by Barbara Kyle
“Gouda?” she stammered.
“There. Now you know some Dutch.”
She almost smiled.
“It’s that simple, mistress. Your boy’ll be jabbering it soon enough, you’ll see. ‘Gouda’ may even be your little girl’s first word.”
Her face clouded again with worry. “They’ll grow up more foreign than English, won’t they?”
“They’ll have two tongues to speak, double the tools most people have for understanding the world. That can’t be an ill thing, now can it?” He smiled gently at her. “There’s good and bad folk abroad, same as everywhere. Same as in England. Same as in your own village, I warrant.”
She nodded, calmed, and this time she managed a small smile.
He watched the pale, anxious, young face. She looked about the same age as Honor, he thought, yet so different, so adrift. In fact, she reminded him a little of Ellen. “I’m sorry about your husband, mistress.”
“He’s with God,” she said simply. After a moment she looked up at him. “You’re very kind, sir. Not at all what Mistress Larke—” She stopped herself, her fingertips at her lips.
Thornleigh grunted, straightening. “Mistress Larke and I sometimes see things differently. Doesn’t mean she’s always right.”
The ship’s bell rang to mark the watch.
“You’d best get below now,” Thornleigh said. “Your children will need you rested, come morning.”
“True enough. Good night, sir,” she said, and turned to go. She was several steps from him when she looked back and whispered shyly. “And thank you.”
He leaned again on the railing and looked out. A game young woman despite her fears, he thought. Not so much like Ellen after all. Ellen. Last time he went home he’d found her curled up in a soiled shift, lost in a stupor of sadness that had lasted for four days, according to his sister, Joan. Four days in which Ellen had not dressed, nor bathed, nor even risen from the bed. When Honor’s message had come asking him to run a second escape voyage, he’d jumped at the chance to get clear of home.
He looked down at the black water, thinking of home. How many times over the past few years had he spurred his horse out of the courtyard of his manor, Great Ashwold, barely getting past the gate before he kicked into a gallop and raced away from the place, away from his wife? His clinging, incomprehensible wife.
And away from his responsibilities. Adam was running wild. Ellen couldn’t control the boy, a rambunctious eight-year-old, curious as a young wolf. The task of seeing that he stayed out of trouble and stuck to his lessons had fallen to Joan. But Joan deserved a house of her own, a family of her own. If Giles Tremont ever got up the courage to ask for her, Thornleigh knew Joan would be keen to accept. He had no right to hold her there, minding his household like a servant. He must let her marry.
But Ellen was utterly incompetent at running a large manor. Thornleigh’s jaw tightened in anger as he thought of her. Yet he knew his anger was better directed at himself. After all, who had rushed into marriage with a seventeen-year-old girl he barely knew? Even Ellen’s father, though eager for the match, had warned him. “She’s a good girl, but somewhat…queer,” the old knight had confided just before the wedding. But Thornleigh had found Ellen comely enough, a quiet little thing, soft of voice. He’d have settled for far less to get hold of the large dowry her grateful father offered. That was very attractive, indeed. The thriving manor of Great Ashwold. With its paying tenants and flocks of sheep, the manor was a bracing step up for a young clothier with his way to make.
But Thornleigh had had no idea then of the bottomless melancholy which, without warning, could drag his new wife into some private hell and chain her there in torment for days. Joan believed, as did the neighbors and the parish priest, that a devil had bored into Ellen’s skull and lived there, sometimes at work, sometimes asleep. After nine years with Ellen, Thornleigh had come to think of it more as a disease. Still, much good his theories did her. A way to help her—that he’d never found.
Except the babies. She loved babies. She had been good with Adam when he was small: tender and watchful. Mothering had made her happy. But then there had been a series of miscarriages, and that little fiasco at the bishop’s court. And the black moods had crept back. Then, little Mary had been born, and…His hands involuntarily balled into fists.
No. There would be no more babies.
He quickly turned from the railing with an urge to escape thoughts of home—the same urge that made him gallop back out through his gates after every brief visit there. He wasn’t proud of it. But, God help him, that’s the way it was.
