The Queen's Lady (28 page)

“Well,” the Marchioness declared when the whipping had ceased, “the people had better get their fill of such sights now. If the goggle-eyed whore worms her way into the Queen’s place there’ll be no more punishments for heretics. The bitch is a Lutheran herself. All the more reason,” she added archly to Honor, “to pray that she is routed by Her Grace.”

Honor’s head snapped up. Sir Thomas had said the same thing.

“Well, ladies,” the green-eyed lady drawled, “the mummery’s over.”

Honor looked out. Bishop Tunstall had climbed down from the pulpit and was turning back to his palace. The penitents, their ceremony of humiliation concluded, were herded away around the cathedral where they would be released. Apart from the custodian beside the burning books, only the three mounted officials were left, and the black horse that would drag Sydenham to his death. The small procession began to move out into St. Martin le Grand, heading for Smithfield. Paul’s Cross cleared, and the usual sounds of the churchyard—the hammers and shouting schoolboys, the birds and barking dogs—resumed. The ladies glided back to their cards.

Honor was left standing alone, watching the last of the street children skip after the hurdle. The Jesus bells of St. Paul’s tolled. She flinched. The bells were so loud they seemed to be clanging inside her skull. They drowned out the human voices of the street. They obliterated the music of the birds. They gonged with a brazen, strident authority, as if proclaiming with sheer bombast their dominion over every living creature below. Dizzy, Honor rested her forehead against the shutter. She heard the wooden slats chatter slightly under her trembling head. As the last bell reverberated she remembered the words of Bridget Sydenham’s letter:

. . . those of us who live must bear witness for those who have suffered and died. Goodness must prevail . . .

A little before midnight Honor left the house with the musicians. She was muffled under the hood of a pilgrim’s homespun cloak beneath which her skirts were hoisted above riding boots. The Marchioness’s servant, Owen, walked beside her. The yawning entertainers crossed the torchlit courtyard, strolled out through the main gate onto darkened Cheapside and, holding lanterns to light their various ways home, bid one another soft good nights. Tucked in among a trio of them, Honor lowered her head as they passed the pair of Wolsey’s men lounging at dice under the sign of the Plowman’s Rest. She knew the men had followed her the day before from Richmond and Chelsea, but as she strolled by them with the musicians they only glanced up before turning back to their dice.

Her “escape” had proved absurdly simple.

In the lee of London Bridge she sent Owen on ahead to the Golden Dog. Alone, with only a guttering lantern to light the dark, she stood for a moment, listening. Faint bursts of laughter echoed across the river from the brothels of Southwark. Reflections of torches on the bridge, the city’s only viaduct, flashed off the black water under the twenty arched supports. The water around the arches formed a swirling rapids on the upstream side, a placid mirror on the downstream side.

Honor looked up. Lights in the houses and shops stacked across the bridge—some four stories high—winked in the darkness. Above the portcullis, two grizzled traitors’ heads impaled on pikes grinned at the night-silvered clouds. Honor hurried away into the packed-earth lanes of the waterfront.

The sign of the Trident Inn whined on its hinges over the door as she entered. The landlord led her past the few morose customers in the tavern. He opened the door to a small back room and motioned her to enter. It was furnished with only a battered trestle table and some dusty barrels. The landlord bit the coin Honor offered, slipped it into his pocket, and shuffled out, closing the door behind him. Honor set her lantern on the table and moved to the unglazed window. She was staring out at the river, thinking, when the door creaked open again. She whirled around.

“A gentleman,” the landlord announced.

Thomas Cromwell stepped into the room.

Uninquisitiveness was apparently the landlord’s policy, and he waited only long enough to receive another coin from the visitor before closing the door a last time and leaving the couple alone.

Cromwell remained near the door. “A chilly night to be abroad, Mistress Larke,” he said warily.

She hurried forward, throwing off her hood. “I believe the business I have to propose will be worth the inconvenience to you, sir.”

“So your note promised.” He stood still, gravely watching her. The table lay between them, and its smoking lantern.

