“I did not!”
John protested so loudly to the tutor that his words reached Margaret’s room. Rose stiffened against the wall as Margaret spun to face the door.
“You counted wrong! You gave me less than the girls!”
Margaret laughed, a nervous laugh.
Rose shook her head. Whatever mischief Margaret dreamed of, it was in Germany and she was stealing for it.
Rose wondered if she dared confront Margaret. She was probably taken with a soldier she had seen in town who was traveling in Germany on some errand for Sir Thomas or the king. Or a past tutor who had moved on when his commission for More was finished. But what harm could come from a boy so far away, Rose thought, when Sir Thomas locked his daughters away behind three guard houses and acres of protected gardens. Even the squirrels only got in by More’s grace.
The thought took her breath for a moment. More knew the world as she did. He would never know the role she had played, but he knew what was beyond his home. He had built these walls, not to keep his children in, but to keep this world out. And he had brought her in, brought her here, to save her from it. What puzzled Rose was that he required nothing for it. Even her body, freely offered, was rejected.
“Rose.”
His voice startled her and she cried out, stupidly, she thought.
Margaret was at her door in a flash and the pair stared at her, father and daughter.
Rose touched the cross on her neck and gathered her wits. “I was coming to check on Margaret. She was unwell during morning lessons.”
Margaret glared at her, then softened her face to smile at her father. Rose noted how she shifted a bit, as if something were poking her in her bodice.
“I did leave morning lessons, Father, forgive me. I must have spent too long in the garden yesterday and the sun was too much. Summer is coming early, I should think. The falcons were restless to fly. It would have been good if you had joined us.”
Sir Thomas spoke to Rose but did not look at her. He had not looked at her since that night she had burned the books. She saw that there was a stain creeping above his doublet vest, turning his linen undershirt a dark red colour. She could say nothing.
“Well, Margaret, take your rest this afternoon but join us for evensong prayers. And you, Rose, take care not to go creeping down these halls unannounced, even if your intentions are pure.”
Rose walked heavily back to the servants’ wing, her shoulders feeling like two great hands were pressing down, driving the sorrows into her frame and expelling lighter breaths.
She thought of her son … his sweet soft skin, the pursed lips that moved as he slept. God was right to have taken him from her. All she could do was pray that her offering had bought his freedom from purgatory. That when she died, she would have no fear to meet him. She had wanted salvation for her son. She had purchased it with what she had, but she had never known how far above her Christ hung. She could not reach Him. All of her troubles—were they not of her own making? Here she was in this place of second chances, of unending devotion, where prayers and matins were said morning and night and she was given children to love, and she was making a wretched mess of it. Death was stealing in, she was sure. It had found her here, too, and was stealing in on the pages of a book, leering at her in her dreams.
She passed his office and drew herself up, taking a deep breath. She could be worthy of salvation herself if only she tried. She could wash the past off and please Sir Thomas. She would stop death from claiming anyone else she loved.
As she passed, she heard a man’s voice peppering Sir Thomas with spicy words and invective.
“I swear this is it! Our moment! The printer’s men were dead drunk, drowning in their barrels, they were, and our wolf spared no expense to keep them in their cups all night until at last one talked. Hutchins has completed the diabolical work, and it’s on its way to our shores! We’ve had only scraps of it until now. When the whole thing is here, chaos will destroy the city!”
Rose heard Sir Thomas make a gruff noise. The man rose to his own defense.
“But I ain’t lying! This time we’ve got him! The printers are working night and day to set up the presses, and Hutchins hovers over them like a fussy nursemaid pecking at a new babe. And this time, it’s not just one chapter. It’s the whole thing!”
Rose knew she shouldn’t stop at this door and listen.
“How will it come into the country?” Sir Thomas asked.
“Aye, the usual way. New book, same tricks. They’ll smuggle it in at the ports, each bundle marked with a blue cloth tied around it. Thomas … we can bring him in before the damage is done.”
“All right. Give the order to raid the printer’s shop. Confiscate everything. I doubt your men can read, so I don’t want them choosing what it is that I want. Confiscate the presses, the dyes, the letters, the papers, and above all else, get me Hutchins.”
“Alive?”
There was a silence, and the hairs on Rose’s neck began to rise.
“Aye, alive. He should die in full view of the English people. A fire consuming the flesh is a mercy to these types, purging them of their sin before they meet the Almighty, who will show them so much less grace. And perchance his miserable screaming death will save a good citizen from ruin. The commonwealth does not know the pestilence this man brings. It will be my honour to save them from it.”
A hand on Rose’s arm made her jump, but another shot out and clasped itself on her mouth. Rose spun and saw Margaret. Margaret released her, motioning for silence, and fled to the garden.
“What is it they said?” Margaret demanded.
“What were you doing in the hall?” Rose asked.
“Oh, pox! What is it they said?”
The air was chilly, a late-morning rain still playing on the extravagantly green leaves, and Rose frowned. The wind blew raindrops into her face.
“If I tell you, can we go inside?” Rose replied.