He cast his eyes up over Speedwell’s furled sails. What had made him proud was that second voyage he’d run for Honor. And the ones that had followed. Real accomplishments. Even the trouble with the harbor officials in Bruges; it could have gone far worse. The fact was, he’d never felt so alive. The work was unpredictable, challenging, exhilarating. And there was Honor.
He looked up at his cabin on the forecastle deck. She was there, inside, behind his door. He felt like a dolt for leaving her in such a stupid way, like some pouting love-starved pup. She’d be gone in the morning. He wouldn’t see her again for at least a month.
A wand of light glowed under the door. He stared at it, and imagined her bare feet moving along the floor. Her hair loosened from its band. Her body loosened from its silken cocoon. He pushed off from the railing, strode to the door, and knocked.
She opened it. Still dressed. What excuse could he muster? “I forgot to lock away the charts,” he said, walking in.
He rolled up the parchments, stashed them into a trunk and locked it. It was done in a moment. Nothing else to keep him here. At the door again, he turned. “I’m sorry. All that shouting when you arrived, I mean.”
She nodded. He saw that weariness had crept back to her face. “I’m sorry too,” she said. “You were right. Sometimes I am…reckless.”
She had never admitted so much. It was a thread of intimacy, of connection, and he wanted to spin it out, wanted to wrap it around them both, wrap her close to him. He could not leave. Not yet. “The ship,” he said. “Why does naming her Speedwell mean so much to you?”
She sighed. She went to the corner of the window. It’s sill was at the height of her chin. He came and stood beside her. She looked out at the blackness, and told him her story. The book. Ralph. Sir Thomas’s perfidy.
By the time she had finished, Thornleigh was leaning his shoulder against the wall, his arms crossed, watching her. “So that’s why you can’t forgive More,” he said.
“Never.” Again, he thought, that chilling voice, hard as an undertaker’s spade. “Well then,” he said, “I’m glad you forgive me.”
“You?” She looked unsettled, surfacing from her trance of spite.
“For my earlier bluster.”
Her mouth began to curve in a smile. Mentally, he ran his thumb over the soft lips. “Nothing to forgive,” she said. “Indeed, I should thank you. For so much, over these past months.”
“Oh? For insulting you in the Cardinal’s garden? For molesting you in Spain, and deserting you there? For constantly opposing your wild schemes?”
Her smiled ripened. “Naturally, for all that,” she said with mock seriousness. “But also,” she added softly, “for saving me from the worst of my…wild schemes.”
“There’s a lot there worth saving,” he said seriously. God knew he meant it.
A puzzled look flitted over her face. “You’re so different from…well, from that time in the Cardinal’s garden.”
“So are you.”
She lowered her eyes for a moment. “In any case,” she said, “it’s you who must forgive me. I was wrong about you. I took you at first for a drunk and a wastrel, but you’re neither.”
He cocked an eyebrow at the backhanded compliment. “Thanks.”
She was studying him. “And Anne Boleyn. I was wrong about her, too, wasn’t I? I mean, about you having a…a friendship with her?
”
“Yes,” he smiled. “Wrong again.”
He caught a glitter in her eyes. Mischievousness? “Not wrong, though,” she added, “in deducing that was exactly what Anne wanted from you.”
He shrugged. “Hard to believe, eh?”
“No,” she said steadily, looking into his eyes. “Not at all.”
The sheer sincerity of it startled him, thrilled him. God, what a woman. He reached out for her. He slipped his arms around her waist, bent his head to kiss her.
She suddenly drew back. “No.” But her palms were warm on his chest. There was no strength in their pressure. Gently, he pulled her to him. “Honor…”
“No, Richard.” This time she tried to jerk free. But he read desire in her eyes. Unmistakable. So he held her. And felt her muscles soften.
“Unless…” she began.
“Unless?” Anything!
“Unless I’m wrong about something else too. Your wife.”
Thornleigh felt the last word like a slap. Ellen. Till death us do part.
They looked hard at one another. From somewhere across the deck, a sailor began to sing a ditty.
