The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

as a claimant to the throne. Sir Thomas, attending with all of his family, had read out the boy’s new patents of nobility.

      “Her Grace was ill with a headache, sir,” Honor answered. “The day was very hot. She became so indisposed she had to leave the hall. I’m sure you remember, for everyone was most concerned.”

      More remembered it well. The Queen had stood stoically by her husband’s side while he made a mistress’s bastard eligible to inherit the throne. Not only was it an insult to the Queen, it also threw the claim of their daughter, the Princess Mary, into jeopardy. Watching his ward’s open-faced reply, More wondered how much Honor had really seen that day. Had she understood anything of the humiliation the good Queen must have been suffering?

      “Her Grace asked me to accompany her to her private chamber,” Honor continued. “Perhaps it was only because I was near at hand. Though I did notice that Mistress Boleyn was nearer.”

      Did she really know nothing of the Boleyn girl’s infamy? More was touched by the innocence of the statement. Gratified, too, for it was further vindication of his judgment to settle his family in Chelsea: city gossip was just far enough removed.

      “In any case,” Honor went on, “Her Grace asked only me. My heart ached to see her in such distress, and I offered to read to her. I read from Louis Vives and it seemed to calm her.” Quickly, she added, as though to deny too much credit, “The chamber was cool and dark, sir, both good medicine, I do not doubt. Her Grace was wondrous kind to me.”

      More could not suppress a jolt of pride. Most of the Queen’s ladies were vain, ignorant flirts. In fine weather they rode out hunting and hawking with their courtier admirers, and when it rained they turned to cards, cat’s cradle, and gossip. Though they were all from prominent families, they had been sent to court only to make profitable marriages, and few of them were even literate, let alone able to soothe the nerves of this accomplished Queen by reading to her in learned Latin.

      “Child,” he said suddenly, “what say you to matrimony?”

      Her mouth fell open. “Leave here? Leave you?” she blurted. A blush swept over her face and she looked down.

      More was surprised. Had she really not thought about marriage yet? A girl so lovely, so aware? Perhaps not; the stricken look on her face told him that her heart was here, at Chelsea. He realized that it pleased him inordinately. The realization was unsettling.

      With her head still lowered, Honor asked quietly, “Is it that fat doctor?”

      More had to cover a smile with his hand. At Lent, a doctor friend of his father’s, a portly widower, had come to court the girl. More had been passing the open solar door and overheard them talking. She was deftly cooling the doctor’s ardor in a most original fashion—by grilling him rather mercilessly on the works of St. Jerome and St. Thomas Aquinas. The poor man fled without even staying to supper.

      “No,” More answered, amused. “The doctor has retreated from the field. But another hopeful has stepped into the breach.” He waited for some response, but she stood stubbornly silent. “Are you not even curious to know who it is?”

      “No,” she said morosely. “But if my marriage is your desire, sir, my pleasure is naturally to obey you.”

      He frowned. “This is no answer, child. I will not sell you like a chattel to the highest bidder. But here,” he said, poking at the letter on the desk beside the Queen’s message, “here is Sir John Bremelcum writing to open a dialogue with me about you and young Geoffrey. You got along well with the lad when he was here at Christmas, despite his coughs and chills. Good family. And he’s doing brilliantly at Cambridge. He’ll make a first-rate lawyer one day.”

      He watched her for a promising sign, but she offered none.

      Indeed, her obstinate expression suggested the opposite. More sighed heavily. He rose from his chair, turned his back to her, and gazed out the window. “I would like to have seen you safely and honorably married. The world is becoming a dangerous place.” He added quietly, “Sometimes, I fear we may be standing on the brink of the very end.” He could hear his own uneasiness hover in the stillness of the book-lined sanctuary.

      He turned abruptly, suddenly all business. “Her Grace has need of new ladies-in-waiting. Two places have fallen vacant. She has asked that you fill one of them.”

      Honor’s eyes grew large.

      More frowned and added hastily, “I scruple to send a tender mind to court. Much vice breeds there. The Queen herself is the most virtuous of women—else nothing could make me even consider it—still, there is much vice. Had I given my word on you already to Sir John Bremelcum I would not hesitate to send my regrets to the Queen, for she well knows my promise is a thing I would not break, not for a world of court gold. Yet it is not so. There has been no such agreement with Sir John…”

      His voice trailed. He had held off asking her inclination outright, hoping that, given a moment to consider, she might yet decline of her own free will. But he could put it off no longer. “What say you, child, to the Queen’s request?”

      She was staring at him, hope glowing on her face. “Are you giving me leave to choose for myself, sir?”

      He hesitated, then answered, “Of course.”

      Suddenly, all her reticence was swept away by a huge, bright smile. More felt a pang of loss. How instantly the siren song of the court had severed her heartstrings from Chelsea—from him! And yet, her eyes were shining so clearly, so openly devoid of guile, that for a moment he could actually believe that she was making the right choice.

      His eyes trailed down to the low-cut bodice of her gown. He noticed, for the first time, the coral and pearls of his gift glistening against the skin above her full, lifted breasts. And she had changed her dress since the morning, had she not? Yes, she had put on a silk one of a gleaming coral color. She must have picked it out especially, for he saw that it perfectly matched the necklace. Saw, too, that it gave fire to her lustrous dark hair and eyes.

      He forced his eyes away. Blindly, he grabbed a sheaf of papers as if he meant to begin work. But it was no good. He turned back to her. “Oh, tread carefully, child,” he said. “At court, many pretty necklaces are dangled before the eyes of the unwary.”

      4

      At Court

      “They’re going to cut off his hand?” Honor asked, horrified.

      She turned to Margery Napier. The two girls were the same age, and for six months had shared duties among the Queen’s two dozen ladies-in-waiting. They had stopped halfway across a colonnaded outdoor gallery at Greenwich Palace with bundles of the Queen’s furs in their arms. “But why?” Honor asked. “What’s he done?”

      The gallery looked down on a cramped quadrangle where a crowd was forming. The quadrangle was hemmed in by the red brick walls of the scullery and spicery, and the gray stone walls of the granary, chandlery, and brewhouse. This jumble of buildings huddled under the perimeter skyline of palace roofs serrated with gables and chimneys where the occasional flash of a gilded turret reflected the watery winter sun.

      “It’s the new penalty for brawling on the King’s tennis courts,” Margery answered blithely. Her eye was following a young lordling with a shapely leg as he and his wolfhound sauntered out of an alley. Man and dog left behind them a pattern of black hollows in the powdery snow as they joined the twenty or so people milling in front of a low scaffolding at the wall opposite the gallery.

      Honor rested her bundle on the gallery railing. “But men quarrel round the palace all the time, then pay their fines and walk away. None has lost a hand for it.”

      “This one will,” Margery said with quiet relish. “The King is in a fume. He says he is ill served by the pack of jackals at his court, and he’s told the lord steward and the palace marshal that he’ll have order.”

      It was the first Honor had heard of it. She studied the bright, bird eyes of her friend with a quizzical