Margaret nodded and leaned in. Seeing her father exit the house with a man dressed in the red livery of a law clerk, she wrapped her arm through Rose’s and pretended to stroll about. Neither man paid them notice though the rain grew heavier.
“There is to be a raid on a printer’s press, and Hutchins is going to be captured alive, to be brought here for burning.”
Margaret chewed her lips. “All right” was all she said as she released Rose’s arm and turned to run back to the house.
Rose caught her. “What’s going on?”
“Go back to your quarters, Rose. This does not concern you. It is simply his work, and you should see to yours.”
Rose pressed in close to her, looking down with a stern grimace. “You are my work. Something is going on which I suspect your father would be displeased by. You’re young and stupid. There is nothing beyond those walls that you want, Margaret.”
Margaret looked pale. “Whatever you think you know, Rose, keep it to yourself, I beg you. My father could be ruined.”
“What on earth are you up to that could ruin him?”
Margaret wouldn’t answer. She turned her attention to her shoes, wiggling her toes and watching them in earnest.
“All right,” Rose finished. “I’ll not say a word on one condition.”
Margaret looked at her.
“Move me to your bedroom. I’ll sleep on the trundle.”
Margaret started to protest, but Rose waved her off. “Servants know how to give orders too. I am decided in this. You need to be watched. And Margaret, I have mastered my letters. I want to read everything you touch: every book, every letter.”
Margaret went limp, her mouth opening as she pointed beyond Rose. “It’s the queen!”
I shook my hands out. “I agreed to take down one story, not two. What are you trying to do, kill me?”
“There is only one story,” he said.
The joke was lost on him.
“Why Anne Boleyn?” I asked. “Everyone and their brother has written an Anne Boleyn story. You
might be a great angel, but you’d starve as a writer.”
He paid no mind. “There are angels in England. The air in London is thick with them in this age. It is they who move the women into place, who move about positioning the players so that His will may be done.”
I frowned. “Thank you for giving me my computer back.”
“Yours?” he asked.
I blushed.
“I forgot how easily you forget what is stolen.”
My face went pale; the fear and dread made my head swim. I didn’t want to live to see tomorrow.
“You are afraid?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Do not be afraid for the women in our stories, though the pageantry is about to turn bloody and wild. Angels with drawn swords will shepherd them across this stage.”
I had no idea what he meant. But I knew he couldn’t read my mind, which surprised me. I called him fat in my head.
“Who was William Hutchins?” he asked me, in a tone that said he did not expect an answer. “What is the rock they break themselves upon?”
I shook my head.
Chapter Ten
May had by now faded and was being daily persuaded to give way to summer. The sun stretched its rays further and stronger, like a thousand lances determined to strike a strong blow and leave a red mark. The sun was the only challenge to his glory that Henry could not conquer, Anne thought with a wry smile.
He caught her smile and laughed. “How do I amuse you, mistress?”
“I am not your mistress! Nor your wife!” Anne yelled, being careful to keep the reins in hand. This horse was much different than the courser she had in France. She did not care for his churlish temper.
“For a good Christian, you have little faith!”
Henry motioned to his privy guard to hand him a pike, which the boy did with great trouble, being similarly mounted just beside Henry. Henry took the long weapon and dealt Anne’s horse a glancing blow on the rump. The animal ran with great spirit, and Anne cursed this king who was determined to spur her from comfort.
She pulled tightly on the reins, careful not to unseat herself, with her thick bodice and train making any movement difficult. At least Catherine and her court were not on this procession to see her humiliation. Henry spoke out loud as if intimacies had passed between them. Anne hated the taint it bore her, the dirty feeling in her spirit that anyone would think she was unfaithful to Lord Percy or to her Christian duty. Yet what could she say? Henry was master of the realm, and every knee bowed in reverence, making him wholly incapable of understanding anyone else.
“Au premier, L’ Pleazaunce!” she heard him call behind her, and as her horse steadied and slowed, taking a turn in the road, she beheld it: Greenwich Castle, “the pleasant manor,” as Henry called it. Indeed, it was different than his castle at Windsor. Windsor was a grand lady that impressed every visitor with the weight of her history, like a grandmother pouring an old, heavy necklace into the palm of a young girl.
Greenwich was much freer. There were many small buildings, but their charm was not their construction, for they each had small angled eaves and only a few rose above them with spires. But there was an endless army of trees, decked in green and glittering with birds, whose songs filled the air as the royal party entered, her train being lifted by a gentle breeze as she dismounted. Her servants jumped from their horses to assist her, lest the king order them lashed, but she was faster than they were and was off her mount and walking about before they even reached her.
Anne was immediately surrounded by great, tall magical yews and thick, full, long-suffering beeches. Peace lived here; she knew it.
Henry had dismounted and joined her. His face beamed with great pride and appetite. Anne sensed he was hungry after this ride. She hoped he would restrain himself to merely his appetite for victuals. She hadn’t the energy to stay awake through the night and keep watch over her door to prevent his entry yet again.
“The palace sits on the River Thames,” he said, motioning beyond the cluster of red brick-and-plaster buildings. “When the tide turns every seven hours or so, you can catch a barge to any other estate.”
