“In private, please,” Kate stammered, feeling her skin suddenly growing warm and flushed and not unaware of the puzzled expression on Swinford’s face. John Frith seemed too tired to notice as he slumped onto a bench in front of the fire.
“But of course,” the lady said, moving closer to Kate, who stood slightly apart.
Kate whispered something in her ear. Lady Walsh’s face registered only a moment’s surprise. “Please, gentlemen, help yourself to the food whilst we wait out the storm. Lord Walsh will give you instructions about the evening’s activities. Young Master Gough and I shall return shortly.” She smiled warmly at Kate as she motioned for her to follow.
Neither of them noticed that John Frith’s head had slumped forward into unconsciousness.
“Trim the mainsail,” the captain shouted as he spotted Sand Point. There was a scurrying of legs up the mainmast as the Siren’s Song slid silently into Bristol Channel toward the jutting promontory, its large, square sail suddenly slack-jawed.
They were early. Too much daylight left to see the signal beacons at Worleburg Hill, and still light enough the see the ship’s name painted on the starboard side. He ordered the lines draped carelessly over the side to obscure the freshly gilded letters of the Siren’s Song.
“Drop anchor here,” he shouted. The boat rocked gently, its black mizzenmast sail now out of sight too, less than a league from the shallow waters of the inlet. Just another idled fishing boat, plying the rich waters off the channel and not the fastest ship in English waters—that’s what the king’s men would see. But truth be told, the little thirty-ton caravel with its crew of ten and four black sails could outrun anything that gave chase except a Spanish galleon—and maybe that, too, if the pursuer was too heavily gunned. She was beautiful and she was fast, and she belonged to him.
And that last was why Tom Lasser loved her.
But the lone cannon hidden behind the innocent-looking porthole and speed aside, it made him nervous to be sitting here like some great black swan in plain sight of any curious customs agent. What was more, in the western sky behind them great gray clouds were humping in a line that ran around the bend toward the mainland. His left wrist, broken some years back in a skirmish that he’d been unable to run from, still ached when a storm threatened. It was better than any shaman.
It ached now.
An early September gale at her back could trap the Siren’s Song in the cove, maybe even drive her landward, stranding her in shallow waters permanently. He thought about breaking out the small boats and off-loading his cargo early, stashing it in the cove, and any other time he would have.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. The mute woman who kept his cabin appeared on board. The first mate eyed her disapprovingly, and, mumbling under his breath, began to fiddle with the anchor rope. Lasser looked at him with a frown and the mumbling stopped. More than once he’d had to set the crew aright about the presence of a woman on board, especially a woman who’d had her tongue cut out by the good men of her village. But Captain Lasser paid his crewmen well enough to overlook their superstitions, and each soul on board had signed or marked with an X his agreement to her presence.
The storm must have drawn her on deck. For the most part, she stayed out of sight in the quarters below. He didn’t know about the scrying; maybe she did see visions in still water, but he knew that she was half starved and whimpering when he found her bleeding and moaning in a ditch. The men had used her for their pleasure before they punished her for trafficking with the devil, apparently unafraid that if she was really a witch, she might shrivel their balls to peas.
He had taken her back to his rooms and fed her and sent for a surgeon to cauterize her bleeding stump of a tongue, only to find a few weeks later, when she was healed and he tried to send her away, that she would not go. They must have made a sight on the docks, with him shooing her away as one would try to shoo a stray cat and her just standing there, taking a step every time he took a step, as though they were attached at the ankles. In the end he had waved his arms in the air and walked away.
She had followed him onto the ship.
At first he’d ignored her. But soon when his linen and his quarters were clean, his food actually eatable, he’d come to accept her presence with something like gratitude.
“What do your witch bowls tell you, Endor?” Endor—the name he’d given her, for she was apparently illiterate as well as dumb and could not write her name. “Is it going to storm?”
She pointed to the horizon. A bolt of lightning zigzagged across the sky.
“Right.” The captain laughed. “Looks like a sign to me.”
