Margaret was vomiting, her head hanging over a brown hedge at the edge of the steps. The tutor, Candice, claimed to be suffering from vapors and fled inside, leaving Rose alone and trembling.
She handed the boy a silver groat and he fairly skipped back down to the steps at the bottom of the garden, back on the barge to return to the city. He had been thrilled to deliver the papers because it lined his pocket. His mother might eat well tonight, or his sister. Sir Thomas’s impending death was feeding the world, Rose thought bitterly. They were feasting upon him already.
The papers, signed with a seal from the Star Chamber of King Henry, read:
That he should be carried back to the Tower of London and from thence drawn on a hurdle through the City of London to Tyburn, there to be hanged till he should be half dead; that he should be cut down alive, his privy parts cut off, his belly ripped, his bowels burnt, his four quarters set up over four gates of the City, and his head upon London Bridge.
Rose braced herself and went inside.
“They will be coming! We must save what we can.” Candice was in the room, ghostlike, lifting a silver candlestick and setting it inside a pillowcase. She was taking the silver, leaving the portrait Holbein had done of the family, looking with an ashen face round the room.
“Who will be coming? Who will be coming?” Margaret demanded.
Candice didn’t respond.
Margaret grabbed her, shaking her until Candice’s face settled on hers.
“The king’s men. When your father is dead, all his property is forfeit. You will be turned out,” Candice said.
“But he is not dead yet! There is still hope!” Rose cried.
“Children, go through the house. Bring me everything Father has written to you. All our books too.” Margaret commanded.
Margaret herself ran into his office, bringing out papers and banned books he had hunted. She threw them into a pile in the garden and set it on fire. She grabbed a Hutchins book to throw in, but Rose stopped her.
“What else do we have left to cling to but these words?”
“Look what they have done, Rose! Everything my father did was to prevent these words from being in the hands of little fools like you! And look what mischief they have done! Laws overturned, churches desecrated, priests treated like criminals!”
“But I have read this book, Margaret. It says none of those things. It gives life to those who read it, not death!”
Margaret began to laugh.
“What is amusing?” Rose asked, confused.
Margaret refused to answer. Instead she turned to the children gathered around her, their chins trembling, fingers in their mouths. “I will encourage Father to sign the Act of Supremacy. He was once Henry’s favoured servant, and his life will be spared if he agrees to this. Do not give up hope!”
Rose waited at the edge of the garden. Everything was lifeless. Winter’s rains and winds had stripped the leaves from every plant. Those that remained were curled and brown. She pulled her shawl around her shoulders, waiting for her mistress.
Margaret was looking out over the black water, watching the barge move away into the grey fog. She had received a letter, written in coarse charcoal, from her father. As Margaret read it aloud, Rose came to understood its content in just a few sentences.
He was unwell, dying from the imprisonment. He did not know if he would be well enough to walk to his own execution. They had beheaded Cardinal Fisher this week. The letter said that cannons were fired to alert the king his enemy was dead. That was how Sir Thomas knew his own time was close. At least these were the words that Margaret shared aloud.
Weeks had passed since he had arrived in the Tower, each cold winter week falling upon the next, a stinking pile of frustrations. Margaret was at the end of her third month of helplessness. Sir Thomas still refused to sign the Act. He refused to comment at all on Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn or the break with the church. He found death preferable to a life with his children—this was how Margaret put it to Rose.
Margaret had not yet sent Rose away. Rose did not know why. Rose preferred life on the street, the freedom she had once known, to this prison. There were other women, she knew, women who had lost sons and husbands, who read these same words. Many were in the Tower themselves, dying slow, shameful deaths. If their families had no money, they would not be able to pay the guards for food, or a shawl to keep warm, or even clean straw for a toilet. Rose could help them. She knew how to earn money. Anything could be forgiven to save these martyrs. She would not let these people die the same lonely, unloved, uncertain deaths of her brothers.
Margaret refused to release her. She only smiled, seeing something in Rose’s future that was secret and delicious, wanting to wait for it to spring up.
Rose had kept the Bible, seared at the edges. She read it alone, at night, seeing Margaret’s sneer through the dim candlelight as she glided past.
Now Margaret broke the silence. “There is other news, the boy bringing the letter told me. Servants are falling ill at the palace all around Anne. It begins with a red spotted rash, red eyes, and spots even inside their mouths. It’s from the devil, they say, the stinking pits of hell. They’re afraid of the light, say it hurts their eyes. My only comfort is that Anne Boleyn can no longer hide who or what she is. She is a witch. She has no more victims in the court, so she turns on her servants. She’s already gotten rid of the men who opposed her: Are they not all dead? Cardinal Fisher is dead, Cardinal Wolsey is dead, my father in the Tower, a condemned man. Can you not see her whole and only goal has been to exterminate the church? Father is a good man, a strong man, to resist her to the end.”
Margaret had that faraway sound in her voice, but a new pride in her father was seeping into it.
“What news of the king?” Rose asked. “Has he received your petition for your father’s life?”
“I do not know. Henry has fled to Hampton Court. He wants no part of this new sickness.”
“Margaret, you must release me! I can do no good here! Let me return to the city, where at least I can tend to my people!”
“Your people?” Margaret laughed. “The only family you have are those pock-faced wenches, selling their bodies for a bowl of soup. Your brothers are dead, your son is dead—there is no one left who loves you, Rose.”
“How did you know?”
“Father knew everything about you when you came here. You were his little experiment in social justice, to show those at court that even the basest person could be elevated through education. He used you to gain acceptance for his ideas, his methods. The more nobles paraded through our living room and saw you at your embroidery, or reading your hornbook, the higher father moved through the ranks of court. You served him well, Rose. Or didn’t you?”
Rose slapped her.
“It doesn’t matter. You’ve done more for him than you know.” She was smiling. “But if you want to run away, I will take you to the city myself. We have an engagement.”
She shoved the letter to Rose and walked away. Rose read it for herself, stopping with a sharp breath at the end.
The execution date was set.