The Queen's Lady (11 page)

The party came up behind a cart piled with sides of beef, slowing their progress. Honor groaned with impatience. How she longed to be back in her room in a cool bath! The stacked carcasses shuddered over every pothole as if in some protracted death throe, and the carrion stink bled into the stench of the slaughterhouses and tanneries that were crowded, by law, outside the city walls. Their waste of entrails was daily slopped into the Fleet Ditch.

The smell was nauseating. Honor had had enough. “Margery,” she said suddenly, “I’m off.”

The other girl’s eyes widened. “What, alone?”

But Honor was already trotting her mare towards an open lane. Laughing, she called over her shoulder, “See you back at Bridewell,” and cantered away, happy at last to be free of dead things and dull companions.

The lane fed into the broad expanse of Smithfield fairground, and she reined the mare to a walk and threaded through the moving crowd. She was surprised at the number of people. She knew that horse markets were regularly held here—all ranks of people frequented its bawling grounds where packhorses and priests’ mules were traded alongside finely bred destriers and hunters—but the usual market day was Saturday, two days away.

She squeezed around to the Augustinian priory church of St. Bartholomew the Great that fronted the square, and passed by as its bell peeled
nones
, the monks’ three o’clock service. Beside the church was an empty flight of stands for dignitaries. Several idlers were lounging in the shade beneath its plank seating. Honor envied them the cool spot they had found. Definitely, she thought, a bath, first thing.

A gray-robed friar staggered out of the crowd straight toward her, his head bowed. Honor thought he must be drunk. As she jerked the reins to twist out of his way he collided with her horse’s shoulder. The horse shied and Honor murmured soothing words to gentle it. The friar stared up at her. His red eyes were blurred with tears. His hands flew to his face in a gesture of misery, and then he dashed away.

There was a shout. Honor looked to her right. A procession was winding toward her. Probably a funeral, she thought. Maybe the dead man is someone the sad friar was close to. She coaxed her horse to one side, hoping to skirt the square and leave, but the crowd was swelling rapidly and the press of bodies forced her to stop.

A trio of mounted men-at-arms was followed by a workhorse dragging something, then by a half-dozen more men-at-arms on foot. The crowd had kicked up a lot of dust, and through this screen Honor could not make out what the horse had in tow. But as it neared her, the heads of two men became visible behind the horse’s rump. Although she could not yet see their bodies it was clear they were strapped to a hurdle, the tilted wooden grill that was scraping over the ground.

This crowd hadn’t come for a horse fair. They’d come to watch a burning.

“There he is!” someone said with a laugh. “Heywood the heretic.”

People pushed to get closer, forcing Honor’s horse forward too. The hurdle was now passing directly in front of her, and she saw the face of the prisoner nearest her. He was young and slight, his hair shaved in a priest’s tonsure. He smiled winningly, like a child or a simpleton, at the people craning to see him. His arms were free above the ropes that bound him to the hurdle, and he offered the sign of the cross over and over.

An old man fell to his knees in front of the procession, halting it. “Brother Heywood, God take you to His rest,” he croaked.

Honor was eager to leave this place of execution. She was about to kick her mare’s flanks when her eyes were drawn to the other prisoner slumped on the far side of the hurdle. He was almost twice the size of the smiling friar. His face was turned away, and she could see only a mass of hair: a dirty blond tangle above and a full beard straggling below. Like the friar, he was barefoot and dressed only in shirt and hose. But unlike the friar he was smeared with the dried filth of long imprisonment, and the ropes around knees, waist and chest that strapped him to the wooden grill pinned his arms tightly to his sides.

“Look what you’ll be missing, love,” a young woman said, laughing. She sprang from the crowd to kiss him. Her companions whistled at her prank. As her mouth covered the prisoner’s slack lips, her hand tousled his hair, revealing his cheek and ear. Or what was left of his ear. It had been mutilated, leaving a scarlet ruffle of cartilage.

Horror chilled Honor’s scalp. Around the reins, her nails dug white crescents into her palms. “Ralph,” she breathed.

The old man impeding the procession was dragged from the path. The horse and hurdle wallowed on. People rushed after it like gulls screeching in the wake of a ship.

The execution cortege stopped in front of Saint Bartholomew’s Church. From inside came the dead chanting of monks.

