The Queen's Lady (23 page)

“Master Cromwell, what are you and Holbein plotting over there? Is the rogue drawing me with horns? Or fangs perhaps?” Her friends laughed, for her tone was gay, but there was a note of stridency too, and her eyes darted among the trio of misfits at the easel and flashed mistrust when they lighted on Honor.

Cromwell spoke up stoutly. “Master Holbein’s hand reproduces only reality, my lady,” he said. His face remained blank, giving no hint that he was aware of the ambiguity of his statement, but Honor had to hide a smile: he had not categorically denied the existence of horns or fangs in the drawing, not if they reproduced reality. A legal mind indeed, she thought, eyeing him with amused respect. One to match the subtlety even of Sir Thomas.

“You must trust the artist, Anne,” George Boleyn said. “He is the one with the skill to leave a copy of you to the world. When all of us poor devils are in our graves your face will live on, thanks to Master Holbein. A reminder of these happy days.”

Anne had removed one of her rings and was playfully holding it up to her eye so that it framed the window. She squinted through it at the straight-falling snow. “I need no help from scribblers to leave my mark,” she muttered. She moved her head around, the ring still at her eye, until Honor was in her sights. “But it’s true, George, that these are happy days. Happy for England, don’t you agree, Mistress Larke?”

“The realm does not groan under war or pestilence,” Honor answered steadily. “And God keeps His Grace hale. I am content.”

“Ha! His Grace is hale indeed. I have my hands full to keep him so!” Anne laughed, and her friends tittered. “Yet it is a joyful task,” she went on in good humor, “for His Grace loves good pastime and merry company, and he has suffered for the want of both in his bedfellow these many years. A change was overdue.”

There was a murmur as several ladies and gentlemen watched the Queen’s trusted maid for signs that she would engage the enemy, but Honor only clenched her teeth.

Tasting blood, Anne plowed on. “It appears that Mistress Larke has no opinion on the subject. How unfortunate, for it is one that interests me mightily. Master Holbein, what have you to say? You must be an expert on change of many kinds, having changed your country for a better one, and changed your patron for a royal one. All you need to round out the new identity is a new religion. Tell us, have you made an alteration there as well? These mad upheavals in your native land must have left some mark? What exactly is going on among your countrymen?”

Holbein was gazing at her above the easel with a wide-eyed mixture of frustration at being once again interrupted in his work, and confusion at the questions, for Anne always spoke as rapidly as she moved, and with his faltering grasp of English he had only partly understood her.

Anne snorted a laugh. “Master Cromwell, can you answer for this poor, dumb creature?” She raised her goblet as if in a toast. “Your gift of claret is delicious, by the way. Now, answer for the speechless Master Holbein and you’ll make yourself doubly welcome. Come, enlighten us.”

“You speak true, Lady Anne,” Cromwell said. “Vast changes there have been in the German lands.”

“But explain them, if you please.”

“Naturally, you are aware that several territories have officially adopted Martin Luther’s new doctrine. The leaders of many cities—Master Holbein’s own native Augsburg and his adopted city state of Basle among them—have embraced Luther’s followers.”

“Yes. What is that name they call themselves?”

“Evangelicals, my lady.”

She smiled. “Fascinating. Go on.”

“Well, the great centers of Nuremberg, Bern, Magdeburg, Strassburg, Zurich—all are now out of the orbit of the Holy Roman Church. And, naturally, these changes have altered institutions and the traditional patterns of commerce, too, producing even more change.” Cromwell rocked on his heels with his fingers woven together over his stomach as if he was comfortably prepared to talk on in this way at some length. His voice carried clearly across the room, but Honor noted that his expressionless face still gave no hint of emotion. It was impossible to say whether he abhorred or applauded the Germans’ religious experiments. He simply catalogued them.

“But how did it all happen so quickly, Master Cromwell?” Anne’s question was serious, but she asked it with a tight, private smile, like a teacher who knows the answer and is laying a trap for the pupil. Honor found it disconcerting.

