Sir Thomas pushed back the double doors with the heavy iron hinges that guarded his private library. Rose followed, lifting each leg and setting it down with great effort, her body dead even as her stomach danced and her heart battered her ribs. Sir Thomas moved to one side to allow Rose to enter, and she saw him.
Rose began running the fingers of one hand along the walls. She had to touch the walls and know that this place had been real, that she had not dreamt this remission of suffering. She would lose it all.
Cardinal Wolsey stood, the parchment in his lap landing on the floor. He made no move to grasp it, staring at her.
“Rose, you have the extreme privilege of meeting Cardinal Wolsey. He is the highest official in all of England, whether in matters of court or church.”
She couldn’t move her arms. They were hanging, useless, at her sides.
“Rose.” Sir Thomas prompted her.
Rose curtsied, staring too long at the little fibers in the rug, seeing flecks of the rushes Sir Thomas had carried in on his shoes and curling brown leaves from the garden. She took one last breath and lifted.
Sir Thomas was pleased; she could see it in his face.
“Cardinal Wolsey was telling me such stories that I could not believe,” Sir Thomas said. “He says that the heretics have grown in numbers and fervour, infecting even the common parishes with their contagion. I myself thought these men to be more select—those rare scholars who crumple under the weight of rigorous studies, easy enough to extinguish one by one, their madness so plain that it would draw none to it. Wolsey needs my help to act.”
Rose jerked her stare from the cardinal to Sir Thomas and tried to smile. She was afraid it was telling, so she stopped and cleared her throat. “How can I please you, Sir Thomas?”
“Well, tell the cardinal what you saw in church,” he said and turned to Wolsey. “Rose has a heart of devotion unmatched by any noblewoman I’ve met. She gave everything to the church, even to the point of despairing of her life when she could not make a pilgrimage.”
“Truly?” Wolsey replied.
“Go on, Rose. Did anyone ever read from the book of Hutchins? Tell us of the church you attended and if any of these madmen were about.”
Rose’s mind began the journey back to this story, but her mouth did not move. Her eyes remained on the floor as she saw the great spreading stain blurring her vision, turning even this peaceful refuge an angry red.
Long ago, he had lain there, troubling Rose with much talk. There was no place in his world for her class, and she resented him always drawing her in, prattering on every time about delicate troubles she would never be graced with. She wanted to stab him on mornings like this, when he arrived dejected, annoyed to be left alone for the day, annoyed that his name was always second on everyone’s tongues, annoyed that the king’s salt was moved out of his reach. He was like a child who needed constant kisses and plucky encouragements. Despite herself, she gave them both. She did not mind that the words rang false. They were, but he paid better when he was happy.
Her own troubles, what could she say of them? When her two little brothers took ill with the sweats, she begged his help, and he gave it. He arranged for them to be declared orphans and put into the king’s charity hospital. They died before the week was out. She only knew they were dead when she saw another boy wearing their clothes. Her mother had been such a poor weaver that her work stood out, even among the pitiful. Her grief was like a mouth full of pebbles. She was dry and brittle from the choking dust of lost hope, and she had no tears. His petulant stories became a distraction, and his body a refuge.
“You can’t live on the streets. You’ll lose your looks within a year.” The outbreak of sweats had alarmed him, she could tell. He swept his quill across a dry parchment, and she was established in an apartment. He saved her. She never saw her home again and remained indoors, waiting for him to return. She began to listen for the noises from the street, hearing her past through the filter of his money, which paid for these walls. It sounded so different to her. She was different. She was dead too.
He had other wives. She could tell their strident perfumes apart from the beckoning aromas of the court: the lavender sprinkled over the rushes, the breads rising on stone slabs in the open kitchens. She wondered how they all lived, which one he loved. Not that it mattered.
She rolled over with a sigh as he prattled. She was wedged tightly between the two worlds in London and wanted neither side as her own. The restlessness this fine and fancy man unburdened stayed with her, growing with every soft-spoken confession. She had given him no mercy, lying there in silence, making no move to invite his own sorrows to roost and tarry. But they had. The great crowing hunger pecked at her until she did what was once inconceivable.
She went to church. London was the city of God, he had told her, and it was true. Bells rang out at Mass when the host was elevated, choral chants floated through the streets, monks and priests milled about everywhere. Rose had never entered this world. Before this time, it had belonged to others … not to her. And why would she choose to be anchored to anything in this world? From her first cry as a baby she had awakened to hunger. Nothing ever satisfied. Life was a continual torment.
