“You are very bold, Cardinal.”
“You were bold this afternoon, Master More. But you cannot afford to risk offending the King twice in one day. Great good luck has attended you; you could not expect that to be repeated. This King of ours is a mighty lion who does not yet know his strength. He is caged… but he does not see the bars. I am his keeper. If he felt his strength, if he knew his power, then we might begin to tremble. I believe he would risk his kingdom to satisfy his appetites. That is why he must be fed carefully. It is the duty of men like yourself… like myself… who wish to serve our country—some because of honor, some because of ambition; what matters it if we serve our country well?—it is the duty of such men to suppress their personal desires. And if we do not, we may find that the King's frown, instead of his smile, is turned upon us.”
“Are you sure that if I refused to come to Court I should find myself persecuted?”
“I believe this would certainly come to pass. Remember, my friend—and I mean ‘my friend’, for I will be yours if you will be mine—I know him. I served his father as I now serve him; and I have watched him grow up.”
“But I have no wish to come to Court.”
“Master More, you have no choice. I remember, when I served his father, that you were in disfavor. You are a man who cannot fail to attract attention. You would not be here in England at this moment had his father lived, unless you now lay under the earth. The young King is not the old King; but, Master More, he is none the less dangerous for that.”
“I wish to live in peace and quietude with my family.”
“If you wish to live at all, Master More, you will not reject the King's honors.” The Cardinal was smiling quizzically. “Go now, my friend. There is nothing more to say at this stage. I will tell the King I have talked with you, and that the honor he is about to heap on you has overwhelmed you, robbed you of your native wit. I will tell him that I believe our country is fortunate in the learned honesty of Thomas More … and the clemency and astonishing wisdom of its King.”
MARGARET FLUNG herself into his arms when he came home.
“Father!”
He kissed her warmly.
“Why these sad looks? This is a time for rejoicing. The King honors me. He sent for me to congratulate me … to tell me of his regard.”
Margaret, her arms about his neck, leaned backward to look searchingly into his face.
“But you are disturbed.”
“Disturbed! My dearest, you will see your father a courtier yet. I met the great Cardinal, and he also honors me with his friendship. Meg, I am weighed down with honors.”
But she continued to look at him uneasily. The others were surrounding him now.
“What is this nonsense?” demanded Alice.
“The King sent for me to tell me he is pleased with me.”
“Pleased with you for losing him his ship?”
“The Pope's ship, madam!”
“Pleased with you. Pleased! Is this another of your jokes?”
“ 'Tis no joke,” said Thomas slowly. “The King liked what I did this day, and he honors me. I am to go to Court. I am to work with Cardinal Wolsey. When I left this house, Alice, I was a humble lawyer; now I am … I know not what.”
Alice cried: “ 'Tis a marvelous thing and great good luck, though you have done little to deserve it. Come to the table. Tell us more of this. A place at Court! Tilly valley! I was never so excited in my life.”
How strange, thought Margaret, that the same piece of news could be so differently received by members of the same family. Here was her stepmother already looking ahead to a rosy future, to rich marriages for the young members of the family; and here was her father looking ahead—smiling for their sakes, trying to be pleased with advancement, yet unable to hide from his beloved daughter the foreboding which showed in his eyes.
THAT SUMMER was hot and dry, and the sweating sickness appeared in the City.
Thomas was to begin his service to the King by going on an embassy to Flanders. His life had changed; he must be often at the Palace and he spent much time with the Cardinal. The first trouble which his elevation brought were his absences from home.
“I wish we were a humble family,” said Margaret passionately to Mercy. “Then we might stay together and attract no attention to ourselves.”
“We should have no education,” Mercy reminded her. “And can you imagine Father as a man of no education? No, as he says, there is good and bad in life; and there is bad in the good and good in the bad; and the only way to live is to accept the one with the other. Enjoy one; endure the other.”
“How wise you are, Mercy!”
“It is borrowed wisdom … borrowed from Father.”
Mercy was happy that year in spite of the pending departure of Thomas, and the reason was that there was a new member of this ever-growing household. This was John Clement, a protégé of the Cardinal's, a young man in his late teens who was to accompany Thomas as his secretary and attendant on the mission to Flanders.
John Clement was a serious and very learned person—a young man after Thomas's own heart—and a warm welcome was given him in the house of his new master. Young Clement quickly became a member of that happy family group, but he found that she who interested him most was not one of the Mores, but Mercy Gigs.
He sought every opportunity of talking with her. He was several years older than she was, but it seemed to him that he had never met a girl of her age so solemnly self-contained; and if she was not quite so learned as Margaret, her scholarship lay in that subject which most interested him.
He never forgot the rapt expression in her eyes when he told her that he had studied medicine at Oxford.
“You are interested in medicine, Mistress Mercy?” he asked.
“In nothing so much.”
Now they had a subject which they could discuss together; Thomas watched them with pleasure. My little Mercy is growing up, he thought. They are all growing up. In two or three years it will be necessary to find husbands for Mercy and Margaret—and Ailie too, though she will doubtless find one for herself.
It was a dream materializing, an ideal becoming palpable. When he had decided on giving up the monk's life for that of a family man, he had visualized a household very like the one which was now his. Had he ever imagined such love as he had for Margaret? Nay, the reality was greater than he had foreseen. And when she marries she must never leave me, he thought, for without Margaret I would not wish to live. And Mercy here is as dear to me as are my own children. Did ever a man possess such a learned and aflectionate daughter as Margaret, such charming children as those who made up his household? And Alice herself, she was neither a pearl nor a girl, but he was fond of her; and he knew that her sharp words often hid kindly motives. Where could he find a better housekeeper? And surely she was the best of mothers to his children, for it was well to have a touch of spice in the sweetest dish. There might be times when his beloved children were in need of chastisement, and how could he administer a whipping? He was a coward where such matters were concerned. What could he whip his children with but a peacocks feather? Yet Mistress Alice shirked not the task.