The Queen's Lady (74 page)

Clutching Legge’s coat, Honor turned for a last look at the monster atop the lantern tower. Shouting monks were hurling stones at it, but even as it held up its arms to deflect the blows it lurched to the edge as if to watch her go, and she saw, as it came forward, that one of its feet turned inward. Her breath stopped. Her heart recognized that awkwardly lovable gait before her mind could grasp the truth.

“It’s Richard!”

“None other,” Legge cried. “For a year and more I’ve served him. No, don’t faint away, my lady, for I promise you it’s God’s truth!”

Richard’s alive!
“But how—?”

“Later! I’m sworn to him to get you safe away. Hold on!” He bent over the horse’s neck and dug his heels into its flanks.

They cannoned into an alley, sending pigs squealing, then galloped down narrow streets, zig-zagging into one after another until Honor was as lost as in a labyrinth. Legge’s riding was sure and swift, as if he had had much practice in evading the law.

They gained Cheapside and quickly merged with the bustle of the thoroughfare. Honor could hold back no longer. “But on London Bridge I saw Bastwick’s archers kill him. I saw him plunge into the river. How—?”

“Oh, the arrows hit him alright,” Legge said. “And he plunged alright. From the downstream shore I watched him bob over the rapids like a speared perch. But when the priest’s men rode into Southwark after you, I scrambled down the bank and fished him out. For many a week he lay in my house, and my wife swore that with all those wounds he’d sink again, and that would be into his final sleep. But Master Thornleigh’s a tough bugger. Ha! I knew as much that night at Mrs. Sydenham’s when he told you to watch out for
me!”

Honor could not speak. To have life and love handed back in the same heartbeat was almost too much joy. Then, suddenly, questions burst from her. “But how has he managed this? And who were those others?”

“Did you not know Sam Jinner when he snatched you?”

“The fox-man!” she cried.

“He insisted he’d have none other take the job of plucking you away.”

“And the hawk-woman? Was that really Bridget Sydenham?”

“Aye. And with her, a game young widow—”

“Alwyn! I knew I’d seen that face before! She and her grandfather, old Master Paycocke, were on the
Speedwell’s
maiden voyage. But she lives in Amsterdam—”

“She came home when the old man died. Said she couldn’t change to foreign ways.”

Honor was trying to digest the flurry of information. “And the others?”

“All those silly, painted devils? More of your friends. Some of them started the show by shouting, ‘Look! The Devil!’ ” He shook his head as if amazed by the success of the rescue. “Can you credit the fear of folks?”

“Friends?” she asked, at a loss.

“Some, men you’ve saved. Mostly, relatives of men you’ve saved. All mustered gladly at Master Thornleigh’s call, for he’d arrived at Mrs. Sydenham’s just after she heard of your fate.”

Honor was overcome. Her brain was smothered under the avalanche of shocks. “But, he’ll . . . they’ll all be in danger now.”

“No. They’ll slip off the masks and no one will be the wiser in that mad crowd. Even if one or two are nabbed, well, what’s the crime in a body being in possession of a fool’s mask?”

“But, Sam stabbed at an officer—”

“Oh, Jinner’ll make it away, never fear. To collect his wager from me, if for nothing else. He was proud as a peacock about that fox get-up of his, so just to rile him I bet him a shilling that you’d know him straight away. But,” he growled, “it’s clear you didn’t.” He glanced back at her and his gravelly voice softened. “You wouldn’t consider telling him a small mistruth, my lady?”

She laughed. “Master Legge, I have done forever with lies and deception!”

She glanced back at the normal bustle of the street behind them. “It’s incredible. No one has followed us.”

Legge chuckled. “The children saw to that.”

“Children?” The tale was becoming more fantastic at every turn.

“Aye. When we heard your fate three days ago, Mistress Sydenham sent her little granddaughter, Jane, to skip out to Smithfield and make a friend of the boy who grooms there. When we saw you drawn up to the pit, that imp and her band of cousins set about their work. Some of the officers’ horses they hobbled. Some they fed horse-bane. So when the men went to mount ’em, they came upon swooning, useless beasts. All I needed was a head-start.”

Honor threw her head back and laughed. Bastwick had been outwitted by a pack of children!

They were trotting into Thames Street, and Honor smelled the river and glimpsed the traffic of ferries plying around the wharves. She had already guessed that the river would be their destination.

“Now, Master Legge, tell me of your master. Tell me all. I am hungry to hear of him. What is his plan for escaping from the Smithfield tower?”