Maybe it’s not Ralph. Six years since I’ve seen him. An injured ear might be common. Among soldiers . . . or criminals . . .

She tried to move her horse forward but the crowd made it impossible. She slid off the saddle and abandoned the animal and fought her way on—shoving aside a woman hawking stick crosses, worming past a man with a child on his shoulders—until she burst into the front rank of onlookers. There, no more than five horse lengths from her, the hurdle had stopped. Still tilted off the ground, the prisoners lay stretched on it like gutted fish splayed in the sun to dry.

“Dear God,” she whispered in despair. For it was no soldier, no criminal. It was Ralph Pepperton. Haggard and filthy, his bearded face a lifetime older, but the same man who had ripped his own flesh from the nail of the pillory to run with her from Tyrell Court and see her safely to London.

The last time she had spoken to him was just after the victorious trial that had made her Sir Thomas’s ward. After bringing Ralph the judgment, she had gone with him to a wharf on the river near London Bridge. It was sunset, and Ralph was tossing his satchels into a barge bound for Oxford. They stood together on the water steps, unable to say good-bye.

“Oh stay, Ralph,” she pleaded. “The news from Tyrell Court may never reach here. And even if it does and they accuse you, Sir Thomas is a wonderful, fair man. I know he’ll forgive you. Come and meet him.”

“Forgive murder?” Ralph shook his head with a smile. “If he does, he’s not the clever lawman I took him for. No, mistress. Though you and me know the how and why of it—an evil mishap—the law sees things different. And maybe that’s as it should be, for I swear I’d snap that lousel’s neck again for your sake.”

He had held her nose between his knuckles as he used to do to make her laugh when she was a child, but as a woman of twelve she had thought it undignified to respond. He let go and chucked her under the chin, then climbed into the barge. As he turned back to her he fished an apple from his pocket, shoved the whole thing between his jaws, and comically bulged his eyes. It had made her giggle like a child after all. The barge had pulled away. Ralph had popped out the apple and waved good-bye, grinning under the golden sunset.

Now, he lay lashed to the hurdle and his grin was the rictus of pain. His shirt, stripped off one shoulder, hung in shreds over his chest, now so lean that the white skin gleamed at the knobs of collarbone and rib. From plum-colored sockets he blinked at the people who jeered at him.

“Ralph!” Honor cried, but his eyes flickered over her, not seeing her.

She stared past him at the circular pit of sand. It was roped off and posted at intervals with guards. At the center, two ten-foot stakes stood ready. Heaped at the base of each stake was a three-foot pile of faggots and straw.

Her mind groped for bearings.
Some mistake . . . Some horrible mistake . . .

There was a commotion beside the church. A group of dignitaries was mounting the stands. Fingers in the crowd pointed up at them: the velveted Lord Mayor and his aldermen; the Bishop of London’s Chancellor and his attendant clerics.

The Mayor! He can stop this!

She barged back through the packed ranks and struck out for the Mayor’s platform, treading on feet, deaf to people’s curses. She was almost at the stands when laughter erupted. Three clowns had dashed into the pit, cavorting like monkeys, tumbling near the stakes. People had clambered onto the roofs of nearby houses to watch. Some sat, some ate. Others leaned out of windows. A woman suckled a baby. Beneath the dignitaries’ stands a couple groped in the shadows, the woman fumbling at the strings of the man’s codpiece while he kneaded her breasts. In the pit the clowns simulated a fist-fight and the crowd’s laughter crescendoed.

Honor glanced back at the hurdle. The guards were slitting the prisoners’ bonds. The young friar sprang up instantly, erect, fresh-faced and smiling. Ralph slid down the hurdle on his back, dropped to his knees, then pitched forward. But when one hand groped in the sand to break his fall his back arched convulsively. Nausea curdled Honor’s stomach as she saw the source of his agony: he had been brought here with one shoulder wrenched from its socket.

Guards flanked each prisoner and grappled their elbows. The friar walked tamely across the pit to the stake as if on his way to church. Ralph had to be hauled between the guards, his legs limp, his toes scraping a channel behind him in the sand. At the stake, they tied Ralph’s hands behind his back. They bound his ankles with twine. They passed a chain around his chest to anchor him to the stake. Both tethered men now faced the stands where the Bishop’s Chancellor was stepping down and striding out to deliver an address.