The cold cobbled path led her to two enormous wood doors overlaid with iron bars and creeping ivy that ate away at the wood and stone.
The world inside took her breath away. The ceiling rose far above her. Towering beams of darkest timber lined the ceiling, making a high sharp vault, with so much air between her and the roof … air she couldn’t breathe. Jesus hung crucified above the altar, above it all, and she averted her eyes from His shameful nakedness. He was barely covered by a loose cloth, His frail body bleeding and pierced.
He looked so weak. What right had she to lay her burdens on Him as well? He looked to be a man who needed mercy and salvation from men, not one who was their only hope. Why had no one in this place saved Him? How had they walked before Him every day, asking and pleading for little favours, while He hung there in agony? Would it be so hard to bring Him down and dress the wounds? His bleeding body disgusted her.
She looked away and saw Him alive, calling to His disciples in a boat floating forever on a sea of cut glass. In another window she saw Him standing with a great book in His hand, the other hand extended to her. In yet another He offered a chalice to men gathered at a table—men eager to take anything He offered. To turn in any direction in this place was to see that His calling, His book, His cup, all pointed finally to this brutal death. The gold and the damask, the linens and silk were only a bright veneer that distracted from His low, bloody end.
There was no glory in death. She knew it too intimately to be in awe of it: The weeping without comfort when all were asleep; the stains that drew the flies; the bitter stench and seeping ulcers that ridiculed the delight in young flesh, until one was heaped into a dark pit and forgotten. Every man met this fate, with or without God. She was here because she wanted something besides hunger and death.
She turned away.
A priest entered at that moment from a door at the back of the church and saw her dress, dirtied from wandering in the street, and her hands on the doors, ready to flee. He stood still. She saw his eyes move to her sleeves, and follow the curve of her frame, and she realized he understood her to be here for thieving, not mercy. If the authorities found her coin purse, it would be his word that sent her to a prison where she would die slowly, in ways that would make her wish for the briefer agony of a crucifixion.
From the corner of her eye she knew Christ held the chalice to her, too, and she sank to her knees in fear.
“I come to receive the Lord!” she cried out.
He attended to the candles burning at the altar, trimming the wicks as darkness fell outside.
“I am Father Grimbald,” he said and gestured for her to retreat into the curtained box along the far wall on her right.
When he slid into the booth, pulling back the scalloped partition, she could not stop the flow of words that rushed out. It began as fear that he would not believe her and would still call the sheriff, but it swept through to the truth before she had her second gulp of air. She had thought the guilt was buried deep within, but it was at the surface … like a grime she skimmed from her heart, working faster and faster. He had listened in silence, but it was not the silence she had known and used herself. It encouraged her to go on, to root out every wicked, soiled thing, until she was purged.
There were many paths to this redemption she sought, he told her, but she did not have the money for a great pilgrimage, or for prayers to be said on her behalf. This was understandable. Perhaps she had only to show kindness to His servants and refrain from selling herself again, and the guilt would not return. She was a beautiful girl, he said, and she did not have to live this life in such misery.
When she stepped out, she wiped the last of the tears from her face and wept again. She was determined. She could sell scraps of wool that fell from the wagons, or find employ as a dyer of wool, or even a shearer.
Grimbald emerged from the confessional, touching her shoulder from behind. He turned her gently, and she saw his face in the candlelight. He was older than she, but not by many years. His mouth was full and his eyebrows dark and heavy, so that his small eyes were almost lost. Yet he was not unpleasant to look on, though she had spent her life turning her face away from the men who held her.
“You brought no coins to offer for the confession?” he asked.
“No,” she lied. She needed every coin in her purse to eat and sleep safely off the streets tonight. If it turned cold again and froze, those coins could well keep her alive.
“I cannot let you go without payment. It is law.” He reached to her hip and patted it before she could swat his hand away. He had heard the noise her pocket made. “You have stolen from the church, receiving confession with no payment.”
“I cannot give you any coins,” she said.
He dropped his hands and took a step back, his face setting into hard lines as he turned on a heel to walk. She knew where he would go. She reached for his hand and stopped him, then drew it slowly to her face, kissing it.
“What have I that pleases you? Take that,” she said.
What roosted next in her heart was a grief so unbearable it had no name.
