Honor looked up, eyes wide. "An ignorant woman? Untrained? My lady, you are more knowledgeable in matters of the law-of both church and state-than many who sit on the King's council."

Catherine stared out at the rain. Her fingertips drew small circles at her temples. "I fear that knowledge will count for little in this battle of wills, sweetheart," she sighed. She came to the desk to sign the letter. "But Charles is a chivalrous young man. The honor of his family weighs heavily with him. A plea from his helpless aunt may do more to rouse him to stiffen the Pope's back than all the law books I could throw at his head."

As Honor watched the small, plump hand write "Katerina," her heart beat faster, for her work here was finished. She could leave for Sydenham's. "Still," she said as she sprinkled sand on the wet ink and tried to conceal her uneasy excitement, "Your Grace seems an unlikely candidate for the role of the helpless female. Your Spanish ladies have told me that in the dark days after Prince Arthur's death they marveled at your strength and ingenuity. What courage you showed, marching before the late King Henry to ask for wages for your maids."

Honor had heard all the old stories. Widowed at sixteen after a few months of marriage to the sickly teenage heir to the English throne, Catherine had become a diplomatic hostage to the slippery alliance between England and Spain. It was an alliance marked by the stinginess of the monarchs. King Henry VII, her father-in-law, had cut off her allowance while her parents, Ferdinand and Isabella, had insisted she was England's responsibility. For almost seven years she had waited in cold apartments beside the foggy Thames, fending off creditors, while her proud but threadbare Spanish entourage became the butt of English courtiers' jokes. Then, suddenly, everything had changed. King Henry had died. His handsome, eighteen-year-old son had mounted the throne as Henry the Eighth and, to make restitution to the shabbily treated Spanish princess, he had married her himself.

"You endured great hardship in those days, my lady," Honor said, "yet you triumphed. I do not doubt you will triumph again."

From the hearth, Catherine's sigh was private and intense. "To cross my lord is a triumph I have never sought."

She lifted her chin abruptly as if to banish self-pity. "Still, in the fight, knowledge and learning may be worth something after all, my dear, and I mean to defend myself with every weapon at hand." She marched toward the jumble of legal books on the desk and fingered their spines for the one she sought. She gave Honor a clear-eyed smile. "I have witnessed too many miracles to despair of victory in this particular battle."

Honor was intrigued. "Miracles, my lady?"

"When I was six, I saw the walls of Granada, held by the infidel for five hundred years, fall to my mother's modern guns and be reclaimed to Christ. When I was seven I saw the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Columbus, return to Barcelona after finding a new world." She laughed lightly. "We watched this ragged Italian adventurer parade through the streets leading a string of wild men, naked except for their paint and feathers and golden ornaments. Now, if heathen Granada can be brought to Christ, and new worlds be found, then surely I can triumph over one conniving Cardinal!"

Honor's smile was full of pride. May I find such resolve to do what I must tonight, she thought. She could leave it no longer. She stood. "Shall I take the letter to Dr. Vittoria as usual, my lady?"

"Yes. The Cardinal's web around me still holds fast."

The door creaked open. Both women turned startled faces. Margery crept in wringing her hands. "Pardon, Your Grace," she said. "My lord Ambassador . . ."

The Spaniard stalked past her. Dripping wet, he bowed to the Queen. Honor had to smile, seeing this impeccable gentleman standing in a small pool of water.

"Thank you, Margery," Catherine said, her voice charged with surprise and pleasure at the sight of Mendoza. "Now, off to bed."

Margery cast Honor a worried glance, then bobbed a curtsy and hurried out. Honor was about to make her own curtsy, thinking that the Queen's dismissal to Margery included her as well. But Mendoza, having peeled off his sodden cloak and hat, thrust them at her. She draped them on a high-backed chair, then was ready to go. Mendoza smoothed back his ruffled, silver hair with great dignity and eyed the decanter on the sideboard.

"A glass of wine, Don Inigo?" Catherine asked.

