The Queen's Lady (46 page)

“No.”

“Then it must still be there.”

He shook his head. “No, as soon as we had the ship back I went down myself to replace the hatch. There was nothing inside. I’m sure.”

Honor was confused. “Then what happened to it?”

He thought for a moment. “Who knew you had it?”

She tried to remember the tense scene on the
Dorothy Beale
before Edward had escaped. “Some of the crew did. We were in the carpenter’s cabin when I took it from Edward.”

“Could have been Timothy, then.”

“Who’s Timothy?”

“Carpenter’s apprentice on the
Dorothy Beale
. Tate said he was chums with Sydenham.”

“But how . . . ?”

“Most of the crew went back on board when I did, to collect their gear. He could have gone down to the hold just before I did. Fished the Bible out.”

“Where is he now? Can we ask him?”

Again, Thornleigh shook his head. “He took off. Came to tell me he’d had enough, wanted a quieter job. He was a good lad. I paid him and let him go. He didn’t say anything about a Bible, though.”

They looked at one another, puzzling the clues. “Timothy must have taken it,” Thornleigh said finally. “None of Pelle’s men could have.”

“Why not?” she asked. “Sam said you didn’t go to Pelle and get the ship back until morning, so there was plenty of time after the fire for one of his men to find the open hatch. And they were thorough. I heard them when they searched.”

“But if they’d found the Bible we wouldn’t be standing here talking. We’d all be in Bishop Nix’s prison.”

“Unless . . .” She hesitated, turning around an idea in her mind.

“Unless?”

“I wonder if we have an unknown friend among the enemy.”

The thought, it seemed, had not occurred to him. “It’s possible. If so, there’s no danger. He’ll probably make himself known to us sooner or later.” He paused, considering it again. “But I doubt that’s what’s happened. It’s far more likely that in the crisis with the fire they never found the open hatch. Then Pelle returned the ship, and Timothy fished out the Bible and left.” He shrugged, done with the mystery. “Whatever. You’re alive. We’re not in Nix’s prison. I have the
Dorothy Beale
back. All’s well.”

“Yes,” she said. “You have her back, and Pelle’s money to rebuild her, too, I hear. It worked out well for you.”

He nodded with a self-satisfied look that she thought was forgivable under the circumstances. “Still,” he said, “burning my own ship is not the method I’d normally choose to turn a profit.”

“No.” Honor could not resist a saucy smile. “And I am glad it was only the tired old
Dorothy Beale
I was hiding in. You might have had second thoughts about a fire if it had been your beloved
Speedwell.”

He laughed.

In Yarmouth a bell chimed faintly from St. Nicholas’s spire. Thornleigh looked out at the last rays of sun disappearing beyond the town. “About the boy,” he said suddenly. “I’m sorry to bother you with him.”

“It’s no bother. I’m glad to meet him. He’s a fine lad.”

Thornleigh’s proud smile was quick. But a frown followed just as quickly. Abruptly, he looked down and kicked half-heartedly at an invisible clump of earth. “I’d planned to keep him away from you. It’s awkward. Explaining our relationship, I mean. But once he saw you, he insisted on meeting you. And now . . . well, it’s obvious he’s taken a liking to you.”

Honor stiffened. “I understand,” she said frostily. “Don’t worry. I shan’t bind his heartstrings to me.”

“No, I didn’t mean—”

“It doesn’t matter.” She looked out at the now cold-looking ocean. Fatigue was claiming her like the darkling shadows that were claiming the deck. “I’m very tired,” she muttered, getting up from the stool.

On her feet she found she was wobbly again. Thornleigh’s arm rushed around her waist to steady her. The cloak slipped from her shoulders to the deck. His grip around her tightened.

She looked up into his face. “No, I’m perfectly fine,” she said quickly.

Jinner rattled out of the cabin door. He hurried up to Honor and snatched her elbow. “Alright, sir, I’ve got her now,” he said helpfully.

She had no choice but to let herself be taken from Thornleigh.

“Come along, m’lady,” Jinner coaxed, bending for the cloak. “A little broth and a good sleep’ll do you wonders.” He led her toward the cabin. She dared not glance back over her shoulder at Thornleigh as she stepped inside. Yet she felt his eyes on her.

She sat on the bed. She watched the open doorway as Jinner fussed with soup bowl and spoon, hung up her cloak, adjusted the lantern. Finally, he touched his cap to her, said good night, and went out. He closed the door. She wished he had not. She watched it for Thornleigh, sitting still.

It was wrong to want him to come. Wrong and selfish and impossible. She told herself as much, over and over. She got up, and paced, and told herself again. Wrong. Selfish. Impossible. And clearly, she thought with a wry smile at her own folly, it was not going to happen.

She pulled back the cover of his bed. She heard the door latch lift. She turned.

He stepped inside and stopped. He looked at her for a long moment. “You said you were perfectly fine,” he said. “Well, I’m not. When I pulled you out of the hold I thought you were dead. It was the worst moment of my life.”

Her breath caught in her throat. “I thought I
was
dying. And Richard, the last thing I remember thinking was your name.” She knew she had just told him, “yes.” She didn’t care. It was what she wanted.

He shut the door and came to her. He took her in his arms. He murmured, “Don’t ever die on me again.” He bent and kissed her. Her legs turned again into willow saplings, but this time not from fatigue. Her arms went round his neck, and she returned his kiss with passion. His hands smoothed up her back, her shoulders, rucking up the linen shirt, then down her throat, her breasts. She could not catch her breath.