Honor’s mouth was dry. How to begin? Her pounding heart drowned out all rational thought. She twisted around and saw the black void of the river and felt suddenly trapped. From the tavern an old woman’s mournful singing crept under the closed door, her voice sodden with drink and regret. Strangely, somewhere in the lost hope of the woman’s song Honor found her courage. She turned back. Yet, still, how to begin?

By beginning.

“Master Cromwell, all the world knows how well and truly you serve Cardinal Wolsey.”

His head jerked in a small bow, his smile pleasant and polite.

“But,” she asked boldly, “what if I could pave the way for you to directly serve the King?”

The veil of his easy smile was torn away, and in his eyes she saw a flash of the hunger of ambition. She knew she had struck cleanly. Instantly, his veil of complacency dropped in place again. He took a step closer and was about to speak when she threw up her hands to stop him.

“Please, sir, no courtier’s babble tonight. I am about an undertaking too large for such trifling currency. Rest easy; I know too little of you, and you of me, for either to bear the other any malice. Therefore, as neutral strangers, let us trust one another. I have asked you here to speak of goals that concern us, you and I. Though these goals lie in different territories, I believe the roads that lead to them cross on common ground. Trusting this, let us speak only the truth. You desire to serve the King.” These last words were put as a statement of fact.

“There is,” he said cautiously, “much honor in serving the King.”

“And riches,” she added.

His eyes were on her, unashamed, waiting. Finally, she caught what fed the hunger there. Like a small key turning in her head, understanding clicked. “There is also,” she said, “power.”

Cromwell’s face darkened. “I am not fond of games, Mistress Larke. Why have you brought me here?”

She stepped up to the table and spread her fingertips on its top. “As the Cardinal’s legal council you are no doubt aware of the brief written by the former Pope and recently discovered by the Queen.”

“Naturally.”

“With it, as you know, the Queen has evidence to shatter the King’s case. He claims that defects in the dispensation make his marriage invalid, but the brief rectifies the defects, making the marriage legal.”

“Indeed,” he said impatiently. “Please, get to the point.”

“The Cardinal is questioning the brief’s authenticity, for the Queen has only a copy.”

“I know that.”

“I am on my way to Spain to ask the Emperor to release the brief to me, in the name of the Queen. The original. There can be no question then of its genuineness.”

Now, Cromwell’s eyes gleamed with interest. “Why do you tell me this?”

“I propose to hand over the document to you.”

His mouth fell open. For a moment he only stared. “Hand it over to the Cardinal?”

“No. To you.”

“What are you saying?”

“I am saying that I want you, secretly, to present the document to the King.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

“I have reasons.”

“But if the King has the brief he will, in all probability, suppress it. Holding it, he can pretend it does not exist.”

“I am counting on that,” she declared.

“I see,” he said slowly, clearly perplexed.

“Do you?”

He stepped up to the table and his eyes narrowed as he studied her face above the lantern light. “Frankly, Mistress Larke, you astonish me. Why should you make me such an offer?”

“Let me answer by asking you a question. If the Lady Anne were to become Queen, she would welcome in the new religion, would she not?”

Cromwell’s eyes grew wide. “Apparently, you are keen to see the advent of this so-called new religion.”

“To see the rot in the old religion gouged out! The Church is a plague, with its power to hunt down and destroy men who seek only after truth. The realm must be cleansed of bloated priests and priest-ridden royal officials who persecute honest folk unto death.” She looked away, conscious that she had revealed too much of her heart.

“I see,” Cromwell said again, this time with a small smile. “The rhetoric is a trifle strained, but the sincerity most eloquent. Especially to these old ears. Fury is an emotion that only the young can muster, betrayed by the unjustness of an imperfect world. The old resign themselves; the young must rage.”

She was disconcerted by the way he was studying her, as if she were a cipher. Sharply, she asked him, “Well, Master Cromwell, do you accept my offer?”

The perplexed look on his face creased into something close to derision. Derision tinged his voice as well. “And how do you propose that this extraordinary transaction be made? When you return, will you dine with me at Stepney while the court spies in my household watch us from a peephole in the gallery?”