Frustrated though she was at more delay, Honor knew her duty. She crossed the room, poured wine, and brought it to Mendoza. He gulped it with uncharacteristic haste. "Madam," he said, answering the question in Catherine's eyes, "the Cardinal is ill. Some are whispering it is the deadly sweating sickness. He has hastened away from London's diseased air, to Hampton Court. His household is riddled with the sickness, and his staff is in a chaos of confusion. It offered an opportunity-which I judged worth the risk-to try, one more time, to come to you."

"I pray the Cardinal is not in mortal danger," Catherine said with a sincerity, Honor understood, that would astonish anyone who did not know her deeply pious character. "God keep him."

Mendoza grunted. "I am not sure my own Christian charity should be tested to stretch as far as Wolsey's obese body. But I hear he has weathered the worst and is busy in his bed, sifting the rush of requests for dead men's lands. Still,"-he jerked his head toward the door-"I dare not stay long lest I imperil you." A violent lashing of rain at the window rekindled his urgency. "I must tell you of the perilous events at Rome. Madam, the tide may be turning against us."

Catherine's flinch was almost imperceptible. She was staring at the Ambassador as if she had forgotten Honor's presence. Honor groaned inwardly. She could not interrupt, yet neither could she leave without a dismissal.

"His Holiness the Pope has returned from exile in Orvieto," Mendoza went on. "He finds Rome a pitiable and mangled corpse, he says, but at least he is home."

A smile flickered on Catherine's face. "From the moment the news arrived of Rome's capture I knew it was a sign to me from God. Did it not happen the very month Wolsey hatched his plot to destroy me?"

"God, of course, is on your side," Mendoza replied with diplomatic smoothness. "Certainly, as long as the Emperor's army was holding Rome the Pope has not dared to infuriate him by annulling your marriage. To do so would have been to sign his own death warrant."

Catherine nodded.

"However, at Orvieto," Mendoza continued, "His Holiness was desperate for help. I have been told he was camping under the dripping roof of the local bishop's derelict palace, shedding tears like a woman at his fate. King Henry's agents found him there. In his miserable condition he was looking anywhere for friends and money. And Wolsey was quick to supply him, you can be sure. Now that the Pope has returned to Rome, the King's agents throng him daily with petitions, and they hardly bother to veil their insinuations that he owes his English benefactors that much at least. Madam, they are poisoning the Pope's mind with tales of the Emperor's treacherousness. They are telling him that your nephew's ambition is to overrun all of Italy and swallow Rome whole. They sweeten these lies with offers to supply His Holiness with a handpicked English and French bodyguard to protect him against another assault. And now-"

"And now, Cardinal Campeggio is on his way," Catherine said grimly.

Mendoza nodded. "The situation is most grave."

Catherine began pacing again. Swiftly, she came to a decision. "Don Inigo, we must prepare our final defense. Immediately." She looked at him, one eyebrow raised in skepticism. "Have you heard who the government will allow me as council?"

Mendoza hesitated as if unwilling to burden her with more bad news. He tried to sound hopeful. "I understand there is a distinguished array of lawyers . . . Archbishop Warham, Bishop Fisher of Rochester, Bishop Tunstall of London, Dr. Standish, Bishop Clerk-"

Catherine held up her hand. "Distinguished these men may be, Don Inigo, but you know, as everyone knows, that they owe their livelihoods to the government. My lords Warham and Tunstall are good men, but timid and fearful. And Standish and Clerk are soft clay in Wolsey's hands. I know he has warned them all not to meddle against the King in this. Small comfort there." A trace of hope fluttered in her eyes. "Except, perhaps, for Fisher."

"The government, as you know, madam, will invoke Leviticus to show the marriage transgressed scriptural law. But we, too, have a good defense in scripture-in Deuteronomy. Besides our argument that the Pope did legally dispense with the injunction, we will rely heavily on the Deuteronomy passage. 'When brethren dwell together, and one of them dieth without children, the wife of the deceased shall not marry to another-' "

" 'But his brother shall take her, and raise up seed for his brother,' " Catherine murmured, completing the scriptural quotation. She paused a moment and stared again at the fire. "No, Don Inigo."

"Pardon, madam?"

She turned to him. "No. I will not put my faith solely in these legal and theological arguments. To me, the legality of the former Pope's dispensation is irrelevant, for I mean to rest my defense on the truth."

Mendoza looked perplexed. "The truth?"

