The Queen's Lady (68 page)

Henry’s grunt was sour with self-pity. “Body of God, they used to call
me
splendid, not my armor.” He looked forlornly around the room, begging comfort, but Anne was staring out the window and Bastwick, writing at a desk, seemed not to have heard the conversation.

“Splendid, indeed, Your Majesty,” the tailor agreed, herding his underlings on ahead. He crept backwards out of the bedchamber, bowing and murmuring. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Good day, Your Majesty . . .” His voice finally dwindled away.

Anne turned to Henry and burst out in anger. “Well? Is it true? About Mary?” Moments ago she had stormed in with the question boiling in her mouth but had bitten it back until the tailor had gone. “Tell me!”

Henry clenched his teeth.

“The whole palace is whispering of it, you know,” Anne said. “That you actually went crawling to your daughter. That she’s refused to take the Oath. Again.”

“Madam, this is not the time to indulge your spleen. I am to meet the new papal envoy any moment now, and—”

“Just tell me if it’s true.”

Henry mustered what cold civility he could. “It is.”

“By all that’s holy!” Anne exploded. “If I had a child that obstinate I’d bash her head against the wall till it was soft as a baked apple. How can you grovel so before her insults?”

“Good heavens,” Henry said, nonplused, “Mary is of my blood.”

“You have another daughter. Elizabeth is of
our
blood. And
she
is not a bastard.”

Henry’s voice roared out, “But still, madam,
I have no son
!”

The room seemed to buckle at his sudden fury. Bastwick’s fingers involuntarily squeezed his pen. Anne’s face turned pale as chaff. She crossed to the door, her brocaded skirt hissing over the carpet, and swept out.

“Bah!” Henry flopped into the chair across from Bastwick and clawed at the pearl-crusted collar that chafed him. For the audience with the new Pope’s envoy he was dressed very finely in a ruby-studded, white satin doublet and gold embroidered, red taffeta gown. “You are fortunate in your celibacy, Father.” He sighed gloomily. “I was intended for the Church, you know. Sometimes I think it is a life I should have preferred, had my brother Arthur lived to rule.”

Bastwick murmured over his writing, “God had more glorious plans for you, Your Majesty.”

Henry toyed with a quill, as fidgety as a schoolboy. “That I would not know,” he grumbled. “God keeps His plans secret from me.” He tossed the quill aside. “Curse the woman, she goes too far with Mary! She’s stripped her of her household, you know. Forced her to act as lady-in-waiting to Elizabeth, too. Mary, a Princess of nineteen, waiting on a baby. Anne hopes to break her.” He chewed his lip for a moment, brooding. “And people are whispering. They’re saying Mary’s sickness last month was the result of poison from Anne’s hand.”

Calmly, Bastwick dipped his quill. “The people are cattle, sire. They also say,” he added contemptuously, “that the Queen is a witch.”

Henry was gazing at his hand. His eyes, between puffy lids above and puffy pouches below, were slits like those of a lizard. “She does have a sixth finger, you know. A pulpy, half-formed thing. She’s clever and hides it with her long sleeves.” He looked up. Fear glinted in the eyes caged behind the flesh. “Is that not a sign of Satan, Father?”

Bastwick cleared his throat diplomatically. “The Queen is not unwise to fear your many enemies.”

“But is my daughter really my enemy?” Henry whined.

“Your Majesty,” Bastwick said patiently, “I have
told
you of the plots that the Emperor’s ambassador is breeding, and all his evil hopes are founded on the Dowager Princess and the Lady Mary. Those two are the lightning rods through which the Emperor’s might will strike at you.”

Henry slumped lower in the chair.

“In the North,” Bastwick continued, “we know Thomas Dacre of Greystock has pledged support for the Dowager Princess. Now, we suspect the Earl of Northumberland and the barons Lord Hussey and Thomas Darcy as well.”

“How the nest of vipers grows.”

“Daily, I fear. In the West George Neville, Lord Abergavenny—”

“Neville? Body of God, I beheaded his father-in-law Buckingham fourteen years ago. Is this another of the family come to hound me?” Henry sighed, suddenly marooned in the past. “I can’t recall . . . what was it Buckingham did, all those years ago? Treason, of course, but what exactly was the plot Wolsey uncovered? Strange how the details blur.”

