The Queen's Lady

by Barbara Kyle

  Honor was looking for Thornleigh. He had sailed into Yarmouth this afternoon after a month away at the Antwerp spring fair, and had immediately sent her word that he was coming home to Great Ashwold as soon as the cargo was unloaded. But Honor, impatient to see him, had hurried to the port, for this latest separation had been a long one; before he had sailed, her work had once again kept her in London for several weeks. Her excitement tonight was tinged with regret, however. They were going to have so little time together.

  She pushed doggedly past the knots of revelers. A boy chasing a squealing piglet cannoned into her stomach with a thud that hurt, then ran off without a word. Honor glared after him.

  She walked on, nearing the church of St. Nicholas, and skirted a fat, tipsy couple who were dancing, clumsy as bears. Suddenly, a man—or a fiend—swooped into her path as if he had plunged from the sky. She halted with a gasp. He was bearded, tall, and powerfully built, dressed all in black, and his lifted arms arched over her like the wings of a bird of prey. His eyes leered down into hers from a black wolf’s face, lurid with streaks of paint—gold, red and green—and fringed all around with lustrous, quivering black feathers. A low growl threatened from his throat.

  The eyes blinked. A blue-eyed wolf. Honor reached for the mask’s snout and wrenched it up. A sharp intake of breath underneath it told her she had scraped his nose.

  She laughed.

  Thornleigh massaged his nose. “So glad I didn’t frighten you, madam,” he grumbled, and shoved the mask up onto his forehead where it rested, instantly inanimate.

  “You’ve grown a beard,” she said, frowning at the short, trim growth.

  He turned his profile and waggled his head in a parody of a courtly coxcomb. “Like it?”

  “No.”

  He laughed. “Ever truthful! Some things never change. Thank God.”

  “You do make a breathtaking monster, though,” Honor said, caressing his cheek. She smiled up into his eyes. “Welcome home.”

  He took her in his arms and was about to kiss her, then stopped and looked beyond her. A man cross-eyed with drink was weaving straight toward them, his hands fumbling below his belt. Thornleigh saw the glinting spout of urine just in time and drew Honor away from the approaching fountain. The drunkard lurched on and the crowd skittered apart for him. Thornleigh laughed. “Effective way to clear a path!”

  “But intrusive,” Honor said, pulling him back and folding her arms around his neck. “Now, what were you saying before?”

  “Just this,” he murmured, bending to her.

  Their kiss was long and hungry.

  “Oh, Richard,” she sighed, drawing back only far enough to look at him, “it’s wonderful to see you.”

  “And you,” he said with feeling. “Eight weeks is eight weeks too many.” He studied her face, smiling. “I’m so glad you came tonight.” He pulled her close again. His voice was low and urgent. “Let’s go home.”

  “In a bit,” Honor said, looking away, hoping it would be easier to tell him out here in the crowd, rather than at home, that she was going. “Let’s walk a little first.”

  She took his arm and they began to stroll among the revelers.

  “How’s Adam?” he asked. “Giving you any trouble?”

  “Not at all. I’ve set him to study Erasmus’s Adages.” She added with a smile, “That is, when I can get him away from the skiff he’s building at the millrace.” She looked at him. “Profitable trip?”

  “Very.” He cocked an eyebrow. “And blessedly dull.”

  Honor half smiled. She knew he was glad the rescue missions were over. But her work was not, despite the softening of government policy. The new Chancellor, Thomas Audeley, a compliant officeholder, had his hands full dealing with the government’s continuing anti-Church policies, and the bishops were busy battling those policies in order to save their own livelihoods; in the anxious new political atmosphere, no one was inclined to care much about heretics. Except Sir Thomas More, Honor thought grimly. Although in retirement, he had been feverishly busy with his pen.

  To counter the diatribes More was turning out, Honor was spending more and more time composing pamphlets and overseeing their printing in London. She was now writing as furiously as More, though anonymously. It kept her away from home far more than she liked. And more, she knew, than Thornleigh liked.

  “There’s news,” she said brightly.

  “Oh?”

  “Oh, yes. For one thing, a coronation.”