Later, when she hesitated to die on a rain-soaked, twisted path, she watched him hound to hell one good man already long dead. She knew then she had no hope for peace, even in death. She was of those who are forever cursed. The hope of redemption was gone and she ran to meet her death. The searing iron strength of the grace that saved her gave her hope for her son.
She remembered her newborn child, his breath shallow, his chest moving in and out in flurries of raspy gulps. He would not live to see his first sunrise. She had little money, only what the local women had helped her earn by sending her out on errands for merchants. Wolsey had thrown her into the street when he had discovered her secret. He had other wives to comfort him in his tribulations at court; he did not want one who brought her own troubles. He took vengeance on Grimbald as well; the man was driven from his parish with blows and scourges.
She held her head straight ahead as she walked in the street and still wore a ribbon in her hair, even when she hadn’t eaten for days. But she was terrified. A seamstress admired her blue silk dress, mistaking her for a woman of quality, and had allowed her to sleep on the floor of her shop, but the miserable work piecing pearls on gowns could not feed two mouths, nor drive away the wet, fevered coughs that claimed so many children here.
The child needed a baptism and a doctor. The doctor could bring medicine, but she would not have the money for this and his baptism. Purgatory was a danger more real to her than death. She had lived in purgatory; she could not sentence her son to an eternity there.
She watched the baby breathe. His eyes were closed, the lashes dark little tendrils that nearly touched his cheeks. His fingers were impossibly small and perfect. She kissed him and held him against her breasts, rocking him as she draped her robe around them both. His flesh was so sweet and soft and new. She would not let him go even as death, a tender, shadowed nurse, came gently for him.
“Please,” she whispered, “a little more time. I must find a priest.” She sensed Death pause for her, and though it was near, she was not afraid. She called for a neighbour, and when the woman poked her head through the thin curtain sheltering Rose from the others, Rose told her to find the priest.
The baby’s movements grew less frequent. When the priest came, she held the baby firmly in her arms for the baptism. Then she had slept, feeling strong arms encircling them both, pressing them together so she could not separate the baby’s heart from hers. She never felt it cease, only that it joined hers and beat on and on. She had held him until their hearts and breath aligned, his growing fainter and freer. She knew the instant his soul had flown away like a little bird in winter. She did not know if she had dreamed this.
This is why Christ hung there and never came down, she thought. He hung in agony so that those in grief could not accuse Him of less. He hung, rent open, and men were comforted by the sight. In this bitter life, who could love a God who did not suffer?
She hoped she would never see Wolsey again, or Grimbald, or the inside of a church. She was done with men and their God.
Rose realized Sir Thomas’s foot was tapping. These memories fled, and she faced the men as if she had forgotten it all. “Madmen?” she answered. “Yes, there were madmen. And sinners and thieves. The church welcomed them all. This is what I saw.”
She didn’t know why she said it. Wolsey’s face, hard-set and ready to defend himself against the truth, softened into the face she had once glimpsed and dared to hope in. He smiled at her, and she knew, the way women who have given themselves do, that he desperately wanted a smile in return.
“Sir Thomas has given you a chance for a new life,” he said to her. “May his name be praised. I pray you, make good use of it.”
“Yes, but Rose,” More continued, his thoughts plainly too far away to see what was happening in his study. “Were there any heretics among you? Those who read Hutchins?”
Rose held Wolsey’s gaze.
“Yes.”
She didn’t know why she had done that. Was she a weak woman, or a fool? Later she wanted that moment back, wanted to crush Wolsey with her words, wanted to scream her truth and hear the words out loud.
But she knew the truth. She wanted this new life more than she wanted revenge for the old. She wanted another chance, and she feared her only way to get it was to give one to Wolsey, too. She prayed, the second surprise of the day.
Jesus.
It was the only word she knew, the only word not spoken in Latin in the Masses she had attended. I cannot stop sinning, she prayed. I just sinned to buy grace. I let my son die to buy him grace. I let my brothers die to find them a cure. Everywhere, grace and redemption are soiled by my hands. Help me. Help me stop.
The next morning she sat on her bed looking out the window. It was late in the morning, but water still beaded on the panes, making her crane her neck to catch sight of the trees below. Though it was the end of April, winter and spring still wrestled for the trees. Green leaves had unfolded on all the trees, and only a few had dead brown branches—the stragglers that the last frost had bitten. There were several boulders placed below the trees in her view. She wondered how the men had moved them all into place, for they were large and rough-edged. Moss and green tendrils grew up all around them, content that the boulders would be unmovable features of their world.
