The Heretic’s Wife Read Online Free Page B

new-cleansed and the embers of his anger banked for a season, could Sir Thomas reenter his Friday domestic bliss. In summer, he would picnic with his family across the wide lawns of his new Chelsea palace. In winter he would practice the lutewith Alice and their daughters in the winter solar or retire to his library to discuss Aristotle with his daughter Margaret.
    But if one did not count the chapel where his spirit gained redemption, or the library, where he wrote his poetry, dreamed out his
Utopia,
held intelligent discourse with his Meg, the pearl of his heart, the rose garden was Sir Thomas More’s favorite place. He had an aviary there with exotic birds for song and color, and a few ferrets and weasels—even a caged ape named Samson for entertainment. The roses, washed by the misting English rain, or bruised by the bright sunshine, were always fragrant in summer.
    But it was not yet summer.
    On this early spring morning the buds would be mere swellings on the bare and prickly vines. Yet, the garden beckoned. For in its forbidden heart, where his grandchildren and his daughters never ventured, a thorn tree of a different sort flourished, often blooming red and out of season. But that tree bloomed only at night, and it was yet day, and Meg would be waiting in the library.

    After the day had ended, after Alice began to snore and the sounds of the great house stilled, Thomas left his slumbering wife and whispered to the servant who slept outside his chamber.
    “It is time, Barnabas,” he said, and handed the servant the coiled whip.
    As he passed the library, he noticed the tapers were still lit, their yellow light spilling from the half-closed door—Meg, working late again, leaving her husband to a lonely bed. But he’d little sympathy for William Roper. Thomas feared he harbored a Lutheran heretic in his very bosom. Only this one favorite daughter would be allowed such forbearance.
    He smiled, thinking of her working on her Greek translations late into the night, her face bent over the desk, her fine script flowing from her cramped fingers, the words from her nimble intellect. What did it matter that she was the homeliest of the lot? She was possessed of a fine mind; one might even say a beautiful mind. She was too good for William Roper, though the match, like all the marriages made in the More household, had brought its share of wealth and good connections.
    Thomas carried the torchlight as he and the servant descended the darkened stairs and entered the slumbering rose garden. Past the songbirds who slept with their heads tucked under their clipped wings, past the ferrets and the weasels who foraged in the darkness for food, treading across the knotgarden where the smitten rosemary released its chastened winter fragrance on the night air.
    They reached a small clearing.
    The cold light of a frosty quarter moon picked out the figure tied to the whipping post. More’s “Tree of Troth,” Bishop Cuthbert Tunstall called it. Thomas preferred to think of it as Jesu’s Tree.
    The man was stripped naked to the waist and bound at his wrists and ankles. His chin rested on his chest as though he slept too, like the winter garden. A knotted rope was wound tightly around his forehead. His blond hair fell forward, obscuring one side of his face. Sir Thomas lifted the torchlight to inspect his prisoner. His anger, so lately purged, rose inside him again. Even the man’s posture was a sacrilege, as though his unconscious body conspired in the Christ-like pose.
    “Wake up the Lollard,” he said, “so that he may be made to see the error of his ways. The sting of the whip may clarify his mind so he can return to the true faith.”
    The servant lifted the whip and curled it around the naked chest of the prisoner, who opened his eyes and settled an unwavering blue gaze upon his questioner.
    A woman’s high, sweet voice called out, “Father, are you there?”
    Startled, Thomas motioned for the servant to recede into the