Linda Barlow (36 page)

To Alexandra’s dismay, Alan insisted on talking incessantly as they rode their horses back to her father's. He was obviously intrigued by his brother's mariner friends, and his imagination had been stimulated by all the tales of the New World. Alexandra, who wanted nothing more than to pull her cloak over her face and cherish her memory of Roger's abortive lovemaking, instead had to endure Alan's speculation on northwest sea routes to China and the probable worth in gold of a well-laden treasure ship.

"You're quiet," he finally said. "Did something happen this evening to upset you?"

"If it had, you, my protector, ought to have noticed it."

Alan glanced at her. "You're not usually so testy. For God's sake, Alix, what’s the matter?"

One who will not,
she was thinking. Like a refrain, the words repeated themselves over and over. Roger wanted her, but because of some strange point of honor that she really didn't understand, he would not act. It would be possible, she'd learned tonight, to break him, to force him to take her in the explosion of passion that was always so close to the surface with him. She had always known that a man could force a woman, but now she realized that it was also possible for a woman to take a man against his will. But it would be a violation, and one did not violate where one loved.

"It's Roger, isn't it? You shouldn't have gone there tonight."

"Oh, Alan—"

"Are you in love with him?"

It had become easy to lie to everyone else, but Alan knew her so well that he leapt on her slight hesitation. Before she could issue her standard denial, he added, "Can you not see that he's the wrong sort of man for you? Alix, please don't break your heart over him."

She would have dearly liked to confide in him, for he had known her secrets since childhood, and her forbidden love seemed almost too much, sometimes, for her heart to hold. But there was something in Alan's expression that stopped her. Her love for Roger, she sensed, was something that Alan would not condone.

"My heart is perfectly safe. I'm tired and testy because the queen never sleeps and we, as her women, are forced to keep the same hours as she. Your flamboyant brother has nothing to do with my moods, I assure you."

He looked so relieved that she wondered if something else was going on in his head. Was Alan jealous of Roger?
 
He was a man now, a man who had been cast out of Oxford for fornication. He was probably looking at all women differently now, even her.
One who dares not?
Oh God, Merwynna—couldn't you be wrong for once? Alan was her dearest friend, but she would never feel passion for him.

Why, she wondered, should this be so? In looks, Roger and Alan were not unalike. Intellectually, she and Alan were suited. They had the identical education, and similar interests. Temperamentally they were different, but this rarely caused conflict. They knew each other's hearts, and accepted each other's foibles as only those who are sincerely affectionate can. Yet Alexandra could no more imagine making love to Alan than she could imagine embracing a stranger or an enemy like Geoffrey de Montreau. Her body did not yearn for his, nor did her soul sense in him its true mate.

But what if his feelings were different? Love, after all, rarely seemed to be reciprocal. Was it possible that Alan desired her the way she desired his brother?

Well, if he did, he would have to get over it. They were friends, comrades, close as siblings. She would give her life for him if necessary, but lying in his arms was unthinkable.

"Love, from what I've seen of it, brings more torment than delight," she said. "Look at poor Pris Martin, for example. Loving a Trevor brought nothing but tragedy to her."

"That reminds me. I knew there was something I'd forgotten to tell you. I ran into Pris Martin in Oxford last month. I thought you'd be interested in hearing about her."

Alexandra silently thanked the impulse that had led her to introduce Priscilla into the conversation. She wanted no more chitchat about love. "You mean she went to Oxford after leaving Whitcombe? Are you certain?"

"Of course. I recognized her and spoke with her, much to her initial consternation. She is apparently living with a cousin and his wife who are associated with the university. Like Pris, they are Reformers."

Reformers. Not heretics.

"What did she say? Did you ask her why she left so abruptly, without a word to anyone, not even your father, who'd been so solicitous of her welfare?"

"We spoke but briefly. You recall how quiet and reserved she always was. Pretty, though," he added as a side note. "I never really noticed that before."

"Before your widow, you mean?"

Alan grinned. "Exactly. Anyway, Mistress Martin became rather agitated when we encountered one another. She seemed frightened."

"Frightened?" The adjective didn't match up with anything that Alexandra remembered of Pris Martin. The woman had always seemed far too in control of herself and her emotions to give way to fear of any sort. Even on that day of revelation at Whitcombe, she had been straight-shouldered and dignified.

"Yes. I recognize fear in others, being so familiar with it myself," Alan said wryly. "I'd swear she was terrified. But the authorities had just arrested several townsfolk for heresy, so mayhap she was fearful of the stake. I asked her if she couldn't leave Oxford, go north again perhaps, where the ecclesiastical courts are not so avidly seeking dissenters. Or to the Continent. I told her of the folk who are leaving the country to await happier times abroad. I suggested she come to London, where one can find people who have the means to assist Reformers in taking ship and leaving England." His sentence was choked off as he shot Alexandra an uneasy look. "I'm talking too much. I forgot that you're no longer simply my oldest friend, but one of the queen's women."

She reached over her horse's neck and touched his arm. "I’m your friend first, Alan. Nothing you say to me will go any further."
And I'm accustomed to keeping secrets.
"But you must be wary of all others, believe me. You are speaking treason."

Alan was silent.

"You must be particularly careful in my father's house. As you may or may not know, he's a minister of state who specializes in making everybody's private business his own." She sighed. "Oxford has succeeded where Mr. Lacklin failed, I take it? You, too, wish to reform the Church?"

"Alix, for better or worse, the reform has already begun. The monasteries were dissolved more than twenty years ago. Your own Westmor Abbey was one of the first to be secularized. You and I grew up reading Archbishop Cranmer's liturgy and admiring his prose, if not his doctrine. Do you know that Cranmer thrust his right hand into the fire as it was lit around him, because that was the hand which had signed the recantation he later rejected? Have you heard what Latimer said to Ridley as they were about to be martyred? 'We shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.'"

