by Barbara Kyle
Anne’s head snapped around to Henry. In a tight whisper she said, “You mock me, sir!”
“You mock yourself with these fishwife antics. Be content.”
“Content? When you take your pleasure with every flouncing strumpet before my very eyes?”
“Then shut your eyes! Shut them and endure, as your betters have done before you.”
Anne’s mouth dropped open at the insult.
Henry heaved himself to his feet. “I grow weary of this place,” he growled. He pushed past her, clipping her shoulder as if she were a beggar in a crowd. She glared after him, then hurried out. A flurry of her women followed in her wake.
Henry stalked across the room, as restless as a bear on a chain. Pages hopped out of his way as he approached the table of refreshments. It was laden with slabs of cold venison, half-picked carcasses of quail and partridge, bowls of Spanish oranges, and spotted winter apples.
Father Jerome Bastwick offered up to him a dish of honeyed apricots. “A sweet, Your Majesty?” Bastwick was always careful to use the title the King had lately come to prefer.
Henry shoved an apricot in his mouth and licked his fingers gloomily. “You’re kinder than my wife, Father.”
“A Royal Almoner’s duty and privilege, Your Majesty,” Bastwick said, still thrilled with his recent appointment. He had used the names listed in the Bible from the Dorothy Beale, brought to him by Legge, to catapult himself into this post, stretching out the arrests of the heretics to give himself maximum glory in the eyes of the bishops. “You are my great good lord,” he concluded, bowing deeply to the King.
“Ah,” Henry groaned, “this place is like a prison, Father. No galleries, no gardens, no tennis.” He lowered his head to rub the back of his neck. “And no riding in this interminable rain.”
“To be sure,” Bastwick commiserated, “Windsor is not Whitehall.”
“Even the inducements here,” Henry said with a glance at the freckled girl, “begin to pale after three days of rain.”
Three days before, the court—a small army of gentlemen, officers, servants, horses, mules and dogs—had snaked through the countryside to the bleak old castle of Windsor which had remained untouched by Henry’s passion for rebuilding. They had arrived in a downpour, and it had rained ever since, though no amount of rain seemed to cool the unnaturally sultry air. Life in the castle had slowed to a groggy torpor. Servants slumped with ale in shadowed corners, and throughout the place there was an odor of damp wool and steaming boredom. Men and women, their nerves unstable, crackled at one another and wandered through airless corridors.
Henry motioned Bastwick to follow him to the far window. They stood side by side staring out at the twisting gray sheets of rain. “News?” Henry asked.
“No more than I communicated to Your Majesty yesterday,” Bastwick said. “One moment, word of the Emperor’s troops massing at Rotterdam or on the Spanish coast. The next moment, a confirmation that all was only malicious rumor.”
“May God keep it so.”
“Amen to that, Your Majesty. And yet we must be vigilant.”
Henry nodded grimly. “Imperial invasion. Dear God…” he murmured with a shudder. “Cromwell does not keep me as informed as he should. His woolcarder’s mind is locked on Parliament.”
Behind them the girl’s thin singing wobbled above George Boleyn’s lute. Henry winced, his musician’s ear offended by her pitch. He stared out the mullioned window. Soggy black leaves slapped up against the panes and quivered beside the lead bars like hunted men begging sanctuary at a rich man’s gate.
Henry leaned sideways to Bastwick and whispered. “This excommunication the Pope has hurled at me, Father. I have bared my teeth at Rome for it, for the Pope had no right. No right! But something in my soul trembles, for all that. Something that will not let me sleep. Excommunication. My God, any foreign power now has the blessing of the Church to take possession of my realm, if they can. And excommunication cancels all vows of allegiance ever made to me.”
“In no true subject’s mind, sire.”
“No true subject, aye. But what of traitors lurking in dark holes throughout the land? What of their plots against me, eh?”
“They will be crushed,” Bastwick said quietly.
Henry was not listening. “Sometimes I ask myself, What is Charles waiting for? A signal from some pack of disaffected nobles here? But who? Who will the traitors be? So many enemies…here, abroad…” He sighed heavily, then managed a wan smile. “Forgive me, Father. I babble. It is this wretched place. That, and my wife’s loss at Candlemas. A son…” He stopped himself. A son born dead.
