I determined to return to the next meeting, for I knew that sooner or later I would meet with Jane Rochford, who professed to be against reformers one and all, her husband included, one presumed. I slipped along the dark hallway, skirts swishing in the rushes, and stood outside yet another, larger chamber, and held my hand up to the door to knock. Ere I did, though, I heard the voice of the speaker.

A sweet voice, a deep voice, a voice that made me wish for all things that could not be and mayhap a willingness to throw away all things that must be in order to gain them. My flesh won—or was it my spirit? In any event, I knocked on the door, gave the new password, and entered.

It was Will speaking, of course. I pulled my cloak about me, which drew no notice because many present sought to keep their identities secret either by cloak or by downcast gaze.

I dared not go into the great room. Instead, I stood behind a stone wall that still had a sword slit in it, just large enough to allow my ear to hear everything that was said whilst revealing nothing of myself. His voice was filled with both fiery rhetoric and soothing reassurance, with logic and with passion. For the first fifteen minutes I heard nothing of the meaning of the words, only drank in the voice that caressed my ears and my heart. I risked peeking through the slit and took my breath when I saw him. The sweet boy had grown into a powerful and striking man. He emanated moral, intellectual, spiritual, physical strength. The Latin came to me, unbidden.

Vires. Fortitudo.

I went back again the next night and dared to come a bit closer though I did not uncloak myself. I listened to the words this time as well as the man. Lord and Lady Carlyle recognized me, I know, as Lady Carlyle came up and bid me good evening. As the meeting was being held in her apartments I had no fear of her making me known. “’Tis because of your closeness with Anne that you must remain secret,” she suggested, and I agreed with her. She took special care to place me where I could best see and hear but not be seen nor heard.

I went back again for a fourth night and a fifth. The court was about to leave York Place and move to Hampton Court shortly, and the meetings would, of necessity, stop for a while. I saw not Jane Rochford but, on the last night, someone even more treacherous. He did not bother to cloak himself, so certain was he in his own powers and being in the protection of Cromwell, for whom he now kept close accounts.

Edmund. Edmund, certainly, was no religious seeker. He worshipped no one save himself.

I hid myself back in the corner a bit more and listened whilst Will finished reading from the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Romans. “For we know not what to desire as we ought: but the spirit maketh intercession mightily for us with groanings which cannot be expressed with the tongue. And he that searchest the hearts, knoweth what is the meaning of the spirit.” He closed Tyndale’s English translation and finished from memory. “For we know that all things work for the best unto them that love God, which also are called of purpose.”

I watched as Edmund took note of Will’s English Bible and then snuck out of the room. The rest of the crowd began to disperse, and indeed, most of them did so in a quick manner. I did not wish to irritate the scar of a badly healed wound but I knew that I must. I slipped up to Will and, after he’d finished talking, Lady Carlyle.

“Meg,” he said roughly. Lady Carlyle looked from him to me and back again. Then, in the way of women since the beginning of time, she nodded knowingly. “Mayhap you’d prefer to talk in my closet?” She indicated the small private room off to the side of the public chamber.

Will took my hand and I followed him in. “May I take your cloak?” he asked, and I nodded and shrugged it off. I was glad that I had taken a care to dress well that night; my dark blue gown showed off my russet hair to its best advantage, though some curls slipped disobediently from the hood casually holding it back. Though I could say in honesty that I hadn’t dressed for the man, I must also be honest in admitting that I was glad that I still had an effect on him. He kept a modest distance from me as he pulled his chair alongside but never took his eyes from my face. “How are you?”

“I’m well,” I said. “All goes well for Anne for the moment, and therefore for me.”

“I’m sorry to hear of your husband,” he said.

I looked up, startled. “Lord Blackston passed away some time ago,” I said. “But he was ready to meet his Maker.”

“I hear from my sister that your brother Edmund is negotiating to have you marry the baron’s nephew and heir.”

“Your sister is particularly well informed for someone who spends her time with child or languishing in a large household in Kent,” I replied somewhat tartly.

He laughed. “She was always the one that heard everything. We called her ‘hare-ears’ as a child. Always twitching to listen to others.”

I laughed with him. “And how do you?”