"That I was never Arthur's wife, except in name. That I came to my lord a virgin, and he knows it. When this is made clear, in public, I do not doubt that God will move my lord to awaken to his duty. And then this nightmare will be over."

Even Honor was surprised. Her eyes and the Ambassador's met as if to ask one another if the Queen herself would awaken before it was too late.

Mendoza cleared his throat. "Madam, may we speak privately?"

"Of course." Catherine laid a gentle hand on Honor's shoulder. "Leave us, sweetheart," she said. She kissed Honor's forehead as if she were a favorite daughter. "You will be longing for your bed after these weary hours of toiling at my papers."

With relief, Honor curtsied and left the room. But after taking the letter to Dr. Vittoria, it was not to her bed she went, but out in the rain to Coleman Street.

9.

The Brethren Honor banged her fist against the merchant's door. Rain pummeled her head and shoulders and drenched her hooded cloak as she waited. A metal bolt scraped, the door swung open, and a young man stood before her. Behind his lantern, his narrow face glowed white against lank orange hair that hung to his shoulders.

"Master Humphrey Sydenham?" she asked.

He thrust the lantern out close to her face, examining her with fearful eyes. "No."

"I must see him." Her voice emerged with more strength than she felt. "His life is in danger."

"What?" The man looked frightened. "What's happened? Who are you?"

"I'll tell only Master Sydenham that. Is he here or not?"

The man gnawed his lip, hesitating, then pulled her in and shut the door. "Follow me."

He led her down a corridor and past a fine-looking great hall to a snug room bright with a fire and candles, though deserted. "Wait here," he said. He turned to go.

"But it's late and I-"

"Wait here!" He walked out and closed the door on her. His footfalls sounded down the corridor.

Honor threw off her hood and looked around. The room was paneled in fashionable linenfold-carved oak. Expensive silver plate gleamed in cupboards. The chairs were soft with velvet cushions. This was not at all what she had expected. She had steeled herself for a bleak, ascetic compound with a ring of zealots chanting in religious fervor. This room exuded nothing but domestic comfort.

She paced. Where was Sydenham? It was almost midnight. The Queen had kept her so long, there was no time left. If she waited any longer she would be in danger herself. She snatched up a candle and hurried to the door.

The corridor was empty. She started in the direction she had heard the man's footsteps take. She passed along a room-length of paneled hallway and came to a closed door. The latch lifted easily. Beyond the door, almost immediately, was an unlit flight of descending stone stairs. The hem of her sodden cloak slapped over the steps as she went down. The walls, too, were stone. The air was dank. A cloying smell-unpleasantly familiar, though she could not identify it-curled in her nostrils.

At the bottom the floor was beaten earth. A low, barrel-vaulted stone passageway hulked around her candle. She walked on. The passage led to another flight of steps, these ones going up. She heard voices, very faint, and she halted. The voices quieted. She climbed the stairs. At the top stood an arched, wooden door. She swept her candle over it and noticed a small opening at a man's eye level. It was a chink of less than a square inch, gouged out of the solid wood, a squint-hole for monitoring the identity of the person seeking entry.

She snuffed her candle and set it down. In the darkness she went up on her toes and pressed her eye to the hole. Her breath caught in her throat. She was looking into a huge warehouse, and near the rear wall thirty-five, perhaps forty people stood inside a ring of hand-held torches. Their faces were lifted towards a man who stood on the lip of a loft, his head raised and eyes closed as if in silent prayer. Honor felt the hairs at the back of her neck rise. This was a huge coven of heretics.

She was shocked to see so many women. Children, too. A couple of boys were rolling chestnuts on the dirt floor under a torch hitched to one of the loft-bearing posts. Stacks of animal hides were ranged along the windowless walls, and in the middle of the warehouse were three huge, round wooden vats, the kind she had seen used in ale brewing. Beside the loft on the far wall was a closed door as wide as a cart. She realized the warehouse must sprawl all the way back to the next street.

The man in the loft snapped from his trance and began to prowl along the edge. He was in his early twenties, Honor guessed, slight, and very fair. His white-blond hair, shaved in a monk's tonsure, stood out in short spikes over his ears, looking indeed like the thorns of Christ's crown that the tonsure was made to symbolize. Yet he wore no priest's cassock or friar's robe, only a laborer's faded tunic over sagging hose. He stopped and stared at the faces below him. The fervor in his eyes blazed all the way to the squint-hole at the back of the warehouse.