The first mate spoke up, his mouth twitching nervously. Tom didn’t know whether it was Endor or the storm that made him so nervous. “We could just lash the cargo together and set it afloat. Most of the barrels would wash ashore,” he said.
Tom knew the ship’s manifest said grain and Flanders cloth, and a few spices, but what really lay in the hold was Spanish wine and English Bibles. He’d planned to off-load some of it in one of the little quiet anchorages in Greenwich or before—the North Sea coast had many out-of-the-way creeks where at low water the crew could walk the cargo to shore—but a customs tidewaiter had joined the ship at Gravesend to keep them honest and stayed with them all the way to London. There had been no chance before Bristol Channel. They were supposed to pick up a cargo here as well—linsey-woolsey, woven and exported without tax by the many cottage industries from Gloucestershire. He’d already paid a bribe of thirty pounds at Mother Grindham’s place, Bristol quayside, for the customs agents to be absent when he picked up the cloth. He’d just added it on to the shipping costs—still cheaper for the cottagers than having to pay the king’s export tax.
The waters of the cove settled to a dead calm. The sky had darkened now, as the clouds crept closer, their heavy load turning them bruise-blue. Thirty pounds was little enough to pay to avoid risk of being trapped here. His first mate looked at him anxiously, pointed to the western horizon.
“Say the word, Cap’n.”
Tom shook his head. “No, I think it’ll go around. It’ll be dark enough in another hour. When we see the beacon, we’ll send the boats to shore with the cargo.”
But Tom didn’t think the storm was going around. Thing was, he had more than cargo to take on. He’d promised Henry Monmouth that he’d pick up a passenger, and Monmouth had saved his bacon too many times for Tom to let him down if he could help it. Besides, they did a lot of business together and Captain Lasser enjoyed a reputation that said he could be relied upon to deliver. There were other ships and other masters Monmouth could turn to on a whim. One merchant had already built his own “coaster,” the Dorothy Fulford, boasting he could pay for it in less than a year from his smuggling profits alone. He wouldn’t want Monmouth to take such a notion into his head.
He glanced at the spot on the railing where Endor had been standing, but she had slipped below as quietly as a shadow.
“Tell the men to secure the rigging and get ready to ride out a storm,” he said.
NINE
The King is, in this world, without law; and may at his lust [pleasure] do right or wrong, and shall give account to God alone.
—WILLIAM TYNDALE,
THE OBEDIENCE OF A CHRISTIAN MAN
Your Majesty, your wooing is too much for a simple maid.” Laughing, Anne Boleyn pulled away from the king’s embrace, hoping to tamp down his ardor without inflaming his temper. She was ever mindful of the fine line she walked.
It was a glorious late-summer day at Hampton Court, a day pregnant with possibility and hope. On such a day as this, when tiny birds twittered among the cropped branches of the hedges, Anne almost believed she could be his queen. On such a day as this, when the smell of sunshine and roses scented the air, she almost believed Henry to be an honest man.
A breeze ruffled the edge of the ribbons at her bodice, which the king’s busy fingers had undone. The bright sound of women’s laughter fro
m somewhere in the verdant heart of the maze rode on that same breeze.
Henry seemed not to hear. “Your hair smells of a thousand flowers and your lips are cherry ripe . . . cherry ripe . . . just one taste,” Henry murmured, his breath moist and heavy on her neck. His fingers fumbled once again at her laces. “Your . . . little maids . . . as firm as pomegranates, Katherine’s are so . . . pendulous.”
She pulled away, gently slapping his fingers, kissing them lightly to soften the rejection. How did one refuse a king? She shivered at her own temerity.
“My lord, we should quit the maze and seek other company where I will not be tempted by Your Grace’s charm and ardor.” She relaced her bodice with a less practiced hand than he’d undone it. “The cardinal could come upon us at any moment. Or worse yet, one of Queen Katherine’s spies. Until I am in truth your wife, I shall retain my maidenhead. Anything less would ill become your queen and put in doubt the rightful parentage of your heir.”