Honor tore her gaze from Ralph. The entrance to the stands lay to her right. There was only one central aisle and only one soldier guarding it, leaning on his pike. She lunged and reached the first step. The pike shot across her path and her hips thudded against its shaft as it locked on the far railing.

“Sorry, my lady. Only His Worship’s party allowed.”

Honor stood back. The guard, she saw, was no older than herself. “I bring a message from the Queen,” she lied. “Let me pass.”

The guard’s eyes dropped to her silk sleeve. The embroidered badge there—the pomegranate of Aragon entwined with the Tudor rose—was the Queen’s emblem. He gnawed his lip, hesitating.

“I beg you,” she whispered.

At the desperation that flooded her face the guard relaxed. It was easy to deal with weakness. “Sorry, my lady. Orders.”

Honor cast a look up to the Mayor on the middle bench surrounded by his aldermen. Recklessly, she shouted, “Your Worship!”

But the Mayor was listening with a scowl to a man standing before him, a middle-aged soldier who was holding up two head-sized sacks tied together with a short length of rope.

“With this gunpowder strung around the man’s neck,” the soldier was explaining, “the fire consumes him all the faster. I’ve seen it used in Lincoln, and I do recommend it.”

“Why?” the Mayor asked. “We’ve never used gunpowder before. And what of the danger? The fire might spread. Up here.”

“There is no danger, Your Worship. This only brings the man a quicker end. For mercy’s sake.”

The Mayor’s concentration appeared to be wavering. His eyes flicked to a banner that drooped at the edge of the stands. Though gray clouds were beginning to roll in, the heat remained suffocating. A bead of sweat slid down his temple. “Mercy?” he asked vaguely.

“Mercy,” a low voice interjected from the bench behind the Mayor, “is the prerogative of God.” The speaker lifted a hand to bat away a fly. On his finger a sapphire ring gleamed.

The Mayor brightened. “There’s your answer, Lieutenant. We’re here to carry out the law. The rest, as Father Bastwick says, we leave to God.” His responsibility discharged, the Mayor turned away to chat with his aldermen. The Lieutenant bowed sadly and came down the steps. The guard lowered his pike to let him pass, then raised it to bar Honor again.

Her vision had darkened. Every face faded except the face behind the Mayor. Every object blurred except the sapphire ring and the brilliant black eyes above it.

He’s behind this. Evil surfacing again . . . like scum . . . blighting everything he touches
.

Fury overpowered her. Though the pike still barred her way, the guard had half turned to watch the Mayor. She lifted her foot and slammed it to the inside of his knee. His body buckled, his pike clattered to the ground.

She bounded up the stairs toward Bastwick. Aldermen cringed in astonishment. Bastwick turned and saw her coming. He stared for a moment, incredulous. Then hatred flooded his eyes. He leaped up and pointed at her. “Guard!”

She was three tiers from him—her fingers hooked to claw out those black eyes—before the guard was on her. Pain seared as he wrenched her arm and pinned her hand to the small of her back. Her eyes and Bastwick’s locked. As she writhed under the guard’s grip, Bastwick’s mouth twitched into a private smile of victory.

Her arm was on fire, but the pangs finally shot reason back to her brain.
Attacking him is madness
. She sensed the guard’s reluctance to bring all his strength to bear on a gentlewoman, and so she groaned loudly, as if faint, and went limp. His grip shifted immediately into an effort to support her. Just then a roar went up from the crowd. Honor’s head snapped around. So did Bastwick’s. All eyes in the stands looked out. The crowd fell silent.

The executioner had entered the pit. The dancing orange flame of his torch was the only movement in the square, and in the stillness Honor caught the Chancellor’s final words droning from between the condemned men. The awful phrase crashed over her: “. . . second charge, for which the sentence is irrevocable . . .”

A steel band of terror tightened around her chest. No one convicted of a second charge of heresy could escape the fire. After a first conviction in the Church courts the accused could abjure, recant, and be released. But for anyone caught a second time there was no escape. That was the law.

No one . . . not the Mayor . . . not even the King . . . no one can save him now . . .

She turned and stumbled down the steps, Bastwick forgotten. The aldermen, settling for the spectacle, ignored her. The guard allowed her to go.