The Queen's Lady (32 page)

Anne tugged at Henry’s sleeve, trying to draw him out of the gallery. Her face was white, but she forced down her own rage. “Come, my lord,” she whispered. “This is no fit place for a king to consider such matters. Look, here is good Master Cromwell ready to offer you council. Come away, my lord!” With glaring eyes she burned a path through the gentlemen and musicians and coaxed the King out of the gallery.

In his private chamber Henry prowled in front of the cold hearth, his wrath concentrated and ferocious. “Summoned! Like some sniveling shoemaker. To grovel before a foreign court. Me, a sovereign King anointed with holy oil!”

Anne stood thinking, silent and grave. Cromwell, by the door, never let his eyes stray from the King. “Obviously, Your Grace,” he said, his voice deferential but calm, “it would be unwise to plead at Rome.”

“Unwise? It would be suicide! The Pope licks Charles’s boots! We know what the outcome of
that
hearing would be!” His fist smashed down on the mantel. “Just as we should have known the outcome of this farcical trial. All these grinding months and years, for failure! Wolsey should have known.”

Anne’s voice reached him. “You have been poorly served by your chancellor, my lord.”

Henry’s battered pride snatched at the suggestion. “So I have! I have been thwarted. By God’s wounds, Wolsey will pay for fouling me with this shame.”

Cromwell waited through a moment of ominous silence. Then, quietly, he ventured to the King’s back, “Do you mean, then, to dismiss the Cardinal, Your Grace?”

Henry whirled around. “I mean to have his heart out!”

From the corridor beyond the closed doors came the muffled sound of a dog barking.

“In that case,” Cromwell said evenly, “you will need a new Lord Chancellor.”

Henry appeared to ignore him. Controlled now that he had a target for his rancor he sauntered across to Anne, though he continued to speak to Cromwell. “Why?” he asked caustically. “Do you imagine I am so fond of your council that you begin to sniff at the post for yourself? Is that it, Master Woolcarder?”

Cromwell did not bristle at this epithet the King enjoyed insulting him with. It had once been the truth; before he had taught himself the law he had been a merchant trading in woolen cloth. “Far from it, Your Grace,” he answered. “But I am naturally concerned for the good government of your realm. Any successor to the post of Lord Chancellor must be a man of outstanding ability.”

“Of
loyalty
,” Henry said, turning to him. “I’ll have no more self-serving parasites like Wolsey. All he ever looked to was his own magnificence.”

“Indeed, Your Grace,” Cromwell murmured. His mind was casting out a net over the likely candidates, quickly evaluating their potential usefulness to himself. “Able and loyal the man must be,” he agreed, knowing that Wolsey had resoundingly been both. “My lord Bishop of Winchester is a most able man,” he said, testing the water.

“No more priests. Must I be forever entangled with these Church puppets?”

“No, indeed, Your Grace. It is just that the post has customarily been held by a man of the Church.”

“Then I’ll change custom. I warrant I can be as well served by an honest layman. A man with no loyalties to foreign powers to thwart me.”

“My lord Duke of Suffolk—”

“Would never be stomached by Norfolk,” Henry said testily. “And the Duke of Norfolk, likewise, would be contested by Suffolk. No, no, forget both Brandon and Howard. They are like two bulldogs eyeing a bone that lies between them. Each would rather go hungry than let the other have it.”

At his quip Anne let out a sharp, coarse laugh. It startled Henry, and he looked back at her with something like a frown. But her bright eyes remained smiling steadily into his as if inviting him to climb out onto the limb of defiance with her and mock the world below. Excited by her spirit he laughed too. He took her hand in his.

She brushed her lips over the back of his hand, then held it against her cheek. “My lord,” she said, “you speak of foreign powers, but it is the foreign Church itself which thwarts you. Do without it, as your honor bids. You are a sovereign King.”

Henry was staring at her mouth. “Sovereign,” he said thoughtfully, as if appreciating the weight, the power, of the word for the first time. “Aye, so I am,” he murmured. “Sovereign in my empire.” He looked at Cromwell.

Cromwell did not miss the flame of triumph that glinted in the King’s eyes. A spark of it seemed to arc through the air between them, like a brush fire jumping. It kindled an idea in Cromwell. Now, he saw the way ahead.

