph Pepperton.

He came to my husband’s notice three years ago in Coventry. He had come there years before as a masterless man fleeing some past crime that I know nothing of. He never spoke of those past days except to tell me once, in confidence, that his name had been Pepperton and that, for safety’s sake against his former crime he had put on the name of Roger Pym. (Ever jesting, he told me that though his conscience cleared him, yet the magistrate might not.) He got his bread driving a dray for a skinner, and he wed a Coventry lass of our circle, and fathered two fine lads, and nowhere lived a better Christian soul than this good Roger Pym. His help in our humble efforts to gladden men’s hearts with the word of Our Lord was always merrily offered. His ending will have made the angels weep.

For news of that dreadful ending you must seek the one other that I spoke of. More than this I dare not lay to paper. That other—the person with the shred of news that will fit mine—is your own guardian.

I tell you this, for I believe that those of us who live must bear witness for those who have suffered and died. Goodness must prevail.

Use this knowledge as you will. I have nothing but thanks in my heart for you for the help you tried to bring us. And I am safe assured that you will keep what I have told you unto yourself alone, except it be for the good purpose of breaking it unto your guardian.

And so I pray Jesu preserve you in long life to His pleasure.

From my London house, though I had liefer lie in filthy straw so I might lie alongside my lord in his prison, I am ever your entire good friend,

Bridget S.

I beg you, destroy this paper.

Honor looked up, flushed with excitement. Now, she would learn the truth! Sir Thomas would lead her to her quarry. Bastwick was almost in her grasp. The erratic wind frisked across the waves and tugged at the letter in her hands.

“Boatman,” she said, tearing the paper into pieces and scattering them on the river, “stop in at Chelsea first. At Sir Thomas More’s.”

13

“S
ir Thomas, mistress?” a servant in the house replied to Honor’s question. “Why, he’s out feeding his creatures.”

Honor walked down to the menagerie, a stone shed that housed the two rows of caged exotic animals whose habits More delighted in observing. She stood in the doorway and found him stooped over a cage, obviously unaware of her presence. She watched with a smile as he coaxed a monkey to accept a scrap of meat he was poking through the bars.

“Sir!” she said severely, pretending disapproval. “Does this house not observe the Lenten fast?”

More looked up, startled. Then he straightened to greet her. “I believe,” he said with a smile, indicating the forbidden meat in his hand, “we may absolve a heathen creature for clinging to some heathen ways.”

“Oh, hunger is heathen indeed,” she said with a laugh, and stepped into the dim shed. She bent to look into the monkey’s cage and was shocked by what she saw. An emaciated figure was slumped in a corner among scattered bits of browning vegetables. Its fur was matted with filth, and a large bald patch, red and raw, festered on its shin. Its lusterless eyes followed her movements with only the barest glimmer of interest. “What’s wrong with him?” she asked.

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.