Sir Thomas had been held at Lambeth palace. Rose heard much news of him through the messengers that ran continually up and down the river below the gardens. All of London was picking and piecing together the story of their favoured scholar being treated as a criminal. Some told it differently. The fiend of London, who scourged the innocent and broke the weak, was at last suffering too.
Rose closed her mind to their interpretations; what did they know of him? Indeed, what did she know of him? His secrets clung too closely about him, and she had never been able to draw near. But she knew some facts of these recent weeks: Henry had given him space and reason to reconsider his rejection of Henry’s supremacy over the church. Sir Thomas did not have to reject the church or reject Henry as monarch; he could have both, if only he would admit that Henry had the right to reign unfettered in the realm. The law of the land would begin and end in the king, not priests.
Rose could not understand the refusal. Sir Thomas could still have his church, so why deny the king his realm? More believed the Scriptures were the only ultimate law, yet he forbade people to read them. He believed harmony was the essential element of utopia, yet he rejected offers to reconcile. He educated his daughters and showed mercy to the orphan, yet drew his own blood every night and tortured those who sought a new world. Rose was sick in her stomach. More had made everyone, and everything, to conform to his own image, but he had never seen himself clearly.
She had seen a glimpse of the man and he had stirred her heart. His passion and appetite was tempered severely by his mind and will. If only he had allowed himself to love, Rose thought, a new man would have emerged. But appetite and passion were lawlessness to him, so he struggled to scourge them from his heart.
He loved law above all else. Henry wanted law and order kept too, and kept under one rule. Why did it matter who administered the Scripture? Would it not be the same? Why did More predict such death if the Book that gives life was given to the people? Rose shook her head to clear herself of the questions without answers. The only answer was that this story of free salvation had condemned More to his imprisonment and death.
Last night a boy had run up the steps from the dock, shouting that he had news of good report. He made sure he was paid before he gave them the news, eyeing the half-angel, glancing back to see if there would be more. Rose still knew how to frighten a greedy urchin, and she drew herself up, pushing her face into his with a glare. He dispensed the news and fled.
“In recognition of his good service, Sir Thomas will be beheaded. What great mercy from the king! He is spared the death of lesser men! It will happen tomorrow; he will be brought to the Tower by barge. His family is not allowed to attend.”
And so this morning had come, with the children sitting in the parlour looking like ghosts, and Dame Alice stinking drunk and snoring.
Margaret did not speak to Rose but dressed quietly. When Rose went down the steps to the dock, Margaret was behind her. There was nothing Rose could say. She had learned her letters, and even learned to form words from them, but there were none in her learning that could comfort. What word had she missed? What should she have been taught, or what lesson did she miss? It was wrong to sit in the barge in this freezing silence. There must be words for this. But none came.
It was raining, an annoying drizzle that pelted her cheeks despite the covering over the barge. The drops found their way in, swatted by the winds, landing on her face and hands, soaking through her cloak little by little. She drew her legs in and tucked her hands under her arms. The sky was a brilliant grey that made the winter limbs of the trees, budding in green, glow against its palette. Birds circled over the river, pecking among the floating debris for their breakfast. She tried not to imagine it, but she knew by lunch his blood would be washed away into this same river. Guards would be washing their boots of him, stones would be covered with fresh straw, and Sir Thomas—the man who had lived for a vision of the future—would fade into London’s past.
Now the Tower was ahead, its white stones looking like the weathered bones of a giant stacked neatly one upon the other. It looked immense to her as she sat perched in a tiny barge, and her stomach began to flip. She couldn’t keep her balance easily as she stepped off onto the slippery dock. The world seemed to be turning too fast under her, her legs unable to hold onto firm ground. Margaret was behind her and accepted Rose’s hand with a hard grip as she stepped onto shore.