“There! It’s happening again. Feel it?” She placed his hand on the place where she felt the fluttering. It stopped abruptly.
“He doesn’t like me.”
“Of course she likes you. You are her father.”
“I didn’t like my father. I thought he was an ogre.”
“But you are not an ogre.”
“Neither was my father.”
“Daughters always like their fathers.”
“How do you know it will be a girl?”
“I don’t,” she said. “Does it matter to you?”
“Only if it matters to you.”
That answer she also found unsatisfying—as if his only interest in the child were secondary.
“Can I get you something to drink? Or more pickled herring?”
She smiled. “No, we are prepared,” and she reached into the pocket of her skirt and brought forth a new apple. “It’s a bit tart, but refreshing.” She held it out to him.
“Of course, Eve, I’ll take a bite of your apple,” he said, then grimaced as he crunched down on the sour apple.
She laughed. “I expect Eve’s were sweeter,” she said, “but mine bear no curse. It seems our child has a taste for sourness. Last week it was sweet. I sucked honey from the comb as wildly as John the Baptist.”
The noonday sun pressed the roses into releasing their fragrance. Kate inhaled, smell that, little one, as she spoke wordlessly to the child in her womb. This was a moment of perfect joy, she thought, if only she could keep it forever. John was unusually quiet as she reached over and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
“Kate, I have something to tell you,” he said. “And I don’t want you to get upset. It won’t be good for the baby.”
The perfect moment was gone as quickly as it came. The apple tasted bitter in her mouth. The roses wilted in the heat.
“There has been another burning,” she said. “No. Don’t tell me. I do not want our child to hear such words.” She could not bear to hear them either. Ten men had been burned since Thomas More was named chancellor. Each telling had made her heart clutch with fear. Each telling had prompted smoke-filled dreams that startled her awake in the dark of the night.
“No. It’s nothing like that! Indeed, it looks as though things may be turning for the better. Parliament has stripped the English clergy of its connection to Rome and placed it under the jurisdiction of the king. The best news is that Thomas More has resigned the chancellorship in protest. Also, the bishops no longer have the power of arrest and interrogation in matters of heresy. That now belongs to Henry.”
“You mean he is both king and pope?”
“Something like that.”
“Well then, that should make him happy. He can grant his own divorce. Though I can’t believe the bishops went along with that. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury?”
“Warham is in very ill health. They say Cranmer is being groomed for the post. He is one of the Boleyn faction—very reform minded.”
“But that is wonderful news! Why should I be upset?”
He reached for her other hand so that he was holding them both. “Since things are improving, Tyndale and I think it might be time for me to make another effort. I’m going back to England. Just a quick trip. I’ll be back well before the birthing. If I can get to the king or Thomas Cranmer or even Cromwell, I’m sure I can convince them to extend this new atmosphere of tolerance to letting the Bible be licensed in England.”
Snatching her hand away, she jumped up from the bench, her precious burden momentarily forgotten in the heat of her anger. “No. I will not hear it! You will not go! Is Thomas More dead? Is that new Bishop of London—Stokesley—that you said was more dangerous than Tunstall, is he dead?”
“No,” he answered quietly. “They are both very much alive. But both are in disfavor. Their influence has been severely curtailed.”
His carefully modulated tone infuriated her, as though he were explaining a concept any simpleton should understand. She turned on him then. “You are a fool, John.”
He looked at her as though he couldn’t believe his usually even-tempered wife had turned into an obstreperous shrew.
“Calm yourself, Kate. It’s not good for the baby.”
“As long as Thomas More draws breath, you and your friends will be hunted down and given no more consideration than a hound gives its prey. There are many in England who cling violently to the old faith. You and everything you represent are anathema to them. Let William go if he thinks it is so necessary.”
“Shh, Kate. Lower your voice. The whole of Antwerp doesn’t need to hear our discourse. Tyndale cannot go. He is a bigger prize than any of us.”
“And you’re expendable, is that it? Does William Tyndale have a wife? Does he have a child?”
The heat in the garden suddenly became unbearable and rose up from the ground in shimmering waves. Kate struggled to get her breath. She felt her knees go weak. John caught her as she fell.
When she came to herself, she lay on the turf bench, and he was on his knees beside her, bathing her brow with a cool rag. She tried to sit up, but her head was still swimming. Mistress Poyntz was there as well. “The baby . . .” Kate murmured, “is the baby—”
“The baby is fine, my dear. You just swooned in the heat.”
John’s face hovered over her. “Everything will be well, Kate. I will not go if you don’t want me to. I promise,” he whispered. But the misery in his face reminded her of the way her brother John had looked when he told her he’d abjured. She knew that in the end, it was not her decision because she could not bear to see that look on his face every day of her life.
THIRTY-TWO
She is of middling stature, with a swarthy complexion, long neck, wide mouth, bosom not much raised, and in fact has nothing but the king’s great appetite, and her eyes which are black and beautiful . . . She lives like a queen and the king accompanies her to mass and everywhere.
—DESCRIPTION OF ANNE BOLEYN
WRITTEN BY THE VENETIAN AMBASSADOR (1532)
It is a noble sacrifice you are making, Kate,” Tyndale said as they watched the boat sail out of the harbor.
