Queen's Lady, The Read online

  Barbara Kyle enjoyed a successful acting career in Canadian theatre and television before turning her hand to writing fiction. She and her husband live in Ontario, where she teaches popular writing seminars and workshops. She welcomes visitors at her website www.barbarakyle.com.

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the US as a mass market paperback in 1994 by Onyx, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a division of Penguin Books USA, under the title A Dangerous Temptation.

  First published in the US by Kensington Publishing Corp. under the title The Queen’s Lady, 2008.

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © Barbara Kyle, 1994

  The right of Barbara Kyle to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-1-78033-559-9 (paperback)

  ISBN: 978-1-78033-560-5 (ebook)

  Printed and bound in the UK

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  Part One

  May Day

  May 1517–June 1522

  1

  May Day

  She would remember this forever after as the night she watched two men die, one at peace and one in terror. But now, seven years old and lost, Honor Larke knew only that she was out alone on a May Day night gone mad. She wedged herself into the shadows of a tavern doorway and prayed that the looters had not seen her. They were ransacking a house across the street, their torches flaring, and it seemed to Honor as though devils in a play had swarmed from the stage and hell blazed right before her.

  She was trapped.

  She could not go back to Cheapside. The London apprentices were rioting there. Their annual day of carousing had boiled into violence against the rich foreigners, especially the Italians, called Lombards, and Honor’s chest still burned from tearing through a Cheapside mob pitching rocks at a goldsmith’s shop while the women inside screamed in a strange tongue. But she could not go forward either, for thieves exploiting the night’s chaos had joined some apprentices to lay waste this side street.

  They were heaving booty out to their accomplices from windows in the three-storied merchant’s house across from her. Bolts of silk billowed down in ribbons of crimson and jade. Wooden chests smashed onto the cobblestones, spilling papers and coins. A dozen thieves were scooping the spoils into sacks. One of them, a toothless old man squatting in the middle of the street, hummed as he picked through a scatter of Venetian silver spoons. A thief with a torch hustled by Honor’s hiding place, and she gagged on the acrid smoke of the blazing tarred rags. She clamped her hand on her mouth to cover the sound.

  “Will, catch this,” a man called from a window. He tossed out a garnet-studded casket. “Careful. It’ll fetch enough to buy a bishop’s whore.”

  Above him, a voice crowed from the top floor. “I found me one!”

  The knots of foraging men looked up. Under a gable, a hefty young apprentice stood at a smashed-out loading door. “Found me a Lombard!” he sang out. “Scribbling at his desk, he was!” He tugged a quill pen from his hair and waved it like a trophy. He darted inside, and for a moment the opening was empty, lit by the garish torchlight from within. Then a man was pushed into view. White-haired, he was dressed in a long, black gown. He stood still and quiet, his hands behind him. The boy took a fistful of the man’s hair and jerked his head back, and the man twisted slightly, revealing a scarlet cord trussing his wrists.

  Gaping up, Honor crammed herself against the tavern door until its latch gouged her shoulder.

  “Can’t see him,” a man in the street groused.

  The boy under the gable shoved the man, forcing him to step up onto the sill where he swayed unsteadily.

  “No finery on him,” the man below scoffed. “Where’s his Lombard silks and jewels?”

  “Hold on.” The boy began draping necklaces over the head of his hostage and layering brightly coloured scarves around his neck. “There. Now he’s a Turk.”

  This brought laughter from below. The boy giggled and piled on more trinkets. His sleeve snagged on one of the chains around the man’s neck. Annoyed, the boy yanked free his sleeve, and the man scuffled forward to balance himself. His foot stubbed against an iron latch, and he fell. He plunged down, his gown rippling through the air. His body thudded onto the cobbles. He lay motionless. Silence, like a shroud cast out after him, settled over the watchers.

  The toothless old man whined, “That’s done it.” He began raking in his bright spoons. “That boy’ll hang, and the mayor’s men’ll be after us all.”

  “Shut your face,” the boy snapped. “He’s just a God-rotting Lombard.” But within moments he and the others inside had sifted out into the street, joining the men who stood around the body. “Stupid old fart,” the boy said. “If he’d just stood still . . .” He gave the body a savage kick.

  Honor gasped. The boy caught the sound and wheeled. He squinted across at the murky tavern entrance. Honor wormed down the door, the back of her dress snagging on the rough wood. She squatted in the corner, heart pounding.

  The boy motioned to a man with a torch. Together, they stalked to the tavern doorway. “Well, lookit here,” the boy brayed over his shoulder. “A little spy.” His grip burned Honor’s wrist as he yanked her out. “Where’d you spring from, goblin?”

  Though trembling, she dug in her heels. The boy grabbed her under the armpits, lifted her in the air and shook her roughly. “Speak up!” he said. She flinched at the blast of breath that stank of sour ale. He shook her again. “Be you English or a God-cursed foreigner?”

  She didn’t know how to answer. She wasn’t sure what a foreigner was. Under the vise of his hands, her ribs felt on fire.

  “Please, sir, I’ve only come to fetch home Ralph.”

  “And who the devil be Ralph?”

  “My father’s servant.”

