"You were supposed to meet me at that vile inn yesterday at noon. That was the plan."

"So it was," he said casually.

"Well, what befell you?"

"Nothing worse than strong drink, so please don't fret for my health. The bout was not incapacitating." His smile was wry.

"Do you mean to tell me you missed the rendezvous . . . because you were drinking?"

"No. Because it was a stupid plan." He slapped the gauntlet against his thigh to remove bits of grass. "Was it yours?"

She fumed in silence.

He laughed again. "I see that it was."

"And so," she said witheringly, "afraid of the plan's slight uncertainties, you simply abandoned it."

He shrugged as if the topic bored him, then started again toward his horse.

She called to his back, taunting, "I had expected Master Cromwell to send a man who would not quake at a little risk."

He walked on.

"All right," she shouted, angry curiosity finally overcoming pride. "Why was it stupid?"

He stopped and turned. "Did you know the other people there?" he asked simply.

"What people?"

"At the inn."

"I have no idea. Travelers. Merchants. Who knows?"

"I know. One's a vintner from Madrid, name of Gomez. Sometimes trades at Greenwich Palace. Another's a Winchester clothier. And his wife traveling with him is the sister of Wolsey's chamberlain. All of you are bound for the same ship. Your meeting with me at the inn would have fueled their gossip for the whole journey home. You may be foolhardy enough to want Wolsey knowing enough against you to breathe down your neck from this day on, but I certainly don't. Dangerous. And stupid, because you should have known that that fleabag is the only hostel between Santiago and the coast. English travelers always stop there. As for the disguise, the landlady knows me. And I kept it up to pursue you because I saw no good reason to risk your manservant as a witness. As for maintaining it out here, that was for your own good. And mine. The less we know of one another the safer we both remain." He thrust his hand into the gauntlet and grunted in weary disgust. "Or would have, if you'd been able to suppress your heroics." He spread his hands as if to say that the litany of reasons should be sufficient. "Satisfied?"

Honor bit her lip, chastised. "Still," she said, "before you crow about your cleverness, sir, you'd best hope these same travelers you know so well do not recognize you, when you come aboard, as one of the brigands who terrorized them last night."

"I'll be returning on my own ship." His lips curled in a half smile. "No, my lady, thievery is not my usual occupation, though by your face I see you believe the calling suits me. But when I am not wrestling papal scrawls from foolish girls, I have a wool trading business to run. At a loss, at this point. And now, if you will excuse me, I have a cargo and crew to get safe home." He made a perfunctory bow and added, "pleasant though this chat has been."

He turned and covered the last few steps to his horse. As he caught up the dangling reins he glanced over at the trees. "Your old fellow will be thrashing through the woods by now, searching for you. Naturally, he'll assume you've been robbed." He threw her a frown of mistrust. "The mercenaries provided the perfect cover, so at least have the good sense to play along with the appearance of a robbery."

"Very neat, sir," she acknowledged tightly.

Ignoring her, he kicked his foot into the stirrup and swung himself easily up into the saddle. "Since I did rob you, you will be telling no less than the truth." He looked down at her. "Your fellow will probably assume that I have molested your body as well. That part of the story I leave to your discretion. Some ladies find such an experience lends piquancy to their past." He smiled. "Forgive me if I have not time today to oblige. Though," he added quietly as his eyes traveled over her body with obvious appreciation, "the temptation is sweet. I recall a kiss that augured well enough."

Honor could not subdue an indignant blush.

"But sadly," Thornleigh said in a tone of mock regret, "duty calls me away." He placed his hand on the prize within the breast of his tunic and lifted his chin with a long-suffering expression, like a knight leaving his lady for the battlefield. Then he snorted a laugh and lifted the reins.

Honor bristled. "Duty?" she said, glowering up at him. "As Cromwell's agent, or as the Lady Anne's lackey?"

His smile faded. He tugged at the reins and his horse danced back a few steps.

"Wait," she said. She walked up to the horse and took hold of the bridle, and asked, scowling with suspicion, "What will you do now with the brief?"

"Carry it to Cromwell, of course, and collect my gold. What else?"

"That's all this mission means to you? Gold?"

"It has its uses, mistress," he said dryly. "I own two ships that gobble gold."

She scoffed, "It's well, sir, that others have larger dreams than you. Dreams of the new order of justice this divorce may foster."

His face darkened. "Fantasies of justice are as easily shattered as conjured." Honor was surprised by the bitterness in his voice. "As for the Lady Anne," he added, his features resuming their lazy indifference, "I wish her well. She has bitten off a large mouthful. I only hope her cantankerous King proves digestible."

"But I'm sure you'll be on hand to comfort her should she require consolation. And will you pocket your cash for that task, too?"

His blue eyes flashed with quicksilver anger. Honor was glad. It eased some of her humiliation.

"You spout lofty words about justice, mistress," he said. "Pardon me if I question their worth when you come here to betray a noble mistress who trusts you with her life's blood."

Honor's heart was stung. She let go of the bridle.

Thornleigh snapped back the reins. The horse tossed its mane and Thornleigh wheeled away.

"Wait!" she cried. Halfway across the meadow he stopped, clearly annoyed.

"My horse has bolted," she called. "You can't leave me here alone."

"The victim and the bandit returning together? Even you can see the idiocy there. Your man will find you. Just be prepared for a bumpy ride behind him to the port."

His boots thwacked the horse's ribs, and as he bounded away he called back with a laugh, "Perfect penance for such a serious-faced pilgrim."

16.

Blackfriars "Henry, King of England, come into the court!"

Honor was so awed by the moment that her knees were trembling. She stood beside the Queen in the corridor outside the great hall of the Dominican monastery of Blackfriars. Inside, the court crier was calling in the King.

Nothing like it had ever been seen in England before-according to the French ambassador, Monsieur du Bellay, perhaps never in all Christendom: a reigning King and his Queen were obeying a summons to appear in a private court set up in their own land, to plead like common citizens. It seemed that King Henry, driven to distraction by Rome's interminable delays, did not care what admission he was making of the Pope's right to set up this legatine court in his kingdom. He cared only that the verdict was the one that for two years he had driven Wolsey and his frenzied agents at Rome to wring from the Pope. Divorce.

The crier called out, "Catherine, Queen of England, come into the court!"

Catherine stepped through the massive, arched doorway into the hall. "Here, my lords," came her clear reply.

Honor walked behind her. Once inside, they paused. The stone walls had been decked with costly tapestries, and sunlight from the high, lancet windows glinted off a million silver threads. On a dais at the far end of the hall the King sat on a throne under a gold canopy, shining in all his diamond and white satin magnificence. His dais had been placed to the right. Slightly lower sat the two judge-legates, Wolsey and Campeggio, splendid in their scarlet robes and tasseled, red Cardinal's hats. A little lower still, and to the left, was the Queen's chair. At its foot was ranged the whole bench of Bishops and, at the bar on either side, a rookery of lawyers.

Honor remained near the doorway. The eyes of a hundred and more faces followed the Queen as she swept across the stone floor. Bishop Fisher, her only real champion among her fearful councilors, watched her advance, his eagle eyes blazing loyalty from his skeletal face. The Queen took her chair. All eyes turned to the King.

The King smiled benignly at the Cardinal-judges, then leaned forward in his throne. Speaking with calmness and sincerity, he told the court of his great scruple. He said he believed that, in living with his brother's widow, a union expressly forbidden by Holy Scripture, he had been in mortal sin. He feared for his soul's salvation. He could bear it no longer. His conscience required judgment. Then, with a rustle of royal satin, he settled back and elegantly stretched out one shapely leg swathed in white silk and gartered with rubies.

There was a moment of stillness as men digested their monarch's speech, so pious, so reasonable. Bishops and lawyers turned to whisper to one another. Pages inched forward to slip documents into the hands of their masters. A recording clerk's pen scratched over parchment.

There was a flash of sunlight on blue velvet. The Queen had arisen, unbidden, breaking all proper procedure. With eyes fixed on the King she stepped forward, crossed around the judges, and mounted the steps to the King's canopied throne. She dropped to her knees at his feet and bowed her head. The court sucked in its breath. The King drew back, visibly shocked by her audacity, her proximity. His hands slid down the gilt arms of his throne and grasped the lion paws at the ends.