“But the Queen will conceive again, Your Majesty. Soon she will give you the lusty prince we all pray God for.”
“Think you so?” Henry asked shakily.
“God will not desert you, sire.”
“Sometimes, Father”—he dropped a hand like meat on Bastwick’s chest—“I swear I don’t know what God is telling me. These lost children…” Eyes moist, he searched the priest’s face for sympathy.
“A blessing it perished,” Bastwick assured him with brutal bluntness, “shrunk and misshapen as it was.” He did not notice Henry flinch.
“I’ve taken you from the pudding, Father,” Henry said flatly. He made a vague gesture behind him towards the table, giving his royal chaplain leave to go.
But Bastwick did not go. He glanced over his shoulder, assuring himself that no one was near enough to listen. “Your Majesty, there is something I think you should see.” He pulled from his cassock a small leather-bound book.
“What’s this?” Henry asked.
“I take a great liberty which I pray Your Majesty will pardon. This,” Bastwick said, lifting the book, “is the work of an English friar, an exile living in Antwerp. His name is Frish.”
“Why, I believe that’s the man Cromwell wants me to meet,” Henry said, interested. “He’s on his way home, apparently. It’s rather intriguing, you know. Cromwell says several of these exiles hold some surprisingly sound theories. For example, the divine commission of the godly prince to reform the Church. Also, the duty of citizens to give total obedience to their King.” Gingerly, he took the volume from Bastwick. “Do you know, I’ve never actually read any of the stuff Tyndale and these fellows have written.” He bounced the book on his palm like a merchant testing the heft of a bag of some exotic spice, wondering if there was profit or loss in such a novelty.
“Perhaps you should, sire, before you meet the man.”
“Might as well,” Henry said, and added glumly, “there’ll be no riding today.”
“I hope I have not offended…?”
“Not at all.”
“I felt it was my duty. That Your Grace should be aware…”
“Of course. You’ve done well, Father,” Henry said expansively. As Bastwick backed away, bowing, Henry cracked a schoolboy smile. “Better keep nigh, though, Father. I may cry out if I feel my soul in danger.”
He ambled to the window seat and thudded down to peruse the book, settling back as if he had taken up a fable of King Arthur to while away the rainy afternoon. Gradually, the buzz of voices in the room faded from his consciousness, and Henry immersed himself in Frish’s A Christian Vision.
The bored men and women around him strolled, and stifled yawns, and picked at their food. George Boleyn finished his strained duet with the girl, then sang, alone, through two melancholy ballads. A greyhound under the table woofed softly in its sleep.
Suddenly, the King’s voice roared from the window seat, “Heresy!”
White lightning illuminated the room. It froze bodies in the act of whirling around to face the King. Henry lunged up from the seat and hurled the book as if it were a snarling creature gnawing his hand. It skittered across the floorboards and stopped at Bastwick’s feet. Bastwick stiffened. Panic flooded his eyes.
“Blessed Mother of God!” Henry sputtered. “He claims God’s grace can be had by faith alone! He claims the body of Chri
st is not present in the bread of the Mass! He calls the veneration of saints idolatry!”
Bastwick relaxed. He bent to pick up the book, careful to hide his satisfaction. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, for inflicting such pain. But now you see the filth that some wish to insinuate into your realm. Can you allow such slanders to taint your new Church?”
“By all that’s holy, no! Abominable, wicked heresy.” Purpling, Henry bellowed again. “Bring me Cromwell! Bring me that miserable woolcarder!”
Honor and Jinner had ridden hard all day. When they arrived at the gate of Cromwell’s Stepney house in the early evening, Honor was parched and aching. With a blistered fist she pounded to be admitted.
The gate clattered open. Honor left Jinner with the horses and ran ahead of the porter. The main door was opened for her, but she had not taken five steps toward the hall when Cromwell’s chamberlain glided out to stop her. He was a pale, aloof man who wore a constant sneer. The Lord Secretary, he told Honor, was entertaining important guests at supper in his hall. It was, the chamberlain said pointedly, a private gathering.
“Tell him I must see him,” she said.
