The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

and from more than just the cold.

      He shrugged. “Only a kiss,” he repeated reasonably.

      She answered, as if uttering a curse, “Very well.” She drew herself up and clenched her jaw. Her folded arms tightened into rigid armor. The iced air pinched her nostrils. “Let’s get it over with.”

      He stood, and Honor’s lips parted in surprise; she had forgotten how tall he was. He stepped close to her. He took her face between his hands and lifted it to his. His lips touched hers. She tasted the sweet residue of brandy. She felt his hand slide to her throat, felt her own pulse beat against his warm palm. His other arm went lower and drew her to him, his cloak almost engulfing her. He held her gently, yet she felt immobilized by his strength. As her every muscle softened, her mouth opened under his. Her arms dropped to her sides. She felt the heat of his body, his hands on her as if he owned her. And she knew that, for this moment, he did.

      He drew his face away. She heard him laugh softly. “Open your eyes, mistress,” he said. “The bargain was for just one kiss, no more. Sorry.”

      Her eyes flew open.

      He chuckled. “You’ve never been kissed before, have you? But of course not. Not Sir Thomas More’s ward. Oh, yes, I’ve heard the tales. Sir Thomas the Pious. I understand the man keeps such a chaste household, he actually segregates his servants so that male and female do not fraternize. Is it true?”

      Honor wrenched herself from his arms. How dare this lecherous drunkard ridicule Sir Thomas! “This transaction is concluded, sir,” she spat. “I trust I have now bought your silence?”

      “Cheap, wasn’t it?” He laughed. “But, I must be content,” he said with mock resignation, “for the court, you know, is a buyer’s market.”

      “And your skill in bartering, small,” she retorted. “No wonder you need a rich wife.”

      His look at her darkened into one of scorn. “Well,” he said, looking at her mouth, “all of us around here must sell whatever we can.”

      The insult was too plain. She raised her hand to strike him. He caught her wrist, held it a moment, then dropped it. He flopped down nonchalantly onto the bench and took up the bottle. “Go back inside, mistress,” he said. “You’re cold.”

      Honor turned on her heel and left him.

      5

      Smithfield

      The small hunting party plodded over the drought-cracked road leading into London, and a parched breeze spiraled grit up into the eyes of Honor and Margery riding in the center. The two mounted gentlemen ahead of them were bickering over techniques of the day’s kill, comparing it with other hunts, while three servant boys lazily brought up the rear, leading a pony laden with strings of bloody grouse and a fallow deer buck.

      Honor peeled off a sweaty glove and picked the grit from her eye. Lord, she thought, how I hate hunting. The chase. The blood. The frenzy of the dogs—and the men—when they run down a wounded buck. Still, the wretched day has been worth it. I charmed all the information out of the Archbishop’s nephew I’m likely to get for the Queen.

      Margery glared ahead at the male conversation that excluded them, her eyes puffy in the heat. Honor offered her a look of sympathy. “Bridewell in twenty minutes,” she said and smiled, “and the Venetian Ambassador’s claret to cool us.” But Margery remained grumpily silent.

      The gentlemen’s chatter had degenerated into a quarrel over who would be invited to hunt with the King’s party the following week. Certainly not the Queen, Honor thought bitterly. The King only rode out now with Anne Boleyn; the Queen was not welcome. Worse, if the loose talk Honor had coaxed from Archbishop Warham’s nephew was correct, the Queen’s prospects appeared grim; in the divorce battle, the Church, it seemed, was going to abandon her. Honor could almost hear the cautious old politician, Warham, murmuring to bishops in his archiepiscopal palace: “Indignatio principis mors est.” The wrath of the King is death.

      But still no answer had come from Rome. Winter had melted into spring, spring had dragged into summer, summer was almost at an end, and all nerves at court were in a jangle. The King fumed. The Queen endured. But the Pope would not act.

      Honor stuffed her gloves into her pocket as the Jesus Bells of St. Paul’s Cathedral clanged. Today was the Feast of Saint Michael. A short distance ahead the walls of London rose, and the city skyline—a square-mile thicket of steeples—wavered in the heat. As usual, several church bells were clamoring at once. Strange, Honor thought, how their discord is so familiar it sounds like harmony.

      The party came up behind a cart piled with sides of beef, slowing their progress. Honor groaned with impatience. How she longed to be back in her room in a cool bath! The stacked carcasses shuddered over every pothole as if in some protracted death throe, and the carrion stink bled into the stench of the slaughterhouses and tanneries that were crowded, by law, outside the city walls. Their waste of entrails was daily slopped into the Fleet Ditch.

      The smell was nauseating. Honor had had enough. “Margery,” she said suddenly, “I’m off.”

      The other girl’s eyes widened. “What, alone?”

      But Honor was already trotting her mare towards an open lane. Laughing, she called over her shoulder, “See you back at Bridewell,” and cantered away, happy at last to be free of dead things and dull companions.

      The lane fed into the broad expanse of Smithfield fairground, and she reined the mare to a walk and threaded through the moving crowd. She was surprised at the number of people. She knew that horse markets were regularly held here—all ranks of people frequented its bawling grounds where packhorses and priests’ mules were traded alongside finely bred destriers and hunters—but the usual market day was Saturday, two days away.

      She squeezed around to the Augustinian priory church of St. Bartholomew the Great that fronted the square, and passed by as its bell peeled nones, the monks’ three o’clock service. Beside the church was an empty flight of stands for dignitaries. Several idlers were lounging in the shade beneath its plank seating. Honor envied them the cool spot they had found. Definitely, she thought, a bath, first thing.

      A gray-robed friar staggered out of the crowd straight toward her, his head bowed. Honor thought he must be drunk. As she jerked the reins to twist out of his way he collided with her horse’s shoulder. The horse shied and Honor murmured soothing words to gentle it. The friar stared up at her. His red eyes were blurred with tears. His hands flew to his face in a gesture of misery, and then he dashed away.

      There was a shout. Honor looked to her right. A procession was winding toward her. Probably a funeral, she thought. Maybe the dead man is someone the sad friar was close to. She coaxed her horse to one side, hoping to skirt the square and leave, but the crowd was swelling rapidly and the press of bodies forced her to stop.

      A trio of mounted men-at-arms was followed by a workhorse dragging something, then by a half-dozen more men-at-arms on foot. The crowd had kicked up a lot of dust, and through this screen Honor could not make out what the horse had in tow. But as it neared her, the heads of two men became visible behind the horse’s rump. Although she could not yet see their bodies it was clear they were strapped to a hurdle, the tilted wooden grill that was scraping over the ground.

      This crowd hadn’t come for a horse fair. They’d come to watch a burning.

      “There he is!” someone said with a laugh. “Heywood the heretic.”

      People pushed to get closer, forcing Honor’s horse forward too. The hurdle was now passing directly in front of her, and she saw the face of the prisoner nearest her. He was young and slight, his hair shaved in a priest’s tonsure. He smiled winningly, like a child or a simpleton, at the people craning to see him. His arms were free above the ropes that bound him to the hurdle, and he offered the sign of the cross over and over.

      An old man fell to his knees in front of the procession, halting it. “Brother Heywood, God take you to His rest,” he croaked.