He slapped his hand on his chest. "Love of God!" he cried. "That is what should fill our hearts." He thrust out his other hand, palm up like a beggar. "Lust for gold! That is what drives our priests." Honor was struck by the vibrancy of his voice. It was a voice made for rallying men.

"The Church hoards one third of the landed wealth of this sovereign realm, my friends. Our rich Bishops send carts of gold to Rome, English gold from the sweat of English brows. They leech it from us in rents and tithes to finance the bawdy banquets and lascivious pleasures of the princes of the Church, and their wicked wars." He shook his head, then smiled grimly. "Glad I am of the spirituality's oath of celibacy, for if the Abbot of Glastonbury were to wed the Abbess of Shrewsbury, their heir would inherit more land than the demesne of the King."

There was soft laughter from the listeners. "If the priests have no heirs, Brother Frish," a man called up, "it's not for lack of fornicating."

Brother Frish laughed along with his audience. Then, suddenly, his arms shot up. "I say the priests are worse than Judas. He sold almighty God for thirty shillings but the priests will sell God for half a penny. They barter off their sacred wares like pork hocks at a fair-stall. They sell the seven sacraments, they sell dispensations,"-he held out his palm again like a collection plate and slammed his fist onto it with every transaction-"the chanting of masses, prayers. And all this on top of their endless tithes and fines, fees and mortuaries . . ."

Honor shivered at this last word. For a moment she was a child again watching Bastwick wrench the sapphire from her father's dead hand, the curse of excommunication still ringing. All for a mortuary.

She shook her head to clear it of such visions of the past-and of her unease at going among these criminals. I must finish this, she told herself. Get inside, find Sydenham, and then get out again before it's too late. I've come this far. I'll see it through.

She lifted the latch and opened the door. A draught of stale air rolled over her. She trembled, for the warehouse stank of an odor that somehow dredged up the horror of Smithfield. A cold hand grabbed her wrist. It was the orange-haired young man. He hauled her into the warehouse and hustled her along the wall among the stacked hides.

"I told you to wait," he whispered fiercely. He glanced nervously at the gathering, but the preacher talked on and the crowd listened, apparently unaware of the intrusion.

"I tell you, I've got to see Master Sydenham," Honor whispered, equally insistent.

"Quiet!" He tightened his grip on her wrist until it was painful.

"But this cannot wait!"

He jerked a knife from his belt and held it at her rib. "You'll wait until the sermon's done, and you'll be quiet."

Heart pounding, she stood still, a hostage witness to the heretical sermon.

"And let us not forget indulgences," Frish cried cynically. "The priests will sell indulgence letters for fornication, for the breaking of vows, for shunning confession, for ignoring fasts, and, of course, for rescuing souls from purgatory. Purgatory," he repeated with a sneer. "This dread place exists, the Church teaches, for the cleansing of sinful man's soul after death, but the Church will gladly give you remission of years of your soul's agony there-for a price. Now, tell me this. If the Pope has the power to deliver a soul out of purgatory, why then can he not deliver it without money? And if he can deliver one soul, then why does he not deliver a thousand? Why not all? Let loose all the poor, tortured souls, and thus destroy purgatory." His fist punched the air. "I say the Pope is a tyrant if he keeps souls within purgatory's prison until men give him money!"

He wiped his brow with his sleeve, and then eased himself down onto the edge of the loft so that his legs dangled. His voice became gentle and warm. "Good friends," he said with a smile, "I am here to tell you that the Pope has no power to loose souls from purgatory because there is no purgatory. I am here to tell you that there are no priests, only God. That the painted images of saints the poor ignorant folk pray to for intercession in their worldly woes are only sticks and stones-and man must pray to God alone. That all the spells a priest may mumble over a piece of bread to conjure it into the body of our Lord cannot make it anything other than bread, for I have read in scripture that God made man, but nowhere have I read that man can make God."