“If you will wait in the solar—”
“No,” she cut him off. She could not risk being seen by any of Cromwell’s guests. “Tell him to come out to me in the garden. And tell him it’s urgent!”
For half an hour she waited, pacing the paths under an ancient yew tree in the twilight shadows. She could not be still. She was brimful of rage and disbelief at what she had found out. What had gone wrong? Again and again, she went over in her mind the events of the past weeks.
The mission to fetch Frish had begun uneventfully. She had left with Sam Jinner and Jeremy, apprentice to Thornleigh’s London agent, sure that it would go well. And she had been right. All had been smooth sailing: the trip to Antwerp, the enlistment of the joyous Frish, and the voyage with him back to Harwich. It had not taken four weeks.
She had intended to accompany Frish all the way to Cromwell’s door, but at Colchester Frish had insisted she leave him. “Go home,” he had said, smiling, “for I can see your heart is there. You’ve done enough. Go home and be happy.”
“Take Sam with you, at least,” she had urged. Frish had agreed to that. He had kissed her cheek, and said good-bye, and he and Jinner had ridden south.
Honor had started north with Jeremy, her mind full of nothing but overrehearsed speeches she hoped would bring a reconciliation with Thornleigh. She had stopped overnight at a well-known inn at Ipswich. After breakfast Jeremy was feeling ill, and Honor was strolling the innyard and pondering whether to ride home alone or stay the day or two until the lad could travel comfortably, when Jinner had galloped in on a lathered horse.
Gulping breaths, he told her the awful news. He and Frish had got as far as Chelmsford, he said. They had stopped to water the horses and find a bite to eat. Frish had started talking scripture with the groom, and Jinner had told him he’d meet him in the tavern across the street. He’d just picked up his mug, he said, and had walked to the open door to stretch his legs when he saw three men dragging Frish down the street.
“The magistrate’s men they were, m’lady. Tapster told me so. I followed, thinking if there’s trouble I’d be better able to help if I stayed nimble. Well, damned if they didn’t clap the good Brother in the stocks in the market square. Folks began pitching dung at him like he was a common lousel. I hustled over to the magistrate to see what could be done, but he only threw up his hands. Said some officials had come from London for Brother Frish. Wouldn’t say more. By the time I got back to the square—mayhap an hour later—the good Brother was gone. They’d taken him, you see? But where or why, or even who’s done it, that I know not, m’lady.”
In fury, Honor had swung back to London with Jinner.
Where, in God’s name, is Cromwell? she agonized. The arched window at the end of his hall glowed with the candlelight of his supper table, and a faint wash of his guests’ laughter drifted across the garden. Honor kicked at the gravel and beat her fist into her palm. It was all to show herself her anger, all to keep from facing the premonition that hulked at the back of her mind: had she delivered up her friend to death? Around her, smells of damp earth and muskroses floated up like shy spirits set free by night. She found that she was shivering.
A rustle in the grass startled her. She swiveled, and stumbled on the yew tree’s exposed roots. She peered into the shadows. The path she stood on led through squat, regimented fruit trees to a wicket gate, dim in the far wall. But on the path nothing moved. All was still.
Above her an owl hooted in the branches of the yew. She looked up through boughs shaggy with night-dark leaves. The owl sat frozen like some stone image on a pagan tomb.
The rustling sounded again. A figure—a man—slipped out from the line of fruit trees and halted. “My lady, get you gone!” he whispered. “You are not safe abiding here!”
Though he stood in darkness, his face obscured, Honor recognized the gangly form. Cromwell’s clerk. “Andrew?” she asked the shadows. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”
“There’s men abroad this night to track you down!”
Fear clogged like cloth in her throat. “What do you mean? What men?”
“I cannot say more. Only…” He stopped as a laugh went up in the hall. “Oh, you are in danger, my lady. Get yourself away, while you can.”
“But what’s happened to…?” A loud snap of a branch made her look up. The owl was lifting from its perch with a movement of broad wings that was eerily slow and soundless.
She looked back. Andrew was gone.
Footsteps crunched from the opposite direction and she whirled around. A swinging lantern was approaching the iron main gate. She could not see the face of the man holding the lantern out before him, but the footsteps, she was sure, came from not just one man, but from others behind him as well.