Legge edged the horse towards Paul’s Wharf. “My wife’s brother’s a fishmonger,” he said brightly. “He has a barge waiting.”

This was no answer. Honor tensed. “Master Legge, tell me.”

He sighed. “I warn you now, my lady. Master Thornleigh may have a rough time getting quit at Smithfield.”

They had reached the wharf and had to trot in silence past a handful of ferrymen and lounging customers. Legge halted the horse, swung his leg over its neck, jumped down and tethered it. He turned to help Honor, but she was already sliding off on her belly, her bare feet stretching for the ground. Legge grabbed her elbow and spoke in a gruff whisper. “His orders were we should not wait for him above a quarter hour.” He saw her blanch, but without waiting for a reply he hustled her towards the barge.

It was a grimy, patched affair, with two shipped sets of splintered oars. A low cabin of woven-reed mats tacked onto a wooden frame took up half its stern, and a flap of sackcloth was slung across the cabin’s entrance. As they approached, the craft appeared deserted. Then, a hand threw up the flap and a dark, tousled head popped out.

“Adam!” Honor cried, and covered her mouth too late. One or two of the men on the wharf glanced over. But Honor noticed nothing but Thornleigh’s bright-eyed son beaming out at her.

Legge pushed the two inside the cabin, then followed. As Honor and Adam embraced, Legge flopped down on a heap of nets and peered out through a puncture in the reed walls. “Now, we wait,” he growled. It was clearly the part of the plan he loathed and mistrusted.

The other two could not speak fast enough. Clasping hands, they breathlessly compared stories.

“And so,” Adam finished, “my aunt Joan and her husband have had the care of my father’s business all the while he searched for you.”

“Searching abroad all these months!”

“We feared you were dead.”

“I thought it safer for you to think so. I was so sure that
he
was dead.”

“He wrote us that he’d followed your trail to Amsterdam, then lost it. He kept searching southward. He even went to France. In a hill-town there he had to fight a highwayman who almost stole his horse.”

“And all the while I was safe in Freiburg.”

“The name of Erasmus never crossed our minds.”

“Of course not. Why should it? An old scholar I had never even met.”

“Finally,” Adam said, “Father found friends of the people who had taken you to Münster, and he said he knew then that you must be inside that place, a prisoner. And then, just weeks ago, he wrote us again from Münster. The Prince-Bishop’s army had routed the city, and all the inhabitants were killed. My father wrote us he was coming home.”

Honor felt a pang for the poor Deurvorsts. Then her eyes darted to Legge. He was still peering out between the reed mats. Where was Thornleigh?

Legge got up. Adam took the cue. His young face settled instantly into that of a man of action. He pulled his hands from Honor’s. “Pardon me, madam,” he said, “I must see to the charts.”

She gazed at the boy, now a sturdy young lad, and for his sake she forced down her fears. There was time yet, she told herself, for Thornleigh to reach the barge.

Adam busied himself with the charts. Legge prowled the small cabin, his fighting hand twitching near his sword. The nearby bells of Blackfriars and St. Paul’s clanged in angry discord.

“That’s it,” Legge growled. “I’m sorry, my lady, but we must be gone if any of us is to see another day.”

“No!” she begged. “We cannot leave him. Another quarter hour, please!”

Legge set his jaw, uttered a low oath, then paced again. The quarter hour passed.

Outside, there came the thudding of horse’s hooves.

“Richard!” Honor’s hands flew to her mouth to muffle the cry of happiness. But when she caught the gleam of Legge’s drawn sword and the dagger that quivered in Adam’s hand she realized that it was not Thornleigh they expected.

The hooves halted. Footsteps, solid and hurried, thudded in their place. The three in the cabin watched the swaying sackcloth flap. No one dared to breathe.

The flap was wrenched up.

“Sam!”

Honor embraced him. A young man ducked in after Jinner. His forehead was gashed, bright with blood. “You helped his brother to Antwerp, my lady,” Jinner said quickly by way of introduction. “He’s off to join him, if you’ll agree.”

She thanked them both profusely. And then they all sat down to wait.

Finally, Legge’s nervousness burst out. “No more, my lady. It’s well past time. The first place they’ll check is the wharves. We must be off!”

