The Queen's Lady (9 page)

The sergeant raised the cleaver. It glinted in the sun. Honor turned away.

“Stop!” a woman’s voice cried.

All heads in the courtyard turned to a door under the gallery. Honor and Margery looked down. A woman swathed in black sable strode out. Her yellow silk hem blazed below the fur, and rubies glittered on the yellow velvet hood that almost covered her dark hair. It was Anne Boleyn.

The sergeant lowered his cleaver. The crowd parted, whispering. Anne approached the scaffold. Thornleigh gaped at her in confusion. Anne handed up a paper to the Royal Surgeon. He scanned it quickly and raised his head to declare, “The King has issued a stay. The prisoner is released.”

The crowd gasped. Thornleigh, half in a trance, walked stiffly to the edge of the platform. In front of Anne he dropped to one knee. She offered her hand. He stared at it a moment as if overcome with amazement, then he caught it up. She waited long enough to receive his prolonged kiss of gratitude on her fingers, then silently turned again and walked briskly back toward the palace. Snow swirled in the wake of her furred train.

An uproar broke out. Men swarmed the platform to congratulate the reprieved man. Dogs barked and ran in circles. A lady fainted. Thornleigh staggered under the crush of well-wishers.

Honor caught Anne’s small smile of triumph just before she disappeared under the gallery. My God, Honor thought, she must have been watching and holding the King’s pardon in her hand all along. Yet she had waited, letting the scene reach its horrifying climax before making her entrance as Lady Merciful.

“Well, there’s proof of the hussy’s power,” Margery cried above the clamor. “As if we needed it. As if we weren’t already sick to death of seeing fellows swarm around her, hoping to coast up to the King on the hem of her yellow skirts. This Thornleigh, I suppose, is her newest toy. Hmph!” she sneered. “She helps herself to men the way my lord Wolsey helps himself to pastries.”

Honor was observing Thornleigh. Recovered, he was grinning now. His back absorbed the men’s hearty slaps, but his eyes were narrowed in carnal appreciation as he allowed a buxom, cooing lady to lace up his sleeve while his precious, spared hand hovered over her white bosom.

“And the result of both gluttonies is the same,” Honor muttered, watching him. “A swollen belly.”

Margery tittered. Honor bit her lip, instantly regretting her lewd remark. The man had courage, she had to acknowledge that, even if it was strong drink that had fortified him. But there was an uneasiness tossing in her: she chafed with shame for her royal mistress’s sake. Honor had learned a great deal in her few months in the Queen’s service; she had not been at court one week before she knew all about the royal scandal involving Anne. And here was brazen proof indeed, as Margery said, of the strings that tugged this shabby King!

Her teeth were chattering in the cold. “I’ve seen enough,” she said. She turned and left Margery ogling the carnival below.

When she entered the Queen’s suite, free of her bundles and looking forward to settling before the warmth of the brazier, she found a half dozen girls gathered there, her fellow ladies-in-waiting. They were whispering in agitation. Several looked quite frightened. One quickly told Honor of the crisis. The Chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey himself, had just left in a great show of anger, she said. He had barged in and arrested the Queen’s young secretary, Walter. “For spying on the King!” the girl breathed in horror. Wolsey’s men, she said, had just taken Walter away. “Her Grace,” another girl added with a nervous nod at the Queen’s private chamber, “is quite beside herself.”

A third girl was at the sideboard pouring wine to take to the Queen. Her hands were trembling. Honor came to a swift decision. Quickly she went to the sideboard. “Let me, Beth,” she said. Beth relinquished the goblet, clearly relieved at the opportunity to steer clear of the storm.

Honor knocked gently on the Queen’s door and opened it. The Queen’s private chamber was empty. Honor stepped in and looked toward the far set of doors that stood open to the bedchamber.

There, Queen Catherine was on her knees in prayer before her prie-dieu. Its magnificent ivory carving glowed from the light of a rim of votive candles arching over the supplicant.

Honor went back and closed the door. Silently, she moved to a paper-strewn table near the bedchamber door and set the goblet down. But she did not leave.

Catherine’s head turned slightly, sharply, as though in annoyance at Honor’s continued presence, although her lips kept moving in her murmured prayer. Still, Honor did not go.

Catherine completed her orisons, crossed herself, and stood. Honor’s resolve surged at the sight of the Queen’s face. Strain had etched tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, and the votive candles’ light glinted over the threads of gray in her light brown hair. Her squat figure appeared dowdy-looking despite her sumptuous purple brocade gown and costly amethysts. But there was a dignity and strength of will in her carriage, and in her calm eyes, that made Honor feel proud.

