The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

      “Stop!” More cried. “Villain!”

      The man spun around in surprise. His knife glinted in the sun.

      More scrambled down the slope, his robe flapping, his feet awkwardly thumping and slipping on the lush grass. He was running too fast and he lost his footing and skidded, then thudded onto his rear end. Following, Honor sailed past him, even more awkward in her long skirts. She windmilled down the hill out of control and crashed into the arms of the would-be assassin who dropped his knife under the force of the impact. The two stumbled back together as if locked in some heathen dance step. They finally came to a halt at the lip of the riverbank.

      There was a moment of stunned silence. The maid wobbled to her feet and shyly looked at More still sitting at the base of the hillside. “Pardon, Your Worship,” she stuttered, her hands patting at the cap that covered her ears. “A knot in my cap string. This gentleman offered to cut it for me.”

      More stared, uncomprehending. The girl cupped her hand beside her mouth and whispered loudly, “A foreigner, Your Worship. He speaks no English.”

      The man stepped around Honor and came shakily toward More, his hands uplifted like an apprehended criminal. He was young and of a stocky peasant build, with a moon face and wide, slate blue eyes. In serviceable Latin he made a nervous explanation. “I am an artist, sir. I was moved to sketch this young woman. I suggested she remove her cap. It was only the strings I wanted to cut.”

      “An artist?” More asked feebly.

      “Hans Holbein is my name. A citizen of Basle. I come to you on the recommendation of our mutual friend, Erasmus.”

      A smile cracked across More’s face. He slapped his green-stained hands together and bits of grass flew from his fingertips. “Master Holbein, on my backside I welcome you to England. Care for some burned roast beef?”

      In the great hall, More leaned back pensively in his chair at the head of the main table. What he was hearing amused him, yet troubled him at the same time: his twenty-year-old daughter, Cecily, was reading aloud a letter Erasmus had sent with the young artist. It was clear to More that his extended family felt none of his own ambiguity. He could see they were all entertained by Erasmus’s news. They sat beside him and at two long lower tables: his wife, his father, his son with his fiancée, his three daughters and their husbands, a clutch of grandchildren, assorted music masters, tutors and clerks. The kitchen maids had cleared away the first courses—the capon with apricots, the salvaged roast beef, the braised leeks—and everyone was listening to Erasmus’s letter, their spoons clacking over bowls of excellent strawberry pudding from Lady Alice’s kitchen. The renowned Dutch scholar had written to More:

      “The arts are freezing here, so I have encouraged Holbein to come to you in England to pick up a few coins.”

      There was a murmur of approval and all heads turned to the red-faced artist. All except Alice, as usual, More noted; everyone except her and the very young children understood the Latin letter. His wife had rejected his every attempt to teach her to read, even in English. Cecily continued reading:

      “As the firestorm rages here over Luther, I am condemned by both sides for my refusal to join either. I am told that a follower of Luther in Constance, a fellow who was once my student, has hung my portrait near the door merely to spit at it as often as he passes. My lot has become like St. Cassianus who was stabbed to death by his pupils with pencils.”

      Many at the table laughed. Sir Thomas More did not. How, he wondered, could Erasmus make jests about a man as dangerous as Luther? Disturbed, he fingered the rim of his goblet of watered wine as Cecily read on. The letter ranged over several more items of news in Basle. Then:

      “Please convey my thanks to young Mistress Larke for the enjoyment her thoughtful essay on St. Augustine’s City of God has given me. Or better yet, tell her that I will write my appreciation to her personally as soon as time permits.”

      More glanced at Honor with a proud smile, as did the rest of the family. Following the young artist, it was Honor’s turn to blush.

      Servants cleared the dishes and Honor and Cecily began a lute duet. Watching Honor, More remembered the letter inside his robe. He beckoned Matthew over and told him to ask Mistress Larke to come out to his library when she was finished playing. He excused himself from the table.

      He passed through the sultry orchard, deep in thought. Though he walked slowly, the heat was oppressive, and sweat prickled his skin by the time he reached the New Building. The sweat made the coarse fibers of the hair shirt he always wore under his linen scratch even more uncomfortably than usual. Good, he thought with a chuckle at himself: a perfect, penitential complement to that second helping of beef.

      The library was pleasantly cool. He laid the Queen’s note on his desk and shifted a letter that was already lying there so that the two papers were lined up side by side. He regarded them for a moment, then turned to the window and looked out at the woods beyond the pond. What to do? To which request should he agree?

      Which was best for the girl?

      A smile crept to his lips as he recalled his laughter with her over the foolish Vicar. But the smile quickly faded. How the world has changed, he thought, since I wrote Utopia. When it was published no one had even heard of Martin Luther. Yet the very next year Luther nailed his wretched theses to the door of Wittenburg Church, and nothing had been the same since. That same year, Sulieman the Turk marshaled his dreadful army, too. And now? The pestilence of Luther’s malice infects all Europe. The Turk has smashed the Hungarian army and casts his hungry eye westward on us. And in Rome…

      Dear God, Rome…

      Everywhere, Christendom quakes and crumbles. Can the old bonds hold? Everything has degenerated. Even here. The King and Queen, who used to live together in such handfast companionship and never stooped to wrangle…

      He did not let himself finish the thought. It did no good to stray down that path. Besides, he reassured himself, that particular crisis will be resolved once the King comes to his senses over the Boleyn girl, which must be soon.

      He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. He was tired, needed rest. It seemed he had not slept soundly since the news had reached England two weeks before of the catastrophe in Rome. So appalling. The civilized world had been stunned by it.

      In May the Holy Roman Emperor Charles’s troops, warring with France for years over pieces of the Italian peninsula, had fought their way to Rome. They were a mixed brew of Spanish, Italian, and German mercenaries. Unpaid for months and hungry for spoils, they mutinied. They burst the city walls and brought Rome to its knees with a reign of terror never before seen in Christendom. A third of the population was massacred. Cardinals were prodded through the streets and butchered. Nuns, auctioned to soldiers, were raped on their altars. The aisles of the Vatican were used as stables, and the precious manuscripts of its libraries shredded for horses’ bedding. Pope Clement, with the jewels of his papal tiara sewn into the hem of his gown, fled the Vatican along a corridor connecting it to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. While soldiers looted the Church’s palaces, and stacked corpses rotted by the river, the Pope huddled in the Castel under siege. Finally, with Rome in ruins, the Emperor allowed the Pope to escape north of the city to Orvieto.

      More shook his head, still hardly able to believe the enormity of the disaster.

      There was a soft knock at the door. He turned to see his ward step into the room. He shook off his gloomy thoughts. “I have received a rather surprising communication from the Queen,” he said as pleasantly as he could manage.

      Honor stood waiting, and More saw by the slight wrinkling of her forehead that she could not imagine how the Queen’s message could concern her.

      He sat down at his desk. “It seems you have made a most favorable impression on Her Grace. Tell me, child, what passed between you and the Queen at Bridewell?”

      He was referring to the glittering public ceremony some time before to which all the nobility of England had been summoned. The King had there enlarged his six-year-old illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy,