The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

joy—a joy that, for one instant, quenched the agony. Then his eyeballs rolled up, white inside the red rind of socket. His backbone arched. Sparks jumped to his head. His hair flared. Smoke boiled over him. Honor’s ears were split by one harrowing scream from him. And then the fire engulfed him.

      Both guards caught up with her at once. They lifted her arms above her head, twisted her limp body around, and dragged her facedown between them to the edge of the crowd the way Ralph had been dragged to the stake. At the rope barricade they pushed her underneath and dropped her on her knees. She knelt, stunned into immobility, and the guards decided it was safe to leave her. People near her, anxious to keep watching the man burn, shuffled in around her.

      Her head slumped back. She was dimly conscious of a throbbing in her hands. They hung like bricks at the ends of her arms. She had not the strength to lift them. Nor to lift up her head. It hung back, so very heavy. The standing bodies around her restricted her vision to the shaft of sky above her upturned face. She blinked at the sparks drifting upward in this column of air—bright, spiraling stars that died to cinders against the gray sky.

      The first, fat drops of rain splatted as warm as blood onto her forehead. Thunder crashed. The sky unleashed a deluge. People looked up. Several laughed, delighted at the relief the water brought. Then, suddenly, the wind rose. Rain began to lash them in whipping, stinging sheets. The mass of humanity around the pit began to crack apart. The water seemed to erode them into chunks, into small islands like the ones already forming on the baked roads leading into Smithfield. Men, women and squealing children scuttled away. Rain scythed across the stands, forcing the dignitaries from their seats. Hurrying down the stairs, they formed a current pushing through the eddying crowd. Running bodies swept out of the square like debris washed into a gutter.

      As water pooled around her skirt, Honor opened her mouth and let the pins of rain sting and then die on her tongue. She gulped the drenched air, willing it to cleanse away the ash that clogged her throat and nostrils. She turned her head to the left. Across the pit, the weeping friar who had earlier collided with her horse kneeled too, in a silent anguish of his own. They were the only mourners.

      The stake that had held the friar was demolished and rain pounded the hissing coals and washed the dead man’s remains. The stake that held Ralph still stood, half eaten to charcoal. Under the chain, his twisted body hung, a black, shriveled lump.

      Honor bent forward and vomited.

      Something made her lift her head. Straight across the pit one other person, she saw, had remained behind. Father Bastwick. He stood under the gable of the dry church porch, watching her.

      Above them all, the blind stone saints on St. Bartholomew’s tower stood sentry in the sloping sheets of rain.

      6

      The Conscience of the King

      King Henry sat with Anne Boleyn in the window seat of a gatehouse in a manor near Oxford. His head hovered over her naked breast, but she was staring beyond him at the night sky, which was cut up by the mullioned windows into starry squares. The whiskers of his beard stung her as his lips and tongue worked around her nipple. “Ow,” she murmured. He paused. Then he bit her.

      “Ouch!” She clamped her hands firmly on both his bearded cheeks, lifted his head, and glared. His blue eyes looked up with all the apprehension of a child caught with a finger in the honey pot. He licked a dribble of saliva from the corner of his mouth and waited for his rebuke.

      Anne’s eyes narrowed, tugging together eyebrows as lustrous as black silk. She leaned back against the stone casement. Above her lowered bodice her black hair lay in stripes over her small breasts. The pink, erect nipples peeked out like berries through brambles. She turned her head and looked out at the night as if she were alone.

      “Woman,” he growled, “how long will you torture me?”

      She watched a shooting star.

      “Anne,” he pleaded, “come to my bed.”

      “No.”

      “But why?”

      “You’ve had my answer”.

      “But I don’t understand,” he whined.

      Her tone was flat, businesslike, except for a note of weariness. “Your Grace cannot marry me, and the longer you single me out as you do, the more you jeopardize my chance of making a good match elsewhere.”

      “Marry you! God’s wounds, am I not moving heaven and earth to do so?”

      Her smile was disdainful. “Heaven is immovable, Your Grace, even by a prince as mighty as yourself. And as for earth, the patch beneath the Pope’s feet shows little sign of yielding. Meanwhile, you already have a wife to share your bed.”

      She was forcing up the lemon yellow bodice of her gown, and he groaned at this signal that she was finished dispensing her favors for the evening. He grabbed her wrist to stop her. She stiffened in defiance.

      Sudden, raw anger infused his face. He fought his way up from the undignified lover’s sprawl in the window seat and stood over her, bulky with red velvet, gold silk, and precious stones. Henry Tudor was six feet tall, broad of shoulder and long of leg. He had been a skilled athlete all his life, and even at thirty-seven, and heavy with years of gluttony, his body still exuded an athlete’s power. Behind him, the remains of the fire across the room illuminated his cropped, golden hair and seemed to make his huge form glow with majesty. But his lips, a small red bow in the broad face, pouted with indignation. “Have I not sworn to you that I no longer lie with the Queen? God’s blood, what more would you have me do?”

      Anne snorted. She rose and pushed past him. The room, lit only by the dying fire, was bare except for a bed, a table, and a scatter of cushions near the hearth. She kicked a tumbled coal into the fire. “If you were a Prince of Lombardy you would dispatch the barren old woman with a potion and marry whom you please.”

      Henry was genuinely shocked. Dignity crept back and inflated his chest. “I am, however, King of England. A Christian King. Such evils will not be countenanced in my realm.”

      Anne whirled around and glowered at him, her hands on her hips.

      “And you would do well to remember,” he went on, “that the lady you call ‘old woman’ is a Spanish Princess. Your great-grandfather rose from a mercer’s shop, Mistress Bullen, but in Catherine’s veins flows the blood of kings.”

      Anne flushed. Looking contrite, she dropped to her knees among the cushions, flung back her hair and looked up at him. “Forgive me, my good lord. For my presumption you must blame this plague of the sweating sickness that has kept us apart for so long. Your presence is so dear to me, and the separation from you, until today, has chafed me so, it drives me to say cruel things. Things I do not mean.”

      She lay back among the cushions, her hair spread across their gold brocade. Her long legs stretched sinuously under her skirt. Henry came to her and stood over her, fascinated. “Your Grace’s displeasure is my abiding sorrow,” Anne said softly. She extended her arms to him. “Forgive me?”

      Instantly, he was on the floor beside her, kissing her mouth, groping inside her bodice, shoving it down to fondle her breast. She gently pushed him onto his back. She whispered in his ear, “Henry.” She never dared to speak his Christian name except in passion, and he shuddered at the intimate thrill it gave. Her breath was moist. Her tongue probed his ear. Her hand crept down to his groin, and her fingernail scraped along the satin of his codpiece. “Henry,” she murmured, “how I long to open my body to you. To discover your body…”

      Suddenly, violently, she pulled away. She sat bolt upright and clamped her skirt around her knees. “But, of course, the Spanish Princess can do these things with you, for the Spanish Princess is your wife.”

      “Damn you, wanton!” He snatched her shoulders and wrenched her around so quickly that her hair whipped his face. She did not flinch from his anger, nor from his strength, but stared at him levelly, like an equal. But tears were brimming in her eyes, and her breath