John was waving at her from the deck, and she was frantically waving back, trying to keep from crying out to him to come back. No. It was a mistake. All a mistake. She needed him. Their child needed him. She should never have agreed to let him go.
“He would not have gone if you had naysayed it. I am sure of it. You are the joy of his life. Try to be of good heart. He will take no foolish chances and will be back before his child is born.”
He was the only joy in my life, and now he is gone, she thought, as she watched the ship sail out of sight until she could no longer see John’s waving figure, wishing that she had Tyndale’s certainty, wishing she, like Endor, could see the future in water. She stared into the murky green liquid of the harbor, but all she saw among the floating bits of debris was the rippling reflection of a fat woman standing beside an old man. For a moment she was startled, not recognizing the reflected silhouettes.
“I wish John had your gift for disguise,” she said, noticing the slump of Tyndale’s shoulders, the general weariness in his posture, the powdered gray streak in his hair. “You could probably go right up and knock on Thomas More’s door, and he would not know you.” She hoped her words did not betray the resentment she felt in her heart.
“He wouldn’t know me. He has never seen me.”
“Then why does he hate you so?”
“You know the answer to that.” He smiled at her kindly. “It was part of your argument against John’s going. Everything we believe in, our very existence, the way we question the Church’s received wisdom, received from powerful men and not from God—there is only one revelation of God, and it’s not a man sitting on a throne in Rome but a book of ancient Scriptures interpreted by every man as the Spirit of God leads him—that belief is anathema to Thomas More and all those who uphold the ‘whited sepulcher’ that the Roman Ch
urch has become. They cannot suffer that belief to live—or those of us who teach it—” He broke off with a sigh and, putting his arm around her, said, “What you need to hear from me right now is that when we said that someone should make a return trip, I did offer to go. It was John who insisted that he should be the one.”
That did not make Kate feel better. “We’d best get back,” she said. “You to your work and I to . . . my worrying.”
“John told me about the women’s Bible study,” he said. “I think it’s a wonderful thing you’re doing. I understand. But it is not without risk.”
“Don’t let that trouble you,” she said, feeling the words in her mouth dry as wool. “I’ve given it up. For the safety of my child. It’s no longer just me.”
He patted her shoulder in a gesture of comfort. She was not comforted.
She was even less comforted later that night when she was tidying John’s desk, and found stuck within the pages of his Disputation on Purgatory the carefully forged papers that would have established his identity as a Hansa merchant. She prayed fervently that he would notice they were missing before he was called upon to produce them.
So far so good, John Frith thought as he disembarked without challenge on the Essex coast and hailed a small cargo packet to ferry him to Reading. His first mission was to visit the prior at Reading Abbey who over the years had acted as a conduit for funds and information, both of which the Antwerp contingent needed badly right now. The translators had sold their winter coats to pay the printer for the last printing, counting on this trip to replenish both their funds and their wardrobes.
He could get a bath at the abbey and a shave, God willing, he thought as he wiped the sweat from his brow and scratched at his ragged beard. He had purposely let it grow as a disguise against the spies and Channel watchers that dotted the coast. Maybe the prior would tell him that the wind now blew so fair in England that a disguise was rendered unnecessary.
The approach to Reading reminded him of the first time he’d seen Kate. It was in one of these cottages scattered throughout the English towns where the Word was read and the cottagers risked everything to support the reform movement. It had been hot that day too, but she’d been dressed in a man’s heavy cloak and breeches. Yet even then, even thinking she was a man and he being so ill from the ordeal of the fish cellar, he remembered finding her oddly attractive.
They’d laughed about that later, after she’d told him shamefacedly that her brother had abjured and she was determined to take his place smuggling the books. He’d made a joke about it, saying he’d wondered at the time if he was like so many of the monks who sought forbidden alliances to assuage their sexual hunger. Though he hadn’t thought that; he’d been too weak to care, and besides he knew his nature. He’d joked about it only to take away the shame she felt for her brother’s recanting.
He hoped fervently that he would never bring her such shame. But how did a man know if he had what it took to withstand torture and maintain honor—especially when he had a wife and child to consider? That was the same decision her brother had faced, poor man. John suddenly felt a kindred spirit with him. If his travels led him near Gloucestershire he would call on him to see how he fared.
By the time they reached Reading, the better part of the river was in evening shade. He watched idly as the packet pulled up to the dock to let him disembark. A knot of men were quarreling on the dock.
“I’d stay clear of that lot if I was you,” the boatman said.
“I’ll heed that advice, my good waterman,” John said, picking his way among the hogsheads stacked in the middle of the boat. He reached in the small purse tied at his belt and tipped the man with his last coin.
“I’m not the sort to take a man’s last farthing,” the boatman said, eyeing his empty purse. “You’ll be needing that for your supper, I expect.”
“I’ll get supper at the abbey. I have friends there,” he said, pressing the coin into the boatman’s rough hand.
The ruffians on the dock had stopped arguing and started exchanging blows.
“Somebody ought to call the town constable.”
“I think somebody already has,” John said, nodding at the two men who approached the thugs with drawn short swords.
