She shrugged. "She was one of Catherine's ladies-in-waiting, who
spent half her life at the French court. Their name was originally
Bullen but they Frenchified it, to appear more genteel, I suppose.
She speaks with this dapper French accent, throwing in a
oui
and a
c'est bon
or two every now and then. She saunters about
with her nose wrinkled up like vinegar is wafting through the air.
Nearly her entire family's bouncing round court, but I have not seen
much of her, though. She sits on the sidelines quietly. I really
believe the King fancies her, for all he protests he does not care
what any of them do. Not in the way he loves me, but she is such an
enigma, he seems fascinated by her. He gazes at her not with the
love two people share, but with an open curiosity, as one gapes at a
distant star, or something he does not understand."
"Have you seen them alone together?"
She shook her head. "Nay, I do not believe he desires her
physically. His life is just so fraught with these divorce problems,
and as hard as it is for me to be patient, I try to be there for
him. He sometimes forgets he is the King, only in front of me, of
course, and I can sense his helplessness in dealing with all these
outside powers...Rome, for instance, and Catherine's stubbornness. I
do pray his disposition will relax when we are finally married, and
when I am with child, and the sooner the better, I say."
"But how can he think he is not married to Queen Catherine?" he
asked in wonder.
"In his eyes, he insists their marriage never was. It is against
Biblical edict to marry a brother's wife. It is considered a form of
incest, or at the very least consanguinity, being too close by
blood.
"In the beginning, he insisted it was a question of conscience. He
appealed to the Pope with this angle, telling him...and me, that he
could not in all good conscience stay married to Catherine, because
she is his brother's widow. That the marriage was cursed as a
result, resulting in many dead children. And that he therefore can
no longer perform his marital duty because he is so weighed down by
his misdeeds and losses. The conscience part sounds very convincing
when presented to the Pope, but deep down, his motives are selfish.
"No one else knows this. Ironically, Cranmer's idea of soliciting
the advice of the universities turned out to be a good one, for it
made the Pope even more adamant against the King's divorce. This is
exactly what Henry needed, for the Pope to refuse him when he was at
the end of his rope, to provoke him to take this final, most drastic
measure."
"What is that?"
"He has chosen a London lawyer, Thomas More, to replace Wolsey as
Chancellor, and has chosen a Thomas Cromwell, one of Wolsey's former
henchmen, to help him carry out an elaborate scheme, one which I
believe the King is executing out of desperation, for I do not
believe he really wants to do this."
Matthew sat silently, intently waiting.
"He is planning to declare himself head of the Church. His own
Church, with nothing to do with Rome. A Church of England, in fact."
"Is such a thing possible?"
"With all of the Protestants on the Continent behaving in a similar
manner, why not."
"But Henry has always been so devout–"
"Aye, save when it stands in the way of what he wants most. Cromwell
even suggested dissolution of the monasteries, for they are corrupt
agents of the greedy Roman sphere of influence."
"Are you saying the King would be like the Pope? As well as the
King? That is rather ambitious."
"He can handle it, Matthew, believe me. He is planning to take all
the money the church has been sending Rome throughout the ages and
from now on deposit it in the royal treasury. He talks of destroying
the abbeys and monasteries, throwing the monks out into the streets
to fend for themselves, melting down bells in order to make cannons
and building coastal forts to defend against the French. He is not
doing this out of power, hunger or greed. He simply wants a divorce,
a divorce attainable only through a break with Rome, and being the
determined soul that he is, always used to getting his way, he will
stop at nothing to get it. So he will rant and rave and let a bit of
agitation be fomented in order to show the Pope that he means
business. If the Pope does not call his bluff, he will get his
divorce."
"And if he does? Does call his bluff, I mean? What will this do to
the kingdom?"
She hugged her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite the balmy
rays of the sun. "I shudder to think of it. Just go along with him,
Matthew. Do as I do and agree to whatever he wishes, and you will
always be safe."
"What of Queen Catherine in all of this?"
She shook her head. "She's even more insignificant now. She has been
banished from court and has been languishing... Oh, I do feel so
badly for her! Henry will not let her see Mary, and although I have
tried to convince him that they would both be so much better off
together, he storms out of the room."
"But you always come back and appease him every time."
She smiled to herself. "But he is going to come back to
me
now."
Matthew gave her a long, appraising look. "I hope so. But if he does
not, well, look to your own safety, my dear."
"I have more to fear from my own sister," she said with a laugh.
"Pardon?"
She shivered again at the recollection of how close she had come to
dying. "Only that if she embroils us in her plots, we could all end
up in the Tower."
"In that case, perhaps you should leave here, come stay with me–"
His eyes began to glow.
"Thank you, but pray calm yourself, my dear. Whatever happens, I am
sure of the King's love. Naught shall be amiss for me, I promise."
"I pray you are right. But where Topaz is involved, there is bound
to be mischief most wicked."
CHAPTER THIRTY
Topaz arrived late that evening, wearing a blood-splattered apron.
Amethyst looked upon her sister in shock. Her imagination
immediately began to run wild.
"What has happened!"
"Dear sister!"
Topaz approached Amethyst for a warm embrace, and Amethyst backed
away, the red-brown stains coming into focus just as they'd soaked
through the linen. "I daresay I doubted we would ever meet again. I
am glad you came to your senses and left that wretched court."
