Читать книгу The Queen's Lady - Barbara Kyle - Страница 11

Thwack! The arrow pierced the target and set the two shafts already embedded there a-quivering.

“Delta!” Honor shouted, jubilant.

“And after two epsilons,” her guardian nodded. “Not bad. Care to try for an alpha before dinner?”

Honor held up her palm against the July sun and studied the target. Its concentric circles were boldly daubed with red letters of the Greek alphabet. She quickly fitted another arrow into her bow and fixed in her sights the alpha in the bull’s-eye. “Homer, be with me,” she murmured in invocation, and let the arrow fly.

It struck. “Alpha!” she cried in delight.

“Homer,” he assured her, smiling sagely, “is always with us.”

She laughed and eagerly reached for another arrow, but her guardian had already started toward the target to collect the shafts. “That’s enough. Attempts to improve on perfection can only drive us mad,” he called merrily over his shoulder. Halfway there he bent to pick up a stray arrow.

Honor slung her bow over her back and smiled. Her guardian was almost fifty and had never been a sportsman, and it was with a charming awkwardness that he wrestled the arrow from its tangle of low grass, his knee-length brown robe slipping askew on his shoulder. “You can’t fool me,” she called to his back. “You’re just hungry. You smell Lady Alice’s roasting beef.”

His head jerked in a sudden laugh, and he cast his hands upward in a gesture of surrender and declared, “Another bull’s-eye!”

She grinned. It was sweet to make Sir Thomas More laugh.

A young male servant popped over the brow of the low hill between the archery lawn and the house. “Pardon, Sir Thomas,” he called as he began down towards them. “A visitor to see you.”

More frowned. Honor could see he had forgotten the appointment. “The Vicar of Croydon, sir,” she reminded him. “He wrote you. You agreed to see him today.”

The lapse, she knew, was understandable; Sir Thomas managed a staggering workload. Over the last ten years he had held posts as Undertreasurer of the Exchequer, Speaker of the House of Commons and, most prestigiously, for three years, King Henry’s sole private secretary—all while sitting on the King’s Council too. For this outstanding service the King had knighted him. Sir Thomas had also found time to build up a literary reputation, one that even the King deferred to. Honor had been in awe when, soon after she had come into Sir Thomas’s custody, the royal barge had docked at Chelsea, and from a window she had watched the tall, golden-haired King strolling the grounds with his arm around Sir Thomas’s shoulder. He had come to give Sir Thomas the honor of writing an important public response to a tract by the wild German heretic, Luther. Besides his continuing duties on the Royal Council, Sir Thomas also heard the complaints of poor suitors in the Court of Requests and was a respected judge in Chancellor Wolsey’s court of Star Chamber. But Honor knew that Sir Thomas relished all this labor, lightened as it was by his friendship with both King Henry and Queen Catherine. He often shared a private supper before the palace fires with one or both of them.

She also knew, however, that he cherished his rare, quiet days at Chelsea. And today he had only been home for a matter of hours.

The servant reached Sir Thomas and handed him a letter fastened, Honor noticed, with the Queen’s seal. “This came for you as well, sir.”

More broke the seal and quickly scanned the note. Honor saw his brow crease, and his eyes flick to her face for a moment. Thoughtfully, he refolded the paper and put it inside his robe. “One thing at a time,” he said. He looked at the servant and sighed with resignation. “Show the Vicar into the solar, Matthew. We’re coming directly.”

Matthew started to go, then called back as an afterthought, “Oh, and Lady Alice says dinner will be late. Maud has burned the beef.”

More groaned. Honor laughed and took his arm to go in.

The Vicar pivoted in the oriel window as Honor and More entered. He was a stooped but wiry man in his sixties, floured with dust from the road. He bowed and wrung his hands with such suppressed excitement that it seemed to Honor as though he were winding up some inner spring. More strode forward to greet him and the Vicar pressed his eyes shut as if blinded by the sun.

“I’ll tell my pupils of this for years to come, Sir Thomas,” he wheezed, blinking. “The day I spoke with the author of Utopia.”

