The Heretic’s Wife (71 page)

“I did not know you had a daughter,” Mistress Roper said. “That makes your husband’s loss even greater. I heard he died very bravely. I have prayed for his soul these many months and I wish to tell you I am verily sorry for my family’s part in your misfortune.”

Kate peeled the child away from her skirt, and lifted her in her arms, feeling suddenly threatened and not just for herself this time.

“And to offer help,” Mistress Roper added, glancing meaningfully at the still empty shelves. “I am on my way to the almshouse. My father need not know that his charity extends to his enemies. I can—”

Kate could not believe what she was hearing. “Mistress Roper, I can see by your demeanor and your words that you are truly sorry . . . for . . . the part your father has played in the persecution of my family. But you must know that I would rather take charity from the devil himself than from Thomas More. My daughter and I will be just fine.”

My daughter.
She had claimed it. Margaret Roper had named it, and Kate had claimed it. Endor, who had been watching the exchange between the women, looked at Kate, and in a gesture Kate remembered, pointed with two fingers of her right hand to her own wide eyes and then to Madeline.
Blue eyes.

My child will have blue eyes.

My child has blue eyes.

The decision was made. Madeline was indeed her daughter and whatever happened they would be just fine.

“Will there be anything else, Mistress Roper?” Kate asked.

The woman half turned and placed her hand on the latch in response to her dismissal. “Just one more thing, Mistress Frith. Please pray for us. Chelsea is not a happy place these days.”

Kate was almost too startled to respond. “I will pray for you, Mistress Roper. I don’t think I can pray for your father. I am not a saint.”

The woman nodded and shut the door behind her. Months later, when Kate would hear from across the sea about the king’s beheading of Sir Thomas More, she would remember the sadness in Margaret Roper’s face, and take no joy in it.

Kate did not welcome the coming of spring. The first daffodils had scarcely lifted their heads in the little flower boxes outside the shop—had they bloomed every year in her absence, bravely waving their yellow banners in defiance and hope?—when the captain began to speak of leaving. His ship was almost finished. Kate began planning how to survive without his support.

Endor sold her honeyed biscuits and sweet buns to the yeomen workers and watermen on their way to the docks each morning, bartering sweet goods for flour from the miller’s wife and milk from the dairyman. Kate did scrivener’s work for the unlettered among them and copied broadsheets of love poems and songs to sell, rolling them into bordered scrolls and tying them with bits of lace and ribbon from Winifred’s stores. What swain could resist picking a love poem for his sweetheart from Madeline’s basket as she skipped among the market stalls? Even Ruffles the cat worked. At long last they were free of the rats that would have wreaked havoc on their baked goods. They would survive without the captain.

Yet she dreaded the thought of his leaving. Madeline would especially miss him. And Endor—Endor might even decide to go with him.

Kate would miss him too; she could not deny it. She had been content as long as he was nearby in Woolwich, and she could look forward to his visits—for Madeline’s sake, she’d told herself. Surely, what she felt for the captain was no more than the affection a helpless woman owed her benefactor. But it was not his kindness that invaded her dreams. She woke more than once laden with guilt as she tried to conjure John’s face. What kind of woman dreamed of another man with her husband in his grave a scant few months? Could a woman love two men at once? she wondered. But it didn’t matter. Tom Lasser would be gone soon and Kate would have endless years of loneliness to repent those dreams.

Gray-eyed Athena sent them a favorable breeze, A fresh west wind, singing over the wine-dark sea.

—F
ROM
H
OMER’S
O
DYSSEY
, B
OOK
I

O
n the first day of May, when all of London was celebrating and every churchyard and square was festive with Maypoles and morris dancers, Captain Tom Lasser did not join the raucous festivities. Instead he donned his best finery and headed for the dim cave of his favorite fleecing tavern. It was in Southwark near the bear-baiting pit and cockfight arena so that when the gamblers wearied of the cheers and jeers of blood sports, they could retire to the Fighting Cock Tavern to quench their thirst and find a more patrician game. With blood heated by violence and wanton death, they were always reckless in their wagering.

Tom squinted as he entered the room lit only by one glazed window, and when his eyes adjusted, he surveyed the pickings. He did not want to go elsewhere. He also had good luck at the Boar’s Head, but time was short. The crowds would grow rowdy, even riotous, late in the day and he’d promised to walk Charlotte home from the dressmaker. At a trestle table beneath the window, a couple of courtiers played at hazard, but dice games were not for Tom. The only way a man could win at dice was with the help of Dame Chance—or by cheating. Tom never cheated and seldom bet on chance. A man who could read faces didn’t have to do either in a game where he could bluff.

In the shadow of the dead chimney, a table of three sat hunched over a deck of cards. Two looked to be of the merchant class and one was a dandified cleric whom he recognized with some surprise. The prospect of playing against Henry Phillips—again—was not altogether a pleasant one. Tom had flattened the upstart’s purse the last time they’d played at cards, only to learn later that the money the youth had lost had been his father’s. The high sheriff had foolishly entrusted his savings to his Oxford-educated son to “invest.” An unfortunate decision. Tom had later heard that Phillips’s father had disowned him, and he felt a little guilty about that. But if Phillips hadn’t lost to him, he’d told himself, then somebody else. He was a ripe plum for the picking. Tom just happened to be standing under the tree. And it had after all been for a very good cause. The sheriff’s money had gone to buy new rigging for Tom’s ship.