Henry pursed his lips into a turgid little pout, reminding her of a spoiled boy whose favorite toy had been taken away. “She is not my queen,” he said. “She was my brother’s queen. I was but a youth when he died and did not know it was a sin to take her to my bed. But it is a sin that might be remedied easily enough. If the Spanish cow were less well connected in the papal courts, the annulment would have been granted long ago.”
And your daughter Mary would be a bastard. How does one annul a child? But Anne held her tongue. The only other solution would be to live as the king’s mistress and that she would not do. So what if her father was only a knight? Some Howard blood ran in her veins, and the king could create a noble with the stroke of a pen. Had he not made Charles Brandon, his childhood friend, Duke of Suffolk? A reform-minded queen would be good for England. Princess Mary had been raised a Catholic, and England had had enough of popery. The king needed a new heir—one who would not be raised a Catholic.
Again the sound of laughter chimed through the hedges. This time it sounded nearer.
“Let us go, then,” Henry grumbled. “With this talk of Katherine, you have spoiled the mood anyway. I assume you will not deny your king your chaste companionship.” He said the word chaste through clenched teeth.
She followed his silk-stockinged, muscular legs through the hedges, struggling to keep up. “You will attend me in the king’s privy chamber—in company as you insist,” he said, widening his stride. “The artist’s drawings for my new Belgian tapestries have arrived. They, at least, should be to my lady’s liking. And it gives me pleasure to parade you before Wolsey. He becomes so apoplectic at the mention of your name that his fat face takes on the aspect of a boiled ham.”
“I have observed that the cardinal loves me not,” Anne said wryly.
Henry stopped abruptly and laughed. Anne allowed herself to breathe. The storm cloud had apparently passed. He remained still, arms akimbo, legs planted slightly apart, in what Anne always thought of as his battlefield stance, until she caught up with him.
“You are a mistress of understatement. It’s not that Wolsey dislikes you. It’s just that you are a constant source of embarrassment to him because he has been unable to serve his sovereign in this great matter. It is really Sir Thomas who would conspire against you, if he dared.”
They had exited the maze and were crossing the orchards beyond which dozens of men were digging large ponds. At the king’s approach, the shovels pumped. Henry paused at the edge of the pond to watch. The afternoon sun cast the shadows of the pear trees and apple trees toward the workers, as though the branches reached out with gnarled hands to grab at them. Henry sat on a bench and patted the spot beside him. “This should be public enough not to compromise your virtue, my lady.”
Anne ignored his sarcasm; her thoughts were still impaled upon his last remark. “I fear, you put me in a dangerous place, Your Majesty. It seems I have incurred the enmity of very powerful men.”
He gave a half snort. “Thomas? Don’t worry about More. He’s too busy burning heretics to worry overmuch about anything else.” He patted her on her knee. “It’s me you have to please, Anne, me alone.”
“I’m afraid Sir Thomas might find me objectionable on all accounts,” she said softly. She hesitated for a moment, wondering, and then decided what good was having the king’s ear, if one did not use it. “I have something to show you,” she said. “Not as grand as your tapestries, but I think it is something you should see.”
“Well, that piques my interest. Some new poem my lady has written, maybe a small jewel, or some silken token of her love?”
Anne blushed. “Nothing of that kind. There will be time enough for such when our . . . circumstances have changed. Nay, it is nothing but a simple, printed pamphlet.”
“A book?” He laughed loudly enough that one of the pond diggers looked his way and then quickly averted his eyes. “My queen will not only be beautiful but erudite. I am a blessed man. Sir Thomas More will not be the only man in England with learned women in his household.”
“I’m afraid it is not a book of which Sir More or the cardinal would approve.” She reached inside the hidden pocket sewn into her skirt and handed him the small booklet. “I’m asking that Your Majesty please review it in private and keep the source to yourself . . . if it pleases Your Highness, of course?”
He looked stern. “It is not some heretical Lutheran work? I caution you—”
“No Lutheran work. But the work of a man not much loved by Master More. It is a book by one called Tyndale. It is called The Obedience of a Christian Man.”
