The Queen's Lady (39 page)

The skiff bumped alongside the ship. Thornleigh jerked his head at a crewman to throw the rope ladder over the side. Honor scampered up it. Thornleigh strode over to her and asked in a furious whisper, “What in the name of the fornicating Devil have you been up to?”

“Collecting your cargo,” she whispered back. “Better late than never, they say.”

“Who says it?” he boomed. Then, whispering again, “Curse you for a Turk, woman, this crew of mine would not be likely to say it. Not with their necks stretched under a gibbet! Where have you—”

But she had turned away and was signaling down to the skiff. Thornleigh looked down at a wizened face peering out from under the tarpaulin. The fugitive crawled out and stood—a stooped, wrinkled old man. He cautiously peeled back the tarpaulin, revealing three curled figures: a boy of about four and a pale young woman with a baby in her arms. Thornleigh was shocked into silence.

Honor beckoned the fugitives to hurry up the ladder. She pulled them the last few feet and pushed them gently on deck one after another, like a cat moving her kittens. They huddled together. Thornleigh could see that they were limp with fear, seeing his glaring face. Jinner came up last.

Honor wrapped her arm around the little boy’s shivering shoulders. She reassured him with a gentle voice, even as her eyes struck sparks of defiance off Thornleigh’s. “Master Thornleigh means no harm, lad,” she said. “He’s just very careful of his ship.”

Thornleigh wanted to shake her, but he swallowed his anger. Madness to wrangle out here in the open. “Jinner,” he growled. “Get these people out of sight.”

The fugitive trio scurried after Jinner across the deck to the companionway, and went below. Honor began to follow. Thornleigh grabbed her elbow and turned her around. “You,” he said. “In my cabin.”

Once inside, he swung the door behind them. Again it stuck, refusing to close completely. With a curse he kicked it shut. “Now,” he said, coming up to her, “what’s going on?”

“What do you mean? Master Paycocke—”

“Paycocke’s welcome. I expected him. But who are the others?”

“His granddaughter, Alwyn, and her children.”

“Come to see him off, have they?” Thornleigh asked with all the sarcasm he could muster. He knew what was coming.

“No,” Honor said firmly. “They sail with you tomorrow.”

Thornleigh groaned. But before he could protest she declared, “I couldn’t leave them behind. Richard, they have no other family.”

“Good Christ! How can we settle them all over there? Have you even
thought
of the expense?”

“I knew you’d be concerned for their welfare,” she said, invoking sarcasm in her turn. She opened her cloak and pulled out a purse and tossed it onto the table. “Five pounds. From Cromwell. And Alwyn has a little money of her own, too, to get them started. And they won’t need papers because they’re Paycocke’s dependents. Satisfied?”

Thornleigh scowled at her and shook his head. It was useless to argue. What was done was done. It would be more dangerous to send the woman and children ashore than to keep them on board.

“Well, if that’s settled . . .” Honor murmured. She was tugging her cloak back in place, avoiding his eyes. “It was a long ride. If I may, I’ll stay the night.” She added quickly, as if to forestall argument, “I’ll be gone in the morning before you see me. Alright?”

Thornleigh walked to the small high window beside his table and looked out.
No, damn it, none of this was alright
.

Honor waited. In the silence, the wooden ship creaked.

Thornleigh’s exasperation finally exploded. “A day late! A whole, bloody day!” He whirled around. “Woman, you take too many risks.”

“You take risks too,” she flared.

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

He brushed aside the question and jabbed a thumb at the window where a scatter of ships could be seen lying between them and the shore. With sails furled, they were skeletal shadows in the gathering dusk. “It’s bad enough we have to lie here, exposed to all the world. Bad enough we can’t take on cargo from the cove as we used to, what with Bishop Nix and that blasted Dr. Pelle watching my every move. But, my God, to bob here for an endless day . . . with two fugitives already aboard. Two more, I remind you, than we agreed was safe, with Paycocke coming. To bob here . . . watched . . . such easy prey. And now,
five
of them for God’s sake. And one a woman. Six, if you count the blasted baby!”

Honor said nothing. Thornleigh turned back to the window tight-lipped, damming up harsher words. He slapped his hand hard against the wall. Then he wheeled around again and spat out a final grievance, making it an accusation: “And not knowing if you were alive or dead!”

“Obviously, I would have made it on time if I could,” she said indignantly. “Hunted people can’t always meet your rigid schedules.”