“I have a plan.”

“And what might that be?”

“I will collect the brief from the Emperor Charles at Valladolid, just as the Queen expects. I will set out to return to England with it. But the King’s agents abroad are vigilant, I understand. How if I am attacked by one of them on the road? How if I should lose the document to him? After all, sir, I am a lone, weak woman, traveling with a single servant. Such a disaster could befall me.”

When Cromwell spoke again there was no longer any trace of mockery. “Very tidy,” he admitted.

“Now, will you accept my offer?”

He wove his fingers together over his ample stomach, contemplating her. “Mistress, farmers with cattle to sell cry down the Church for its plethora of fast days when we must eat fish. Fishmongers cry down the Church for its tithe on eels. And for all I know, eels may cry down the Church for blessing ships that sail upon the water. Now, you may have good cause to cry down the Church as well, but I mind that among the priest-ridden royal officials you just spat against is your own guardian, Sir Thomas More. A good and pious man, and known to all as a defender of the faith.”

“A brutal man! Known to all as a defender of the Church’s abuses!”

Cromwell seemed lost for words. Finally, he said, “Mistress, for the second time tonight you have surprised me.” He ran a hand over his thinning hair, and chuckled, “And that is two times more than most people can surprise me.” Again, he clasped his hands in front. “And so,” he said thoughtfully, “you look for the day when the Church will be reformed. It is a goal that many good people share.”

“Do you?”

He gave her his small, enigmatic smile, but no answer.

“Well, it matters not,” she said. “If the Lady Anne becomes Queen, the goal will be realized. Now, will you accept my offer? I confess,” she said with some warmth, “I had expected more thanks.”

“Did you, indeed?”

“Your future will be made,” she cried. “The King leans on men who deliver.”

“Why do you not make this offer directly to my lord Cardinal?” he asked. “Or why not simply hand over the document to the King yourself? Why use me?”

“I do not wish to expose myself. But even without this consideration, I would never deal with the Cardinal. He represents all that people loath in the Church. His palaces and splendor, his bastard son elevated to high church office, his multiple benefices and bishoprics. Wolsey
personifies
the old Church. But you, sir, are a coming man. All the court speaks well of your temperance and your abilities. I have seen for myself your openness to change. And the Lady Anne trusts you. The way lies before you,” she said, and added softly but sternly, like a warning, “to make or to mar.”

Neither had moved. Across the table, they gauged one another.

“There is still a point that confounds me, mistress. Until this meeting you were a person known to me chiefly for your reputation as the Queen’s most loved and loyal woman. And this papal document may be her last chance to salvage her marriage and her estate as Queen. Her last hope.”

“There is no hope at all for hundreds of people who daily risk the wrath of the Church,” Honor flared. “Under the Queen the wicked Church thrives. Under the Lady Anne I pray it may wither.”

“Yet I know you love Her Grace. Are you really prepared to dash her happiness against your higher cause?”

He might as well have slapped her. She knew he had not meant it as a rebuke but she felt it as one. Stiffly, she rubbed the edge of the battered table in an effort to regain control. “Her Grace will be well treated,” she said. “Whether she enters a convent, which would suit her temperament, or decides to live alone, she will be well treated. The King cannot abuse her. He would not dare insult the Emperor so. This way she will be reunited with the daughter she loves. And as for the King, she has lost him already. She deceives herself that it is not so, but he will never live with her again. That much is clear to all but her.”

She gasped. She had rubbed the wood too hard and a splinter had rammed under her nail. Aware that Cromwell was studying her again, she ignored the pain. “Self-deception is our enemy,” she declared. “I know. I once deceived myself about . . . someone.” She heard the feebleness in her voice and was angered by it. “No,” she said harshly, “the Queen should accept reality. As you once so wisely suggested we all do, sir. She should accept the world as it really is. She should go quietly, as common sense bids.”

“Yet you do not,” was his cool reply.

“I do not what?”

“Accept the world as it is.”

She met his gaze, feeling calm for the first time since she had left Chelsea the day before. She answered simply, “I cannot.”