The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

slumped on the far side of the hurdle. He was almost twice the size of the smiling friar. His face was turned away, and she could see only a mass of hair: a dirty blond tangle above and a full beard straggling below. Like the friar, he was barefoot and dressed only in shirt and hose. But unlike the friar he was smeared with the dried filth of long imprisonment, and the ropes around knees, waist and chest that strapped him to the wooden grill pinned his arms tightly to his sides.

      “Look what you’ll be missing, love,” a young woman said, laughing. She sprang from the crowd to kiss him. Her companions whistled at her prank. As her mouth covered the prisoner’s slack lips, her hand tousled his hair, revealing his cheek and ear. Or what was left of his ear. It had been mutilated, leaving a scarlet ruffle of cartilage.

      Horror chilled Honor’s scalp. Around the reins, her nails dug white crescents into her palms. “Ralph,” she breathed.

      The old man impeding the procession was dragged from the path. The horse and hurdle wallowed on. People rushed after it like gulls screeching in the wake of a ship.

      The execution cortege stopped in front of Saint Bartholomew’s Church. From inside came the dead chanting of monks.

      Maybe it’s not Ralph. Six years since I’ve seen him. An injured ear might be common. Among soldiers…or criminals…

      She tried to move her horse forward but the crowd made it impossible. She slid off the saddle and abandoned the animal and fought her way on—shoving aside a woman hawking stick crosses, worming past a man with a child on his shoulders—until she burst into the front rank of onlookers. There, no more than five horse lengths from her, the hurdle had stopped. Still tilted off the ground, the prisoners lay stretched on it like gutted fish splayed in the sun to dry.

      “Dear God,” she whispered in despair. For it was no soldier, no criminal. It was Ralph Pepperton. Haggard and filthy, his bearded face a lifetime older, but the same man who had ripped his own flesh from the nail of the pillory to run with her from Tyrell Court and see her safely to London.

      The last time she had spoken to him was just after the victorious trial that had made her Sir Thomas’s ward. After bringing Ralph the judgment, she had gone with him to a wharf on the river near London Bridge. It was sunset, and Ralph was tossing his satchels into a barge bound for Oxford. They stood together on the water steps, unable to say good-bye.

      “Oh stay, Ralph,” she pleaded. “The news from Tyrell Court may never reach here. And even if it does and they accuse you, Sir Thomas is a wonderful, fair man. I know he’ll forgive you. Come and meet him.”

      “Forgive murder?” Ralph shook his head with a smile. “If he does, he’s not the clever lawman I took him for. No, mistress. Though you and me know the how and why of it—an evil mishap—the law sees things different. And maybe that’s as it should be, for I swear I’d snap that lousel’s neck again for your sake.”

      He had held her nose between his knuckles as he used to do to make her laugh when she was a child, but as a woman of twelve she had thought it undignified to respond. He let go and chucked her under the chin, then climbed into the barge. As he turned back to her he fished an apple from his pocket, shoved the whole thing between his jaws, and comically bulged his eyes. It had made her giggle like a child after all. The barge had pulled away. Ralph had popped out the apple and waved good-bye, grinning under the golden sunset.

      Now, he lay lashed to the hurdle and his grin was the rictus of pain. His shirt, stripped off one shoulder, hung in shreds over his chest, now so lean that the white skin gleamed at the knobs of collarbone and rib. From plum-colored sockets he blinked at the people who jeered at him.

      “Ralph!” Honor cried, but his eyes flickered over her, not seeing her.

      She stared past him at the circular pit of sand. It was roped off and posted at intervals with guards. At the center, two ten-foot stakes stood ready. Heaped at the base of each stake was a three-foot pile of faggots and straw.

      Her mind groped for bearings. Some mistake…Some horrible mistake…

      There was a commotion beside the church. A group of dignitaries was mounting the stands. Fingers in the crowd pointed up at them: the velveted Lord Mayor and his aldermen; the Bishop of London’s Chancellor and his attendant clerics.

      The Mayor! He can stop this!

      She barged back through the packed ranks and struck out for the Mayor’s platform, treading on feet, deaf to people’s curses. She was almost at the stands when laughter erupted. Three clowns had dashed into the pit, cavorting like monkeys, tumbling near the stakes. People had clambered onto the roofs of nearby houses to watch. Some sat, some ate. Others leaned out of windows. A woman suckled a baby. Beneath the dignitaries’ stands a couple groped in the shadows, the woman fumbling at the strings of the man’s codpiece while he kneaded her breasts. In the pit the clowns simulated a fistfight and the crowd’s laughter crescendoed.

      Honor glanced back at the hurdle. The guards were slitting the prisoners’ bonds. The young friar sprang up instantly, erect, fresh-faced and smiling. Ralph slid down the hurdle on his back, dropped to his knees, then pitched forward. But when one hand groped in the sand to break his fall his back arched convulsively. Nausea curdled Honor’s stomach as she saw the source of his agony: he had been brought here with one shoulder wrenched from its socket.

      Guards flanked each prisoner and grappled their elbows. The friar walked tamely across the pit to the stake as if on his way to church. Ralph had to be hauled between the guards, his legs limp, his toes scraping a channel behind him in the sand. At the stake, they tied Ralph’s hands behind his back. They bound his ankles with twine. They passed a chain around his chest to anchor him to the stake. Both tethered men now faced the stands where the Bishop’s Chancellor was stepping down and striding out to deliver an address.

      Honor tore her gaze from Ralph. The entrance to the stands lay to her right. There was only one central aisle and only one soldier guarding it, leaning on his pike. She lunged and reached the first step. The pike shot across her path and her hips thudded against its shaft as it locked on the far railing.

      “Sorry, my lady. Only His Worship’s party allowed.”

      Honor stood back. The guard, she saw, was no older than herself. “I bring a message from the Queen,” she lied. “Let me pass.”

      The guard’s eyes dropped to her silk sleeve. The embroidered badge there—the pomegranate of Aragon entwined with the Tudor rose—was the Queen’s emblem. He gnawed his lip, hesitating.

      “I beg you,” she whispered.

      At the desperation that flooded her face the guard relaxed. It was easy to deal with weakness. “Sorry, my lady. Orders.”

      Honor cast a look up to the Mayor on the middle bench surrounded by his aldermen. Recklessly, she shouted, “Your Worship!”

      But the Mayor was listening with a scowl to a man standing before him, a middle-aged soldier who was holding up two head-sized sacks tied together with a short length of rope.

      “With this gunpowder strung around the man’s neck,” the soldier was explaining, “the fire consumes him all the faster. I’ve seen it used in Lincoln, and I do recommend it.”

      “Why?” the Mayor asked. “We’ve never used gunpowder before. And what of the danger? The fire might spread. Up here.”

      “There is no danger, Your Worship. This only brings the man a quicker end. For mercy’s sake.”

      The Mayor’s concentration appeared to be wavering. His eyes flicked to a banner that drooped at the edge of the stands. Though gray clouds were beginning to roll in, the heat remained suffocating. A bead of sweat slid down his temple. “Mercy?” he asked vaguely.

      “Mercy,” a low voice interjected from the bench behind the Mayor, “is the prerogative of God.” The speaker lifted a hand to bat away a fly. On his finger a sapphire ring gleamed.

      The Mayor brightened. “There’s your answer, Lieutenant. We’re here to carry out the law.