She ran down the path to the wicket gate and dashed back to Jinner at the stable. They grabbed their horses from the startled groom, and fled.
It was hot noon. Sir Thomas More pressed his palm against the window casement. The stone was cold, refreshingly cold. It helped a little; the trembling of his hand lessened.
He was standing alone in a dim second-story room of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s palace of Lambeth and looking down on a large garden where twenty or thirty clerics were milling—bishops and abbots, their chaplains and clerks. Some had already been inside to stand before the commissioners, then had returned to the garden to chat with colleagues awaiting their turn. All had been summoned here, like him, to swear the Oath.
More watched the churchmen, faintly sickened by their behavior. They strolled the paths arm-in-arm. They gossiped on benches. They laughed under apple trees and hailed one another at intersections in the hedges. To him, standing above them, their faint chatter sounded both flat and frantic, like so many bumble-bees droning in the heated, garish foliage. He had to narrow his eyes at the glaring sunlight that seemed to throb off the scarlet flowers and glossy emerald leaves, off the blinding brass of the sun-dial and the hectic clerical silks. Finally, he drew his head back into the cool gloom. No. He felt no impulse to join that sweaty, grinning throng.
He knew the commissioners downstairs had hoped he would. “Why not walk a while and think,” Audeley had suggested. Audeley, his dull-witted successor as Lord Chancellor. Oh, yes, More thought, the commissioners’ expectations had been obvious: once in the garden and bantering with the others, my resolution would surely falter.
The others. He wondered again why he had been called in with this body of clergy. He was the only layman among them. Already, commissioners had sped out to every shire in the realm, marshaling justices of the peace to administer the Oath to every Englishman. Cromwell, with characteristic thoroughness, had organized the unprecedented action. Why, then, have they brought me in with these illustrious churchmen, he asked himself, when I could just as easily have been approached at home in Chelsea? Did Crom
well intend it as an honor? Or a threat?
“Walk and think,” Audeley had said.
But More had done with thinking, and had come instead to this cool stone chamber.
He looked at his hand. It still trembled on the casement. Around his fingers he could make out, on the stone, traces of the fire that had threatened the palace years ago. Faint smears of soot, mere shadows, curled in crevices between the blocks. That fire had been long ago, he thought, and yet, like skin that has been scalded, the scars remain, though on skin they would show tough and white, and on this stone, a ghostly black. He felt the shudder leap inside him again, beginning at his heart and trembling down into his bowels where a primordial panic squirmed. Would violence done to his body leave indelible scars like this? The shudder increased the tremor of his hand and again he flattened it against the stone to stop it. But the fear in his bowels would not be quelled.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to re-examine the scene he had just played out with the commissioners. Had he made any slip?
“May I see a copy of the Oath?” he had asked them. Refusing a chair, he had stood before their table: Audeley, Cromwell, Archbishop Cranmer, William Benson, Abbot of Westminster, and a few others. More’s skin had prickled at the sight of the last face at the table: Jerome Bastwick, the King’s new almoner.
Politely, they had showed him the printed Oath with the Great Seal of the Realm affixed, and a copy of the Act of Succession. Politely, they had let him read in silence.
The Oath made reference to the Act of Succession which stated that the swearer would “bear faithful obedience to King Henry’s heirs by his most dear and entirely beloved lawful wife, Queen Anne.” More had felt a jolt of hope. Would they be satisfied if he swore simply to the royal succession as decreed by Parliament? With that he had no quarrel. Succession was a temporal matter, and Parliament was well within its rights to fix it on whatever heir it chose. It had done so many times, over several hundred years.
He read on: “Ye shall observe, maintain and defend this Act and all the whole contents and effects thereof, and all other Acts and Statutes made since the beginning of this present Parliament.” His stomach tightened. Here was the quicksand. “…all other Acts and Statutes…” The lengthy preamble of the Act of Succession itself declared that the King’s marriage with the former Queen Catherine had been invalid from the beginning since it had been made against the laws of God. For More to accept the Act of Succession, then, was to accept that the Church had erred. Worse, other Acts of this Parliament recognized the King as Supreme Head of the Church in England, and for him to accept that was…impossible.