"Topaz, pray what happened to you! Are you hurt?"
"Nay, one of the mares at one of our neighboring farms gave birth to
a beautiful white colt named Robin! I was the midwife."
She linked her arm in Amethyst's and walked up the staircase to the
library, one of their favorite rooms to chat and browse through the
books, write poetry and dream.
She removed the apron and tossed it into the garderobe outside the
library.
"So why did you leave? Did the palace run out of food?" she asked,
flaunting a smug smirk.
"My leave is temporary." She didn't want to discuss court or her
relationship with the King until his divorce was final.
"Do you...have any plans yourself?" she asked Topaz, not really
wanting to know, just fishing for some kind of hint. She'd heard
nothing all these months, and for that she was grateful.
"Nay, no plans to date."
Amethyst breathed a sigh of relief, although she knew the longer her
sister waited to carry out her plans, the more devastating it would
be.
"So what is going on with Henry and this Night Crow? According to
the tittle-tattle of the nobles who met Henry on his last progress,
he forbade her to marry Henry Percy. I still know not whose loss
that is," Topaz said breezily.
"You hear quite a bit, don't you?" Amethyst retorted, desperately
trying to deny that her beloved King had any feelings for Anne
Boleyn other than deep curiosity. "She is a fixture at court,
nothing else," she replied, preferring to explore the bookshelves
and run her hands over the thick dusty volumes, slide one out at
random, wondrously scan each frayed page, fragile as autumn leaves,
breathing in the ages of knowledge contained within the leathery
covers.
"I think his taste is abominable."
Amethyst turned to face Topaz. "Come to think of it, you and Anne
are alike in many ways. She, like you, distributes alms to the
poor."
She's also a pompous bitch, Amethyst thought, but kept any further
comparisons to herself.
"Ah, yes, she tosses an urchin a few guineas from her travelling
litter when she's in a generous mood. Nay, I have never met her and
I never wish to. None of those court people are worthy of my
company."
How easily she dumped all the courtiers together, including the
King, in that general category.
"When I become queen, they will love me," Topaz remarked.
Amethyst automatically shut off her ears and said instead, "Where
are my nephews?" She turned to Topaz with an earnest gaze, just as
eager to see the lads as she was to change the subject.
"At Kenilworth. I shall fetch them in the morning. They know you are
here, and are equally eager to see you."
"How they must have grown."
"Edward is as handsome and noble as any king will ever be, and
Richard George is coming along, not quite as tall and statuesque as
Edward, a delicate lad, but he is not a big eater. I try to
compensate with plenty of fresh vegetables and milk."
As Amethyst walked along the bookshelves, her index finger brushing
the spine of each volume, she noticed several old books shoved off
to the side and piled atop one another to make room for a set of
what were obviously new volumes; the covers in bright reds, greens,
and rich browns, gold lettering embossed on their spines glinting in
the sunlight. She pulled one out at random and flipped open the
cover. "Utopia" read the title page, "by Sir Thomas More."
"Utopia? What is this, Topaz?"
"It is an ingenious volume by Sir Thomas More, a brilliant London
lawyer."
"I know who he is. He has just replaced Cardinal Wolsey as
Chancellor. Of what does he write in this book?"
"Utopia is a whimsical little island in the New World where everyone
lives together in harmony, and shares equal portions of everything,
which is available in abundance. There is no greed, for no man asks
more than he can possibly use, there is no money, therefore no
profits, no extortion, no bribing, no stealing! The only use for
gold is not as a measure of currency, but to craft beautiful
objects, ropes to be worn about the neck and wrists, plates,
goblets, and chamber pots."
"Chamber pots!"
"Aye! Gold at both ends! The communal storehouses maintain a healthy
reserve, so there is no hunger. Each adult works but six hours a day
on agricultural endeavors, to further ascertain adequate production.
There are no lawyers, for each man is required to plead his own
case. Those who violate the law are not simply tossed into a
stinking dungeon, but are required to serve the community. There is
no adultery and young people are permitted to inspect each other's
naked bodies before marrying to avoid disappointment, and are
permitted annulment if the spark does not fly. Even heretics are
treated with respect and are accepted by members of the society, as
long as they do not presume to judge the others' beliefs about the
established religion. He wrote it many years ago. Surely Henry has a
copy of it somewhere."
"It does not sound like the type of thing the King would find
entertaining. It sounds too irrelevant," Amethyst replied, having
read a few books belonging to Henry, a self-proclaimed theological
expert, whose tastes of late ran to the new books dealing with the
papacy that he seemed to enjoy reading and discussing with the more
learned and outspoken courtiers. She looked further and noticed
there were indeed a few books she'd seen on Henry's nightstand, in
Anne's clutches, and in the hands of several of the courtiers.
"This is my favorite," Topaz said, sliding out a thin volume titled
A Supplication for the Beggars
. "Simon Fish wrote this while
in exile, when he fled after ridiculing Wolsey in a play. It speaks
out against the clergy, where the poor complain that they are dying
of hunger because the clergy has seized one-third of the kingdom's
resources."
Topaz flipped through the pages, her eyes brightening at certain
passages, as if remembering them fondly. She could see Topaz
identifying with the author.
"The monks and priests seize women in the dark corners of the
confessional and seduce them. The monasteries are a hotbed of
corruption in this book. Does it not bear a striking similarity to a
kingdom we're all familiar with, Amethyst?"