"My lord," the Queen said, "I beseech you, for the love that has been between us, let me have justice and right. Take of me some pity, for I am a friendless woman, a stranger, born out of your dominion. I kneel to you, the fount of justice within this realm, for I see around me no impartial tribunal. I do not recognize the authority of this court."

Her steady voice rang through the dumbfounded hall.

"I take all the world to witness that I have been a faithful, humble and obedient wife to Your Grace these twenty years, ever comfortable to your will and pleasure, being always well pleased and contented with all things wherein you took delight. And I take God to be my judge that when you had me first I was a pure maid, without touch of man. And whether this be truth or no, I put it to your conscience."

Not even a whisper could be heard in the stunned court. Honor, too, held her breath. The Queen had wagered all. She had confronted the King publicly with the one claim whose truth no living person but herself could swear to.

The King sat rigid, staring out squarely over the Queen's head. His hands still clenched the throne arms' lion paws and his bloodless fingertips seemed to form a second set of claws.

When he made no answer, the Queen spoke again. "My lord, I humbly beg you to spare me the extremity of this court."

Still, he said nothing. In the silence, the chirrups of birds fluted through the windows. "If you will not," the Queen concluded lifelessly, "to God alone do I commit my cause."

She stood, made a deep curtsy to her husband, and stepped off the dais. She did not give one look to the cardinal-judges or to the bishops, but moved slowly across the hall towards the open doors. Honor saw that her walk was as sedate as ever, but the light had gone out of her face, and all strength seemed to have ebbed from her body. Beneath the Queen's shoe an uneven flagstone tripped her and she stumbled. She quickly found her balance but stood still, as if unsure of which way to go, her hands fumbling oddly at her side. In a moment Honor was at her elbow, offering her arm and guiding her mistress away from the glaring mass of eyes. The court crier called the Queen back. But she walked on.

"Madame," Honor whispered as they neared the door, "you are called again."

"It matters not," Catherine said hollowly. "This is no impartial court for me. I will not tarry."

The crier called once more as the shadows of the doorway swallowed the Queen and her lady-in-waiting.

Weeks later the debate sputtered on all morning in Campeggio's packed, sweltering courtroom: had the young Prince Arthur, twenty-eight years ago, used the Spanish Princess Catherine as his wife or not? For hours the Cardinals and Bishops had probed old men's memories, dredging up their speculations about the Prince's sexual performance on that long-vanished bridal night. The groom had been fourteen, the bride fifteen.

Honor watched, disgusted, from the gallery. How this degrading spectacle dragged on! The judges had declared the Queen contumacious immediately after her extraordinary appeal on that first day, and the court sessions had slogged on for four more weeks without her. Now, as another ancient gentleman hobbled forward to give testimony pleasing to the King, Honor groaned. She pushed her way past the sweating bodies in the gallery and left the hall.

Outside Blackfriars she crossed the polluted Fleet Ditch over the bridge that connected the monastery precincts with Bridewell Palace. She went directly up to the Queen's private chamber. It lay in gloom, shrouded with heavy Flemish tapestries to shield its occupant from the noonday glare. Catherine sat alone in a corner, at work over her embroidery.

She looked up as Honor entered, and smiled. "What news, my dear?"

"Little to cheer you, my lady."

"Little cheer do I expect. Yet I must know it."

Honor took a chair near her. She picked up a spool of purple thread from the sewing basket and toyed with it. "Such a foolish business, Your Grace," she began. "One ancient lordling after another stepped forward with the most idiotic babble about your wedding night." She laughed, hoping to sound lighthearted, but the result was forced and spiritless. "Really, my lady, some told tales that stretched credulity so far, I wondered the speakers did not choke on their own nonsense."

"Let me hear it," Catherine said quietly.

Honor wound the purple thread. "First came the Marquis of Dorset. He said that following the marriage ceremony he had been among the lords and gentlemen who escorted Prince Arthur to your bedchamber, and he observed you lying in your bed under a coverlet. The Prince had a good complexion, 'ruddy and full of fire,' the Marquis said, and looked fit, he thought, to make any woman his wife. He finished by saying that he always supposed the Prince had used you as his wife, for-" she paused, recalling the courtroom sniggers, then went on softly-"for at the same age he had done so himself with his own bride."