They stood staring at one another, both defiant.

Honor was the first to relent. “I’m too tired to fight,” she sighed. Softly, reasonably, she explained. “I went to pick up Paycocke as planned, but he was distracted about his granddaughter’s safety. A few months ago her husband was convicted of heresy. He abjured, but the Chancellor gave him a two year sentence. He died a week ago in the Marshalsea prison. The old man and his granddaughter have only each other now. He was so upset, I offered to take her and the children as well. But it was twenty miles out of our way to reach her, and Paycocke is so frail and, with the children, the ride was so slow . . .” Her voice trailed off. She added, with a quiet desperation that Thornleigh rarely saw in her, “The Chancellor’s net spreads farther every day.”

He noticed for the first time the shadows under her eyes. The trip had obviously been an ordeal for her. Well, it had not been much less so for him. A sleepless night, trying to beat from his mind the images that had swarmed when she’d failed to arrive—images of her on a stone cell floor, squirming naked beneath a grunting jailer. Or stretched in agony on the bishop’s rack. “Better late, you say?” he muttered. “If all unravels, you might think you were better dead.”

She lifted her chin high. “At least that would make your life easier, wouldn’t it.” She turned on her heel to leave.

She struggled with the stuck door. Thornleigh had to smile. She finally yanked it open, gathered her dignity again, and flounced out.

Two hours later, Thornleigh sat at the end of the table watching Honor, at the opposite end, tell an amusing story. Between them, all the passengers were crowded on benches, drinking Thornleigh’s ale and laughing. On one side sat old Paycocke and his granddaughter—she cradling the sleeping baby in her arms, he with the boy on his lap, the drooping young eyelids fighting to stay open. On the other side sat two young men who had already been aboard for a night and day—a bespectacled bookbinder and a stocky, bearded wheelwright.

The mood in the cabin was jovial. But Thornleigh was aware that his passengers’ merriment was more frantic than relaxed, tinged as it was with fears of an uncertain future—and more than a little nervousness in his company. Nevertheless, they were enjoying Honor’s boisterous accounts of his victorious skirmishes with the authorities. The tale she was telling now was of his recent coup against the Bishop of London.

“And so,” she said, “Master Thornleigh assured the Bishop in his most honeyed, most
lying
merchant’s voice”—her audience laughed and stole furtive glances down the table at Thornleigh—“‘Nothing easier, Your Grace!’” she said, lowering her voice to mimic Thornleigh, and doing it so abominably that even he had to smile. “‘I’ll act as your agent and gather in the filthy books for you to burn. Next cargo of wool cloth I carry to Antwerp I’ll root out this wicked new edition of Tyndale’s—’ ”

“I know the book!” old Paycocke piped up enthusiastically. “Tyndale’s
Answer To Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue
. He’s written it to refute More’s
Dialogue Concerning Heresies.”

“The very one, Master Paycocke,” Honor confirmed. “But what the Bishop didn’t know, sir, and Master Thornleigh did, was that Tyndale’s new edition had been ill made, botched at the printer’s, and Tyndale longed to reprint it. “‘Aye, my lord,’ says Thornleigh to the old Church fox. ‘Give me the means, and a fair commission, and I’ll go and buy up every last book and deliver them home to you.’ Well, he did get the money and he bought them all. And he sailed back from Antwerp, his hold crammed with Bruges silk, licorice, and thimbles, and twenty crates of Tyndale’s
Answer
. So, the Bishop got his books to burn, Master Thornleigh got a generous commission, and William Tyndale got the Bishop’s gold . . . enough to print a beautiful new edition!”

Old Paycocke threw his head back with a hearty laugh that belied his frail constitution. The other men banged their mugs on the table, hunched over it, wheezing in helpless mirth. “It’s sheer poetry, mistress,” Paycocke cried. “Listen.

The bishop got the books to burn,

Our man got his commission,

And Tyndale got the Bishop’s gold,

To . . .”

Other voices chimed in,

“. . . print a new edition!”

There were waves of laughter.

Thornleigh leaned back in his chair with an indulgent smile at the hilarity. He lifted his hand to signal the cabin boy to pour more ale all around. But the boy, he saw, was slumped in a corner, asleep. Honor apparently noticed it too, for she reached for the pitcher and started around the table to serve the ale.