“Quickly, indeed,” Cromwell went on. “You will recall the Edict of Worms issued by the Emperor only seven years ago. It excommunicated Luther and placed him in the Imperial ban. Since then, the formation of the Catholic League of Regensburg—which allied Ferdinand of Austria, Bavaria, and the south German Bishops, and was blessed by the Pope—has attempted to enforce the Edict. But many in England are not aware that this has brought about the Lutheran League of Torgau, which is attempting to
prevent
the enforcement of the Edict.”

“And these Lutheran forces? Are they strong?”

“Strong but fragmented, my lady. There are conflicting elements, for the reformers are by no means agreed amongst themselves. Zwingli of Zurich, for instance, battles with Luther over points of reformed doctrine and, fearing an alliance between the Emperor’s Hapsburg relations in the north and the Catholic cantons to the south, Zwingli is now preaching for an all-out evangelical war. Amid this great upheaval, power elites of both government and commerce are shifting daily.”

“And where do the mass of the German people stand in all this?”

“There can be no doubt that many thousands of them support the new order, and some of their most powerful princes embrace it. Yes, vast change indeed. It is a new German reality we must all accept.”

Having defined the point, Cromwell closed his mouth. Stares of unease met him all around, except from Honor, who was impressed with his grasp, and from Anne whose eyes shone with fresh interest.

“You are well informed, sir,” Anne said, smiling at his cold-blooded dissertation.

“I try to keep abreast of all matters that affect His Grace’s business.”

“His Grace the Cardinal, or His Grace the King?” she asked pointedly.

“Both, my lady,” was his bland reply. “Only if Cardinal Wolsey’s servants keep him informed can the Cardinal properly serve the King.”

“If he were properly serving the King,” she said with sudden savagery, “he would by now have dissolved the King’s illegal marriage!” Allowing her smile to brighten again, she added, “The King would do well to have such able servants about him as the Cardinal is blessed with, sir.”

Cromwell only bobbed his stiff bow to acknowledge her compliment, but Honor was sure she had finally seen excitement flicker for a moment in his eyes. Was that his secret wish, then? she wondered. His reason for attending Anne, and bearing gifts of wine? Was it proximity to the King he sought? If so, he was managing a fine balancing act; in a situation where everyone clung with tribal fierceness to one faction or the other—the Queen’s party or the Lady’s—it was still impossible to know in which camp he stood. And although he had spoken of the German heretics without a trace of disapproval, his loyalty to his master, a Cardinal of the Church, remained indisputable.

Anne carried on, warming to her subject. “Yes, the King would be well served indeed if everyone took the refreshing view of the Germans’ reforms as Master Cromwell does. I confess I have a desire to investigate some of their new doctrine myself. It’s a pity that reading their books is illegal here.”

There was an audible intake of breath from several throats. Anne’s eyes glinted as though she knew she was creeping out on a limb but enjoyed the view. “Yes, I’ve heard there is much wisdom in the works of some of these reformers,” she said. “Men like William . . .” she frowned and appeared to falter in memory. “Oh, dear, what is that exiled Englishman’s name, Master Cromwell?”

“Tyndale, my lady,” was his clear reply.

“Ah, sir,” she smiled. “You do not disappoint.”

“But, my lady,” Cromwell added calmly, “you are aware, of course, that these books are full of lies, obscenities, blasphemies. The Church has declared them so.”

“Aware? Let me see. I am aware that the reformers preach the abolition of some of the seven sacraments. Of the seven—baptism, confirmation, holy orders, matrimony, confession, the Eucharist, and extreme unction—they declare they can find no sign in scripture.”

“Clearly, this is heresy,” Cromwell said mildly.

Anne raised an eyebrow. “Clearly, sir.”

Honor watched them, fascinated. They were testing one another, she realized. Like two children on the bank of a swift-flowing river, each was daring the other to jump in first.

“But I am also aware,” Anne went on, clearly relishing the roomful of stares, the danger in the air, “that Luther says the godly prince has a divine commission to reform the Church. For example, to rid it of grasping prelates. Now, this suggestion interests me, for there are some overmighty, odious priests, grown fat on the sweated labor of the people, who do the King no good, and whose demise would be a blessing to this realm. As for the Lutherans’ disapproval of the Pope—”

“They call him Anti-Christ!” a shocked young lady murmured.

