The Heretic’s Wife (27 page)

As they grew closer, he tried to take the measure of his passenger. The other two were in skirts so the one with the wavy brown hair must be his man. He looked young and more like a yeoman with his porkpie hat and simple peasant’s tunic than a scholar. They said he had been very ill, but he looked vigorous enough. He was matching Lord Walsh stride for stride whilst the two women hung back a few steps, deep in conversation.

As they drew near, Tom stepped out from the trees that fringed the shingle beach.

“My word, Captain, you gave us a start.” Lord Walsh laughed. “Where’s your ship?”

“Well away, my lord. As we should be with all due speed.” He tried to keep the irritation from his voice.

“Well, of course. But I’m sure there is no need to be testy. The beach looks quite deserted.”

“Looks can be deceiving,” he said, holding out his hand to the young man. “I’m Captain Tom Lasser. You are the passenger, I presume.”

“John Frith.” The young man flashed him a ready smile. “But I’m afraid there are two of us.”

“Two! But Sir Humphrey never—”

“Sir Humphrey didn’t know. I’ve married, you see, and I wish to take my wife with me.”

Irritated at the presumptuousness of young Master Frith, Tom only half glanced at the woman standing a little apart with Lady Walsh. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Your wife will need to make the journey overland. She can easily and much more cheaply get a boat from Yarmouth. Nobody is looking for her.”

“I’m sorry. That’s likewise impossible. I’m not leaving without her. If you cannot accommodate us both, I will go overland with her. We’ll both leave from Yarmouth.”

“Don’t be a fool, man. They’d catch you before you even get to Yarmouth.” Tom was trying to control his temper. All this and now the cheeky upstart was playing the brave hero in front of his bride.

The woman stepped forward, and Tom got a good look at her for the first time as she said, “If it’s a question of money, I can pay—”

The voice. The broad brow with a faint blue line beneath skin so fine it was almost translucent. All too familiar.

She looked straight at him, just the slightest challenge in the tilt of her chin.

“You already have, Mistress Gough,” he said, sighing. “One penny plus interest.”

“Mistress Frith,” she said, taking her husband’s hand. And then she whispered to her puzzled bridegroom but loud enough for Tom to hear, “I’ll tell you later, John.”

“It’s not just a question of money,” he said gruffly. “I might do it out of
human kindness.
”

She had the grace to blush. It was most becoming. As was the stubborn way she went after what she wanted. Had he noticed before how striking she was? He’d only seen her in the gray light outside his prison cell and once again in the shadow of a campfire light. He’d thought her pretty enough. Now in the full sunlight, it struck him that she was quite remarkable with her bright hair and intelligent eyes—green the color of the sea. He grudgingly conceded why Frith might be reluctant to leave her.

“Let’s go,” he said gruffly, pulling the boat from behind the rock.

The two women tearfully embraced. He pitched an oar to Frith.

“Here, bridegroom, you can help me row, if you’ve the strength for it.”

King Henry always did his best thinking astride a horse, and the ride back from Greenwich, where he’d just come from visiting his brother’s widow—that was how he thought of Katherine of Aragon these days, never his wife, never his queen. It was all so clear to him now.

For eighteen years, he had slept with his brother’s wife in an attempt to make an heir for England. Each act of copulation a grievous sin, each act more an onerous duty than before, until it was a wonder he could perform at all. And there had been no heir—the surest sign that God was not pleased—just one girl child, Mary, a girl child who might be queen and marry a Spanish prince, or God forbid, even a Frenchman. Their issue would inherit. England’s enemies would win the sovereignty that English kings before him had fought to maintain without ever having to spend a ducat of Florentine gold or a drop of blood.

His father had foisted Katherine upon him at the tender age of eighteen, largely because he did not want to give back the dowry her father King Ferdinand paid for her marriage to Arthur. From the first day, Henry had thought to do his duty and was determined to find her a suitable wife. But as the sin festered in his soul so did his distaste for her. For many months the thought of any physical relationship with her had repulsed him. More and more she disgusted him: her pendulous breasts, her Spanish blood, the habit of the order of St. Francis that she wore beneath her robes of state, her excess of piety in general. She never laughed. Not even at Will Somers the court fool—who could make a statue laugh. Not even at Henry’s jests—surely a wise wife would. A wiser woman would not answer her husband’s jokes with that long-suffering smile that smacked of tolerance and condescension.

Though he had to admit she was not without her virtues, something her supporters never tired of pointing out. She was intelligent, well read—a lover of the new learning coming out of the universities—and could hold her own even with the great Sir Thomas in theological and political dispute. And it was all too plain that she adored her husband, even tolerating the occasional fling like the one he’d had with Mary Boleyn. Tolerated it by spending more hours on her knees praying for him. Somehow that took the edge
off a man, knowing that while he was engaged in a little manly “sporting,” his wife was home praying for him.

She had been on her knees when he found her this morning. He had greeted her by calling her “sister-in-law.”

“I am Queen Katherine, wife of the sovereign king of England, Henry VIII,” she had said in her thick Spanish accent, never looking up. “What God hath joined together let no man put asunder.”

“You are not my lawful wife, Katherine. You were never my lawful wife. You are my brother’s wife.”

“How say you ‘not lawful,’ Your Majesty, when we were married before God and the archbishop? The court at Black Friars did not declare our marriage unlawful.”