Catherine walked out of the bedchamber and glanced at the wine goblet. “Thank you,” she said wearily, her thoughts elsewhere. “You may go.” She closed her prayer missal and moved toward the fire that crackled in the hearth.

“Pray, give me leave to stay, my lady,” Honor said. “I wish to help you.”

From the corner of the hearth Catherine glanced over her shoulder at Honor. The smallest smile of indulgence came to her lips, colorless despite the fire’s orange glow. “Help me?” she said softly, almost to herself. She looked back at the flames. “It’s poor Walter who needs help now. And that I have just left in the merciful hands of God.” A slight Spanish accent still clung to her speech, even after twenty-seven years in England; when she was fatigued it became pronounced.

“But that’s just it,” Honor blurted. “I know about Walter. That he carried your letters out.”

Catherine’s head turned slightly, again with that small, sharp movement of annoyance. “You mean, you know that the Cardinal claims it.”

Honor took a deep breath. She would say what she had come to say. “More than that. I know Walter took your letters to Dr. de Athequa, who took them to Ambassador Mendoza. I know that this is how you correspond with the Emperor.” She moved to the other corner of the hearth to be nearer the Queen. “My lady,” she entreated, “let me take Walter’s place. Let me help you!”

Catherine turned to her with an expression that was both surprised and wary. Honor watched the fire’s shadows play unkindly over a face whose cares, like weights, had begun to sag the flesh. The Queen was forty-two, six years older than the King. She no longer danced, and rarely rode, and her waist had thickened from repeated pregnancies—six children born, five of them buried. It was a decade since her womb had quickened, and the only living child she had been able to give the husband she adored was a girl, not the male heir he craved.

Pity squeezed Honor’s heart. How the Queen must have suffered through these past months. “The King’s great matter,” that’s what everyone called it. Such a pompous phrase, Honor thought with scorn. What was so grand, she wanted to know, about a man in middle years infatuated to the point of irrationality? But the besotted King had actually asked the Pope to annul his marriage. Now, the Queen—everyone—was waiting for the decision from Rome.

Honor knew that if the Pope were to grant the King his wish the consequences for the Queen could be terrible: imprisonment in a convent, the bastardization of their twelve-year-old daughter, the Princess Mary—even, perhaps, the Queen’s murder finessed by some overzealous minion of Wolsey.

And it had all begun, Honor realized with some wonder, while she was living at Chelsea, playing at archery and musing over Plato, blithely ignorant of the dark currents swirling at court and in Rome. After eighteen years with Catherine of Aragon as his wife, King Henry had privately commanded Cardinal Wolsey to dissolve the marriage. Wolsey had special authority, being a papal legate, and the King had apparently assumed that the Pope’s agreement would be automatic; annulments of royal marriages were not uncommon.

The King had grounds, strange and shaky though they seemed to Honor. The marriage was the King’s first, but it was the Queen’s second, and that was the crux of his argument. When the King had married her Catherine had been the widow of his brother, Arthur. Scripture technically forbade matrimony with a brother’s wife, so it had been necessary, all those years ago, to secure from the former Pope a dispensation to allow the union. Therefore, when the King decided he wanted his freedom, Cardinal Wolsey had called a secret tribunal and pronounced judgment that the Queen’s second marriage—outlawed, after all, by scripture—had never been legal; that the King was, in the eyes of God, a bachelor. But then, before anyone—even the Queen—had been told the tribunal’s extraordinary verdict, the unthinkable had happened in Rome. The Emperor Charles’s mutinous troops had sacked the city, inflicting a massacre that had shaken Europe to its core. And Charles—Holy Roman Emperor of the vast German lands, ruler of Flanders, King of Spain, lord of the limitless New World—was Queen Catherine’s nephew.

Overnight, King Henry’s dream of a quick divorce had evaporated, for as soon as the Queen was told of his decision to cast her aside she dispatched an appeal to the Pope, a man now wholly under the domination of her invincible nephew. The English King’s private matrimonial case had suddenly exploded into an international crisis. The dithering Pope, badgered by the King’s envoys one day and threatened by the Emperor’s the next, wrung his hands, it was said, and wept like a woman before all of them—and stalled. For nine months the King and Queen had remained at this impasse.

