The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

realm was virtually lawless then,” Henry went on anxiously. “And all because the King was an imbecile. A pitiful half-wit who couldn’t dress himself. Poor King Harry of Lancaster.” He turned to More, his face pallid in the scant moonlight. “If I leave no heir, Thomas, will the horrors start again? The mighty factions my father hoped to curb are straining again at their leashes. Some have snapped them, and nip at my very heels. Look at Buckingham. True, I cut off his treasonous scheming along with his head, but what of Norfolk? And the grasping Percys? What of the villainous dogs in Scotland, panting for an empty English throne? I must leave an heir, Thomas. Without a son I consign my realm to bloody civil war.”

      “Princess Mary…”

      “Bah! A woman’s hand cannot rule this stubborn people. Even if she could, she must one day marry some prince of Spain or France or Portugal, and then her obedience to her husband would reduce England to a sniveling fiefdom, the vassal of a foreigner.”

      “I think not, Your Grace. Your subjects have been accustomed for too many generations to liberty and the rule of English law.”

      Henry suddenly roared, “I must have a son!”

      More flinched. At the King’s outburst the laughter below at the campfire hushed.

      Henry hauled himself up and stalked to the wall and looked out over the dark valley.

      More had stood when the King did, the ingrained habit of obedience. He watched the breeze tug the silken skirt of the King’s gold tunic, and waited. The air was heavy with a melancholy smell of smoke and dying vegetation. Today’s the Feast of St. Michael, More thought with a shiver. The end of summer.

      The men’s chatter from the courtyard slowly resumed.

      Henry waved wearily behind his back. “Sit down, man,” he said, staring out. “Sit down.”

      More sat. An owl hooted from the forest.

      Henry’s hand slapped irritably against the stone parapet. “How I detest this waiting for a judgment. God’s wounds, I’ll breathe easier when the thing is done, Thomas. The infernal waiting. It’s enough to kill a man.”

      “Your Grace may not have to wait so very much longer,” More said quietly.

      Henry swung around. “What say you?” He moved in, wide-eyed with hope. “Thomas, what have you heard?”

      “Only a rumor, sire,” More said. He was far from happy to be the messenger of such news. Yet, he asked himself, how could he in conscience conceal it? “Just before supper your goldsmith arrived. He told me he had met a merchant on the road who’d come from Dover, having crossed from Calais. The merchant said he had seen Cardinal Campeggio’s entourage arrive at Calais from Rome.”

      Henry smacked his hands together, exulting. For months he had been pressing the Pope to send Cardinal Campeggio as a special envoy to judge the divorce. “I knew it,” he cried. “Knew it in my bones when Anne arrived today. Campeggio, soon in England! Ha! Making that Italian the Bishop of Salisbury was the best day’s work I ever did.” He laughed. “God smiles on me, Thomas.”

      “He always has, Your Grace.” More made no attempt to hide the affection in his voice.

      Henry smiled. He came and sat again beside his friend. “Thomas, I didn’t bring you up here just to stargaze. I wanted to seek your council on this great matter. Until now I’ve not asked your opinion outright. And”—he chuckled—“God knows you’ve not been forward in voicing it.”

      More’s palms prickled.

      Henry went on. “Everyone else has had his say, ad infinitum. But you—you’ve kept mightily quiet. Well, I’m asking now. It’s important. Give me your thoughts.”

      More tried to keep his face neutral but he feared the racing of his heart betrayed him. Fool! he chided himself. You knew the question would come one day.

      Henry gently grasped the back of More’s neck and leaned in to him as if to impart a confession. “I won’t deny I dearly want you behind me in this, Thomas. In fact, there’s no man’s support I’d rather have.”

      The sincerity, the generosity, unbalanced More’s shaky composure. He lowered his head to collect his thoughts. But his thoughts were in turmoil. Where did his duty lie? Should he march behind his King, right or wrong? Or leap in front to block him from this perilous false step? A pang of arthritis shot through his knee. He rubbed it. “These old bones bring news, too,” he said, and offered an apologetic smile. “They tell me autumn nears.”

      “Don’t change the subject, Thomas. Come, give me your council. Cannot you see God’s hand in this? I do. I see so clearly that if I had done my duty to Him all those years ago, had obeyed His scriptural commandment, I’d have a son beside me now.” His voice rose to indicate a quotation. ‘If a man shall take his brother’s wife, it is an unclean thing: he hath uncovered his brother’s nakedness; they shall be childless.’”

      More closed his eyes, sick of hearing yet again the scriptural passage from Leviticus. He had been appalled at how quickly the English bishops had jumped to mouth it back to the King. Bishop Fisher had been the only one to speak out for the sanctity of the marriage.

      “It’s as clear as the Dog Star above us,” Henry concluded confidently. “I sinned in marrying Arthur’s wife. As punishment, I am childless.”

      More cleared his throat softly. “But, Your Grace…” He hesitated. How to tell a king he’s wrong? He lifted his finger in a debating gesture. “Leviticus is a lengthy catalogue of such injunctions. They are the harsh rules of a nomadic Hebrew tribe, a people living in the fractiousness of close confinement, in tents.”

      He knew it was a safe enough beginning, for the King was used to this sort of intellectual opposition from him; theological debates were a pastime with them, and both could quote long passages of Latin scripture by heart. “The Church,” he went on, “has overruled many prohibitions in Leviticus, including the injunction against shaving off ‘the corner of the beard,’ and against eating the flesh of swine.”

      “Exactly, Thomas,” Henry replied swiftly. “Overruled. The former Pope, in granting the dispensation, bent the law. God’s law. The Pope was wrong to allow my marriage. He acted contrary to God’s law in scripture.”

      More answered cautiously but firmly. “Acted on his authority as the Vicar of Christ on earth, Your Grace.”

      They were sitting face-to-face. More looked into the eyes of his King, eyes so hungry for approval. Were they hungry, too, for guidance? Was that his duty, after all? He felt a pang of devotion and longed to say something that would hold the King back from charging like a mad bull at the bright banner—the unspotted fabric—of Christ’s Church. The traditions of civilization over fifteen centuries are embodied in the authority of the Church, he wanted to cry. Your marriage with the Queen has lasted almost twenty years. Custom and tradition make it sacred. And the Church has spoken.

      As he thought this, hovering on the brink of speaking what was in his heart, he shook his head almost imperceptibly. It was not a gesture of defiance, merely of concentration, but it seemed to trip the spring of a trap in Henry’s mind. His face darkened and bulged over his jeweled collar.

      “By Christ’s wounds,” he cried, “I will have this annulment, for God tells me it is right! I’ll not be thwarted!”

      More felt his heart beat fast with fear. “Thwarted?” In the forest the owl’s cry spiraled on the chill air. “Never by me, Your Grace.” He shuddered. He knew that his moment of courage had ebbed, and was forever lost.

      Henry was staring at his hands. “Thomas, I want you to understand something.” He turned, calmer now. “God is speaking to me,” he said. More listened uneasily, vaguely dizzy, for the crenellated walls around them blocked out the world, and shreds of cloud scudded overhead giving the illusion that the platform was moving. It seemed that he and the King were sitting alone, voyaging in some unearthly ship, adrift among the stars.

      “He