Wolsey was not far behind them. “Yes, Henry was born here … his mother’s most perfect consolation after a hard and difficult labor.”
“Yes.” Henry nodded, but to Anne, not Wolsey. “It is the home of many revelries. I am a king of the people, am I not? All comers are welcome here for jousts, if they do not mind a sore stripe and broken lance!”
Why was everything directed at her? Anne grumbled inwardly. Did she want these prizes? He went to great trouble to present her with these affections, but they were unwholesome. Any move she made only encouraged. To protest gave him license to overcome her disdain. Heaven forbid she praise him, for there’d be no end to his great leapings and posturings.
She had found no way yet to dissuade him in his attentions, to allow her to return to Percy. She reached in her pocket and patted her prayer beads. They were there, as always. She had rubbed them through her fingers so often these last weeks that she feared one day she would reach into her pocket and they would crumble beneath her touch. No prayer beads were meant to withstand this much use, she was sure. When she was alone, she sank to her knees and said her prayers aloud, and when she was attended, she kept the beads in her pocket and said them silently. Once she had fallen asleep in her bed, saying her prayers, and was awakened when the beads hit the floor. She had sat upright in bed and saw a sudden fluttering of the curtains drawn closed around her bed.
“Leave us!” Henry bellowed, and the attendants fled back to their mounts.
“Wolsey, you as well,” Henry said. Wolsey bowed and fell back.
Henry grasped her hand and tried to lean against a trunk, but Anne’s head began to ache. She thought it was the strong sunlight so she moved deeper in the shadows, the woods that surrounded the palace grounds. She hoped Henry would notice her discomfort and not take this retreat into shadow as a sign of encouragement.
The earth was so soft under her feet and, unsteady after a hard ride, she leaned into his grasp … then wished she hadn’t. Henry slipped his arm around her side, dropping her hand, glad to have reason to touch more of her. The birds still sang, and there were so many varieties here that their trilling overlapped and wove together a song unique to this place.
“Everyone in the court observes the order I set,” Henry said. “How many dishes they may eat, and when, and where they may sit, where they may stand, and what clothes they may wear, what they may say and when.”
Anne continued her walk. It was misery. She wanted a still bed and a dark room.
“Only here do I know what it is to be a subject. How small I am against this king.” Perhaps he meant it to affect righteousness, but he sounded depressed, as if he would rule this world too if he could.
Anne bit her lip and kept walking.
“Anne,” he said, pulling against her, stopping her in the path.
She turned to look at him, and his face was that of a boy, lit with desire for some great prize. She noticed her stomach had turned sour and didn’t know if her head or her sovereign was to blame.
“Anne, I am your servant too.” He pulled a velvet drawstring from the pocket of his cloak and reached for her hand. She held it there stupidly, confused why this monarch would abase himself before her, when her sober judgment of him was so plainly spoken between them. But men had lost their lives for scorning his charity. She would at least not make their mistake.
He loosened the sack and dropped a fat green emerald ring into his palm before lifting it to set it on her ring finger on the right hand. It was a square-cut emerald, as big as a walnut. It weighed her hand down.
“Henry, I cannot accept this.” She took hold of the ring to pull it off. “This gift belongs to your wife, not me.”
His shoulders fell and he looked away from her. Shaking his head, he walked off a few paces. “Is there no one at this court who believes in me?” he muttered.
“Anne, you have read the papers I delivered?”
“Of course,” she lied. These were endless technical papers drawn up by lawyers attesting that his marriage to Catherine was invalid.
“There can be no greater danger than a monarch ruling in dishonour. When I die, civil war would break out, a hundred different nobles claiming the throne for themselves. And who would die, Anne? Is it not the poorest, who send their sons into service when the grain gets low?”
“You have a daughter from Catherine to rule England when you’re gone,” Anne reminded him.
“What woman could rule England?” Henry bellowed.
“What does Queen Catherine say to the papers?”
He shrugged, coming back to her and taking her hands. “She will not read the papers, but she knows my intention. She will woo me back, or turn everyone against me.”
Anne tried to pull her hands out from his but he drew her closer yet. She was crushed against his chest, his arms wrapping around her waist, with her looking up at him, the sunlight burnishing his red hair and making his eyes glisten like embers.
“I will not be won. Only, do not abandon me, Anne. Swear it. Swear allegiance to your king.”
“Do not say that, my lord,” she whispered.
He crushed her tighter. “Swear allegiance to your king!”
“I swear my allegiance,” she said under her breath, thinking the pressure would cause her to black out.
She could smell his robes, anointed with cinnamon oil and spices, as the heavy gold and jeweled chain around his shoulders crushed into her skin. The shining hurt her eyes, and the world spun. She let him take more of her weight.
“Wolsey, More, the men of the Star Chamber, they would choose tranquility with her over my conscience,” he said. “I am suffering, but do you see me complaining in the streets? No. As a man, I do not matter. I do not exist. It is as king that I must act, and I must do what is right.”
“As must I,” she said, finally pushing him away. “I cannot lie with you. I cannot receive your gifts. You must not try to persuade me again. Let me return to the court and marry Lord Percy.”
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