"Brave words, and stirring, certainly. But I do not believe in a God who looks with pleasure on burnt offerings. Nor do I think these hideous fires will cleanse the Church." She spoke vehemently, inspired by her distaste for Francis Lacklin's methods of reformation, which were apparently as bloodthirsty as the queen's. Who was it, she wondered, whom he had asked Roger to kill? A cleric, a government officer, or the queen herself? "The country went mad the day the old king's lust for Nan Boleyn caused him to throw off the authority of the pope, and nothing has been the same since."

"The pope was corrupt. The entire ecclesiastical establishment was full of corruption, and still is. Mary Tudor would pull the cloak of the past over England again. But she will not succeed, for those times are gone. The old must make way for the new."

"But who is to say the new is any more valid than the old? I cannot believe God would be so petty as to care whether the Mass is said in English or Latin, or whether the Body and Blood of Christ are actually present in the Host."

"'Tis you, I think, who are the heretic. You sound like Roger. At Whitcombe, he expressed similar cynical views, even if he did not truly espouse them."

"My views are not cynical. Cynics do not mourn the failings of humanity. They revile them. And how do you know whether he espouses them or not?"

Alan shrugged and did not answer. "How do you worship, Alix?"

"I go to Mass with everybody else at court. While the priests rant and rave about heresy, I turn inward to ignore them, praying in my heart that all this strife may stop and we may live together in peace and tolerance. What do you do? Proclaim your dangerous views in the streets?"

"Of course not. I'm a coward, remember? I admire men like Latimer and Ridley, but I'd never choose their path."

"And what of Pris Martin?" she asked, remembering how this discussion had begun. "Will she follow your advice and come to London? Do you really know people who can arrange overseas exile for heretics?" As soon as she asked the question, insight flashed. "Oh, God's blood! Are you thinking of Roger? The resistance we encountered from the boatman about rowing out to the
Argo?
You believe he's not just shipping cargo, but also refugees?"

Alan winced and turned his eyes away.

But everything was clear to her now. "You learned at Whitcombe that your brother was associated with the heretics. At the time you despised him for it, but now, after Oxford, you've changed your views."

His shrug confirmed her suspicions.

"But it's nonsense," she protested. "Roger's passion is shipping, not religion. You heard him. He dreams of trade routes to the east, exploration to the west. And he's no true heretic, whatever skullduggery he may be mixed up in. Surely he wouldn't risk his dreams for a bunch of Marian exiles."

"Probably not," Alan agreed. "The idea is nothing more than one of my romance-inspired guesses. Seeing him, wrongly, as a hero of sorts. Or as a villain, depending on your political views."

Alexandra frowned and bit her lip, wondering at his disinclination to argue. Could he be right? What was Roger up to with the heretics? And whom had Francis asked him to kill? "You seemed to be on much better terms with him tonight. You're going to go and live with Roger, aren't you?"

"If he'll have me."

He'll have you, she thought with an uncharacteristic spurt of envy. 'Tis me he won't have.

"Sweet God," she said aloud. "Now I'm going to have to worry about you both."

* * *

Worry she did, but not just about Alan and Roger. Her week of freedom passed all too fast, and she was shut up once again with the queen and her courtiers at Westminster, where the atmosphere was one of unrelenting tension. Spring was late that year, the wet, stormy weather continued, and the April days were gloomy with talk of war. England’s participation in King Philip’s conflict with the French became unavoidable when, at the end of the month, Thomas Stafford, a Plantagenet descendant who had a distant claim to the throne of England, sailed from France with French ships and French soldiers to attack and capture Scarborough Castle. Stafford denounced the Queen’s Spanish marriage and declared himself Protector of the Realm. He expected the people to rise for him, but this did not happen. He was quickly defeated, captured and brought to trial for treason. Rumor had it that King Philip had known of Stafford’s plans for some time and allowed him to land with his small contingent of troops in order to force the hand of the Queen’s Council.

Alexandra watched with pity as the queen tried to please her husband both in the council chamber and in the bedchamber. The first involved delicate negotiation with reluctant Council members to provide men, arms, and funding for the upcoming war. The second involved long hours of careful toilette, and, now and then, one of Merwynna's beauty potions. Alexandra tried, for her own sake, to keep the latter a secret, but the word leaked out, as rumors of such miracles will. Soon there was a demand for witchy folk remedies that would have amused her, had it not seemed so incongruous at a court where prayer was supposed to be more efficacious than magic.

Geoffrey de Montreau continued to plague her. Although she did what she could to avoid him, now and then he succeeded in isolating her from her companions. Invariably, at such times, he would maneuver the conversation around to Roger, although this happened so subtly that she sometimes wondered if she were imagining it. She fought back by hiding her consternation, reacting to his remarks with widened eyes and feigned ignorance, as if she were missing his point entirely. But Geoffrey was not deceived.

"I gossip too much. It was ever a flaw in me," he confided to her one evening as they danced. "You are careful to refrain from displaying your wit with me, mademoiselle. Yet with others, I hear, you have a clever tongue."

"Ah, sir, I think I have just been insulted. I strike you as dull?"

"You strike me as better disciplined than I believed when first we met."

"How disappointing for you, monsieur. You are having an unpleasant turn on fortune's wheel. Diplomacy has not eased the tensions between your country and mine, has it? There will be war?"

"Any day now, I expect."

"And when it comes, will you return to France?"

His liquid eyes hardened. "I will return to France when my business here is finished."

She felt a chill in her abdomen. He might just as well have said, "I will return to France when Roger Trevor is dead."