This Scepter'd Isle

by Mercedes Lackey

  There was a small ivory table painted with a long blue lake surrounded by mountains. Sandalwood chairs inlaid with ivory, added their scent to that of the roses, keeping it from being overpoweringly sweet. Eirianell seated herself in the deepest, most shadowed, part of the arbor, gathering her long train around her feet. Her silk gown's pastel colors flowed and blended with each movement of her body to which the gown clung, and the embroidery seemed to move and change on her trailing sleeves.

  "There have been ill portents since last we spoke Lord Denoriel," the eldest of the teachers began. "It finally occurred to Rhonwen and myself that having Aleneil with us when we tried to FarSee Logres was totally disruptive. She knows—or thinks she knows—what is happening. She is too much involved with the people. Her 'knowledge' and hopes and fears were all tangled with our Vision. So we did not summon her . . . and we learned."

  "I am very sorry," Aleneil whispered.

  Eirianell stretched a long arm and delicate hand and touched Aleneil's cheek. "Child, how could you know if we did not? The fault is ours, mine and Rhonwen's and Morwen's. And Rhonwen and I excluded Morwen also. She is much taken with the ways of the mortals, even if she has not been living with them."

  "If Harry is in danger, I will bring him Underhill—" Denoriel began.

  "No! He has a role to play and to remove him will condemn us all." She saw the mulish, rebellious expression on Denoriel's face and sighed. "The danger is not immediate. It will not touch him until he is a man, so you will have time to consider."

  "Denoriel," Aleneil murmured. "Remember how angry you were when the charge of FitzRoy was first laid on you? Now listen before you leap to conclusions."

  "Let me tell you the worst first," Eirianell said. "We have seen that the fires will come. There is no avoiding them, but if the red-haired babe is born and is in the succession for the throne, that period of torture will be short. If there is no successor, worse will befall England, not only a search for heretics but the full Inquisition."

  "Then what we are doing is useless?" Aleneil asked, faintly.

  "By no means," her teacher said decisively. "The boy must be protected into his manhood for in some way that is not clear, his life stands between the red-haired child and destruction. And the child must be born legitimately and recognized as King Henry's get, or it will not come to the throne and the priests of the Inquisition will whip the mortals into a frenzy that will destroy Elfhame Logres. It will be as dead and empty as Alhambra and Eldorado."

  "If my life can protect Harry's, I will lay it down," Denoriel swore.

  "Only do not throw it away. Think before you act," Eirianell cautioned. "Fortunately I have some practical suggestions. Aleneil, you must keep Mistress Boleyn out of the king's bed."

  "She has shown no signs of yielding to Henry's importunities," his sister replied—but there was a hint, just a hint, of doubt.

  "Not yet, but now that the easy path to her body has been blocked, the king will try to buy her. He will make her father a double earl, her brother a viscount and give her material gifts. When there is enough to make life good even if he does abandon her, she might yield—she will in the long run, but not yet. Not for four long years."

  "Four years!" Aleneil exclaimed in tones of despair. "I do not think even Anne's wit and her perfect purity can hold a man for four years."

  "Perhaps not, but there is something else that will fix him to the idea of marriage to her." The FarSeer had a certain look of satisfaction about her. "I told you I had consulted with Ieuan Hywyn. He says there is something at the back of the king's mind that possibly he does not remember is there. He must be reminded. Almost fifteen years ago Henry's attention was drawn to an affair in which an anti-clerical reformer named Richard Hunne was said to have committed suicide when a prisoner."

  Aleneil looked puzzled at the statement. Well, so was Denoriel! "What in the world has this to do with—"

  The teacher chuckled. "So young. So impatient. Listen. Our joy, perhaps our lives depend on this small thing. This Richard Hunne read the Bible, which the clergy forbids; he annoyed the clergy when his child died by refusing to pay the customary fee for the winding-sheet. He held on to the winding sheet and was imprisoned and tortured by the clergy. The common folk and burgesses were angry when Hunne was arrested. When his suicide was announced they became infuriated and refused to believe he had killed himself. They accused the bishop of London of condoning Hunne's murder."

  "Likely enough," Aleneil sighed. "Most will condone anything for a gold coin or two."