“Where did you acquire such a book, my lady?” he said sternly.
“It came into my hands when I visited the Continent. I brought it into England before the present licensing laws were published. I am surrendering it as the law says—to you.” She dropped him a full curtsy.
“Wisely done. May all your choices be so circumspect. If your enemies found this in your possession, they would make much of it. But you could have burned it.”
“I thought you might wish to read it first.”
“Did you read it?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, I read it.”
“Well? What did you think of it?”
She hesitated. Henry was no friend to Lutherans either. After all, he’d written the refutation against Luther—as much Thomas More’s work as his own, she suspected—that gained him papal favor and the title “Defender of the Faith.” She swallowed hard.
“It argues well, but it has some Lutheran-influenced ideas.”
He smacked the book against his knee as if to punish it. “Then we shall throw it in the fire with the rest.”
“But it also has certain ideas about the right of kings that I think may give voice and weight to the king’s own thinking.”
“The king’s thinking needs no added weight or voice,” he said, frowning.
Anne took a deep breath. “Then you are more in agreement with Master Tyndale than you know. That’s exactly what that book says. It boldly asserts the divine right of kings over all.”
He cocked one eyebrow. “Even the pope?”
“Read it, you will see. The king gives account to God alone.”
He took the book from her hand and studied it for a minute or two, then slid it into a voluminous silken sleeve. “Then I shall read it,” he said.
From a yew tree above them a pair of crows chose that moment to set up a raucous protest. He laughed. “Methinks the black-robed lot doth protest already.” Then, “Let’s go look at my tapestry,” he said, taking her hand.
As they exited the orchards, the digger closest sighed with relief and leaned upon his shovel.
Cardinal Wolsey stood alone in the center of the great hall, regarding its great hammer-beam roof and its brilliant ceiling of blue, and red, and gold. A deep sadness descended on his scarlet-clad shoulders. Hampton Court, the greatest palace in all England—and he was about to give it away. What a fool he’d been to upstage the king, even though God knew he’d taken every
pain to ease whatever jealousy Henry might feel by referring to this personal holding as just another of the king’s many palaces.
“From your palace at Hampton,” he’d signed all his correspondence to Henry while in residence there. But after tonight it would be the king’s in deed and truly. In one last effort to save his head, if not his office, Chancellor Wolsey was signing over to the king his splendid palace on the Thames wherein he had entertained and suborned many a Roman prelate and foreign prince. A generous but empty gesture, he mused. The king could take any palace with one stroke of a pen, but by surrendering it voluntarily, Wolsey thought to avoid both the stroke of the pen and a stroke of another sort.
He ran his hand over the grooves in the wooden panels of the walls with their carvings chiseled to imitate folds of linen drapery. The same paneling was in his private apartments. From the leaded windows of his study he could look out at the gardens and the winding river beyond. This palace had been, for a humble butcher’s son, the culmination of a dream. Now it was all lost: Hampton Palace, the chancellor’s seal . . . and he could not bear to think what else. And for what? A woman—not even a beautiful woman by court standards. It was as though she had bewitched the king, who talked of nothing else but his desire to wed her. He was willing to risk papal displeasure and maybe even the threat of hellfire for what he could find between her legs. The word witchcraft had been bandied about among the queen’s supporters. But Wolsey suspected that whatever dark arts the Boleyn girl practiced had more to do with the gifts of Eve than the devil.
His spies told him she was in the maze today with the king. She might even be seated with him tonight at the king’s board. Henry was flaunting her openly now—while his old queen cried and petitioned her nephew Charles, the Holy Roman Emperor, to stop her husband from setting her aside. They were stalemated, but it was only a matter of time. Wolsey could see it in Henry’s lust-crazed eyes whenever he looked at Anne and in the confident gaze of her dark eyes. If she held out long enough, she would be queen. And Henry would have defied a pope. There was no place for Thomas Wolsey in such a court. But he was not looking forward to going back to York. He had thought to be in Rome by now, sitting in the papal chair, but that dream had fallen apart.
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