She looked from face to face. Each one stared back at her, waiting for her to give the word. They were brave men who had already proved their courage in her rescue, and she knew that they would wait longer, wait an hour even, if she begged it. But she also saw in each man’s eyes an ache to be gone, a craving to be out of harm’s reach. She looked at Adam, so gallantly steadfast, so bravely ready to carry out his father’s wishes. One of those wishes, she knew, would be to have his son safe. How could she forsake such a duty? Accepting it, her shoulders sagged. She nodded to Legge.

“Cast off!” he cried, springing past her. “Man the oars!” The other three dashed out behind him. Slowly, Honor followed.

She crouched on deck, afraid of being seen yet unable to tear her eyes from the wharf. She searched the moving forms for Thornleigh’s. But he was not there.

The water was calm and the barge slipped out into the river traffic, leaving Paul’s wharf behind. They passed the Steelyard Wharf. London Bridge loomed dead ahead. Once through the turbulence under its arches they would have smooth going to Gravesend. And at Gravesend, Adam had said, the
Speedwell
waited at anchor. Honor watched Paul’s wharf dwindle in the distance. She felt suddenly cold. She lifted the flap to go back into the cabin. The faint sound of splashing made her glance over her shoulder.

The flap fell from her hand. In the water, between the barge and the Steelyard Wharf, someone was swimming toward them.

“Stop!” she cried to the rowers.

Legge and Jinner shipped their oars. “Good Christ, he’s made it!” Jinner croaked. He clambered to the side.

Honor was already leaning out, stretching her hands out to the flailing arms blurred behind spray.

They pulled Thornleigh aboard and he flopped onto the deck. He was naked to the waist, his devil’s costume abandoned, and he sat with his head between his drawn-up knees, sputtering and fighting for air. Red and black lines of scarlet paint and charcoal ran down the tendons of his neck. He flung his head up, and water drops flew from his hair. He turned his face to Honor. She gasped. A sodden leather patch covered his left eye.

She threw an arm under him and with her help he struggled to his feet, his chest still heaving for air. They stood for one charmed moment face-to-face.

She was the first to speak. “You take too many risks, my love.”

He threw his head back with a laugh. “And you,” he said, taking her face in his hands and gazing at her, “you take my breath away.”

“You have a daughter,” she said softly. And when she saw tears spring into the one eye that, all alone, beamed as blue as the summer sky, she fell against him and they kissed with all the hunger of four hundred days and nights of longing.

“Bridge ahead!” Jinner shouted. Thornleigh and the other men leaped to the oars to manage the sudden swell of the river. Compressed between the stone arches, the angry water frothed and roared.

Honor and Adam held tight to the gunwales as the barge shuddered through the rapids. Above, at the entrance to the bridge, a grisly array of heads pinned on pikes leered down at them. Sunlight glanced off the head of Sir Thomas More. Its eyes were wide and staring, but blind in death. As he was blind to so much in life, Honor thought. Now, blind for all eternity.

The barge passed safely under the arch. The river calmed. Thornleigh left the other two men to row, and came back and slipped his arm around Honor.

She smiled up at him and wiped a smear of charcoal from his cheek. “My husband, the Devil.” She shook her head in amazement. “But how could you know it would work?”

He grinned. “People believe what they want to believe.”

She hugged him, then looked back at More’s head atop the bridge. Adam followed her gaze. “That man must have been a terrible traitor,” he said with a shiver.

“Only to himself,” she murmured. A thought struck. “Once we’re safe across the Channel, Adam, there’s a book I’ll buy for you. It’s called
Utopia
. I want you to have it.” She searched the boy’s face for a fragment of her past, a moment long ago when a stranger had placed in her hands a book she could not read.

She looked up again and watched the head become a small, featureless blot against the sunny sky.
“Utopia,”
she said. “As long as it speaks to the living, its author will never die. There lies Sir Thomas More’s immortality.”

Historical facts are the core of historical fiction. In writing about people who actually lived, I have taken care, when setting a scene, not to deviate from the historical record. King Henry and Queen Catherine, Anne Boleyn, Cardinals Wolsey and Campeggio, Cromwell, Holbein, Erasmus, and the fascinatingly complex Sir Thomas More—even “King” Jan of Münster and his several wives—all are placed, whenever possible, in the actual locations of the events they participated in, and at the actual times. (The London apprentices did riot on May Day, 1517, when Thomas More was Undersheriff; Queen Catherine did beg Henry on her knees at the Blackfriars trial; More did wear a hair shirt and indulge in self-flagellation; and Anabaptists in Münster did institute mass baptisms, mass executions, and polygamy.) While the words and thoughts of the historical figures in the novel are my speculation, their actions are authentic.