  "The bishop was enraged, and Hunne's body was tried for heresy and burned, if you can imagine it. The citizens were even more outraged. They pursued the matter by raising in Parliament the question of whether the murderers in Hunne's prison had been protected by a clerk's right to be tried even for civil offenses by his own clerical tribunal. And this is where the king came into the affair. This is what must be recalled to Henry's mind."

  "What?" Denoriel was totally confused.

  "That at the time of the Hunne affair, King Henry recognized clearly that the Church was the greatest rival to his own domestic power." She nodded when she saw the dawning understanding in both their expressions. "Ieuan Hywyn says that although King Henry enjoys being called Defender of the Faith and fulminating against heresy abroad . . . he will brook no rivals to his absolute power within his own realm. The king summoned all the parties to Blackfriars—"

  "Where the divorce trial was held," Aleneil said.

  "Yes, but in the Hunne case the king won." The FarSeer steepled her fingers together in her lap. "He surrounded himself with his own lay judges, and the Lord Chief Justice, well aware of Henry's resentment of any man of the cloth being able to escape the king's justice, of the feeling of the nobility, the burgesses, even the common folk, ruled that indeed a clerk could be summoned before a lay tribunal for a lay crime. His soul could be judged by the Church, but his body must answer to the courts of the land. Thus, the Chief Justice ruled, the clergy in the case of Richard Hunne had been guilty of praemunire—of asserting papal jurisdiction in England against the king's right—and were guilty of a crime."

  "Oh!" Aleneil exclaimed. "Oh, my!"

  "A bit more than 'oh my,' I think," said Denoriel, who was, at this point far more educated in the ways of mortal politics than he would ever have dreamed of being four years ago. "I do not believe that any king has so asserted himself against the Church since the murder of Thomas a Becket."

  "The entire Church, including Wolsey, went down on their knees and assured Henry they had no intention of doing anything prejudicial to the Crown and Henry replied—I have his exact words from Ieuan Hywyn." Eirianell closed her eyes to recall the memorized statement. "He said, 'The kings of England have never had any superior but God alone. Know well, therefore, that we will ever maintain the right of our crown and of our temporal jurisdiction.' Which means that for cases tried in England, Henry did not recognize the right of the Church, which means the pope, to decide a legal case."

  "But how can we . . . I don't think I even know a priest," Denoriel protested. He had avoided the clergy as much as possible, being fearful that a Talented priest might "smell" his magic.

  "Anne," Aleneil said. "Anne has become very interested in theology, and particularly in any theology that challenges the power of the pope." She cocked her head at Denoriel. "And you can work through George. Hungarians are bound to have a different view of the pope in Rome . . . what with the Moslem heathens breathing down their necks all these years. You might sound puzzled about why the king is so subservient to the pope—and perhaps, why the pope seems unable to respond to the needs of his flock. Not suggesting the king not be subservient, just asking why."

  Eirianell nodded. "Once King Henry gets the bit of the Church interfering with his right to rule between his teeth, the marriage to Anne will be as much of an excuse as it will be a matter of passion. But the girl must stay out of his bed until he has committed himself to her so publicly that he cann
ot back away without looking an ultimate fool."

  Although it was now true that Seleighe and Unseleighe were united in desiring the birth of the red-haired babe, opinions on how to get the child started differed widely. Aurilia nic Morrigan believed it would be easiest to steal the child if it were a bastard. Pasgen and Rhoslyn agreed with her, but Rhoslyn, tied to Queen Catherine and Princess Mary was in no position to approach Anne—and would not even if she could.

  Even Vidal Dhu would not challenge King Oberon's direct prohibition against harming anyone close to the king. So while Anne remained the center of King Henry's attention she was safe from any direct interference. Plans were being made for a very indirect means of influencing Anne in the future, but those were not yet ripe. At present, the best Pasgen could do was to prevent the divorce from taking place and find devices that would convince Anne that it was time to yield her body to the king. Possibly Henry could buy her with favors to her family.