At the sound of the latch falling back into place, Henry Phillips looked toward the door, and his gaze locked on Tom’s. His eyes glinted hard as steel before he flashed a hearty smile and waved. “Captain, come and join us. The game is better with a fourth.”

Tom hated to pluck the same pigeon twice, but Phillips was an easy mark and such an eager one. And he did not want to keep Charlotte waiting, so he sauntered over and asked, “Primero?”

Phillips motioned for him to sit down. “If I remember correctly, Captain, that’s your game.”

“Italian rules or English?” Tom asked, settling into the fourth chair.

“English,” one of the merchants said. “We don’t declare hands. Stake is two crowns. Rest is four.”

“Here, you do the honors, Captain, just to show I’ve no hard feelings,” Phillips said as he handed the deck to Tom to “lift.” The merchant to Tom’s left drew the lowest card and dealt.

“I’m surprised to see you, Master Phillips,” Tom said, frowning deliberately at his hand. It was a decent hand: one court card from each suit worth forty points. But the value of the hand didn’t really matter. He would lose the first two hands deliberately to draw the merchants in. “I heard you were living on the Continent,” Tom said as he made a show of discarding all four cards and drawing four more.

“I am. I’ve just returned to London to draw payment on a new business venture.”

And you can hardly wait to lose it,
Tom thought. “Congratulations,” he
said, glancing at the piles of coins in front of Phillips. “It seems you have found a wealthy patron.”

“A very influential patron,” Phillips said, drawing in the pot he’d just won with a simple primero valuing only about twenty points. The merchants must be novices for Phillips to win with such a low hand.

“The Bishop of London has employed me to represent some Church matters on the Continent,” Phillips said with bravado. “I’ve also made some valuable connections in Flanders.”

“Good for you,” Tom said, wondering to what purpose the Bishop of London could possibly put such a poseur. But then it was Church business. And Phillips was charming enough to ingratiate himself almost anywhere. He could be a perfect spy. He had one of those boyish faces a man or a woman would be eager to trust—if you didn’t look too closely at the eyes that lied.

The attention returned to the game, with the betting and the passing and the folding. They swigged on the fourth hand, with everybody folding, the money staying in the pot. On the fifth hand, Tom picked up his cards to find a low hand. Unfortunately the cards had run against him since the first hand, but the afternoon was getting on. Charlotte would be waiting for him. Now was the time. He discarded none of the cards and forced a pleased expression.

Two more rounds of vying and the merchant beside Phillips vied two more crowns. Phillips’s eyes clouded, but he saw that bet, discarded one card, and revied. Tom calculated the heap of money in the center of the table. It was just about enough to pay his ship out of hock.

“I vie the rest,” Tom said, putting four crowns in the center with a confident flick of his lace cuffs. The two merchants folded. Henry Phillips fingered his cards nervously and after an interminable silence and a slight twitching of his left eye—a distress signal that Tom recognized—threw his cards facedown with a grunt of disgust. Henry Phillips was nothing if not a coward, and a coward could always be bluffed.

Tom feigned a look of surprise and pulled in the pot, shrugging. “Well, gentlemen, looks like Dame Fortune smiled on me this time.”

Henry Phillips retrieved his cards and turned them up. Supremus: a six, seven, and ace of hearts with a point value of fifty-five.

“Show your hand, sir, if you please,” Phillips said, his smile tight.

“If you insist,” Tom said with a laugh. “But I don’t think you’ll like what
you see.” He turned over his cards: a jack of spades and a two of spades with a worthless heart and a club. The hand was worth only twenty-two points, the lowest hand on the board.

Phillips stood up, staggered back against his chair. It clattered to the floor. The tavernkeeper slapped a tankard of beer onto the table opposite them and shouted, “I’ll have no rowdiness.” The hazard players ceased their game and looked in their direction. Tom kept his seat, neatly counting his money into stacks.

Phillips’s arm darted out, sweeping the cards from the table, then he pounded the table with his fist. “God’s Blood, I declare you are a lying whoreson,” he shouted.

Tom had Phillips figured for a hothead but a cowardly one. Still, he was thinking about the dagger in his boot when the merchant stayed Phillips’s hand. “He beat you square. Let it go.”

In the pause that followed, Tom stood up, picking up his money with deliberation, then bowed. “I thank you for the game, gentlemen, and I would stay to let you win some of your money back, which you verily would, but, alas, it seems our young friend is too choleric to continue. It’s probably prudent if we let it end here.” Then, with a mock salute to the simmering Henry Phillips, “Better luck next time, Master Phillips.”

“There won’t be a next time, you bloody bastard.”

As Tom hurried back to Cheapside to meet the lovely widow of Lübeck, he laughed aloud. He was almost sure the flaming arrow that burned his ship was sent from Bishop Stokesley—or from Thomas More. Now in some roundabout way the bishop’s money was making the last payment on his ship’s repairs. There was a pleasing justice in that and he wished they could know it.