Thornleigh’s eyes followed her. Her face was bright, all her weariness melted away by her own warm energy. That energy had thawed the fears of these timid people, too, he realized. She could do that so easily. When she wanted to. What an amazing woman. In fury, she’d kicked a red hot poker from his hands to get his attention, but she could be as soothing as a mother’s embrace to these people in distress.

He watched her move, turn her head and bend, pouring ale. He loved looking at her. The colors of her silk dress gleamed in the lantern light—the skirt, pale green like a shiny new apple; the top, a shade like the apple’s first blush. The pearls of her headband shone in her dark hair like dew. She glowed, he thought. Especially amid the browns and grays of these drab Protesters. Wasn’t that what they were calling themselves these days? No, Protestants, that was it. But then, she’d stand out anywhere, even without fine clothes. With that face—that body—what man could fail to notice her?

He remembered how he’d glibly talked her into that midnight kiss in the Cardinal’s wintry garden—a quick, stupid victory that he’d forgotten as soon as he’d won. So much had changed since then. The Cardinal was dead. Tonight was warm summer. And no one was likely to talk Honor Larke into anything these days. But—the biggest change of all—he’d give the earth to be able to kiss her again.

“As satisfying a tale as I’ve heard in many a month, Mistress Larke,” Paycocke was saying, dabbing tears of laughter with his sleeve. Honor smiled and topped up his mug. “And you, Master Thornleigh,” the old man went on. He got to his feet and his face became solemn. “I salute you, and I thank you, sir, as well. For despite these hearty tales, I know you are taking great risk to give me and my family hope—and these other friends here, too. Yes, I’m sure every heart here thanks you.” He lifted his cup. “To Master Thornleigh, and his bonny new ship!”

The others murmured, “Aye!” and raised their cups in a toast.

Uncomfortable, Thornleigh waved away the thanks. “She is a beauty, though, isn’t she?” he said. He was immensely proud of the ship.

“And is it true what I have heard, Master Thornleigh?” the young woman, Alwyn, shyly asked. “That tomorrow, with us, your ship takes her maiden voyage?”

“It is, mistress.” Thornleigh sensed her uneasiness and knew the others shared it; none of them had ever been on the sea. “And a grand crossing it will be, I promise you. She’s sound as an oak. I’ve never seen a carrack better built.”

“There now, Mistress Alwyn, it must be so,” Honor smiled as she reached Thornleigh’s side with the pitcher. “Only perfection could make him stop grumbling about the cost of building her.”

The others laughed. Thornleigh hid his smile in a sip of ale.

“And what have you called her, sir?” the bookbinder asked.

“To tell you true,” Thornleigh said, wiping his mouth, “she hasn’t yet been named.” He looked around at the whole company. “Any suggestions? Offer me a good one and I’ll name her here and now.”

“How about the ‘Thomas More’?” the wheelwright put in cynically. “As a tribute for sending us off to see the world.”

“Or ‘More Trouble’,” the bookbinder punned.

There were groans.

“Or ‘More’s Nemesis’,” Honor muttered. Thornleigh frowned at the hardness in her voice. He’d noticed that it tainted her, in face and speech, whenever she mentioned More. Why she hated the man so, he couldn’t fathom.

“Have you no thoughts yourself, Master Thornleigh?” Paycocke asked.

“None so far. But I’ll have a good name only, mind. A singing name. One to make her happy and speed well.”

The others chattered on, discussing the challenge.

“That’s it!” Honor cried softly.

She was standing at Thornleigh’s elbow. He looked up, and was surprised at the sudden pallor of her face.

“You said ‘speed well’,” she said. She set the pitcher on the table and dropped to her knees at his side. “Oh, let
Speedwell
be her name.”

He saw the eagerness in her eyes, big as a child’s. As she gazed up at him, her hand rested artlessly on his knee, light as a lamb’s fleece, and warm. He felt his body respond. “Please, Richard,” she whispered. The entreaty—so hopeful, so devoid of guile—tugged at his heart and brought a smile to his lips.

She withdrew her hand and stiffened. “Don’t mock this,” she said. “I have my reasons for wanting it.” She stood, her face hardening. “Private reasons. You wouldn’t understand.”

His smile vanished. Once again, it was Mistress Larke with her private hurts and hates. Brusquely, he called above the chatter, “Well, we cannot understand everything, can we, Master Paycocke? Presumptuous of mere men to think so.”

“Indeed, sir,” Paycocke answered amiably, having heard only the question and none of what went before. “Omniscience we must leave to God.”