There was a sound at the door. Thornleigh whirled around, shielding Honor with his body. The door opened. It was Adam. “Ready to study the stars, Father?” he asked brightly.

Honor stepped away, head down, cheeks on fire.

Thornleigh glanced back at her, his face tight with need. Quickly, he regained control. He strode toward his son. He did not look back at Honor. “Good night,” he said gruffly, and left.

Thornleigh stopped at the top of the stairs to the deck and looked back. Adam, about to go down, stopped too. His eyes followed Thornleigh’s to the cabin door. “I like Mistress Larke,” he said. “She’s pretty.”

“Very pretty,” Thornleigh murmured. “And very brave.”

The band of light under the door went dark.

He put his arm around his son’s shoulders, and together they turned away.

Leonard Legge was standing alone, nervous. He smoothed back his long hair with both hands, uncomfortable in this gilded chamber of Hampton Court. He hated the way the palace made him feel. Like a peasant. Cardinal Wolsey had built it, he knew, but it belonged now to the King. Strains of music from the King’s entertainment down the corridor filtered in around the closed room. Legge picked up his hat from the table and began turning it around in his sweaty hands.

The door opened suddenly and Legge twisted around like a caught criminal. He jerked a bow to the priest in the doorway. “Afternoon, Father.”

Jerome Bastwick strode past him to a desk neatly piled with papers. Bastwick had put on weight in his new-found prosperity—his sterling work with Cardinal Campeggio had brought him the reward of a Royal Chaplaincy—but his compact body still exuded the energy that had taken him from his father’s hovel, where he had fed the pigs, to the private Chapel Royal, where he offered up Christ’s blood before the King.

“Well, Master Legge?” he asked without interest. He shuffled through some papers and lifted a letter to read. “What have you for me today?”

Legge reached for a burlap sack on the floor. He loosened the strings and lifted it tantalizingly over the desk. “You said to watch her whenever my duties with Dr. Pelle don’t interfere. Well, it so happened that the two crossed-like.”

He upended the sack. A large, brown leather book slid out.

Bastwick put down his letter. He reached out to touch the book. His finger traced the stark gold cross embossed on the cover. A Bible. “Hers?” he asked.

“Hers.”

“Excellent, Master Legge. Excellent.”

“Do we nab her now, Father?”

“No. Not yet.” The Bible, Bastwick knew, was not quite enough evidence. Also, if he waited, she might lead him to net a larger catch, a whole coven of heretics. A success like that, even the King would notice. He could wait a little longer.

Besides, she had Cromwell’s protection at the moment. But one day that could change. She’d be friendless then. Exposed. Just as he had been that long-ago day in Star Chamber when her accusations had stripped him of every thing he had striven to attain. Exposed—just as he had been for a whole year in the Bishop’s cell, haggardly watching the red-eyed rats watch
him
from the corners. The nightmare still had the power to throttle his sleep. All because of Honor Larke.

“Later,” he said. “When she slips. And then, Master Legge, we shall be ready.”

23

“I
t’s late, Master Cromwell,” Honor said with a sigh. “And I must deliver an anxious couple to Yarmouth, then hurry back to join the Queen in her new lodging.”

She stood looking out the window in Cromwell’s office at Whitehall. Once again, Cromwell had entertained her with a fine dinner. Again, Anne Boleyn’s maids were amusing themselves tossing a ball on the terrace below. And again, Honor wondered how long she would be able to control the unraveling threads of her dangerous work. Recent failures and frights had exhausted her. The poor chandler, Rivers, had been caught and burned. There had been her own close brush with death. The constant, frantic rushing to and from the Queen’s residence had frayed her nerves. And then there was Thornleigh. Her humiliation had been keen the night his son had broken in on their moment of passion; she had resolved afterward to stifle her feelings for him. But the result was that time spent with him was agony, so hard was the knowledge of all she could not have with him. She felt she was balancing on a precipice.

There was a shrill of giggling from the maids on the terrace. Honor hugged herself with a shiver of exasperation. “Is all of this really leading us anywhere, Master Cromwell?” she asked, looking out. “To a new Queen? A new order? Sometimes I wonder. So many people risking so much. Yet, what exactly have we accomplished?”

“Patience, mistress.”

Patience. Cromwell’s eternal panacea. She was about to snap back at him but she held her tongue. “You know, it’s strange,” she murmured, watching the game below, “but Her Grace’s spirit is a constant example to me. She made a comment yesterday when my Lord of Suffolk came to threaten her with this latest move, even more desolately far from London than she is now at Rickmansworth. She said that she would go wherever her husband ordered her, but she would prefer the Tower, since the people of England would then know what had become of her and would keep her in their prayers.”

“Ah, yes, your mistress,” Cromwell groaned. “How quickly any mention of the Dowager Princess sours a good meal and pleasant conversation.”

Honor turned, her lips pursed in annoyance at the insulting title the King was insisting be applied to the Queen. “His Grace may call my lady by what new name he will, but while Rome refuses to act, she is still his wife, and Queen of England. And the pitiably reduced state she lives in is nothing less than a disgrace. Will you not speak to the King, sir, and entreat him to restore some of her ladies and household?”

“Her predicament is her own doing. You know she refuses any servants about her who will not call her ‘Queen.’ ”

“She
is
Queen.”

“Your devotion to her is touching, but—forgive me—confusing.”

Honor shrugged. She didn’t expect him to understand. How could he, when she hardly understood it herself. “My position with her is the perfect cover,” she said wearily. “Even you have said so.”

Cromwell grunted, conceding the point. “Lord, what a bulldog she’s turned out to be. Nature wronged her in not making her a man.”