More smiled, the gracious host, and offered a chair. The Vicar, never taking his eyes from More, groped for the seat.

More indicated Honor. “My ward, Mistress Larke, will join us if you have no objection, sir.”

Honor bobbed a curtsy, then sat quietly at a far table to continue transcribing a list of petitioners to the Court of Requests.

“My secretary is ill with a flux,” More went on, moving behind his cluttered desk. “Mistress Larke is assisting me in his absence.” He laughed. “We two do our best, but still the claims of debts and the indictments and petitions seem to breed overnight like mushrooms.”

The Vicar did not smile. He was regarding Honor with an expression of discomfort. “Most unusual,” he muttered.

“My ward, sir, like my daughters, is an able scholar,” More assured him. “They have always pursued their studies on an equal footing with my son.”

The Vicar looked astonished.

More smiled. “Good learning, I’m sure you agree, leads to piety.”

“Doubtless, Sir Thomas. But, in the case of women…” His face hinted at grave doubt indeed.

“The maxim is especially true in the case of women,” More replied in good humor. Honor smiled over her writing; she knew this subject was one of his favorites. “For as women are by nature impure,” he went on, “so learning cleanses them and sets them on the road to pious living.”

The Vicar fell stonily silent, apparently unconvinced by this revolutionary manifesto.

“Honor Larke is an excellent case in point,” More continued enthusiastically. “She came into this house several years ago, illiterate, ill-used, and with no more understanding of God’s workings in this world or His glories in the next than has that poor, dumb creature there.” He nodded at a pet monkey curled in sleep on the window ledge. “Indeed far less, I should say, for the monkey lives contented with its natural cycle of feeding and sleep and does not go in fear of my boot at its ribs. Whereas this girl, after five years under a brutal lord, arrived at my door unsure if there was any contentment at all for the wretched in a wicked world.”

Honor blushed under the scrutiny of the two men and bent lower over her writing.

“Yet with education, sir,” More summed up proudly, “this same girl now goes blithely to her bed, ears ringing with the conjugation of Latin verbs and the voice of Plato, and happy in the assurance that her life and mind, enriched by duty and service to God, will not be despised by Him at the final hour. And when she wakes up to our cook’s burnt toast she can cut it into a right-angle triangle knowing that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides.” He smiled at Honor. “Even her Greek improves.”

“Greek!” the Vicar exclaimed. Honor understood his shock. Many in the theology-dominated educational institutions like Oxford considered Greek studies to be dangerously close to paganism.

The Vicar pulled himself together. “Well, girl, you were lucky Sir Thomas found you,” he grunted. “I hope you are grateful.”

“He did not find me, sir. I found him.”

She had the satisfaction of seeing the Vicar’s eyes widen at her impertinent remark.

More strangled a laugh, then hastened to say with sober concern, “Pardon, sir, the fault is mine if the child speaks out of turn. I fear that, through contact with me, she has absorbed an annoying tendency of the lawyer’s mind—the sometimes overscrupulous passion to have every fact correct.” He cleared his throat and tugged at his robe with judgelike decorum, but finally was unable to hide his amusement. “Truth is, though, she’s right. She came knocking at my gate because, as she made quite clear to me, I was the only lawyer whose name she knew!” He laughed.

The Vicar frowned.

It was obvious that Honor’s presence would be an irritant to the meeting.

“Child,” More said gravely, “wait for me in the New Building. I have some business for you there.”

He turned his head to her and flashed a conspiratorial wink, and she rose and passed through the room with a controlled smile that she was sure even the Vicar could interpret as one of filial obedience.

In the dappled sunshine of the orchard she sang to herself under the fragrant vault of pear-tree boughs, then crossed the lawn that separated the large house and its gardens from the small New Building. Heat cradled the drowsing estate. The only sounds that drifted on the still air were the buzzing of bees and the faint tolling of the bell from the nearby parish church. Down at the foot of the rolling lawns the ribbon of the River Thames snapped stars of sunlight off its silver surface.

