Margaret had gone to the city for shopping. Sir Thomas had sent her with an exorbitant sum, and she was not expected to return today. Rose realized with grim admiration that Sir Thomas set everything in motion around her for this moment. He would have this just as he wanted. He was the only man she had ever met who could control the fates. The thought stabbed her heart. He had done nothing for her, save given her a letter to deliver. In the end, she despaired, that was all she was to him: a servant to be used. He cared nothing, really, of her fate.
Rose went out in the garden and watched as the men read Sir Thomas the charges. She had seen men arrested, men who fought and wanted to die on the open street rather than see the inside of the Tower. More only pursed his lip and nodded when they finished. She could tell he was impatient with their long list of accusations.
He called to her as they took hold of his arms on either side. “The letter, Rose! Do not tarry. It is my salvation.”
“And mine,” she replied, repeating what he had earlier told her. It lingered in the air like a question between them.
He stared at her, a tenderness in his eyes that shocked her. Sharp pains shot through her stomach, pains of fear, pains not so different from desire. She blushed to have such strange thoughts at this moment.
He shook his head, answering some question she had not asked. “I am sorry,” he said as they pushed him away, forcing him to begin the walk to the gate.
He turned at the gate, saying something to the guards, so that they allowed him this pause. He turned and surveyed his utopia. Rose saw him weep.
The children were murmuring, and nothing could bring them to concentrate on their studies. Rose tried to steady their rising fears, and she was afraid that she sounded as patently bad as the pageant actors on the streets.
“Everything will be all right,” she crooned.
It set their teeth on edge.
Her words were meaningless. She did not have answers.
“I must go; I cannot stay,” she said to Candice. “If Margaret returns before me, tell her I have gone on an errand for her father. I will return.”
Going by barge would be faster than horse, for the tide was in her favour at the moment. She could go on foot when she arrived in the city.
She sat on the barge, the sole customer. The cold wind skimmed the top of the Thames, stinging her cheeks with little pecks of ice.
She thought on everything that passed between her and More, and the strange vision on Christmas Eve that caused her to scream, the bell that rang from the kitchen, making everyone spring from their sleep, so that all complained later of the bell and no one made mention of having heard her scream. The others had stayed up late that night telling ghost stories. Could she have seen one herself? she wondered. But ghosts are vengeful spirits, and this one, though more terrifying than any tale told round the hearth, had saved her in her hour of rebuke.
That misfortune was what she had deserved. She was not pure of heart, and perhaps she had tempted him beyond what he could bear, but the apparition saved her from it. How could the unseen judge her so differently? And how could this tale ever be told, for who would judge her worthy of such salvation? Who would believe More, the great purger of the church, the man who laboured to present the church as the faultless bride, the man who above all else wanted law to reign in the land, who would believe he would do such a thing? He was purging evil and error from the hearts of men. How could his own be so unclean?
She thought of him scourging himself. He had done more to be pure than anyone she had ever known. Who else tormented their flesh nightly so that he may live clean in the day? If this was not enough to purge himself of evil desires, there was no hope for purging the church. Not even Hutchins could do this. She had never heard of Hutchins scourging himself. If More, a master of learning and obedience, could not cleanse himself, there was no hope for the common man or the greater church.
Perhaps Hutchins was a fool.
Rose got out at the Wharf. A woman was busy picking lice from a blanket, sitting on the corner of a street, quite near the channel cut out to carry urine from the city. The sun was strongest in that spot, even if the odour was too. The woman did not mind.
“What’s in the bag?” the woman snapped, looking up from her work with hatred as she took in Rose’s black and red dress, the white lace peeking out from her sleeves and the pomander at her waist. The woman snagged a louse that had given her particular trouble and pinched it with a grimacing smile between her fingernails.
“I have not opened it,” Rose replied.
“It’s coins. Ye got one f’me?” The woman’s voice had a strangled sound to it.
“No, I—”
“Be gone!” the crone shouted.
“I need to find the sheriff!”
“Ye’ll be robbed soon enough on this street. Then he’ll find you!” She laughed out loud, throwing her head back, and Rose saw layers of dirt in the lines of her throat, like the rings of a tree trunk. The woman’s great mouth yawned open as she guffawed, and Rose witnessed her complete lack of teeth.
A man approached her and did not make her afraid. He kept his eyes down but pointed her to a door.
Knocking, she waited for an answer. She turned back to thank the man, but he had vanished.
“Go away!” a voice scraped from inside.