  “A foreigner?”

  “Aw, leave it,” a man by the body called, preparing to leave.

  Another said, “Gilbey’s right. Mayor’s men’ll be coming. I’m off, too.”

  The boy set Honor down so harshly she staggered for balance. Wordlessly, men and boys gathered up their booty, leaving behind small piles of litter, and scuttled into the alleys. Their torchlight evaporated. Under the hiding moon the street went dark and cold. Papers fluttered. The faint, far-away bursts of shouts and shattering glass rolled over the rooftops then died in the air above Honor and the body. She looked across the street at it. It lay sprawled amongst the refuse, a black mound.

  There was a moan. Honor’s heart tightened. The sound had come from the body.

  “Per favoré . . . qualcuno . . . O! Per pietà!”

  Honor stood still, afraid, unsure. She heard a scrabbling on the cobbles. A dog was snuffling through the litter. It moved to the body and circled it.

  The man did not move. “Va! Va via!” he gasp
ed.

  The dog seemed to sense his helplessness. It thrust its muzzle into the open neck of his gown.

  “Per pietà-à-à!”

  Without thinking, Honor sprang from the doorway. She snatched up a pewter goblet and hurled it. It struck the dog’s hind leg. The dog yelped. She seized a pot and pitched it as well. The dog turned and bolted up the street.

  “Who is there?” the man cried.

  Honor came closer, cautiously, and stood over him. The moon sailed out from the cover of clouds, washing him with a cold, white light. Now she could see him clearly. He lay on his back on top of his bound arms. At his throat the scarves and necklaces were twined in a bright tangle. He did not move. His eyes were closed. His moans had stopped. Had he died? she wondered.

  His eyelids sprang open. For a moment, man and child stared at one another.

  “Thank you,” he whispered. “The dog . . .” He stopped to cough.

  “Do you hurt?” Honor asked.

  A small smile tugged at his lips. “No hurt. Back is broken. Feel nothing . . .” His voice trailed. “Muoro. I am dying . . .”

  If he’s dying, she thought, how can he smile? But she realized what she must do. “Sir, I’ll fetch a priest.”

  “No! No need!”

  The sudden fierceness of his voice surprised her. She did not want to disobey him, but everyone knew that God would not allow a soul into heaven if it was filthy with unconfessed sin. “Sir,” she said, marveling at his ignorance, “you must be shriven.” She did not want him to burn in hell’s fires forever.

  “No,” he insisted, faintly now. “Confession . . . priests . . . prayers to God . . . no good . . .”

  She drew back. He was speaking blasphemy. Even a child knew that. But she noticed blood seeping from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto the cobbles like ink. Maybe dying is making him mad, she thought. Otherwise, how can he smile so? “Sir,” she asked softly, “are you not afraid to die? And all alone?”

  “You came to help me,” he whispered. “When there was no one else, you came. What should I fear when I have uno àngelo—an angel—beside me?”

  Honor stiffened at the sound of footsteps. The moon was masked again by clouds and she could not see far, but she could hear the low voices of men, their words indistinct.

  The dying man heard them too. His body jerked once in a spasm. “Inside . . . my gown,” he rasped. “Piccolo àngelo . . . take it.” He was spitting blood. “Take it! Now!”

  Honor kneeled and reached into his gown. She withdrew a slim book slightly larger than a man’s hand.

  “I wrote it,” he said, his eyes glinting as if with joy, “for you.”

  “For me?” she asked, beguiled, though his comment made no sense, strangers as they were. She could not even read.

  “But never . . . never show it to a priest!” He coughed. Honor winced as the warm mist of blood sprayed her hands. “You understand? Never . . . to a priest!”

  “A secret?” she whispered.

  Again, his lips formed a serene smile. “Si, piccolo àngelo. A secret . . .”

  Blood bubbled out of his mouth. His head lolled. His dead eyes stared at her, wide open. But Honor felt no horror. Despite the violence done to him, his life had closed so peacefully.

  “Somewhere ’round here . . .” It was a man’s voice. Two dark forms were turning the corner of the ransacked house. Honor stuffed the book deep inside her wide sleeve and crouched. Looking across the body, she watched the men approach. They were kicking at the litter.

  “You sure there was a purse on him?” one man muttered.

  “I saw it at his belt,” the other insisted. “When he fell.”

  “Well, find him and cut it. And let’s be off.”

  “And his rings? Cut his rings, too?”

  “Cut off his poxy balls, if you want, but get the purse.”

  The second man finally saw the body and shot out a finger. “There!”

  They both hurried forward. A few paces from the body the second man stopped abruptly and held out his arm to stop the other. “Jesus, it’s that sneaking girl.”

  Both men whipped out knives. They stepped toward her.

  Honor jumped up, ready to bolt.

  From behind her a thick arm swept around her waist and snatched her. Her body was jackknifed, facedown, and she could see only the heels of her abductor’s boots. He bounded up the street, and she gasped for air, pinned against his thigh. She was joggled half a block before the man carrying her swung into an alley and halted. He hoisted her up roughly, his hands encircling her rib cage. Fierce with fear, she swung her fists at him with eyes closed, but he held her away easily.