Reaching the New Building she stepped under the small porch gable, lifted the latch, and let herself in. She loved this place, for it reflected the quintessential Thomas More. It contained only three rooms: his library, a gallery for meditation, and a small, austere chapel. It was his habit to come here with his lantern at three in the morning for several hours of study and prayer before the household and the work-a-day world awoke.

She let the door swing shut and stood for a moment breathing in the cool, wood-paneled peace of the library. The furnishings were spartan. In front of the single window stood an oak desk and a plain, hard-backed chair. There was a small hearth. Cocooning the room, the walls were lined with bookshelves crammed with books.

Whenever she stood here, surrounded by books, memories tumbled back of the foreigner’s strange gift on that May Day night ten years before—the little volume she and Ralph had opened together under the kitchen lantern to find the speedwell winking back at them. She had never seen the book again. At her abduction, Tyrell had turned her father’s townhouse into a tenement, and all its contents had been bundled up and sold for quick cash. Where, she often wondered, had the foreigner’s book gone? She had never forgotten its haunting, proud little flower, nor the unsettling serenity of the man’s dying smile. And the more education she acquired, thanks to Sir Thomas’s liberal instruction, the more her curiosity grew to know what had been written in that book. But, though she was always on the lookout for a copy of it, she feared that after so many years the search was hopeless.

She stepped up to More’s desk. With eyes closed, she ran her finger reverentially over its beeswaxed surface. “Gratias,” she whispered, and touched her finger to her heart. It was a private ritual she had performed over a hundred times, though she was careful never to let Sir Thomas see her do it. He would have been dismayed—would have called her prayer blasphemous. And so it was, she knew, for it was not to God she gave her thanks, but to Sir Thomas himself.

She walked slowly alongside a bookshelf and bumped the knuckle of her finger lovingly over the spines. This was Sir Thomas’s private world, and in it she felt close to him. So close that she blushed to remember how, when she was younger, she would sometimes let her mind wander into forbidden tracks. She used to imagine herself beside him, as his wife. She had sensed as soon as she came into the family that there was no bond of love between Sir Thomas and the blunt-faced Lady Alice who was, after all, seven years older than him; his four grown children were the issue of his first marriage. Lady Alice seemed to Honor to be more housekeeper than wife. What if, she used to ask herself, Lady Alice were to die, as Sir Thomas’s first wife had? It was not uncommon for gentlemen to marry their wards, and she could bring to her husband a sizable fortune in her father’s scattered estates.

She gazed out the window, shaking her head in embarrassment at the recollection of such juvenile fantasies. The world looked quite different to her now. For one thing those estates, she had learned, had been in sad condition when she became Sir Thomas’s ward. Tyrell had ravaged the land. He had sold acres of timber to a smelting interest that had razed the forests. He had stripped the mines of their treasure, then issued fraudulent—and worthless—mining licenses. Using violence and threats, he had extorted crippling rents from most of the tenant farmers, and thrown many others off their holdings to make room for destructive herds of sheep. Sir Thomas, as the administrator of her property now, was attempting, with her father’s stewards, to repair the damage.

He had explained all this to her, and a great deal more. When, as a child, she had been married to Hugh Tyrell, she had only dimly understood her legal situation, though at twelve she had realized that if the marriage were consummated her property would go out of her hands. Much later, Sir Thomas had explained to her the nub of it.

An unmarried woman did not own property, though she could become the channel through which her father’s property passed to her husband. Given this situation, Sir Thomas pointed out, abduction of heiresses was not an uncommon occurrence. There was even legislation, “Against the Taking Away of Women,” but it was difficult to enforce, he said, and the attraction of an heiress’s lands seized through an enforced marriage often seemed worth the risk to an unscrupulous man like Tyrell.

But Father Bastwick, too, Sir Thomas told her, had taken a huge risk in masterminding her abduction. He and Tyrell had cheated the King out of revenue in his Court of Wards, one of the most lucrative royal ministries. All orphans with significant property became, by feudal prerogative, wards of the King, who then sold the wardships. Gentlemen had to pay handsomely for the custody of wealthy wards, male and female. Indeed, since a guardian was entitled to pocket all the rents and revenues of the ward’s estates until the young person’s marriage, the bidding often was fiercely competitive.