“With your pitiable display you rendered the court impotent to give a legal rendering. A queen on her knees like a common beggar.”

“Your expression of love for me in the presence of the court then, that was not true?”

She still did not look at him but down at her prayer book, studying its jeweled cover as though she would find the answer there. The hands that held the Book of Hours were trembling. He felt a surge of compassion for her that threatened to unman him. Sighing, he turned his gaze away from those trembling hands.

“True or not. It doesn’t matter. You were married to Arthur, Katherine. That marriage was annulled at my father’s request. The annulment of my brother’s marriage should never have happened. Our marriage should never have happened.”

“My marriage to your brother was annulled because it was never consummated. You, my lord king, are the only husband I have ever had, will ever have.”

Tears welled in her eyes and spilled down her cheeks, large drops of water, like great jewels. He’d once seen a Flanders portrait decorated with such tears.

He could not look at her but concentrated his gaze instead on the figure of the dying Christ hanging above her head.

“Wherein, my lord, have I ever played false to you or failed to serve England?” Her voice was husky with the tears yet to flow. “Have you forgotten the triumph at Flodden against the Scots, how proud you said you were when from the war camps there I sent you the Scottish king’s plaid tunic stained with his own blood? Does not such a wife, such a queen, deserve better? Wherein have I ever been aught but a loving and loyal queen?”

She was right, of course, except in one regard. He sometimes wondered if her loyalty to Spain was not greater than her loyalty to England. Ferdinand could not have a better spy in England’s court. But he did not say that. He had no proof.

She sniffed, and he noticed how her shoulders stiffened, though her head was still bowed, as though she willed herself to courage. “The pope will never annul this marriage. He will not make a bastard of our daughter,” she said. “If my husband will not preserve my honor, God will. You have fallen under some evil spell. God will bring you back to me or you will lose your throne. It has been prophesied. Our daughter will reign within months if you take Anne Boleyn to wife.”

“Where did you hear such treasonous talk?”

“My ministers have told it to me. The Virgin has revealed it to the Holy Maid of Kent.”

He sighed, trying to be patient. The woman was not reasonable. “If God had blessed our union,” he said as gently as he could, “we would have had a male child. I am a king by divine right. To deny me a male heir means God has
not
blessed this union. We lived in sin for eighteen years, and I told you last year: I will do it no longer, with the pope’s annulment or not.”

She looked up at him then, her tearstained face stricken with grief, but there was another emotion there as well. In her large eyes—Spanish cow eyes, he’d called them, playfully at first when there was still some vestige of harmony between them, before he’d found comfort in other eyes—he saw a steel as hard as the metal in his sword. It was a king’s voice that decreed, “Not the pope, not you, not your father, and certainly not your Holy Roman Emperor nephew will make me persist in this sin one day longer, Katherine. You are my widowed sister-in-law. You are not my wife.”

She stood up then to face him, her face blotched and red, but her wide intelligent gaze never wavered. “Take your pleasure where you find it, my lord, but know that I am Queen Katherine of England. I will never return to Spain. I will not flee to a nunnery. I am the true and loyal queen of Henry King of England and will be such when I die.”

Henry had taken his leave of her then, striding away without even a good-bye.

“When will I see you again, husband,” she’d called after him.

“When hell freezes over,” he had muttered under his breath, all compassion melted away beneath the heat of her resolve.

He’d mounted his horse and trotted briskly away. The master of the
horse had wisely signaled for his riding companions, Neville and Brandon, to follow at a distance.

Horse and rider paused now at a brook. Henry’s mount neighed gently and shook its golden harness.

“Drink your fill, Dominican.” Henry patted the black stallion on its neck and held his hand to signal “stay” to the courtiers and the master of the horse.

The horse, the issue of a Spanish mare, a gift from King Ferdinand, was one of Henry’s favorites—at least something fertile had come out of the Spanish court. He had named the horse himself after the ubiquitous black friars. He thought it a fine joke—less so the prior of Black Friars Abbey, who was as humorless as Katherine.

Behind him, he was mildly annoyed at the whispering of the restless courtiers, the nervous whinnying of the horses, the jingling of the harness bells, echoing the restlessness in his own mind. He should have spent this day hunting boar in New Forrest listening to the call of the huntsman’s horn, the baying of hounds, instead of the whining of an unreasonable woman. What did a man, a king, have to do to be alone? He had a wild urge to spur Dominican and make a mad dash through the woods to his left, his cloak flying in the wind, his hat catching on the lowest tree branch, leaving his hair free to blow in the wind. Maybe he would take the road to Hever Castle, surprise Anne—there was a woman who could appreciate a good joke—but he knew they would only clamor after him. Too many of them disapproved of Anne. Too many of them were loyal to Katherine.

Dominican raised his head, and waited, his haunch shivering slightly, for his master’s command. Henry gave a light flick of the reins and they waded on through the stream. He waved the court to follow. When they reached the hunting lodge he would send his page to summon Anne to Hampton Court. She would be there upon his return on the morrow.

“Piety becomes a queen—” a familiar voice behind Anne said, “though not in excess.”

Her heart skipped half a beat. Before standing up, she genuflected before the small makeshift altar—a simple cross, an unadorned prayer book, and a kneeling bench in the corner of her chamber. Turning around, she dropped a curtsy.