  “What do you think you’re up to?” he cried.

  Her eyes popped open. “Ralph!”

  She threw her arms around his neck and pressed her face against the stubble of his cheek. “Oh, Ralph,” she gulped, “they were smashing the houses! And they pushed the foreigner man out the window, and he fell, all broken! And those robbers were going to kill me, and—”

  “Hush, little mistress, I’ve got you now.” He cupped one beefy hand around the back of her head and hugged her with the other. “You be safe now. Hush.” He began walking quickly.

  She held tight, drinking in the familiar smell of his battered leather jerkin and feeling safe, indeed, in his embrace. Ralph Pepperton, at nineteen, was over six feet tall and built like a tree trunk. Honor had been told by her nurse, Margaret—with no little pride—that Ralph had never lost a fight. On Lady Day, when he had vaulted the neighbor’s garden wall to visit the pretty scullery maid there, a brawl with two of that household’s retainers had ensued, and the servants on both sides had bet money on Ralph. “An ox on two feet,” Honor’s father had called Ralph that day, and beamed as he pocketed his own winnings.

  Ralph was heading up the dark alley, making for the glow of torches on the broad thoroughfare of Cheapside. “What a night,” he growled, kicking through the garbage of dung and bones. “May Day’s for fun, right enough, but this time the ’prentices have gone too far. They’ve burst Newgate jail and loosed the prisoners. And now they’re off to fire the houses on Lombard Street. I watched some hound a Frenchman up the belfry of St. Mary’s like a rat before they dragged him down and set on him.”

  He talked on as if to soothe her, though his voice was tight with indignation. “I grant the ’prentices have some cause to hate the strangers, but Sweet Jesu, there be some mighty sins committed this night. And they’ll pay for it, sure as there’s eel pie at Lent. But never fear, little mistress,” he murmured, “you be safe with me.”

  She hugged him with all her might, but when he squeezed her in return she flinched, still tender from the apprentice’s rough handling. Ralph stopped. Beneath a window where a candle flickered he pried her away from his neck and quickly examined her muddy face and arms. His voice was harsh with an anger she had never heard from him. “Whatever in God’s good creation lured you out?” he said. “On this cursed night of all nights.”

  She pouted in silence and he hoisted her up as if to shake an answer from her.

  “Stop that, Ralph Pepperton! I won’t be shaken anymore!” Tears sprang to her eyes. “Let me go!”

  Tenderly, he set her again in the crook of his arm. But his scowl remained firm. “Well?”

  She glared at him, her arms folded over her chest. “I came out for you! And I don’t see why you should be angry when I only came to save you.”

  “Save me?” he blustered.

  “Yes. Master Ellsworth said he’d skin you alive if he found you’d left the house.” Ellsworth was her father’s chamberlain. After curfew, she had seen him prowling the house for absent servants, thwacking his stick ominously against his shin. “He was in a terrible fume. And I knew you’d left. I heard you at the kitchen door this afternoon, telling the baker’s ’prentice you’d meet him later at the sign of the Ploughman’s Rest.”

  “Do you mean you wriggled out of your bed, away from old Margaret, and cam
e out to the Ploughman’s . . . for me?”

  “Yes. But I got lost.” She bit her lip, remembering the fearful hours of wandering, then the mob, the flames, and the white-haired man falling to his death. “Oh, Ralph . . .” she said, fighting back tears, “it was only because of Master Ellsworth with his stick . . .”

  Ralph’s scowl had already softened, although he kept his voice stern. “Master Ellsworth and his stick be my lookout, mistress.” He took her chin in his calloused hand and grinned. “But it be a kind little heart—and a brave one—that prompted you to do it.”

  She smiled back, loving him.

  “Now,” he said, stepping away from the wall, “we’ve got to get you back a-bed before Margaret wakes herself with her own snoring and finds you gone.” He shook his head and whistled through his teeth. “Maybe dunk you in a bucket first, for I swear you’re more mud than maid.”

  She followed his gaze toward Cheapside where bright torchlight was now spilling partway down the alley. She could hear shouting there, too.

  Ralph looked back over his shoulder, then frowned as if rejecting that route. “The alleys will be crawling with lousels,” he muttered. He looked forward again at Cheapside and set his jaw. Hugging Honor in one arm, he unsheathed his dagger and strode up toward the light. Just before they reached the wide street he ducked into the shadows and halted. Honor twisted in his arms to look.

  Two bands were squared off like small armies on a battlefield. One, a mob of twenty-odd apprentices—young men from about fourteen to twenty—was jeering at the other, a city delegation. Above the street, half-open shutters revealed candles, and nightcaps, and frightened faces.

  The delegation was made up of three mounted aldermen—ineffectual-looking despite their fine velvets—who lurked behind a dozen foot-soldiers with pikes. In front of the soldiers, two more officials sat on horseback: a grizzled Sergeant of the Guard who wore half-armor, and a dark-haired man of middle age, unarmed and plainly dressed. The Sergeant’s sword and steel breastplate glinted above the mob’s torches.

  “I warn you again,” the Sergeant barked to the mob, “you are breaking the law.”