But Bastwick had wielded forgery and fraud to help Tyrell snatch Honor’s wardship and pay nothing for it. As Tyrell’s payment, Bastwick had been well on his way to an archdeacon’s post when Honor escaped with Ralph to London, found Sir Thomas, and brought her abductors to trial in Cardinal Wolsey’s Court of Star Chamber.

Overnight Honor’s world had changed. Wolsey awarded the custody of her and her property to More. Sir Guy Tyrell was sent to the Fleet prison. Bastwick, though immune from civil justice because of his clerical status, was nevertheless sent to a cell in the Bishop’s prison for a period, his dreams of advancement in the Church shattered.

Honor had rejoiced that day in court, seeing Bastwick humbled. And yet, the image of his face at the trial still had the power to make her shiver. She did not think she would ever forget Bastwick’s look of cold fury when More delivered his damning oration against him.

“Pity the Church,” More had said under the court’s star-spangled ceiling as he pointed to Bastwick. “Longing only to cure men’s souls, she sometimes suffers disease herself in corrupt priests such as this.”

Honor had caught the glint of pure hatred in Bastwick’s black, hooded eyes—hatred for Sir Thomas and, especially, hatred for her.

The verdict was handed down, and Sir Thomas went victoriously to the bar to settle the custody. But as the clerks and officials rose and began to mill about, Honor saw Bastwick moving towards her. She could barely swallow, so parched was her throat, but she held her ground. Bastwick stopped in front of her. His body was completely still, his emotion controlled, but the muscles around his eyes twitched, betraying him. “You will live to regret this day,” he said. The threat was no more than a whisper, but its malice seared her ears.

But Bastwick was wrong. She regretted nothing. Certainly not the news a year later that Tyrell had died in prison. Nor the fact that Bastwick had vanished from her life. Ever since the day of judgment she had been happy.

No, she thought, that was not quite true. One regret did nag—she had lost track of Ralph. He had thought it best, since the death of Hugh Tyrell at his hands, to stay clear of the law. So he had not come to the trial, had waited at an inn instead, and rejoiced with her when she ran to him to report the wonderful news. And then, as soon as she was securely settled with Sir Thomas, Ralph had left London. Honor had no doubt that he would merrily thrive in any place he found himself, but she often wondered where he was living and what he was doing, and who was laughing now at his jests and silly stories. She missed him. Dear Ralph, she thought, I owe him so much. How he suffered, that night at the pillory, for my sake…

There was laughter outside the New Building. Honor looked out the window. Sir Thomas was striding across the lawn toward her, laughing. She hurried to the door and stepped outside to meet him.

“Oh, child, I would you had stayed,” he said. Reaching her, he placed a hand on her shoulder to steady himself. “Or, rather, it’s well you did not, for I could not have kept a serious face if anyone had been there to hear.”

“Why? What is it, sir?” she asked, smiling in anticipation.

“Oh, I would not have missed this Vicar’s visit for the world! He wanted…” He broke off, shaken by another wave of laughter. Recovering, he set his face into a mask of zeal that parodied his earnest guest. “The Vicar came to ascertain from me the exact location of Utopia. He dreams of making a voyage there.”

“What?” she cried. Utopia was More’s popular book. Written in Latin, it was a lively account of his meeting with a traveler named Raphael who had made contact with an extraordinary island commonwealth in the New World. The book described the Utopians as a stable, highly organized and, though heathen, morally upright people who lived lives of monastic rigor. But it was a work of pure imagination; its title meant “no place” in Greek. “And does he really believe such an island exists?” she asked.

“Absolutely. His dream is to make a missionary expedition there! To bring to the ignorant Utopians the blessed civilization of the Church.” He wiped tears of mirth from his eyes. “Ah, a most delicious fool.”

“Well, sir, what he has taken from you in the ill-timing of his visit he has repaid in entertainment.”

“True, true. Oh, child, I would not belittle a man for ignorance, for we are all born ignorant. But this was a self-blinkered, pompous fool. A dangerous one, too, for he has the teaching of boys under him.”