Two months later, on a drizzly day in early October, Honor burst into Cromwell’s private chamber at Greenwich. Seated at his desk, he was just sending away a clerk with a sheaf of letters.

Honor threw off the hood of her cloak. “Is it true?” She held the back of a chair to keep her fury in check. “Sir Thomas as Lord Chancellor?”

“Not official yet,” Cromwell said, laying down his pen, “but he should be sworn in towards the end of the month. Certainly by All Saints’ Day. I made the recommendation myself.”

“But why? How could you?”

“Calm yourself, Mistress Larke. Please, sit down. You look quite ill.”

“Sick at heart, sir, at this news!” she said fiercely. “And sick to think I trusted you!”

“Mistress,” he said with sudden coldness, “in politics one does not grab at what one wants like a peasant snatching sausages at a wedding feast. Now sit down, and I’ll explain.”

“Explain why you have raised that monster, that enemy of justice, to the highest judicial post in the land? Yes do, sir, if you can.”

“Will you sit?” he snapped.

“No!”

He took in a deep, angry breath and held it a moment, but as it left his body it became a sigh of resignation, and the sigh ended in a chuckle. “You cannot be faulted on tenacity, mistress. And in politics that, too, is necessary.”

She glared at him. “Well?”

“Well. Cardinal Wolsey, as you know, is in disgrace. He has already signed over his lands and palaces to the King in the hope of saving his neck.”

Honor could not suppress a shiver. “You are quick to forget your former master, sir, now that the King cannot do without you.”

“Are we going to speak of former loyalties or of Sir Thomas?” His small eyes gleamed at her like wet stones. “Or are they, in your case, the same thing?”

Honor smarted at the rebuke. “Forgive me,” she said tightly. “Go on.”

Cromwell leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers over his stomach. “The King demanded a laymen as his new Lord Chancellor. I suggested Sir Thomas because I believe he is the right choice. All the world knows him for a brilliant and honest judge, not puffed up by arrogance or ambition. His Grace was immediately taken with the suggestion of More. ‘A man who’s fonder of his family than of riches and high place,’ he agreed. A man, he said, ‘he was proud to call his friend.’ The Lady Anne, by the way, was present at this conversation, and she asked whether so weighty a post could be entrusted to a man who had never spoken a word in favor of the divorce. ‘He has not spoken a word against it, either,’ said the King. ‘Even in that he has shown his loyalty, for he swore to me he never would cross me.’ Now that comment . . .”

“The confounded divorce!” Honor cried. “Is that all anyone can think of? What about the people Sir Thomas will burn?”

“It is the Church that condemns heretics. You know that.”

“It is the state that burns them.”

“Not if the Church is reformed and changes its rules. You had that goal clearly in mind when you summoned me to the Trident Inn six months ago. Keep to your original agenda, Mistress Larke. It is a sound one. New Queen, new Church. The divorce is the key. You want it. I want it. Because, most importantly, the King wants it. And I can get it for him.”

“How?” she scoffed. “Wolsey could not. And since the adjournment, the case now rests in Rome.”

“But the King’s power rests here. King and Parliament are the forces at home. And Parliament convenes after All Saints’ Day.”

She threw up her hands. “Good Lord, what does Parliament have to do with this?”

He chuckled again. “His Grace said the same thing. Actually, when I specified that the Commons should be our target, his response was: ‘What do I want with those blockheads?’ ”

To Honor none of this made sense. Exasperated, she leaned across the desk. “All I know is that Sir Thomas . . .”

“Forget Sir Thomas,” Cromwell said. “His proven deference to authority is a bonus for us now. The point is he will not meddle, and that leaves me free to go to work.” He leaned toward her with a cool, confident smile. “Have patience, Mistress Larke. Tenacity is necessary in this battle, yes, but if you are to see it through without tearing yourself apart you must develop patience. And trust me. Though the road ahead appears foggy, we are on track.”

With a heaviness in the pit of her stomach, Honor straightened. Trust him? Have patience? She knew she had no choice.

*

The road into Cambridge was thick with winter mud. The wheels of the tanner’s cart creaked over the sloppy ruts. Edward Sydenham nervously flicked the reins from the driver’s seat. But the horse merely kept on at the same plodding pace it had maintained from London.

It was the supper hour in Cambridge, and getting dark. Most people were indoors. Chilly fog filled the quiet streets as if claiming a squatter’s authority to the space the citizens had abandoned.