“Indeed,” Anne said with withering scorn. “Touching on that, I, for one, can happily imagine a Church without a pope. For we must ask: is Christendom well served by a man who waffles and whimpers, who promises and then forswears, who cannot bring himself to grant the simplest and most deserved of requests concerning the marriage of one of Christendom’s most loyal princes? Perhaps it is the Pope who is the heretic.”

The room fell deathly quiet. “I am aware, too,” Anne said, “that the reformers are calling for priests to marry, as Luther himself has done. Married a nun, no less.” The imp of humor played over her lips. “Imagine. The monk and the nun. Will their children be born wearing habits, I wonder?”

A hollow, staccato laugh left one gentleman’s lips and died on the air. Anne looked around her. Most heads were bowed or turned away. Suddenly, she clapped her hands to break the pall. “Enough philosophy! Come, George, let’s have a tune. And where’s my little spaniel? I’m sure I saw Eleanor bring him in. I long to hold him. Now, Lucy, pour some more of Master Cromwell’s excellent claret . . .”

The room sprang to life in a flurry of relief.

Honor looked past Holbein’s back at Cromwell. His shrewd eyes had not left Anne, but there was a shadow of a smile in them as he inclined his head to Honor and murmured, “The Lady Anne has an uncanny knowledge of the contents of illegal books she claims not to have read.”

Honor wondered which of the two had won their dare. It seemed to her to be a standoff; that both had retreated from the bank unscathed and with renewed respect for the other’s abilities. But Cromwell’s face betrayed nothing. She longed to draw him out and make him declare himself. “Master Cromwell, have I understood the lady aright?” she asked with as much amazed innocence as she could feign. “Did she really express a desire for a Church without a pope?”

“She did, mistress,” he answered. He brought his eyes around to Honor and added flatly and finally, though with a small smile, “And my son desires a school without a teacher. But we must all deal in reality, as our artist friend here does. My son may pine for freedom but he obediently takes his desk every day, for his teacher is still his master. For us, the Pope is still the Pope. And,” he added meaningfully, “your mistress is still the Queen of England.”

Holbein stepped back from his labor and wagged the black chalk in Cromwell’s face to make a point. “Ah, but one day your son will graduate and then he will need a teacher no longer.” His eyes twinkled at the surprise on the two faces beside him. “My English improves, I think!” he said coyly.

Cromwell and Honor blinked at one another. Then they laughed.

Boots thudded at the bedchamber doorway and Honor’s workmen emerged hoisting boxes of the dismantled prie-dieu. They strode past her, nodding deferentially, then halted at the doorway to the antechamber to wait for her.

But Honor did not join them. Her eyes had been drawn to the upper left corner of Holbein’s paper—to a flower among the doodles. Her heartbeat quickened. Sketched roughly but faithfully was the little blossom that had brightened the title page of the dying foreigner’s book. Although naked of colour, every stroke—every vein of the four petals, every leaf-point—was the same. There was no mistake; the original flower was imprinted on her memory. Her very fingertips tingled at the remembered feel of paint on vellum that she had traced over as she sat in Ralph’s arms under the kitchen lantern. “Speedwell,” Ralph had said, identifying the flower. And for years, the book and the flower and Ralph had been entwined in her memory in an aching tangle of regret. Whenever she thought of him, she thought of the speedwell. But she had never guessed, had never known until this moment, that Holbein was its creator.

She lifted her face to him, hungry to find out, at last, about the contents of the book, about its author, about the extraordinary stranger who had given it to her that May Day night eleven years before. She opened her mouth—but which of a hundred questions should she ask first?

“Mistress Larke?” The steely impatience in Anne’s voice snapped across the room. “I believe your task here is complete. We will not detain you longer.”

All eyes were on Honor: the workmen waiting for her; Anne; the guests once more sniffing rivalry between the women; Cromwell. And Holbein, who had seen the colour leave her face as if drained by some ghost on his easel.

“Good-bye, mistress.” Anne’s dismissal clanged.

Honor had no choice but to leave.

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