“In the Southeast,” Bastwick plowed on, “there is a formidable array whispering against you, Your Majesty, led by Sir Thomas Burgoyne and the Earl of Rutland. And Lord Edmund Bray, I have heard, has reported to the Imperial ambassador that at least twenty great gentlemen and over a hundred knights are eager to take up defense for the old Queen and the old religion. Then there’s the Earl of Shrewsbury, and the Marquis of Exeter, and the Poles—both Henry Lord Montague and Sir Geoffrey—and even, in exile Reginald—”

“I know, I know. Catherine always hoped for a marriage there, Reginald Pole and Mary.”

“You must never allow that, Your Majesty. As things stand, these men grumble treason in separate corners of the realm, but behind an alliance of Pole, with his Plantagenet royal blood, and the Lady Mary, whom many feel to be your true heir, your enemies would swiftly unite.”

Henry groaned. “It’s true. Inside my very realm enemies surround me. And outside, England stands in such weak isolation. The French have walked away from talks for a marriage between Mary and the Dauphin. The Scots are seeking an alliance with the Emperor. Where are the allies I need? Where are the friends? And now,” he cried, “my own daughter cannot be trusted.”

“No more than the Dowager Princess,” Bastwick warned.

Henry wagged a finger. “Now there, Father, you are in error. The old woman is a trial, to be sure, with her whimpering letters from her sickbed, but she has never evaded my authority. Nor ever will, not even to save her life. That,” he said with a sneer, “is why the people love her.” He pointed to a paper on the table lying apart from Bastwick’s tidy sheaves. “Just look at that, you’ll see what I mean.”

Bastwick quickly read the letter. Catherine was again begging her husband’s permission that Mary be allowed to live with her. She concluded with:

For my part, I pardon you everything, and devoutly pray God that he will pardon you also. For the rest, I commend you unto our daughter Mary, beseeching you to be a good father unto her. Lastly, I make this vow, that mine eyes desire you above all things.

Henry snorted. “Pitiful, is it not?”

“Oh, take heed, Your Majesty,” Bastwick said warmly. “The lady Catherine is a proud, stubborn woman of very high courage. If she took it into her head to take her daughter’s part she could with little effort muster a great array and wage a war against you as fierce as any her mother, Isabella, ever waged in Spain.”

Henry’s eyes narrowed. The war Isabella had waged in Spain had overturned the throne of Castile.

“With or without her outright encouragement,” Bastwick urged, “these rebel lords are prepared to rally around her standard, confident that under her they can consolidate their gains, confident of a leader whose views about the old religion are their own, and whose personal popularity is their best link to the masses. And if these lords do rise up against you in her name, the Emperor can do no other than send support for his aunt. The Bishop of Rome as well.”

At the mention of the Pope, under whose edict he remained an excommunicate, Henry’s fingers curled around the arms of his chair as if to throttle them. He looked at Bastwick with a flash of irritation and disbelief. “But how could Catherine manage it, marooned out in the fens at Kimbolton? God’s blood, she’s more closely watched than a virgin. And since my officers replaced her staff, she refuses even to leave her private rooms. She’s more strictly imprisoned by her own pride than by any order of mine.”

“I beg Your Majesty to look about you with more care,” Bastwick pleaded. “The Dowager Princess may not lead, but in her name others will.”

Henry frowned like a man reaching a sturdy-looking bridge he has been told is rotten: he was cautious, yet unwilling to yield to a danger so invisible. “But who? I know the men you mention. Northumberland. George Talbot. Edmund Bray. Courtney of Exeter. I know their natures. Without a rallying call from Catherine, which I tell you she will never give, none of these lords would dare to move.”

“And the men who are not lords?”

“You mean the drunkards in the taverns? All that tap talk about the bad harvests since I put away the old Queen?” Henry waved a heavy hand, dismissing the threat. “Cromwell is dealing with that. Hanged men say no slander.”

“No, sire, I mean the men you hold in your Tower. Fisher and More. The whole realm knows of their opposition to your will, and of their love for the old Queen. The potential rebel lords at least have sworn the Oath, but Fisher and More have not. A word from either one, and the rebels will cease to merely grumble. They will muster.”

Henry squirmed, then hauled himself from the chair. He moved to the window and looked out, his hands balled on either side of the casement.

Bastwick spoke to the massive back. “And of the two, sire, Sir Thomas More is the one you must fear. Bishop Fisher is old and has little fight left in him, and the people have no love for such a prince of the old Church. Indeed, he has shouted so long against your policies that many feel he has led himself into the Tower. But More is a layman. And well liked. And his silence has moved many hearts.”