  Pasgen's credit as the magician and fortune teller Fagildo Otstargi had been substantially increased by the accuracy of his predictions of the fall of Cardinal Wolsey. Just as Otstargi had foreseen, on the ninth of October when Cardinal Wolsey went to Westminster Hall, the king's servants who usually preceded him were absent and he found that a bill of indictment had been preferred against him. On the tenth the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk arrived at York House to informed him that the king had dismissed him from his position as chancellor.

  They asked for his seal of office; Wolsey refused and demanded either to be told in person by the king that he was dismissed or to receive an order in the king's own hand demanding his seal of office. Wolsey had counted on Henry's known aversion to writing anything and hoped for a personal interview. It was a forlorn hope, Cromwell told Master Otstargi. On October nineteenth the written demand had arrived and Wolsey had handed over his seal of office to the outwardly concerned but inwardly triumphing dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk.

  Partly by his own wit and partly because he had accepted Pasgen's prediction that Wolsey was ruined, Cromwell had survived the fall of his master; however he had not taken Pasgen's advice to abandon Wolsey. In fact, when the Parliament met in November, he had pleaded Wolsey's case so well in the House of Commons that the bill against him was dropped.

  Cromwell had impressed the whole court by his loyalty and care of Wolsey's affairs while obeying every royal order to the letter. And by the most unlikely avenue of opening himself to attack by one of Henry's courtiers, Cromwell had brought himself to the notice of King Henry. As yet he had no royal appointment, but his influence was growing. Still, Pasgen knew that whatever his outward demeanor, Cromwell hated Anne Boleyn . . . which, as if Pasgen's thought had drawn it forth, Cromwell promptly confirmed.

  "That witch-bitch Boleyn poisoned the king's mind against the cardinal," Cromwell spat. "I heard she warned the king not to allow any meeting with the cardinal lest he fall under Wolsey's spell again."

  "The cardinal has great persuasive powers," Pasgen said mildly.

  "Spell!" Cromwell snarled softly. "She's the one who casts spells. She's got every mark of a witch—that extra finger on her left hand and a black mark like a star on her breast, and—"

  "Master Cromwell," Pasgen said soothingly, "I don't believe Mistress Anne is a witch. I have detected no magic on or about her . . ."

  That, of course, was not true; Pasgen knew of Anne's Talent and knew how she used it unconsciously. He also knew it was totally untrained and unguarded. That was the basis of Aurilia's plan for Anne's destruction and he did not want Cromwell, whom he hoped to guide into considerable power—which would, of course, be directed by his personal magician—to think of Anne as a witch.

  At least—not yet.

  "Besides," Pasgen continued, "it is not safe to . . . to speak ill of her. She . . . the picture is not so clear to me as that of the poor cardinal's downfall—there are still some uncertainties—but I believe unless Mistress Anne Boleyn soon yields her body to the king, she will be queen. Of course, the longer the divorce can be delayed, the more likely she will yield. But some hope must be held out to the king or he might take matters—and by this I mean in terms of the divorce—into his own hands."

  Cromwell hissed between his teeth, then seemed to conquer whatever emotion had gripped him. For a moment his face was blank, then it relaxed into a kind of interested thoughtfulness. "To keep the king hoping but move no further forward toward the divorce . . . ah, yes. There is a cleric, one Dr. Cranmer, a fellow of Jesus College in Cambridge, who mentioned to the king's secretary, Dr. Gardiner, that what should be done was to take the opinions of the divines at the great universities in Europe as to whether or not King Henry's marriage is valid."

  Pasgen smiled. "If I know the habits of divines at universities, it might take a year or more to gather those opinions."

  "Giving Mistress Anne more time to hang herself." Cromwell nodded. "But what if she does not? Are you sure she has not ensorcelled Henry? He seems positively to relish her scolding."

  "It is a novelty," Pasgen pointed out. "Queen Catherine was nearly always agreeable or submissive. Every other leman that the king has desired has flung herself into his bed almost before he could ask—why, even Mistress Anne's own sister! It is forbidden fruit; what he is denied, he must needs want. How long the novelty will last, I cannot read, but nothing in the near future shows change. The best way to be sure the king will rid himself of Mistress Anne is for her to grant his desire." Pasgen bit his lip. "Do you not think it time for the king to try to buy her?"

  "Unless he turns a county over to her," Cromwell said dryly, "I do not see how he can give her more. He has showered her with jewels and money."