  “That much I’ve heard. Queen Anne. Were you there for it?”

  She nodded. “Along with half of London. Three days of folly. Bannered flotillas on the river. Cannon booming from the Tower. A procession through the streets with the new Queen sitting in her litter, her hair streaming free like a virgin…and her belly out to here.”

  Thornleigh laughed. “Five months’ pregnant, they say.”

  “Apparently it did the trick, though no one seems to know exactly when or where the King married her. But this is his chance to have a legitimate son, so his new puppy archbishop cleared the way to the altar.” At Archbishop Warham’s death Honor had been amused at how quickly the Boleyn family’s chaplain, Thomas Cranmer, had been elevated to the primacy of Canterbury and had immediately declared that the King was without doubt, in the eyes of God, a bachelor.

  “What of Queen Catherine?” Thornleigh asked, and then corrected himself. “The Princess Dowager, I mean.”

  “The Pope, it seems, has refused to recognize the new marriage, and he’s ordered the King to take Queen Catherine back. The King became so furious he’s packed her off to the fens of Buckden with only her father confessor, her doctor, and a skeleton staff.”

  Thornleigh let out a low whistle of sympathy.

  Honor looked down. She was not proud of the part she had played, however ineffectual, in bringing the Queen to her present wretchedness.

  “Did you see Cromwell while you were there?” Thornleigh asked.

  “Yes.” She could not suppress a smile. “I went to congratulate him, since the new Queen’s rise has happened exactly as he said it would. But when we met he was wincing at the drain the coronation banquet had made on the royal purse. He said the King went absolutely mad on his wardrobe. He fairly dripped gold. But then, from what I saw for myself at the procession, every gentleman and peer in England had done the same. Some must have been wearing half their fortunes on their backs. And they came out in full force, vying with one another to show the King their loyalty to his new Queen.”

  Thornleigh smiled. “I wonder who was left at home to tend the sheep.”

  “Sir Thomas More was.”

  “Not invited?”

  “Oh, he was invited—and was conspicuously absent.”

  “Silently brooding in his library, no doubt. This new order of things is far from his liking.”

  “Brooding, perhaps, but hardly silent,” she said harshly. “He’s writing reams of trash. Huge, vitriolic tomes. While you were in Flanders the latest volume of his Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer came out—that’s five volumes so far! And other books too, all drearily laced with his malice for heretics. Listen,” she said, closing her eyes to recite, “‘…these heretics of our time that go busily about to heap up to the sky their foul, filthy dunghill of all old and new false, stinking heresies, gathered up together against the true Catholic faith of Christ…’ He scribbles on like that ad nauseam. He also carries on at some length about whether demons are taking the form of beautiful, wicked women these days, and if so, that young men must beware their lures, et cetera, et cetera. All very tiresome.”

  “Who reads the stuff, though? The man is out of power. No one listens to him. Besides, the new English Church, severed from Rome, will soon be entrenched.”

  “It’s not yet.”

  Their walk had brought them to the stone enclosure around St. Nicholas’s. Thornleigh stopped under a lantern jutting from the wall and turned to Honor. “The work is done,” he said steadily. “You’ve a
ccomplished what you wanted. It’s time to get back to living a normal life.” He looked soberly into her eyes. “Honor, it’s all over.”

  “Not for me,” she said with quiet bitterness. “I’ll fight Sir Thomas, as long as I can.”

  Thornleigh frowned. Honor knew that she had disturbed him. She looked away, wanting to deflect his displeasure. She scanned the square and brightened. “Look,” she said, pointing. At the far side of the square a crowd had gathered at a huge wagon, a two-storied, moveable stage flanked by blazing torches. Laughter rolled from the people standing in front of it.

  “Let’s go see,” Honor said, grateful for the diversion. She took Thornleigh’s elbow.

  But he would not be moved from his discontent. “It’s only the baker’s guild doing the Last Judgment,” he said testily.

  “Oh, come on.” She pulled him across the square and they stood at the back of the crowd and looked at the stage. Gradually, watching the lively play, Thornleigh’s dour expression softened.