His face became infused with light. “I do well. I have been in Antwerp helping with translations, with printing. We have now moved some printing here, to England, and I am come to assist with the setup. I am passionate about my work. And about sharing it with others. It has the power to transform the mind, you know.” He looked sheepish. “Epistle to the Romans. Chapter twelve. I’ve been studying it quite a bit.”

I envied his study and his transformed mind. “Your rhetoric is as sharp as ever,” I said. “I heard you speak from the Gospel of Saint Matthew last night, about our being the bride of Christ and He our bridegroom.”

He blushed at the mention of the topic of brides and bridegrooms, as I’d intended him to do. I felt pleased, not in an unkind manner, that I could still provoke him thus.

“How many nights have you come?” he asked.

“All,” I replied simply. I would not lie to save my pride.

“The test of a speaker is not in carefully chosen words nor in the fine rhetoric of delivery, but in the effect he has upon the hearts and minds of those listening.”

I offered nothing, not willing to admit that there had been a tiny unclenching of my heart the past few nights. The irony of God in using Will thusly had not gone unrecognized. “I come to warn you,” I said. “My brother Edmund was here. He paid particular attention to your English Bible and he knows you are no low-level simpleton. He works for Cromwell now. All know that Cromwell is a reformer, but also the king’s man. The king’s law decrees that no one shall own an English Bible. I urge you to have a care; do not let my brother see you, nor warm you with false words about his desire for church reform.”

Will stood up, ran a hand through his dark hair, and sat down again. “He’s already been to see me—to claim friendship and brotherhood. Knowing his facility with money, I was about to see if he could arrange funds here in England for printing. I am aware, of course, of Alice’s inclinations, and your brother Thomas’s. I thought maybe Edmund had grown kinder with time.”

“Mortar sets with age,” I said, “afore it crumbles. Be wary. Do not let your Bibles remain in your quarters.”

He glanced down at the copy in his hands. “This is the only one I brought with me. Have you read it?”

I shook my head. “I don’t even read the book by Father Erasmus any longer. The one you’d given me. ’Tis written in Latin.”

He laughed. “You should still read Handbook of a Christian Knight, of course. Erasmus remains a scholar par excellence. But this.” He tapped the cover. “’Tis in English,” he teased. “Hence, allowable.”

I grinned. He reached out, took my hand in his own, and loosened my fingers from their self-protective fist. He placed his copy of Tyndale’s Bible in my palm and closed my fingers around it. He held his hand over mine for a long while, longer than was necessary, longer than was wise as well. He seemed unwilling to remove it and I wished that he wouldn’t. But of course, he did.

Tentatio.

“I have been directed back to Antwerp. I shall not share my plans with your brother Edmund, nor the names of those working here in England. But I will certainly return.” He stood up and moved back to a safe distance. “Shall you…. remain at court?”

I nodded. “I shall be where Anne is, till I am married, and perhaps even after.”

“Mayhap I shall see you, then,” he said. He took my hand, the one with the Bible clutched in it, and kissed the back of it before taking his leave.

The imprint of his lips burnt into my skin, and I held it near my cheek as I made my way back to my chamber. When I arrived, I set the Bible next to my bed, considering where to hide it, even from Edithe. I touched the cover, knowing that his hand had done so as well. And then, as I turned the pages, I came upon something. A fragile dried wreath of daisies. The one I’d made Will so many years before in the garden at Hever and that he had claimed as a keepsake. I pressed it to my lips, returned it to the Scriptures, and hid the book away next to my neglected, well-loved copy of Erasmus.

The next day Anne drew me into her sleeping chamber, the one place we could be certain to have privacy. We sat on the foot of her bed, cross-legged, and I recounted to her my entire evening. After telling her everything about Will I said, “Have a care with Jane Roch-ford. She will not be loyal to you, nor even George, I believe. She is only ever after loyalty to herself.”

Anne nodded. “Yes. And you have a care with Edmund. Has he brought word of the new baron?”

“Yes. He says negotiations go well. Enough time is elapsing that as soon as they settle the financial matters, I can expect the baron to come to collect me. They seem to be at odds over the money, no surprise with Edmund, but I expect them to come to terms very soon.” I did not say, Because I grow older and it becomes more difficult to be assured of conceiving a child. Anne and I were of an age and that was something, in her precarious position, she did not need to be reminded of.