A knock at Rose’s door made her jerk, and she grabbed her skirt to be sure she was modestly covered, with no calve or ankle showing.
“Margaret!” she exclaimed, opening her arms as the girl walked in. She was a sweet sight after a night of tears. Margaret rested in Rose’s arms for a moment as Rose inhaled the scent of her hair, powdered and perfumed with roses. Rose relaxed in the softness of the girl, her warm, steady breath, and was surprised love was again in her heart. It had been gone for years and its return made her laugh out loud.
Margaret pushed away, her face serious. “Who does Father whip at the gatehouse?”
“What?” Rose asked.
“I saw him. There is another man at the gatehouse. He was whipped last night, lashed to Father’s Tree of Truth. Did you not hear his cries to God?”
Rose shook her head. She had heard only her own. She wondered who God would answer first. “Has it happened before?” she asked.
“Sometimes. Father says it is a great mercy, for if he turned the men over to Wolsey, they’d be racked. At least here their punishment is over swiftly, and they have much time to recant. Father thinks everyone will worship properly again if they can be broken first.”
The prisons she had seen in Southwark were visions of hell. A whipping here would end; those who entered the gates of a prison were lost forever. Only a gravecloth was ever returned, and this went to the priest as payment for his final services. Guards stole the boots and cloaks.
“I don’t understand, Margaret. What is their crime?”
Margaret sat next to her on the bed. “Can you keep a secret?”
“Yes,” Rose replied.
“They are guilty of reading a book, that’s all. A book by a man named Hutchins. Father knew him. He even visited us the summer that Mother died. Hutchins believed every person could approach God and know Him intimately. Father said God could make no sense to the average man. We must be led by wiser men.”
“If they are being whipped for reading it, it is no secret,” Rose replied.
Margaret squirmed, biting at her cheek.
Rose frowned and reached to assure Margaret, but Margaret pulled away. “Margaret, what is the real secret?”
Margaret grew still and set her face in a cold frown. “I am a little bit afraid, although he promises to keep me safe.”
“Margaret!” Rose shook her. “What is your secret?”
“He is like Father in many ways, you know. Father hates him, but he does not know him like I do. The book is superb, Rose. It will open your eyes. You’ll never think of God the same way again.”
Rose’s stomach turned. She had smelled death when she had first cracked open the spine of a book. She wondered what man would be so bold—or so careless—as to leave such a record of his thoughts and heart so that any man, anywhere, could know them. To see a book open was to see a shield laid down. It made no sense to Rose why anyone would wish to be exposed to their enemies this way. If men could see what was in the heart of the world, they would leave the books closed and the inkwells dry.
Rose jumped from the bed and grabbed the hornbook from her table. Racing into Margaret’s room, she began pulling as many books from the shelves as she could, lifting her skirts to carry them in. She ran to the family room, throwing them into the fireplace, which roared and sprang up, nearly catching the edge of her skirts as she worked. Margaret screamed when she saw what Rose was doing, and the children came running, Sir Thomas just behind them. The fire was blazing out, high and hungry, when Sir Thomas pinned Rose’s arms to her sides, dragging her back from the flames. A book fell from the fire, its pages lined in burning red, sparks biting along its edges as it smoked.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
Margaret was crying. Rose looked around at the children and the other servants, all staring at her with furrowed brows and deep, angry frowns.
“All of you, to your rooms,” he ordered.
Alone, he stared at her but did not release his grip. She didn’t want him to; she wanted to be shaken from her fear, her dread broken by his hands.
“It is the books, Sir Thomas,” Rose began. “A man in your gatehouse is paying in blood for this man Hutchins, and your own children are curious about the book! I burned these books, and I would burn more, if it can save the children from their influence! They must not be tempted by the world beyond this one.”
She didn’t notice his crushing grip on her arms; it would be only later she would see the bruising. His face was so near hers that his breath washed over her neck and bodice. She had been overpowered by men in a life that was far away. She had never been forced to stillness at that moment so that a man could see what was in her eyes.
“You are salvation to me,” she whispered.
For a long moment they stared at each other, his heart beating through his doublet, the heat of his body touching hers. He was pulling her closer in so that she was pressed against him, the distances between them being sealed off and forgotten.
Her knees were weak, but she did not fall; his grip on her was too tight. She stopped trying to stand on her own and let him take her weight, lifting her face to kiss him on the mouth. She needed this kiss, needed to be taken hold of and firmly fixed in his world of grace. She could see his lips parting as he leaned down, and she closed her eyes.