He hooked his arm in hers and together they strolled toward a copse of oak trees that shaded the fish pond. By the time they reached the pond he was patting his pockets, searching for something. “By the way,” he said, “I forgot, earlier. I have a gift for you.” His hands stopped against his chest in midsearch, and he added gently, “I’m sorry I missed your birthday last week, child.”

She blushed, pleased that he remembered. “No matter, sir. Though,” she teased, “I call your excuse of the King’s summoning you to Greenwich a feeble one.”

“Ha! Perhaps I should have insisted he let me go. We were back in Westminster by then. ‘I’m sorry, your Grace, the letters to the French King needs must wait and I must ride to Chelsea, for Honor Larke is seventeen years old today.’ The King is a fond father himself. He might have given me Godspeed and one of his finest stallions to carry me.”

“Or he might have had your head,” she cried. “No, I’d rather see you past the date, and whole.” They laughed together.

“We didn’t get much work done that night in any case,” More said, rummaging again inside his robe, “what with the music and the bonfires.”

Honor could well imagine it. Her birthday was the twenty-fourth of June, Midsummer Eve, a holiday when bonfires were lighted in the streets and doors festooned with garlands, and people danced and sang through the city with drums and horns and pipes. “When I was little, in my father’s house,” she said with a soft smile, “my manservant, Ralph, told me that people danced around their fires at midsummer just to celebrate my birthday. And truly, sir, he assured me with such long-faced foolery that for many childish years I believed him.”

“Charming,” More chuckled. “Ah!” He had found the object of his search. From a deep pocket he withdrew it and held it out to her. It was a necklace, a delicately wrought string of coral and pearls, simple and exquisite.

“Oh, sir!” she stammered, delighted.

More looked baffled. “I fear you misunderstand. That is not my gift. No, no, that is only an ornament, a bauble, a toy for a child.” Solemnly, he took her hand in his. “Put it away,” he said quietly. She obeyed.

“My gift to you is something much more precious. More lasting. A reward for the great progress you have made. It’s incredible, really, when you came here you couldn’t even read, and now your Latin is as good as mine. Well,” he winked, “almost. And you have excelled in mathematics, music, philosophy, even astronomy. In fact, your tutor tells me you are so far advanced in that science that you can point out not only the polar star and the dog star, but are also able—and this requires the skill of an absolute master—to distinguish the sun from the moon.”

She laughed.

“Yes,” he said, “your mind now rests on a rock solid foundation. And your heart,” he smiled, “remains as soft as God could wish. Truly, child, you could not please me more.”

Honor gazed at him, feeling too much happiness to hold inside. She threw her arms around his neck, her cheek against his. His hands went to her back and he pressed her to him. Then, suddenly, he pulled away. His face was flushed. Abruptly, he stepped toward the pond. For a moment he kept his back to her. She waited, fearing her impetuous show of affection had angered him.

He turned around to her briskly, and she was relieved to see that he was smiling again. “And now, Honor Larke,” he declared, “my gift to you. It is…a name. A name in Greek, as befits a scholar of this little academy. ‘Kale kai sophe.’ It means, ‘Fair and wise.’ What think you of it?”

Tears of happiness brimmed in her eyes. “A wonderful gift.”

“And yours alone.” Solemnity darkened his smile. “Remember, child, a thousand girls have necklaces.”

A shout startled them. “Sir Thomas! Come quick!”

Across the grass Matthew stood where the lawn sloped down to the river. He was waving his arms. “Murder!” he cried.

More and Honor shared a horrified glance. They raced towards the breathless Matthew who pointed down at the reeds by the river’s edge. On the bank, a man was bending over a girl, a maid in More’s household. She was kneeling and looking up at the man. He held a knife at her throat.

“Stop!” More cried. “Villain!”

The man spun around in surprise. His knife glinted in the sun.

More scrambled down the slope, his robe flapping, his feet awkwardly thumping and slipping on the lush grass. He was running too fast and he lost his footing and skidded, then thudded onto his rear end. Following, Honor sailed past him, even more awkward in her long skirts. She windmilled down the hill out of control and crashed into the arms of the would-be assassin who dropped his knife under the force of the impact. The two stumbled back together as if locked in some heathen dance step. They finally came to a halt at the lip of the riverbank.