Edward looked at his two companions on the seat beside him, and tried to stifle his anxiety. Neither his mother nor Brother Frish seemed worried. They were engrossed in a private, murmured conversation. Edward looked past the back of Frish’s head and watched the movements of his mother’s thin mouth. She was discussing strategy, again. Again, only with Frish. Frish, the Great Man.

Frish was the reason for this trip. He, and the forbidden Antwerp books stacked under hides in the cart behind them: Tyndale’s
Parable of the Wicked Mammon
, and Frish’s own treatise against the doctrine of purgatory. They were bringing Frish to a meeting of the Cambridge Brethren. After that, he’d stay on to organize them. A sermon from him tonight, and distribution of the books, would go a long way towards heartening the dispirited Brethren here, Bridget Sydenham had decreed. And ever since her husband’s burning, no one in their circle questioned Bridget Sydenham’s decisions.

Edward watched the two conferring so earnestly. How could they remain calm? Under the new Chancellor’s crackdown, scores of people were being arrested all over the country. But then, he thought with a touch of envy, their tasks here were important, and clear-cut. His mother was essential as the contact; her job was to introduce the preacher. The preacher’s job was to inspire.
And me?
Edward wondered bitterly. Well, someone has to unload the books.

He caught his mother’s sharp glance back at him.

“Watch where you’re going, Edward.” She frowned at the houses looming out of the fog. “Don’t take a wrong turning. We’re late as it is.”

“Yes, Mother.” Edward’s head snapped back to his duty. Mustn’t be late delivering the Great Man.

Edward saw the draper’s bay window emerging from the mist, and said, “Master Price’s is just up ahead, Mother.” The house hadn’t been difficult to find. He’d been there once before, helping his father. He wanted to point that out to his mother, but she was busy with Frish, tugging tight the hood around his face to mask him. Edward said nothing.

He stopped the horse in front of the draper’s house. He glanced furtively up and down the foggy street, but the few pedestrians, intent on making their way home for supper, ignored the arrivals.

Bridget Sydenham climbed down. Frish followed her. “Keep an eye out, Edward,” Bridget ordered. “I’ll find where Master Price wants his load delivered. There’s likely a back entrance.”

Edward watched his mother and the preacher walk toward the draper’s front door. Then the fog swallowed them.

He waited in the street. The gloomy mist closed in around him, chill and damp. He shivered and hugged himself, listening. In an alley someone was sawing wood. A baby bawled. Nearby, a dog’s teeth clicked over a bone. He hated being alone with the books. He hoped Price would send out a man or two to help unload; the faster it was done, the sooner he and his mother could be on their way again.

The draper’s door slammed. Edward stiffened. In a moment his mother was standing beside him—and with no one to help unload, he noticed.

“Master Price is jumpy,” Bridget said in a stern whisper. “With the meeting going on, he refuses to have these goods on the premises.” Edward recognized the irritation in her voice; his mother, he well knew, had no patience with cowardice. “The goods are to be taken to his storeroom around the block,” she said, showing a padlock key.

“Dangerous for us,” Edward growled. Instantly, he regretted this display of his anxiety, for his mother, scowling, climbed up onto the seat. Edward made no protest, knowing it would be futile, but his cheeks burned with humiliation: she didn’t even trust him to manage the delivery. She motioned to him to take up the reins. “Go now.”

Edward drove the cart around the corner, then into a mucky lane. He stopped at the storeroom doors and climbed down. Bridget unlocked the doors. “I’ll stand watch,” she said. “Be quick about this now.” She marched back to the lane entrance, not even bothering to lift her skirt in the mud, and stopped at the corner as sentry.

Edward yanked off the hides that covered the books. After a quarter-hour of hauling out heavy armloads, squelching through the mud into the storeroom, and stacking the books inside, he was sweating. Grunting under the last load, he was halfway to the doors and raising his shoulder to swipe away the sweat that prickled his upper lip, when he heard his mother come running. He whirled around to face her. His foot slid in the muck. He lost his balance and fell, and the whole armload—twenty-odd books—tumbled around him.

Panting, Bridget reached the cart. Edward kicked aside a book and scrambled to his feet in dread. “What is it?”

“The Chancellor’s men, I fear,” Bridget whispered, grabbing the edge of the cart seat to climb up.