Then Sir Thomas shoved her away, a push so fierce it landed her on the floor. He did not look down as he left the room.
Rose didn’t move from her bed, not for supper or evening prayers. No one came to fetch her. She watched as the red sunset faded through the garden and she could no longer see the trees that danced in the night breeze. Only the birds, still singing, were oblivious to the boundaries of More’s home. She wondered what they had seen today in London. Had they seen madmen and lost women, or mothers whose arms were as empty as their stomachs? Where would they go when they left here? She hoped they would fly to the bosom of God and tell. She wished she could follow, but she saw the world and doubted God would receive her. She stank of it.
How long she lay in this position, curled into a ball, her face towards the garden, she did not know. In total darkness a noise had stirred her mind and she awoke.
It was a dull keening, the soft groaning of a man. The hairs on her arm lifted, and Rose closed her eyes, listening hard to know where the sound came from. It was somewhere beyond her room, beyond perhaps the walls of the house. She eased her feet off the bed and pried the door back, careful to make no noise. As she crept down the hall, she saw that everyone was asleep and in several rooms the candles had burned out. The servants snored like drunks; Rose did not doubt a few of them kept refreshments under their mattresses for lonely nights such as this.
Rose crossed through the servants’ wing and peered down the hall that would lead her to the children, but it was as dark and quiet as a closet. She went down the stairs next and peered into Sir Thomas’s study. It was empty. A candle burned before an open book, and a crucifix hung on the wall above his desk. In the shadows it appeared as if Christ moved upon His cross, and Rose fled the room. There was no movement or noise on this floor, so she looked at the heavy double doors leading to the garden, a side entrance for the household. She was debating the wisdom of leaving the house on a dark night, just after a man had been whipped there, but she saw she would not be the first to do so. One door stood slightly back from the other, not having been closed all the way after someone’s exit. She took a deep silent breath and decided.
The door slid quietly, but the cold air that met her made her gasp. She hunched down, drawing herself in tightly, and stepped out into the garden. The dull keening continued but sounded wet, and there were not so many moans.
She followed the path down through the gardens, the rows and plots of plants marked into squares, each for its own kind, going farther down the path until the house was nearly out of her sight. The voice grew louder, and she heard whispers of Latin, a man’s pleas punctuated by a long cry for mercy. This word, mercy, was the only one she knew, for it was the only one in English. She held her breath, waiting for the last cry, which would surely be a wail of death. The dull pounding continued.
“I have made a covenant with mine eyes!” he cried out, his teeth grinding down on the last two words as a bolt of pain hit.
Rose crept a few more paces, keeping to the side of the path, shrinking into the shadow as best she could, willing herself to make no noise no matter what she should see. As she came around one last curve, she saw the Tree of Truth. A man was beneath it, with a heavy stone in his hand, and a scourging whip in the other. In the moonlight, he glistened. It was the black glistening of blood. Stepping closer, she knew him.
It was Sir Thomas.
She stumbled back, her steps making the stones of the path scratch together.
Sir Thomas stopped and stared into the darkness. “Who goes there?”
Rose held her breath, mouthing a silent prayer that she would not be discovered.
A rabbit jumped from behind a tree in between them and ran down past the gatehouse. Sir Thomas watched it go, and Rose watched him. He exhaled and raised his scourge again. Rose was more careful with her next steps and made it back to her room undiscovered. She eased the door closed and hung her head.
She lay on her bed but could not face the garden, for she knew another of its secrets. Instead, restless, she turned to face the door, her mind exhausting itself of what might happen next. She could be thrown out or demoted to tending animals instead of children. She would certainly lose Margaret’s affection, and Margaret was a girl thirsty for affection. What would happen to the girl if Rose was thrown out?
There were so many worries and visions that Rose could not tend to them all before sleep found her. It was a deep and dreamless sleep, and when she awoke, unsettled and unsafe, sleep having done nothing to put distance between her and her fears.
She noticed her door was ajar. She rose and shut it. Perhaps it had swung open of its own accord, a breeze from an open window somewhere doing this.
There was no breeze in the house. She opened it again, perplexed, and stepped into the hall to see if anyone had been there. Perhaps another servant had been trying to summon her to breakfast. The hall was empty. She heard the other servants just beginning to stir.
A pebble on the wooden plank floor caught her eye. Bending to pick it up, she saw that it smeared in her hands. The stain was rust coloured, a stitch of bright red breaking through.