“But,” Honor said softly, “I see that I am not wrong.”
“No,” he answered. Disappointment and desire surged in warring waves. “I have a wife. I can’t change that.”
He let her go. She stepped away and turned from him. He felt the thread of intimacy snap. Not looking at him, she said, very low, “I will not be a married man’s dalliance.”
He walked to the door, opened it, and left.
Alone, Honor doused the lantern. She unfastened the lacings of her clothes and let the heavy garments drop to the floor. She pulled back the coverlet of Thornleigh’s bed and crawled naked inside. She lay with eyes open in the dark, aware of the smell of him on the sheets. From across the deck came the sweet-sad music of a sailor’s pipe.
I have a wife, he’d said.
And I? Honor thought. I envy her.
She yielded her weary body to the rocking Speedwell, and to sleep.
She was on deck at dawn. Crewmen jogged by her to their stations, some still rubbing sleep from their eyes. From the forecastle deck Samuel Jinner barked orders. The bosun’s whistle shrilled. Boys, monkey-quick in the rigging, readied to set free the great, cocoon-like shrouds. One unfurled above her, stirring and rippling in the morning breeze as if it, too, was just awakening. The first rays of the sun sparked the red and white banners that snapped above the crow’s nest, and suddenly the whole ship basked in soft morning sunlight. Her oiled oak timbers glowed. The gay designs of stripes, chevrons and stars on the outside of her hull flashed off the water in bright ripples of red, green, white and gold. Honor took it all in, along with a swallow of sweet, salt air. The Speedwell was indeed a beauty!
On the sterncastle deck Thornleigh stood under the gold wash of the sky calling commands, preparing his ship to sail. Honor took a deep breath and came up beside him.
Thornleigh was shouting angrily to Jinner. “Who’s bowsprit lookout?”
“Rawlings,” Jinner shouted back.
“He’s half asleep there! Tell him to sit up smart or I’ll have him lashed.”
“Aye, sir!” Jinner said, on the run.
Thornleigh looked overhead, mentally checking lanyards that tendrilled the masts as he said to Honor, “Thought you’d be ashore by now.”
“I’m just going.”
He glanced at her face. “Don’t fret. I’ll get them all safe over.”
“No, it’s not that. I have a favor to ask.”
“Well?” He turned away to watch a crewman securing a sheet.
“You see, there’s a rather desperate case. A chandler named Rivers.”
“Master Wade!” Thornleigh called. “Send up the carpenter to see about these parrels. Two are cracked.”
“Aye, sir!”
Thornleigh looked back at her. “Yes?”
“And, well, I’ll need to run another mission before you get back.”
Thornleigh was watching the quartermaster roll a barrel past them. “Stonor,” Thornleigh growled, “I hope for your sake this grog’s better than the swill we had last crossing.” He moved to a ledge to pick up a chart.
Honor followed him. “So,” she said, as boldly as she could, “can you spare the Vixen?”
He turned to her and let out a snort of incredulity. “You want all my ships?”
“Not quite. I’ve no need for the poor old Dorothy Beale.”
“Not yet,” he scoffed. He looked at her hard. “On credit again, I suppose? Crew’s wages and all?”
She returned his look steadily, and nodded.
“And,” he added softly, “with collateral security I apparently cannot seize.”
The reined-in regret in his voice forced her to look away. She was afraid that if she gazed too long into his eyes, she would be lost. She said coldly, “This must remain a business arrangement.”
“I see. Well, in a business arrangement it’s customary for both parties to get something they want.”
His sharpness stung her. And irritated her. A man’s life was at stake and all Thornleigh could think of was his own hurt pride. “Look,” she said, “you won’t have to deal with me for much longer. Cromwell assures me the King will soon get the divorce, and when Mistress Boleyn is Queen this persecution of the reformers will stop. But until then, I need access to two ships.”
“And to my capital.”
“Richard, if our work founders, men will die. You know that. Already there are too many we can’t reach.”
“Some of them don’t want to be reached. Some are lunatics.”
“And some,” she shot back, “have been reduced to such pitiful husks by the Chancellor they can no longer react like men!”
