Read Online The Queen's Lady by Barbara Kyle - Free Book Online

the Queen at Bridewell?”
    He was referring to the glittering public ceremony some time before to which all the nobility of England had been summoned. The King had there enlarged his six-year-old illegitimate son, Henry Fitzroy, with the titles of Duke of Richmond and Somerset. It had been an extraordinary, symbolic declaration by the King, acknowledging, in the absence of a legitimate son, Fitzroy’s right to some rank as a claimant to the throne. Sir Thomas, attending with all of his family, had read out the boy’s new patents of nobility.
    “Her Grace was ill with a headache, sir,” Honor answered. “The day was very hot. She became so indisposed she had to leave the hall. I’m sure you remember, for everyone was most concerned.”
    More remembered it well. The Queen had stood stoically by her husband’s side while he made a mistress’s bastard eligible to inherit the throne. Not only was it an insult to the Queen, it also threw the claim of their daughter, the Princess Mary, into jeopardy. Watching his ward’s open-faced reply, More wondered how much Honor had really seen that day. Had she understood anything of the humiliation the good Queen must have been suffering?
    “Her Grace asked me to accompany her to her private chamber,” Honor continued. “Perhaps it was only because I was near at hand. Though I did notice that Mistress Boleyn was nearer.”
    Did she really know nothing of the Boleyn girl’s infamy? More was touched by the innocence of the statement. Gratified, too, for it was further vindication of his judgment to settle his family in Chelsea: city gossip was just far enough removed.
    “In any case,” Honor went on, “Her Grace asked only me. My heart ached to see her in such distress, and I offered to read to her. I read from Louis Vives and it seemed to calm her.” Quickly, she added, as though to deny too much credit, “The chamber was cool and dark, sir, both good medicine, I do not doubt. Her Grace was wondrous kind to me.”
    More could not suppress a jolt of pride. Most of the Queen’s ladies were vain, ignorant flirts. In fine weather they rode out hunting and hawking with their courtier admirers, and when it rained they turned to cards, cat’s cradle, and gossip. Though they were all from prominent families, they had been sent to court only to make profitable marriages, and few of them were even literate, let alone able to soothe the nerves of this accomplished Queen by reading to her in learned Latin.
    “Child,” he said suddenly, “what say you to matrimony?”
    Her mouth fell open. “Leave here? Leave you ?” she blurted. A blush swept over her face and she looked down.
    More was surprised. Had she really not thought about marriage yet? A girl so lovely, so aware? Perhaps not; the stricken look on her face told him that her heart was here, at Chelsea. He realized that it pleased him inordinately. The realization was unsettling.
    With her head still lowered, Honor asked quietly, “Is it that fat doctor?”
    More had to cover a smile with his hand. At Lent, a doctor friend of his father’s, a portly widower, had come to court the girl. More had been passing the open solar door and overheard them talking. She was deftly cooling the doctor’s ardor in a most original fashion—by grilling him rather mercilessly on the works of St. Jerome and St. Thomas Aquinas. The poor man fled without even staying to supper.
    “No,” More answered, amused. “The doctor has retreated from the field. But another hopeful has stepped into the breach.” He waited for some response, but she stood stubbornly silent. “Are you not even curious to know who it is?”
    “No,” she said morosely. “But if my marriage is your desire, sir, my pleasure is naturally to obey you.”
    He frowned. “This is no answer, child. I will not sell you like a chattel to the highest bidder. But here,” he said, poking at the letter on the desk beside the Queen’s message, “here is Sir John Bremelcum