Henry’s voice was very low. “Thomas could always do that. Could always move people with that gifted tongue of his. Now, with his silence, he moves them still.”

His fist thudded on the wall. “Moves them against
me
! God’s body, all have turned against me.” Rhythmically, his fist pounded the stone. “Wife. Daughter. Friend. All turned into enemies.”

There was a soft knock. The door opened. The royal chamberlain swept in, smiling with excitement. “The papal envoy is arrived, Your Majesty. He waits in your Presence chamber.”

Henry’s shoulders shivered as if to shake Thomas More from his back. He shunted himself around and stood with feet wide apart. “Well? What’s he like?”

“Most cordial, Your Majesty. An elderly, courtly gentleman. And, he says he is eager to give you great news.”

Henry’s eyebrows shot up. “Is he now?” He thrust his thumbs into his sash and pulled himself up to his full height, and his lungs inflated with the vigor of kingship. He glanced at Bastwick. “Well, Father, shall we see this eager pigeon from Rome? Perhaps he brings a clean slate with him. Come!”

Following the chamberlain, they strode together across the private chamber, then through the withdrawing room. A guard opened the door to the audience chamber, and a plump of gentlemen chatting near the canopied throne quieted for the King’s entrance. Henry stopped for a moment in the doorway. He cast a small royal smile on the Roman envoy whose ingratiating bow took his white head lower than the silver knob of his walking stick.

At this show of deference, Henry beamed. He leaned to Bastwick and whispered, “Perhaps God has heard my prayers, Father. This new Pope may be ready to bargain after all.”

“I’ll get it yet!” Honor laughed. She was panting from the exercise. “You can’t run away!” She was straddling the path to the gate in Erasmus’s garden, her arms stretched out to her sides to cut off Pieter’s route of escape.

Pieter was grinning and panting, too, from the game. He had just come with the Frobens from their house, and Johannes Froben, master printer, had proudly announced to Honor that Pieter had brought her a sample of his first solo work at the press. But Pieter, red-faced as he pulled the paper from his pocket, had been shy to present it; too many mistakes in it, he said. Honor had laughed and reached for it, but Pieter had jumped back, and soon the thing had become a contest. She had already chased him three times around the vegetable patch where Marthe was on her knees ruthlessly thinning a riot of carrot seedlings.

Honor wiped sweat from her upper lip. “Oho, you’re in trouble now!” Her grin was full of exuberant menace as she began a predatory stalk toward him.

“To the tree, boy!” Froben shouted through his laughter. He and his wife had been watching the chase from the bench under the cherry tree. Baby Isabel was solemnly watching, too, sitting on the grass between their feet. “Get behind the chestnut tree!” Froben urged.

Pieter darted sideways toward the thick trunk. Honor sprang after him, almost on his heels. She swiped his shoulder, but he zig-zagged out of her grasp. She lost her balance and lurched forward in an ungainly stumble, her arms windmilling to regain her balance.

The baby gurgled with delight and clapped tiny hands that were stiff with glee. That made Katerina Froben laugh so hard she had to lean against her husband’s shoulder.

Honor was laughing, too, and she was bending over with her hands on her knees to catch her breath when she heard the garden gate close behind her. A moment later she felt Erasmus’s bony hand grasp her elbow. She turned and was about to laughingly explain the mayhem in his garden, but he interrupted her.

“News,” he blurted.

She looked at his haggard eyes. This news could only be bad. “From England?”

Erasmus nodded, swallowing. He was out of breath as well. It appeared he had hurried to get home. Honor led him to a chair under an awning that stretched out beneath his upstairs study. As they both caught their breath, she glanced back at the others. Pieter had run up to the trio at the bench holding a huge sunflower in front of his face like a mask, and he was creating great hilarity as he ran around them in circles making lionlike roars.

Erasmus sat shaking his head in bewilderment. “So strange. So unaccountable. Is this new Pope bloody-minded or simply an imbecile?”

“The Pope? What do you mean, sir? What has happened?”

“The Pope has named Bishop Fisher a cardinal!”

“You mean, King Henry has released Fisher?” A spark of hope flared in her breast. If one prisoner had been freed, she thought, why not the other? “Released Sir Thomas, too?”