  "No, no, I meant something more permanent." He inclined his head toward Cromwell. "Her father has always yearned for the earldom of Ormonde. Why should he not have it? And that would make the son . . . George, isn't it? . . . Viscount Rochford. Mistress Anne is very fond of her brother, I understand. When she has their nobility to support her, perhaps she will care less for being the cast-off mistress of the king. She took fright at her sister's banishment to the country, but with her with father an earl, she would still have a place at court."

  Cromwell shook his head and then laughed. "Yes, she could come to court, but everyone there would snicker behind their hands. Still, her father, Lord Rochford, has only known me as an enemy. If I suggest this expedient to the king . . ."

  By the eighth of December, Boleyn had his earldom . . . earldoms in fact, for he was not only named earl of Ormonde, to which title he had some family claim, but earl of Wiltshire as well. Pasgen laughed to himself when that news came to him. It seemed that Master Cromwell was eager to impress his tame magician. Boleyn's elevation was too quick, too pat, for it to have been a result of Cromwell's urging. Doubtless he had learned of it at court and pretended to be an instigator of the idea to increase Pasgen's belief in his power with the king.

  Well, let the clever little clerk work to impress Pasgen. That would only make Pasgen's work easier.

  However, to Aleneil's relief, Anne's father's and brother's elevation had little influence on her. She was at best a self-centered creature, and, though mildly pleased that she now had a right to be called Lady Anne rather than Mistress Anne, she had her hopes firmly fixed on a far more exalted title. Earl and viscount had no direct advantage for her; she was still precariously balanced on the knife edge of simultaneously tempting and refusing the king.

  Nor did Anne have much support, Aleneil thought. Oh, her mother and father and brother all petted and praised her, but now, having their desires fulfilled and fearing that too much resistance might sour the king's affection and make him turn on those he had only recently given so much, none urged virtue as strongly. There were even hints that perhaps King Henry should be rewarded for what he had done.

  In Anne's opinion, however, Henry had done nothing for her. Her dreams were not fulfilled. Aleneil sighed. She had heard a great deal of Anne's opinion recently, for what
support Anne did have came from Lady Margaret Lee, Thomas Wyatt's sister, and Anne's only female friend. Lady Margaret had come to know Anne before her marriage when Wyatt had been courting her at the same time that Anne had first aroused Henry's interest. Although Lady Margaret's intention had been to warn Anne off her brother, who was already married, she had been fascinated by Anne's wit and grace.

  Admiration was always a path to Anne's regard, which was why her relationships were nearly always with men, but this time it fixed her attention on Lady Margaret. The least clever of the Wyatt family, Margaret was only barely pretty in a pallid way, which also made her acceptable to dark and vivid Anne. And, as Margaret was disposed to continue to admire, to listen and agree with Anne's opinions, she soon became necessary to Anne.

  In like manner, Aleneil, under the guise of Lady Alana FitzWilliam, distant kinswoman of Sir William FitzWilliam, treasurer of Henry's household, became the attached friend and companion of Lady Margaret. Lady Alana was even plainer than her mistress. Although her features were neat and pleasant, she had a sallow complexion and muddy eyes and hair.

  There was simply nothing about Lady Alana that attracted notice; one could look away from her for just a moment and forget her face. However, no one ever forgot Lady Alana's clothing. Her sense of fashion and instinctive knowledge of what color and ornament and what styles would best become her friends soon made her indispensable to both Margaret and Anne. Just at this time, dress was desperately necessary to Anne, who had to balance her somewhat limited purse, her status as the king's acknowledged favorite, and the necessity of looking at one and the same time interesting, magnificent, and never tawdry.

  Thus Aleneil was admitted to an inner, inner circle free of any influence except Anne's will and pleasure. She said little for some time, confining her conversation and advice to the color and fit of Anne's gowns. However, after Cranmer and others left to obtain opinions on the king's marriage at various universities, Aleneil managed to introduce, somewhere between the placement of silver lace and the cloth-of-gold stomacher, a book by William Tyndale—who had been exiled for his translation of the New Testament into English. The book was called The Obedience of the Christian Man and How Christian Rulers Ought to Govern.