Читать книгу The Queen's Lady - Barbara Kyle - Страница 18

“Is the litter for the Cardinal, Master DeVille?” Honor asked, looking down at the activity in the courtyard.

She was standing at a window of the library in the Bishop of London’s palace. Cardinal Campeggio, the Pope’s special envoy, had been a guest here since his arrival in London the week before. Now, his retinue was assembling for a move to quarters across the city. The palace was attached to St. Paul’s, and in the shadow of the cathedral’s spire servants and clerks jostled and shouted among horses, mules, and baggage carts, while at the center of the commotion the Cardinal’s horse litter sat motionless. Honor glanced over her shoulder at the young cleric writing at a book-strewn table. “Is the Cardinal ill?”

“He suffers from gout,” Percy DeVille answered without glancing up from his ledger. He was cataloging a shipment of books just arrived from Florence. DeVille was an assistant to the Bishop’s librarian, and Honor had dealt with him on several occasions, borrowing rare books for the Queen. “It took him weeks to get here from Dover in that litter,” he added.

Honor looked out again and caught a glimpse of the pale, balding man frowning out from the brocaded interior of the curtained couch. “Perhaps delay is his strategy,” she said.

“Strategy?” DeVille asked, finally looking up.

“His best hope is that, given time, the King will change his mind about the divorce. Then the Pope would not have to act at all.”

“Change his mind?” DeVille smirked over the rim of his eyeglasses. “Don’t let affection for the Queen cloud your reason, Mistress Larke.”

Honor turned from the window. “While your own affection bends toward the King?”

“Only toward the Church, mistress,” he murmured, “only toward the Church.” His pen scratched another entry.

Honor glanced at a far corner where a couple of priests, the only other people in the library, stood chatting. She was waiting for them to leave. A week ago she had paid DeVille to check the Bishop’s records for information about Ralph’s death, and she had come this afternoon to hear what he had discovered. But the priests were laughing softly, making no haste to go. She moved to DeVille’s table and restlessly fingered the cover of a large, beautifully embossed volume of Cicero. “And in the King’s ‘great matter,’ which way does the Church’s affection bend?” she asked.

He raised an eyebrow. “Fishing, Mistress Larke?”

“Only for what will rise to the bait, Master DeVille.”

He chuckled. “I’m afraid you’ll take no great catch from these waters. Though I will say this much—under normal circumstances the King’s case would be strong, based as it is on the scriptural injunction in Leviticus.”

“But the Queen’s case is surely stronger,” Honor argued. “The former Pope dispensed with Leviticus in a papal bull that allowed the marriage. It’s there in black and white.”

“But the question is, can a Pope legally dispense with a scriptural injunction?”

“Come now, Master DeVille. Historically Popes have issued hundreds of such dispensations, and all sorts of royal marriages have been contracted on the strength of them. How can a papal dispensation be called illegal?”