There was a moment of stunned silence. The maid wobbled to her feet and shyly looked at More still sitting at the base of the hillside. “Pardon, Your Worship,” she stuttered, her hands patting at the cap that covered her ears. “A knot in my cap string. This gentleman offered to cut it for me.”

More stared, uncomprehending. The girl cupped her hand beside her mouth and whispered loudly, “A foreigner, Your Worship. He speaks no English.”

The man stepped around Honor and came shakily toward More, his hands uplifted like an apprehended criminal. He was young and of a stocky peasant build, with a moon face and wide, slate blue eyes. In serviceable Latin he made a nervous explanation. “I am an artist, sir. I was moved to sketch this young woman. I suggested she remove her cap. It was only the strings I wanted to cut.”

“An artist?” More asked feebly.

“Hans Holbein is my name. A citizen of Basle. I come to you on the recommendation of our mutual friend, Erasmus.”

A smile cracked across More’s face. He slapped his green-stained hands together and bits of grass flew from his fingertips. “Master Holbein, on my backside I welcome you to England. Care for some burned roast beef?”

In the great hall, More leaned back pensively in his chair at the head of the main table. What he was hearing amused him, yet troubled him at the same time: his twenty-year-old daughter, Cecily, was reading aloud a letter Erasmus had sent with the young artist. It was clear to More that his extended family felt none of his own ambiguity. He could see they were all entertained by Erasmus’s news. They sat beside him and at two long lower tables: his wife, his father, his son with his fiancée, his three daughters and their husbands, a clutch of grandchildren, assorted music masters, tutors and clerks. The kitchen maids had cleared away the first courses—the capon with apricots, the salvaged roast beef, the braised leeks—and everyone was listening to Erasmus’s letter, their spoons clacking over bowls of excellent strawberry pudding from Lady Alice’s kitchen. The renowned Dutch scholar had written to More:

“The arts are freezing here, so I have encouraged Holbein to come to you in England to pick up a few coins.”

There was a murmur of approval and all heads turned to the red-faced artist. All except Alice, as usual, More noted; everyone except her and the very young children understood the Latin letter. His wife had rejected his every attempt to teach her to read, even in English. Cecily continued reading:

“As the firestorm rages here over Luther, I am condemned by both sides for my refusal to join either. I am told that a follower of Luther in Constance, a fellow who was once my student, has hung my portrait near the door merely to spit at it as often as he passes. My lot has become like St. Cassianus who was stabbed to death by his pupils with pencils.”

Many at the table laughed. Sir Thomas More did not. How, he wondered, could Erasmus make jests about a man as dangerous as Luther? Disturbed, he fingered the rim of his goblet of watered wine as Cecily read on. The letter ranged over several more items of news in Basle. Then:

“Please convey my thanks to young Mistress Larke for the enjoyment her thoughtful essay on St. Augustine’s City of God has given me. Or better yet, tell her that I will write my appreciation to her personally as soon as time permits.”

More glanced at Honor with a proud smile, as did the rest of the family. Following the young artist, it was Honor’s turn to blush.

Servants cleared the dishes and Honor and Cecily began a lute duet. Watching Honor, More remembered the letter inside his robe. He beckoned Matthew over and told him to ask Mistress Larke to come out to his library when she was finished playing. He excused himself from the table.

He passed through the sultry orchard, deep in thought. Though he walked slowly, the heat was oppressive, and sweat prickled his skin by the time he reached the New Building. The sweat made the coarse fibers of the hair shirt he always wore under his linen scratch even more uncomfortably than usual. Good, he thought with a chuckle at himself: a perfect, penitential complement to that second helping of beef.

The library was pleasantly cool. He laid the Queen’s note on his desk and shifted a letter that was already lying there so that the two papers were lined up side by side. He regarded them for a moment, then turned to the window and looked out at the woods beyond the pond. What to do? To which request should he agree?

Which was best for the girl?