  Two baker-actors stood on the wagon’s top platform. One, dressed as a fat monk, was piteously begging the other, a stern-faced St. Peter, to let him through heaven’s gates which were painted in yellow stripes on a blue cloth. But St. Peter remained unmoved. The monk began to whimper about his blameless life. “He’s lying!” eager voices shouted from the crowd. As the monk’s pleas became more desperate, angels—dressed as ordinary bakers and millwrights and watermen—filed behind him. Every time he told a lie one of them kicked him, and with each kick the watchers whistled and stamped their approval.

  A curtain swept open on the lower level where a backdrop painted with orange flames depicted hell. There was a low, admiring “Aah” from the audience as a huge wooden serpent, green and scaled, glided forward on rollers, and eerie music of pipes and tambourines sounded from behind the doors. A baker playing Satan stalked on stage brandishing a sword. He was horned and almost naked, his body painted red. With a menacing leer he climbed aboard the serpent. Above, the angels led the quaking monk to the edge of a staircase connecting Heaven and Hell, and forced him to look down and behold Satan. Fascinated, the crowd stood quiet.

  Thornleigh leaned over to Honor. “This’ll up the stakes with the brewers.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a yearly feud here. Bakers’ guild against the brewers’. They try to outdo one another with their plays. But,” he added with a chuckle, “unless the brewers’ Great Flood has sharpened up since last year, they can’t touch this.”

  There was a loud roll of thunder. Satan swung his sword overhead and the serpent’s jaws opened wide, showing a garish red maw. Gasps were heard in the crowd. An explosion erupted from the beast’s throat. It vomited fire. Several women screamed. One threw her apron over her head. A child began to wail. Honor saw an old man cross himself.

  Thornleigh had folded his arms across his chest and was studying the fire-breathing viper. “Gunpowder,” he muttered, sniffing the air. “Sulfur.”

  Honor shook her head, watching the frightened faces around her. “And sticks pounded on kettles for thunder. How can they be afraid of sparks and paint and noise?”

  Thornleigh shrugged. “People see what they want to see.”

  “Or what they’re told to see.”

  “Or what they fear to see,” he added.

  “Blind,” she said in disgust, “and what’s worse, content to be blind.”

  Satan was by this time displaying his evil fury with fine gusto, pumping his sword arm up and down, and with every pump the serpent he rode bellowed fire. Suddenly, a head of cabbage thrown from the audience thumped Satan on his horned temple. He lurched sideways, then tumbled from his mount and thudded to the stage on his backside. He sat up scowling. With his legs straight out before him he looked more like a furious, red-faced baby than the Lord of Darkness.

  A great peal of laughter burst from the audience. More vegetables pelted the actors, more loud delight rose from the crowd. Then, quick as a sneeze, a fistfight broke out near the front. It seemed to light a fuse that burned through the throng, igniting bursts of shoving and punching among the young men. Within moments the whole crowd was scuffling and shouting.

  “It’s the brewers getting even,” Thornleigh said with a laugh above the noise. A man with blood streaming from his nose reeled backwards towards Honor and stopped only feet away from her. He straightened and plowed headlong again into the fracas. Thornleigh whisked his arm around Honor’s waist. “Let’s get out of here.”

  They made their way through the square until the brawl was well behind them, then walked on among the quieter revelers. They passed a bonfire where three men were dancing a jig. Children ran past, squealing. They walked by a couple kissing in a doorway. Thornleigh glanced at the lovers, then smiled at Honor. “Those two have the right idea,” he said, stopping to put his arms around her. Honor gave herself to his kiss. “How about we go out to the Speedwell?” Thornleigh said, nuzzling her neck. “The crew are all ashore. We’d be alone.” He looked into her eyes and murmured, “I’d like to lock the cabin door and make love to you for about three days.”

  Reluctantly, Honor pulled out of his embrace. She could put off her announcement no longer. “Richard, I’ve got to leave for London in the morning.”

  He straightened abruptly. He looked away, clearly angry.