“It always comes down to the Chancellor for you, doesn’t it? The man doesn’t act alone, you know. He’s not the Devil incarnate.”
“Close enough.”
“Honor, you can’t save the whole world.”
“I can save enough to make a difference.”
He watched her, frowning, but said nothing more.
“I know,” she began, eyes down, “I know I owe you…a great deal of money for what you’ve done already. And I’ll keep my promise to pay it all…one day. But for now, think of what must be done. Think of Paycocke and Alwyn. Can we leave people like that to the clutches of the Chancellor?”
Around them, the bustle of embarkation continued.
“Jinner!” Thornleigh called, his eyes still locked on Honor’s. “Lower the skiff. Mistress Larke is going ashore.”
He took her elbow and hustled her down to the main deck and across to the railing as if he were escorting a mischief-maker off his ship. The skiff splashed into the water and the rope ladder was tossed over the side for her. Her hands were on the ropes and she had taken the first step down when Thornleigh said, “Tate.”
Honor looked up with a question in her eyes.
“I’ve a good pilot named Tate,” Thornleigh said. “I’ll leave orders for him. Meet him at St. Nicholas’s here two weeks from Sunday at noon. Tate’s yours, and the Vixen.”
She beamed. “Thank you.” She started down.
He leaned over the railing and called after her, “And God help you if you’re late again!”
21
The Hold
Several months later, at ten o’clock on a gusty May morning, Honor and Jinner stood on Pinnacle Tower in Yarmouth’s town wall and nervously looked out at the masts of carracks and coasters beyond the beach. The Dorothy Beale, Thornleigh’s oldest ship of his three, still lay at anchor. Piloted in Thornleigh’s absence by Master Tate, the ship was supposed to have sailed hours ago.
Honor hugged herself as she thought of the jittery fugitive she had sent aboard the night before. Edward Sydenham. He’d found courage enough to escape the Bishop’s prison a week ago, but he had none of his father’s gentle forbearance nor his mother’s fierce stoicism. This delay, she knew, wou
ld be gnawing at his belly.
It was her fault. She knew it. Thornleigh had warned her that the Dorothy Beale was sorely in need of refitting. They had not yet sent her out with the Speedwell and the Vixen in the missions. But when Edward, on the run, had come to Honor begging for help, she had decided to press the old hulk into service. She had not realized the extent of the problem, however, until seven that morning, the hour that the ship should have been underway. As she was rising from her bed at Thornleigh’s Yarmouth townhouse, Jinner had banged on the door.
“Rat-eaten rigging and piss-bloated bilges,” he’d reported, scrubbing in the matted hair under his red cap. “She’s a tub, m’lady. It’ll take some hours more.”
Then, she and Jinner had just sat down to a silent, tense breakfast when a messenger arrived from the Bishop of Norwich’s Chancellor. Dr. Pelle, she was told, wanted her to present the ship’s bills of lading for examination at the Tolhouse within the hour. She and Jinner had immediately rushed to Pinnacle Tower for a look out at the Dorothy Beale, and breathed a little easier to see that no officials’ boats were alongside her.
At least, she thought now, not yet. Exchanging anxious glances, she and Jinner climbed down to the street and made their way to the Tolhouse.
Pelle sat in his high-backed chair framed against an arched window in the Tolhouse hall. His impeccable black velvet robe emphasized his white hair and parchment-white skin as he leafed carefully through Honor’s papers. Finally, he looked up at her. “A profitable cargo of wool cloth, Mistress Larke. Your partner flourishes.”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.” She gave him a vapid smile. The story she and Thornleigh had circulated was that she had invested substantially in his wool trading business. It was uncommon for a woman to be so personally involved in trade, but not unheard of. It explained her frequent trips to Yarmouth, and her presence around Thornleigh’s ships. As for Queen Catherine, she was gone on a pilgrimage to humble herself before the Holy Blood of Hales, and Honor would not be needed again for at least a week. But even when the Queen was home, her joyless days were spent in a trance of prayer; she hardly seemed to notice Honor’s absences.