The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

both palms, leaving the thumb and fingers free.

      Honor smiled her thanks, hating herself for the lie she had told: an accident in heating the Queen’s wine at the fire. The Queen, for her part, had accepted that the “accident” had happened here at Chelsea. Honor loathed the deception. But Ralph’s death was too painful even to think of; speaking of it would be unbearable. She had told no one.

      “Will the Queen spare you to sit for the family portrait?” Cecily asked. “It’s next Thursday, you know.” She bent awkwardly to pick a crinkled leaf off her baby’s forehead. “Little angel,” she cooed. She straightened, then settled, and the exertion made her puff her cheeks with a laugh. “I fear Master Holbein will already need a larger canvas just to fit me in.”

      “I’ll try to come,” Honor said. She smiled. Cecily was her best friend and Honor loved her—when she’d lived here they had shared a bed, and all their secrets—but her matronly contentment rather amused Honor. After all, Cecily was only eighteen months older than herself. Today, though, she found Cecily’s blanket of solicitude strangely soothing.

      “Speaking of Holbein,” Cecily said brightly, “let’s hear the letter you said dear old Erasmus has sent you. Then I can give Hans the news from Basle when I sit for his sketch tomorrow. I know he hungers for tidings of his home.”

      Honor roused herself, and with stiff fingers drew a paper from her sleeve. Her letters from Erasmus were delights that she always shared with the More household. She had never met Erasmus—he had not visited England in over a decade—but following his gracious reply to the essay she had sent him, they had continued a lively correspondence. Honor was aware that it was a mark of some distinction to be one of a handful of females among the international body of colleagues with whom the scholar communicated. “Forgive me, Cecily,” she said. “I meant to bring the letter before this.”

      “That’s all right, dear, I’ll hear it now,” Cecily murmured good-naturedly. “Though heaven knows when I’ll be able to pass the news along to Father,” she sighed. “We haven’t seen him for weeks. This latest epidemic of the Sweat has driven the King from Greenwich, first to Hunsden, then to Titten-hanger, and now I don’t know where. And where His Grace goes, there must Father go as well. I’m so sorry you missed him.”

      Honor could hardly express how sorry she was, too. Her guardian was the one person to whom she felt she might unburden her heart, and she ached for a half hour of his wisdom to help her ease her sorrow. But, though hoping to find him home, she had hardly expected it.

      She opened the letter and read:

      “To Mistress Larke, and all alumni of the academy in the house of Thomas More: greetings.

      Sad to say, the howling over Luther continues unabated. It rises to fever pitch when he attacks the trade in saints’ relics, though there is no doubt the trade has become shameless. The Archbishop of Maintz boasts an exhibition of eight thousand items, including a clod of the earth from which Adam was created, a toenail of Saint Stephen’s, a dollop of manna from the wilderness, a twig from the burning bush, and a drop of the Virgin’s milk. And this goes on everywhere! There are so many splinters of Our Lord’s cross displayed in church reliquaries throughout Europe that a warship could not hold them all.”

      Cecily looked up wide-eyed. “He hasn’t mellowed in his old age, has he?”

      “He never hesitates to speak his rather formidable mind,” Honor agreed, but her smile was weak, for Erasmus’s faintly blasphemous satire brought echoes of the charges of heresy at Smithfield that chilled her. But then Erasmus, she knew, was an eclectic thinker; he always saw through cant. Though he was a priest, trained in the monastery, he had secured a special dispensation years ago that had released him from his vows of obedience to the Augustinian order.

      She read on:

      “People shriek at me because I do not denounce Luther. And, indeed, when he speaks the truth, I will not. Yet they should not worry; he speaks little enough of it. Lately he has fallen to raving about the ‘German soul.’ I fear he is the tree that bears the poison fruit of nationalism. Von Hutten has now joined in, urging ‘we Germans’ to stick together in the present danger. If things continue on like this I shall soon declare myself to be a Frenchman!

      Certainly, one place that will never claim me again is Louvain. There, the selling of meat on Fridays or during Lent was punishable by law—unlike exploitation or war-mongering. I have been much happier here at Basle, where meat is always sold. Though my heart is Catholic, my stomach is Protestant.”

      Cecily and Honor exchanged smiles. Erasmus’s notoriously finicky appetite was one of his more endearing quirks.

      The gilded, late-afternoon sky was ripening into a rosy sunset. The maidservants ambled up from the riverbank with their bundles of reeds. From the kitchen, voices and the aromas of fresh bread and baking apples wafted across the lawn.

      “But, tragically, even here in Basle [Honor read on] we are on the brink of civil war. The Lutheran Evangelicals have taken over the Council, expelling the Catholic leaders. There is talk of the University being suspended. I fear I must seek another home. But where? The lust for war boils over across Europe. Some people cry for a holy massacre of Luther’s followers, some for a bloody crusade against the Turks. My essay, ‘War Is Sweet to the Inexperienced’ has infuriated all who do not want the world to come to its senses.

      No, I cannot go with St. Bernard who praised soldiers, or St. Thomas Aquinas when he sanctioned the ‘just war.’ Why should we be moved by the arguments of these men more than by the words of Christ? Crusade, indeed! The Turks are clawing at the doors of Vienna, and all because Christians are too busy snarling at one another over Luther. I say to them: Do you wish to terrify the Turks? Then live in concord amongst yourselves.

      But no one wants to hear me, though they love to hurl my tired old name, missilelike, into one another’s camps. When I travel, people snatch up the stubs of candles I burn in the night, for souvenirs. I tell them they would do better to use my ideas as candles.”

      A bell chimed from the house.

      “Goodness, so late,” Cecily exclaimed. “Supper in an hour.”

      “That’s really all there is, in any case,” Honor said. She glanced again at the hastily written postscript, but kept it to herself:

      “I have had no luck tracking down the book you asked me to seek. No title page with a single blue flower has passed under my nose. I promise, however, that I shall not abandon the search.”

      Honor felt a familiar pang of regret. She had thought that if anyone could find a copy of the foreigner’s little volume, it would be Erasmus. Not only was he a renowned book collector, he was also in touch with all the ground-breaking authors in Europe. But his disappointing postscript deepened her conviction that she would never discover what mysteries had been written inside the foreigner’s lost gift.

      Cecily was pushing her bulk up from the bench to go inside. Honor picked up the baby and placed him in his mother’s arms, then went back to the edge of the pond to put on her stockings and shoes.

      “You’ll stay, won’t you, Honor?” Cecily asked. “Lady Alice has baked some apples. With honey, just the way you like them.”

      Honor was tying her shoelace. “I can’t, Cecily. I must get back to Bridewell. The Queen likes me to read to her. The evenings are long for her these days.” She did not raise her head as she spoke, for this was another lie. The Queen’s comfort was not her reason for wanting to hurry away. It was something else, something gnawing inside her that frightened her.

      She knew well the routine of the household. At supper one of More’s daughters—Margaret or Cecily or Elizabeth—would read from Latin scripture. Afterwards would come family prayers in the chapel. Even when Sir Thomas was away he insisted on his family’s strict observance of the practice. Now, Honor dreaded it. Since Ralph’s death she had not been able to pray. She could not force herself into the meek and grateful state of mind required. Supplication, contrition, thanks: the prayers had always flowed so unconsciously.