By the time John strode across the jetty, the drunks were already shackled together with their arms bound behind them. They would probably spend the night locked up in the magistrate’s cellar, he thought, for drunken disturbance, no worse for wear in the morning than a bad headache and some angry wives.
“Hey! You there, halt.”
John looked around to see who they were talking to. He was alone on the dock. The boatman had already pulled away. Maybe if he pretended not to hear, just kept walking. They probably wanted him for a witness.
“Halt in the name of the law!”
Sighing, John stopped, put down his small valise and turned to look at them. One of the drunken louts was grinning stupidly. Adversity loves company, he thought.
“Did you wish to speak with me? I only just arrived as you did. I assure you I know nothing of this affair.”
“You look like a stranger. I don’t recollect seeing you in this shire.”
“I’m a friend of the abbey.”
“Well, pardon me for saying so, but you don’t look like a friend of the abbey. The prior’s friends are usually more elegantly turned out.”
“I’ve come a long way. I’m a merchant. A Hansa merchant attached to the London Steelyard.”
This seemed not to impress his inquisitors. “Here, I have papers to prove it.” He pointed to the valise at his feet. “If I may?”
The constable nodded and John reached into the small bag, searching through his soiled linen—he’d brought only the barest essentials so that he could travel easily—even looking inside the pages of his Homer. Nothing. He shook the book of Homer’s poems, but the only thing that fell out was one of Kate’s hair ribands that he used to mark the page.
Then he remembered.
He’d stuck the forged credentials inside his Disputation of Purgatory, thinking he could work on it, then wisely deciding that if he were searched it would be damning evidence. He’d left the credentials behind with the book.
The grinning lout had found his tongue. “If he’s a friend of the prior, I’m a fat whore’s keeper,” he said in a slur of words.
“You are a fat whore’s keeper,” one of the rogues responded with a snigger. “I’ve had your wife.”
“You whoreson, I’ll cut off your cock and feed it to the crows before your very eyes, I’ll—”
“You’ll shut your filthy mouth before I shut it for good,” the constable responded, giving weight to his words with a poke of his sword. Then he nodded at John. “Bring this one in too. The magistrate’s already going to be mad at being pulled from his supper. Might as well give him a vagrant to plump his warrants.”
“If you’ll just send to the abbey—” John said, becoming really alarmed now.
“Do I look like a messenger boy?” the constable grumbled. “Tell it to the magistrate.”
“Yesh, tell it to the magishtrate,” the drunkest of the rogues mocked.
John hoped the magistrate was more reasonable than the constable. This did not augur a good beginning to his travels, he thought as he trudged up the hill with his stomach growling and not a farthing to his name.
“No. I think it should be the crimson. Definitely the crimson if I am to become a fallen woman,” Anne Boleyn said to the trusted servant who had accompanied her to Windsor. The old woman had been with her since childhood. Anne had left Lady Margaret and the simpering Jane Seymour behind at Hampton Court. This was not a night she wanted either of them around.
She handed the green sleeves back to the maid, along with an underskirt of green satin. “Sleeves of crimson velvet to match the velvet kirtle. And an underskirt of scarlet silk, girdled with a rope of twisted gold and crimson, I think.”
I will come to him in shades of red, s
he thought, to heat his blood the more. “And the black heart-shaped coif, studded with rubies. And a single ruby at my throat.”
“A very wise choice. The king will be unable to resist you, my lady. The crimson will bring out your eyes. Shall I dress your hair?”
The old woman’s smile was conspiratorial, and it warmed Anne’s heart on what was to be the most important night of her life. For tonight she was going to be made a peer of the realm, Marquess of Pembroke, with her own lands and rights, not dependent on her father’s less than worthy merchant background or her Howard relations. By using the male form of the title, Henry was bestowing on her an honor never before accorded to a woman in her own right. That could only mean one thing. By giving her the title, he was making her worthy to be his queen. The king had made up his mind at last.
And Anne had made up hers. With the power Parliament had given the king, Cranmer now Archbishop of Canterbury, and Cromwell on her side, everything was in place.
Almost.
If Henry wanted one thing more than he wanted her, he wanted an heir. She needed to be pregnant with his child by Christmas.
“No. I will let my hair fall free this one last time, to remind him I am still a maid.” Technically, at least, she thought. Her maidenhead was still intact, though with Percy she would surely have lost it had not Wolsey interrupted them in the queen’s closet.
“Prepare a bath with scented oils from France. There is a blue vial in my garderobe. It is the king’s favorite.”
Two hours later, when the bathing and dressing was finished and Anne stood in front of her pier glass, she smiled with satisfaction. It was a bold choice. The crimson dress did, indeed, accentuate her eyes, and her hair gleamed darkly against the rich velvet of her sleeves. She might be no blond beauty by court standards, but as she practiced the nuanced glance and flirtatious smile, even beckoning toward the figure in the pier glass as she would later beckon the king to her bed, she felt a sense of power.
“I am ready,” she said. “Summon the footman to take this message to the king,” she said, careful as she sat down at the writing table not to muss her skirts.
The Heretic’s Wife Page 37