Catherine was silent. She dipped her needle and tugged the thread.

"Truly, my lady," Honor urged, "the rest is all drivel to match this."

"Go on, my dear."

Honor looked down. "The Viscount Fitzwater gave testimony next. He recalled that the Prince had been wearing a nightshirt."

Catherine almost smiled. "Damning evidence, indeed. And to think that only last month I awarded Fitzwater's grandson the rights of forest to a manor I hold in Lancashire." She sighed. "Well, who was next?"

"Sir Charles Willoughby. He added something new. The morning after your bridal night, he said, the Prince had addressed him in front of several attendants, saying, 'Willoughby, bring me a cup of ale, for I have been all night in the midst of Spain!' "

Catherine shook her head with weary disgust.

"And that was all, Your Grace," Honor said, too quickly.

"What?" Catherine asked, amused. "No one else came forth to say he saw me actually in the same room with my husband? No more old men to swear that a worried boy's boast of manhood is absolute proof of a maiden's lost virginity?" Her smile faded into a look of infinite pity. "A frightened, sickly boy, who perished not five months later, too ill to withstand even the mild breezes of spring." She crossed herself. "May God, who knows the truth of this, rest Arthur's simple soul."

Honor wound her thread in silence.

"I can see that there is more, my dear," Catherine said, dipping the needle again. "Come, let me have it all."

This time, Honor could not even glance up. "Sir Andrew Talbot," she murmured. "He said his wife, now dead, had talked the next morning with her maid. The maid had spoken with a laundress. The laundress assured the maid, who told the wife . . . that the sheets of your bed were stained with blood."

Catherine's hand, poised with her needle, froze at the lie.

"And the last witness I heard," Honor said, rushing the words now, wanting it over and done with, "was Sir Joshua de Pencier. He testified that he saw Your Grace the next morning as you went to chapel. He said that your way of walking, your gait, was stiff. 'Like a woman who suffers in her nether regions,' he said, 'from having lain long with a man.' "

Catherine's hand flew to her lips as if to halt a retch, or perhaps a cry.

Impulsively, Honor bent forward to touch her mistress's trembling knee. Catherine clasped the hand, eyes closed. They sat together for several moments, Catherine walled up behind her humiliation, and Honor reaching out in pity.

And yet such chains hung about her own heart. Not chains of remorse. She saw the way too clearly for remorse; she did not repent what she had done. She believed, in the deepest, soundest part of herself, that she was fighting for right-that the strangling limbs of the Church must be amputated. Every day she shuddered for the unknown lives snuffed out by heretic hunters like Sir Thomas More. Bitterness shackled her heart. It was a rusty weight, and corrosive.

But every day, too, the sight of the Queen's private anguish forged a new link on a separate chain. Richard Thornleigh's accusation in Spain echoed: "You betray a noble mistress who trusts you with her life's blood."

The dissembling had been the worst. Apologizing on her knees to the Queen for the 'robbery' of the brief in Spain. Pretending to grieve at the theft, though the Queen assured her it could only have been arranged through Wolsey's treachery. Worst of all, accepting the Queen's tender kiss at having risked so much danger for her sake. It had been agony.

And then, the trial had carried on as if the brief had never existed. The Queen had sent Honor daily to monitor the court sessions, and neither side had even mentioned the brief. Honor knew that the King held the original document in secret under lock and key, and the Queen's lawyers, bullied by Wolsey into agreeing that the Queen's unattested copy was worthless, had dropped the matter. The Queen made no complaint. She declared again that she did not recognize the authority of the court and would obey only Rome. But Honor realized that the Queen had fallen back to this position in desperation after the one piece of evidence that might have saved her had been lost.

Trussed and loaded with these fetters, Honor could only hope that the verdict in the King's favor would arrive swiftly to release them both from the misery of waiting.

The afternoon crawled on.

Just before five o'clock, as Catherine was preparing to lay aside her sewing to go to Vespers in her chapel, the door swung open. Golden evening burst into the room, and the tapestries rippled in the gust of air. Margery stood in the doorway, out of breath and grinning.