  “Richard, please listen…”

  A braying interrupted her, and she and Thornleigh were forced to part as a priest on a donkey ambled between them. A trio of giggling children hopped after the donkey, tying flowers to its tail. One of them, a bright-eyed girl, stopped to stare up at Thornleigh’s mask. He pulled it off his forehead and bent to place it on her small face. She ran after her friends, growling in savage delight.

  Once they had gone, Thornleigh still did not look at Honor. “How long away this time?” he said.

  “Two weeks. Maybe three.”

  “Or four. Or five.”

  “No. I promise.”

  “You promised once before.”

  “You mean about seeing you off at Billingsgate? I told you what happened at the printer’s. I told you I was sorry.”

  “I’m sorry too.” Finally, he looked at her. His eyes were hard and cold. “This isn’t working out very well, is it?”

  Honor shivered. “What do you mean?”

  “This marriage. If you can call it that. Maybe there’s another word for it. An ‘arrangement’?”

  “Richard, don’t talk like—”

  A ball of fire swamped her vision. A boy was dashing by with a torch. Its heat blasted the side of her face, and the wind-like rush of the flame roared by her ear. In a flash of horrified memory she saw again the executioner’s torch at Smithfield as it plunged into the faggots beneath Ralph. Her eyes followed the moving flame. The boy reached a man-sized mound of logs and sticks, and with a primitive yelp of joy he thrust in the torch. The fuel burst into flame. Honor went rigid, fists clenched, eyes wide.

  Thornleigh was watching her. “What is it?” he asked. “What’s the matter?”

  She stared at the blaze. Her breathing was shallow. “I can’t see him,” she whispered, frightened.

  Thornleigh glanced at the bonfire. “See who?”

  Her hands flew to her cheeks, and she cringed, shaking her head, still staring.

  Alarmed, Thornleigh grabbed her wrists and jerked her around, away from the fire, to face him. “Tell me. What’s wrong?”

  “I swore!” she cried. “Swore I’d never forget. Never look into a fire without seeing Ralph’s face. But…he’s not there anymore!”

  “Good,” Thornleigh said steadily. “If he’s gone, let him go.”

  “No!” She pulled out of his grasp and whirled around to look at the blaze. She beat her fists against her temples. “I promised to see him…always. To never forget his pain.”

  “Stop this!” He caught her again, this time by the shoulders, and wrenched her back to him.

  She struggled, trying to free herself. “You do
n’t understand!” she cried. “You’ve never understood. Or cared.”

  He held her firmly. “I do understand. If you can’t see death in the flames anymore it’s time to look again at life.”

  “What are you talking about? Can’t you understand? I am sworn. To keep faith. To—”

  “You’ve kept faith enough to save a hundred blasted sinners. Whatever you owed, you owe no more.”

  “I won’t abandon Ralph!”

  “Ralph is dead!”

  She shook her head to shield herself from his words, and strained, though he still held her, to look over her shoulder at the bonfire. Tears welled in her eyes. “If I try…if I only look harder…I know I’ll see him.”

  Thornleigh suddenly flung her around to face the fire. “Go on, then, look at it!” he said. He gripped her shoulders, hard. “What do you see? You belittle people for seeing devils on a slapped-up stage—you scorn them for willingly blinding themselves to what’s real—but you’re no better. You want to see ghosts. Well, look hard. What’s really there?”

  A ragged circle of people had drifted in around the bonfire and stood, talking and drinking. The blaze crackled as someone tossed on a splintered board. Honor looked deep into the flames but, try as she might, she could not conjure up Ralph’s face. Instead, strangely, she heard his laughing voice, telling her, as he used to do when she was a child, that people set fires on Midsummer Eve to celebrate her birthday. Other words echoed—was it Ralph’s voice still?—“You owe no more!” She began to feel it might be true. Slowly, one by one, the chains that hung around her—chains of guilt, of sorrow, of regret—began to fall away. She felt oddly lightened. But then she hugged herself, suddenly afraid that without the familiar weight of the chains she would be adrift, and she searched the fire again. But there was no writhing specter. Only flames leaping on wood. Reality. Tears spilled onto her cheeks, the molten waste of her struggle.