Honor's mouth fell open at this litany of heresies, especially the last one. The miracle of transubstantiation-the bread of the Mass transformed into the living body of Christ-was the cornerstone of Catholic faith. Yet this preacher's words were full-blooded with conviction. His passion, so fearless, so generous, stunned her. It was as if, while she slept, someone had dashed her face with ice water.

Frish's voice rose again and his face was bright. "I come before you this night to bring you good news, my friends. We can cast off the chains of bondage to Rome. I have done it. I have been freed. How?" He reached over to a barrel beside him and lifted a black book that lay on top. He held it high. "With this. The word of Our Lord, Our Savior. His blessed word, illuminated by the sublime translation of Master William Tyndale into our own tongue." He waved the book slowly, like a banner over his head.

Honor shuddered as a voice from Smithfield echoed: ". . . selling illegal Bibles in the English tongue . . ."

This was the book for which Ralph had been burned.

"Not the word of Christ's desecrated Church," Frish cried, "where the priests would have us grovel dumbly at their mystical Latin prayers, then shuffle home more ignorant than when we came. No! I have read Christ's message for myself." He clasped the book against his chest like a lover. His eyes gleamed with tears, and his voice was gentle as a song. "And scripture did so exhilarate my heart, being before almost in despair, that immediately I felt a marvelous comfort and quietness, and my weary bones leaped for joy. This is salvation, my friends. The shining, unadulterated word of God. Come! See!" He gestured to a large crate on the warehouse floor. "I have brought enough for all of you." He stood and climbed down the ladder from the loft, and people moved in around him with excited questions and comments.

Honor could restrain herself no longer. She wanted only to finish what she had come to do and then get out of this dangerous place. She glanced down at the knife at her rib. She sensed that the young man was more nervous than dangerous. "You're not going to use the knife," she said steadily. "Let me go."

He appeared startled by her sudden steeliness, and Honor seized his moment of indecision to wrench free of his grip. "I tell you," she said, "everyone here is in danger. Now, one last time, take me to Sydenham, or I'll leave you all to your miserable fate!"

He looked anxious but he said nothing. She took a few steps forward. He followed on her heels and grabbed her elbow. She was shaking him off when she saw a figure hurrying toward them: a portly, apple-cheeked man dressed in the rich, flowing clothing of a merchant. Behind him, the people carried on with their meeting. "What is it, Edward?" the man said in a menacing whisper. Under tufted gray eyebrows he was squinting at Honor in the way of the shortsighted. When he reached her his menacing look widened into surprise. "Who's this?"

"Wants to see you. I left her above, but she's come snooping."

Honor almost pounced, so great was her relief. "Master Sydenham?"

"Let her go, son," the merchant said. "Aye, I'm Sydenham. What be your business with me?" His voice was wary, but so gentle that it betrayed him; clearly he felt more curiosity than wrath at her presence.

"Sir, I bring a warning-" She stopped, surprised by the approach of a woman.

"Humphrey, what's the matter?" the woman asked. As she came to Sydenham's side her hand groped for his, and their fingers wove together in an unconscious gesture of comfort that told Honor the two were man and wife.

Mrs. Sydenham was a formidable-looking person, several inches taller than her husband and a startling contrast to him, for she was as gaunt as he was stout, and as pale as he was florid. Only their common gray hair unified them, but while his lay in short, springy curls, hers was stretched tightly back from a center part under a starched white cap. Her face was almost as sallow and bony as a cadaver, but the eye sockets blazed with life at their hazel cores. She was staring at Honor with a frown. Suddenly, she gasped and grabbed her husband's sleeve.

"What is it, Bridget?" he asked gently.

"I know this girl."

Honor was amazed at her effect on the woman. "Indeed, madam, I am surprised to hear it, for I know you not."

"You are Sir Thomas More's daughter."

"You are mistaken," Honor said.

"You lie! I've seen you with him at Paul's Cross. Sir Thomas More and all his family."

Honor bit back the anger rising within her. "If I had not known since childhood that lying is a sin, madam, my guardian would surely have instructed me, for Sir Thomas is known to all the world as the most upright, Christian teacher."

"Your guardian?" Sydenham blurted. "You are Sir Thomas More's ward?"

"Ward or daughter," his wife spat, "where's the difference?"