The Queen's Lady. Barbara Kyle

do without me.”

      Tyrell’s eyes hardened. He held the blade rigid at Bastwick’s throat.

      Bastwick did not flinch. His eyes locked with Tyrell’s. “Therefore, my lord,” he went on, “you must guarantee me the benefice.”

      Tyrell held the right to appoint a priest to a benefice in the west country parish where he was lord. The thought of it made Bastwick’s heart race with joy despite Tyrell’s dagger. His own benefice! With fat tithes, and rents from the glebe lands he would control! It was far beyond anything he could hope for from the miserly vicar of Nettlecombe. The old vicar lived high and dined with the Bishop, while he, Bastwick, scraped by on a pittance as his curate. He deserved better. He silently cursed his peasant background for keeping him in such servility. Still, he reminded himself, the abbot who had seen promise enough in him to educate him had schooled him well in what was possible: the Church was the one institution that cared more for a man’s ability than his blood. Had not the great Cardinal Wolsey himself risen from his father’s base butcher’s shop? The cardinal—so rich, they said, he had fragrant imported herbs strewn over his palace floors twice a day. The cardinal—Chancellor of the realm, the second most powerful man in England, right hand to the King.

      “Alright, priest,” Tyrell growled, drawing back his dagger and sheathing it. “Profit’s good. And we share the risk. We are agreed.”

      Bastwick relaxed. He noticed again the light dancing over the jewel on his finger. Yes, he thought jubilantly, a man of ability needs only the will to plant his foot firmly on the steps that will lead him up to glory.

      The Larke household stumbled through the day following the master’s death. Honor sat close to Ralph beside the laid-out body of her father and tried to listen to what Master Ellsworth was telling her, but his words were all a jumble to her. He spoke of her father’s estates, of the King’s Court of Wards at Westminster, of gentlemen who would soon be bidding there for her wardship. She understood little of it. In the hushed bedchamber that smelled of death, she hung onto Ralph’s hand.

      That evening, as she and Ralph crossed the courtyard to join the mourning household already at vespers in the family chapel, horsemen clattered through the gate. Honor saw Father Bastwick riding at the head of the band. He pointed to her. “That’s the girl,” he said.

      The broken-toothed lord beside him ordered one of his men to seize her. The henchman dismounted.

      Honor darted behind Ralph. Shielding her, Ralph called to Bastwick, “What’s this about, Father?”

      “Let her go. This is Sir Guy Tyrell. The girl is his ward now.”

      “What? Can the Court of Wards have judged so soon?”

      “Do you question the King’s justice, man?” Bastwick asked witheringly.

      “Not I, Father,” said Ralph. “If this be the King’s justice.”

      “Ha,” the lord snorted, “all will be legal enough once I marry her to my boy, eh, priest?”

      Honor, pressing close to Ralph, could feel his muscles tense. He stepped backwards, pushing her back as well. He looked at the priest, “And what reward be in this unholy bargain for you, Father?”

      Honor saw the priest’s black eyes flash at Ralph with anger.

      “I tire of this fellow’s prating,” Tyrell growled. He signaled to his other men. They dismounted and stalked toward Ralph.

      Ralph fought, but he could not prevail over four men. They soon had him on his knees, his nose bleeding, his arms trussed.

      The henchman did not find Honor easy to subdue. She kicked and bit and screamed for help. Bastwick glanced furtively around the empty courtyard. He jumped from his horse, pulled a knife from his boot, and strode over to Ralph. He lifted Ralph’s head by the hair and held the knife at his throat. Ralph sucked in a breath. “Come tamely, girl,” Bastwick said, “or that breath will be his last.”

      Honor stopped struggling. Quietly, she stepped forward. The henchman hoisted her up onto the gelding brought for her.

      “We should take the fellow, too,” Bastwick said to Tyrell. “I believe there’s a bond between them that might serve us.”

      Tyrell nodded, understanding. As his men pushed Ralph toward the gelding, Tyrell warned him, “Any trouble from you, we’ll carve a finger off her.”

      So the two prisoners rode together out through Larke’s gates, each as the other’s reluctant jailer. Behind her, Honor heard the servants in the chapel singing prayers. And in the house, lying forgotten under the pillow on her bed, was the foreigner’s little book.

      The party passed under the city walls at Newgate where apprentices were being hanged in pairs. They reached the Great Western Road, and soon they had left London—and the King’s justice—far behind.

      2

      Tyrell Court

      On Honor’s twelfth birthday it rained all day. The great hall of Tyrell Court stank of the damp wool and sour sweat of Sir Guy Tyrell’s retainers, the armed band with which he intimidated the district. Having lounged and drunk their way through the enforced indolence of the soggy afternoon in the company of a few serving women of the household, they were waiting now for supper.

      Honor sat in a corner. Bored, she watched rain dribble from the louvered vent in the middle of the roof of the archaic hall. Tyrell, chronically short of cash, had made no improvements to the dark, medieval house his father had left him years before. Raindrops hissed onto the fire in the central hearth. Its perimeter was littered with old charred bones beneath the spit. Its smoke hazed the hall.

      Lady Philippa Tyrell, Sir Guy’s wife, came in blowing her perpetually dripping nose on a rag. She took her seat at the head table. Boys began carrying in the supper—trenchers of beef and bread and turnips, along with pots of ale. The company noisily settled in at the benches along trestle tables abutting the head table.

      Honor was approaching one of the tables when she saw Father Bastwick come through the arched doorway. She moved to a place farthest from the chair she knew he would take, the one beside Lady Tyrell. Bastwick was a regular visitor at Tyrell Court, and often, in Sir Guy’s absences, he took the lord’s seat. This morning, Sir Guy had left for business in Exeter. Honor grabbed a second trencher for Ralph as the serving boy passed. She slapped some extra bread onto it and squeezed closer to the amply fleshed body of Mary, a friendly brew-house servant, to force a space for Ralph. He hadn’t come into the hall yet. Probably still in the kitchen, Honor thought, telling jokes to the scullery maids.

      Honor knew why Bastwick flattered and coddled Lady Philippa. The lady’s cousin was an archdeacon in Exeter. Already, Bastwick had secured two more rich benefices through Lady Philippa’s pressing of this cousin. Honor knew all about Bastwick’s ambition. It glinted in his eyes, just like the jewel in her father’s ring. Bastwick wore the ring always. Wore it like a trophy, Honor thought, the way a savage wears a necklace of his slain enemy’s teeth. She hated him.

      She turned her eyes from Bastwick and caught sight of another face she loathed. At the far table, across the central hearth, sat the heir of this bickering, noisome place. Hugh Tyrell. Her husband.

      Father Bastwick himself had conducted the hasty wedding ceremony a week after he and Tyrell had abducted Honor. They had married her, at the age of seven, to eleven-year-old Hugh. That, she had soon come to understand, was her sole purpose here: Hugh would legally own all her property on the day their marriage was consummated. She understood the meaning of that word, too. The Tyrell Court servants, male and female, slept sprawled on the floor of the great hall, and no one living here could ignore the rutting that went on, day and night, in its grimy corners.

      Honor’s stomach tightened as she looked across at Hugh. He was now a pimpled sixteen-year-old who screamed at servants, lacerated his horses with whips in the hunt, and drank himself most nights into partial paralysis. Tonight, he was already close to stupefaction as he upended a leather