The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

tell you a story,” said Frish. “My father was a tenant farmer. I labored in his field from the day I could lift a load. When I was nine, the landlord stopped by our cottage to see my father, and when he left, my father told me the landlord had accused me of stealing some of his pears. I was desolate, not only because I was innocent, but also because the landlord had always been a friend to me, always told me I had promise. My father beat me for the theft. Years later I found out that the landlord, who had no son, had not come that day with any such accusation, but rather with an offer to pay for an education for me. My father, you see, preferred to retain my labor.” He looked Honor in the eye. “The Church keeps us from God, mistress. It frightens us and punishes us in order to keep us enslaved. But I have caught the Church in its lie.”

      Again, she saw Bastwick standing over her own father, punishing him with the terror of hell, all for a mortuary.

      “Are you so sure you are not one of us?” Frish asked gently.

      She could find no words. Objections and denials withered under those fiercely pure eyes.

      He lowered his head, disappointed by her silence. His body slumped again into meek self-consciousness. “Forgive me,” he mumbled, “I’ve made a mistake. I’ll go.” He stood. “You will not want me to escort you. I would only endanger you further.”

      He flipped the hood of his tunic over his fair head. Instantly, it cut off the beam from his eyes. Without another word he left her side, his footsteps falling noiselessly. As he passed beyond the lantern’s feeble halo, clouds blotted the moon, as if some massive hand in heaven covered it to shield him, allowing him to go in darkness.

      But Honor heard his clear voice as he called back softly from the end of the alley, “God be with you!”

      10

      Chelsea in Autumn

      “Is the litter for the Cardinal, Master DeVille?” Honor asked, looking down at the activity in the courtyard.

      She was standing at a window of the library in the Bishop of London’s palace. Cardinal Campeggio, the Pope’s special envoy, had been a guest here since his arrival in London the week before. Now, his retinue was assembling for a move to quarters across the city. The palace was attached to St. Paul’s, and in the shadow of the cathedral’s spire servants and clerks jostled and shouted among horses, mules, and baggage carts, while at the center of the commotion the Cardinal’s horse litter sat motionless. Honor glanced over her shoulder at the young cleric writing at a book-strewn table. “Is the Cardinal ill?”

      “He suffers from gout,” Percy DeVille answered without glancing up from his ledger. He was cataloging a shipment of books just arrived from Florence. DeVille was an assistant to the Bishop’s librarian, and Honor had dealt with him on several occasions, borrowing rare books for the Queen. “It took him weeks to get here from Dover in that litter,” he added.

      Honor looked out again and caught a glimpse of the pale, balding man frowning out from the brocaded interior of the curtained couch. “Perhaps delay is his strategy,” she said.

      “Strategy?” DeVille asked, finally looking up.

      “His best hope is that, given time, the King will change his mind about the divorce. Then the Pope would not have to act at all.”

      “Change his mind?” DeVille smirked over the rim of his eyeglasses. “Don’t let affection for the Queen cloud your reason, Mistress Larke.”

      Honor turned from the window. “While your own affection bends toward the King?”

      “Only toward the Church, mistress,” he murmured, “only toward the Church.” His pen scratched another entry.

      Honor glanced at a far corner where a couple of priests, the only other people in the library, stood chatting. She was waiting for them to leave. A week ago she had paid DeVille to check the Bishop’s records for information about Ralph’s death, and she had come this afternoon to hear what he had discovered. But the priests were laughing softly, making no haste to go. She moved to DeVille’s table and restlessly fingered the cover of a large, beautifully embossed volume of Cicero. “And in the King’s ‘great matter,’ which way does the Church’s affection bend?” she asked.

      He raised an eyebrow. “Fishing, Mistress Larke?”

      “Only for what will rise to the bait, Master DeVille.”

      He chuckled. “I’m afraid you’ll take no great catch from these waters. Though I will say this much—under normal circumstances the King’s case would be strong, based as it is on the scriptural injunction in Leviticus.”

      “But the Queen’s case is surely stronger,” Honor argued. “The former Pope dispensed with Leviticus in a papal bull that allowed the marriage. It’s there in black and white.”

      “But the question is, can a Pope legally dispense with a scriptural injunction?”

      “Come now, Master DeVille. Historically Popes have issued hundreds of such dispensations, and all sorts of royal marriages have been contracted on the strength of them. How can a papal dispensation be called illegal?”