A smile crept to his lips as he recalled his laughter with her over the foolish Vicar. But the smile quickly faded. How the world has changed, he thought, since I wrote Utopia. When it was published no one had even heard of Martin Luther. Yet the very next year Luther nailed his wretched theses to the door of Wittenburg Church, and nothing had been the same since. That same year, Sulieman the Turk marshaled his dreadful army, too. And now? The pestilence of Luther’s malice infects all Europe. The Turk has smashed the Hungarian army and casts his hungry eye westward on us. And in Rome…

Dear God, Rome…

Everywhere, Christendom quakes and crumbles. Can the old bonds hold? Everything has degenerated. Even here. The King and Queen, who used to live together in such handfast companionship and never stooped to wrangle…

He did not let himself finish the thought. It did no good to stray down that path. Besides, he reassured himself, that particular crisis will be resolved once the King comes to his senses over the Boleyn girl, which must be soon.

He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He was tired, needed rest. It seemed he had not slept soundly since the news had reached England two weeks before of the catastrophe in Rome. So appalling. The civilized world had been stunned by it.

In May the Holy Roman Emperor Charles’s troops, warring with France for years over pieces of the Italian peninsula, had fought their way to Rome. They were a mixed brew of Spanish, Italian, and German mercenaries. Unpaid for months and hungry for spoils, they mutinied. They burst the city walls and brought Rome to its knees with a reign of terror never before seen in Christendom. A third of the population was massacred. Cardinals were prodded through the streets and butchered. Nuns, auctioned to soldiers, were raped on their altars. The aisles of the Vatican were used as stables, and the precious manuscripts of its libraries shredded for horses’ bedding. Pope Clement, with the jewels of his papal tiara sewn into the hem of his gown, fled the Vatican along a corridor connecting it to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. While soldiers looted the Church’s palaces, and stacked corpses rotted by the river, the Pope huddled in the Castel under siege. Finally, with Rome in ruins, the Emperor allowed the Pope to escape north of the city to Orvieto.

More shook his head, still hardly able to believe the enormity of the disaster.

There was a soft knock at the door. He turned to see his ward step into the room. He shook off his gloomy thoughts. “I have received a rather surprising communication from the Queen,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage.

Honor stood waiting, and More saw by the slight wrinkling of her forehead that she could not imagine how the Queen’s message could concern her.

He sat down at his desk. “It seems you have made a most favorable impression on Her Grace. Tell me, child, what passed between you and the Queen at Bridewell?”

He was referring to the glittering public ceremony some time before to which all the nobility of England had been summoned. The King had there enlarged his six-year-old illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, with the titles of Duke of Richmond and Somerset. It had been an extraordinary, symbolic declaration by the King, acknowledging, in the absence of a legitimate son, Fitzroy’s right to some rank as a claimant to the throne. Sir Thomas, attending with all of his family, had read out the boy’s new patents of nobility.

“Her Grace was ill with a headache, sir,” Honor answered. “The day was very hot. She became so indisposed she had to leave the hall. I’m sure you remember, for everyone was most concerned.”

More remembered it well. The Queen had stood stoically by her husband’s side while he made a mistress’s bastard eligible to inherit the throne. Not only was it an insult to the Queen, it also threw the claim of their daughter, the Princess Mary, into jeopardy. Watching his ward’s open-faced reply, More wondered how much Honor had really seen that day. Had she understood anything of the humiliation the good Queen must have been suffering?

“Her Grace asked me to accompany her to her private chamber,” Honor continued. “Perhaps it was only because I was near at hand. Though I did notice that Mistress Boleyn was nearer.”

Did she really know nothing of the Boleyn girl’s infamy? More was touched by the innocence of the statement. Gratified, too, for it was further vindication of his judgment to settle his family in Chelsea: city gossip was just far enough removed.

“In any case,” Honor went on, “Her Grace asked only me. My heart ached to see her in such distress, and I offered to read to her. I read from Louis Vives and it seemed to calm her.” Quickly, she added, as though to deny too much credit, “The chamber was cool and dark, sir, both good medicine, I do not doubt. Her Grace was wondrous kind to me.”