And Cardinal Wolsey’s impatience with the Queen had grown thin. Everyone knew he chafed at what he saw as her intransigence against the King’s wishes. Worse, he feared military intervention by the Emperor’s forces. So he kept the Queen a virtual prisoner in her own palace. He maintained informants in her household, read every letter he could lay hands on that went from her desk, and refused to let her see the Emperor’s ambassador in private. Nevertheless, Honor knew that the Queen had managed to eke out a fragile line of communication using her secretary, Walter, her confessor, Dr. de Athequa, and Ambassador Mendoza to get her letters across to Charles in Spain. But now, Wolsey had discovered at least one link of that lifeline, and had broken it.

“Please, allow me, my lady,” Honor urged. “I can do everything Walter did. I can write your letters. You know my Latin is as good as his. And I could deliver them, too.”

Catherine’s wary expression had not changed. “Would you? Why?”

Honor hesitated, but only to search for the most concise words. She said simply, “You have been wronged.”

Catherine’s breath flew out of her as if she had been physically struck by the justice of the statement. “God knows!” she cried. Impulsively, she reached for Honor’s hand in a gesture as filled with passion as her previous motions had been with caution. “I knew you were one to be trusted!” Quickly, she controlled herself. “But, my dear, there are grave risks. I am not at all sure it is right to ask such dangerous things of you.”

“You are asking nothing, Your Grace. I am offering. And as for risk,” she shrugged, “I have tasted of that before now.”

Catherine’s grasp on Honor’s hand tightened. “Oh, I will thank Our Lord for sending you to me.”

Honor’s smile contained a glint of playfulness. “Do not forget to thank Sir Thomas, too, my lady, for my Latin. Had he not transformed the barbarian in me, I would be no good to you at all.”

She was glad to see the warm smile that the Queen returned. “Indeed,” Catherine replied with feeling. “A prayer will go, as well, for More, my dear friend.” Her manner quickly sobered. “Can you begin at once, my dear?”

“Of course.”

“Good. It is imperative that I tell Charles to send me lawyers. Ones experienced in dealing with the Roman court. The Cardinal has cowed the English advocates. I must have men from Charles’s Flemish provinces, immune to Wolsey’s threats. And I must have them now.”

Honor quickly sat and took up pen and paper. She wrote at length, following the Queen’s Latin dictation. With the plea to the Emperor completed, Honor folded the letter. “And now, my lady,” she said, “where shall I find Dr. de Athequa?”

Catherine frowned. With a sudden movement she came to the table, took up the letter, and held it to her bosom. “No. I have changed my mind. You shall not endanger yourself for me. I’ll find another way.”

Honor bit her lip. She was not afraid; was ready to take the risk. But she knew, too, that she had no business contradicting a Queen. “How, my lady?” she asked gently. “There
is
no other way.”

“One must be found. The Cardinal may have already squeezed poor Walter for de Athequa’s name. I will not cast you, too, into such perilous seas.”

Honor sat silent a moment. Suddenly, she brightened. “The masque,” she said.

“Masque?”

“Tonight. At my lord Cardinal’s. He is hosting a masque for the King and the Lady, and . . .” She saw the Queen flinch, and stopped. “The Lady” was the title that everyone at court, whatever their allegiance, applied to Anne Boleyn.

“Pardon, Your Grace,” Honor went on, hating to give the Queen pain. “But you see, as Sir Thomas is invited to the masque, I am too. And Ambassador Mendoza is sure to be among the guests. I can take the letter directly to him. It will be so easy. No need to go through Dr. de Athequa at all.”

Catherine appeared hopeful, but unconvinced.

“I promise,” Honor smiled, “I shall take every care.”

Catherine looked for a long moment into Honor’s eyes. Then, with a small, grave nod, she gave her consent. She touched Honor’s cheek with a gesture of motherly affection. “
Every
care,” she said earnestly. “I’ll have no ill befall you.” Her warm smile broke through. “Else, how shall I answer to Sir Thomas?”

A hundred candles blazed in Cardinal Wolsey’s great hall at Hampton Court. Wall-sized Flemish tapestries—miracles of artistry in gold, ruby, and sky blue threads—shimmered with larger-than-life-size scenes of the Virtues and the Vices. Many of the latter were being enacted with relish among the gaudily dressed crowd of ladies and gentlemen. Their laughing voices and the scuffle of their dancing feet all but drowned out the lusty efforts of thirty musicians in the minstrels’ gallery. The pungency of spiced wine and roasted meats on side tables mingled in the air with sweet herbs crushed underfoot, and with perfumed sweat. The King had disappeared soon after the dancing had begun. So had the Lady. But the revelers carried on.