More could not suppress a jolt of pride. Most of the Queen’s ladies were vain, ignorant flirts. In fine weather they rode out hunting and hawking with their courtier admirers, and when it rained they turned to cards, cat’s cradle, and gossip. Though they were all from prominent families, they had been sent to court only to make profitable marriages, and few of them were even literate, let alone able to soothe the nerves of this accomplished Queen by reading to her in learned Latin.

“Child,” he said suddenly, “what say you to matrimony?”

Her mouth fell open. “Leave here? Leave you?” she blurted. A blush swept over her face and she looked down.

More was surprised. Had she really not thought about marriage yet? A girl so lovely, so aware? Perhaps not; the stricken look on her face told him that her heart was here, at Chelsea. He realized that it pleased him inordinately. The realization was unsettling.

With her head still lowered, Honor asked quietly, “Is it that fat doctor?”

More had to cover a smile with his hand. At Lent, a doctor friend of his father’s, a portly widower, had come to court the girl. More had been passing the open solar door and overheard them talking. She was deftly cooling the doctor’s ardor in a most original fashion—by grilling him rather mercilessly on the works of St. Jerome and St. Thomas Aquinas. The poor man fled without even staying to supper.

“No,” More answered, amused. “The doctor has retreated from the field. But another hopeful has stepped into the breach.” He waited for some response, but she stood stubbornly silent. “Are you not even curious to know who it is?”

“No,” she said morosely. “But if my marriage is your desire, sir, my pleasure is naturally to obey you.”

He frowned. “This is no answer, child. I will not sell you like a chattel to the highest bidder. But here,” he said, poking at the letter on the desk beside the Queen’s message, “here is Sir John Bremelcum writing to open a dialogue with me about you and young Geoffrey. You got along well with the lad when he was here at Christmas, despite his coughs and chills. Good family. And he’s doing brilliantly at Cambridge. He’ll make a first-rate lawyer one day.”

He watched her for a promising sign, but she offered none.

Indeed, her obstinate expression suggested the opposite. More sighed heavily. He rose from his chair, turned his back to her, and gazed out the window. “I would like to have seen you safely and honorably married. The world is becoming a dangerous place.” He added quietly, “Sometimes, I fear we may be standing on the brink of the very end.” He could hear his own uneasiness hover in the stillness of the book-lined sanctuary.

He turned abruptly, suddenly all business. “Her Grace has need of new ladies-in-waiting. Two places have fallen vacant. She has asked that you fill one of them.”

Honor’s eyes grew large.

More frowned and added hastily, “I scruple to send a tender mind to court. Much vice breeds there. The Queen herself is the most virtuous of women—else nothing could make me even consider it—still, there is much vice. Had I given my word on you already to Sir John Bremelcum I would not hesitate to send my regrets to the Queen, for she well knows my promise is a thing I would not break, not for a world of court gold. Yet it is not so. There has been no such agreement with Sir John…”

His voice trailed. He had held off asking her inclination outright, hoping that, given a moment to consider, she might yet decline of her own free will. But he could put it off no longer. “What say you, child, to the Queen’s request?”

She was staring at him, hope glowing on her face. “Are you giving me leave to choose for myself, sir?”

He hesitated, then answered, “Of course.”

Suddenly, all her reticence was swept away by a huge, bright smile. More felt a pang of loss. How instantly the siren song of the court had severed her heartstrings from Chelsea—from him! And yet, her eyes were shining so clearly, so openly devoid of guile, that for a moment he could actually believe that she was making the right choice.

His eyes trailed down to the low-cut bodice of her gown. He noticed, for the first time, the coral and pearls of his gift glistening against the skin above her full, lifted breasts. And she had changed her dress since the morning, had she not? Yes, she had put on a silk one of a gleaming coral color. She must have picked it out especially, for he saw that it perfectly matched the necklace. Saw, too, that it gave fire to her lustrous dark hair and eyes.

He forced his eyes away. Blindly, he grabbed a sheaf of papers as if he meant to begin work. But it was no good. He turned back to her. “Oh, tread carefully, child,” he said. “At court, many pretty necklaces are dangled before the eyes of the unwary.”