“Margaret, this is not like you. You… so reasonable, so rational. Margaret, you the cleverest of us all… to give way to grief, to mourn for what has not yet come to pass!”
“Oh, Mercy, do not stand there and pretend to be so calm! There are tears in your eyes. You have the same fears. Your heart is breaking too.”
Mercy looked at her, and the tears began to flow silently down her cheeks.
“And all for a woman,” cried Margaret in sudden anger, “a woman with a deformed hand and a mole on her throat that must be covered with a jewel…. For beautiful sleeves … for Frenchified manners … our father must…”
“Don't say it, Meg. It has not happened yet.”
They looked at each other and then began to walk silently back to the house.
HE DID come home from the Commissioners; he came merrily. Will was with him in the barge when Mercy and Margaret ran down to meet him.
He embraced the girls warmly. He saw the tears on their cheeks, but he did not comment on them.
“Father … so you have come back!” said Margaret.
“Yes, daughter, your husband and I came back together.”
“And, Father, all is well?”
“All is well, my daughter.”
“You are no longer on the Parliaments list? You are no longer accused with the nun of Canterbury?”
“It was not of that that they wished to talk.”
“Then what?”
“I was accused of urging the King to write his Assertion of the Seven Sacraments.”
“But, Father, he had started to write that when he called you in.”
“Ah, my dear daughter, it was as good a charge as the others, so, I beg of you, do not complain of it.”
“Father, they are seeking to entrap you.”
“They cannot trap an innocent man.”
“How could they have accused you of this matter?”
“His Majesty was determined to honor the Pope in his book, and he did so. And now it appears he would like to accuse me of writing this book, but for the fact that it is so well done, and he likes better the praise he has received for writing it. But it is said that I have caused him, to his dishonor, to put a sword in the Pope's hand to fight the King.”
“Oh, Father!”
“Have no fear, Meg. I have confounded them. For did I not warn the King of the risk of incurring the penalties of praemunire? I reminded them of this, and that the book was the King's book; that he himself had said I had but arranged it to his wishes. They could scarcely bring such a matter against me when the King has so clearly said that the book was his own—aye, and has received the title of Defender of the Faith for having written it.”
“If he is repudiating authorship of the book, then he should abandon the title it brought him,” said Mercy.
“You are right, daughter. I said: ‘My lords, these terrors be arguments for children and not for me.’”
Will's brow was furrowed. He said: “But, Father, what of the Parliament's list? Have they struck your name from it?”
“By my troth, son Roper, I forgot that matter in this new one.”
Will spoke tartly in his anxiety. “You did not remember it? A case that touches you so near, and us all for your sake!”
Margaret looked anxiously from her husband to her father. Thomas was smiling; Will was angry.
“I understand not, sir,” said Will, “why you should be so merry.”
“Then, Will, let me tell you. And I will tell my dear daughters also. This day I have gone so far, I have spoken my mind so clearly to these lords who cross-examined me, that, without great shame, I could not now turn back.”
He lifted his eyes and looked beyond them. He was smiling, but those about him were conscious of a deepening of their fear.
IT SEEMED wrong that the weather should be so beautiful. Surely there had never been a more lovely April. Margaret could not bear the brightness of the spring sunshine. They went about their work silently, forcing their smiles. Everyone in the household knew that it could not be long before he was called before the Commissioners to sign the newly coined Oath of Supremacy. How would he be able to extricate himself from this trouble? Now he would be presented with the necessity to sign or not to sign. The first would mean a return to the King's pleasure; the other …? They did not know; they dared not think.
Easter Day came, and he, determined not to brood as they did, trying to laugh at their fears, being more gay than even was his wont, had arranged to go with Will to St Paul's to hear the sermon.
On that lovely spring day they set out by barge.
He would not be back until late in the day.
“I shall be within a few minutes of Bucklersbury,” he said “and I cannot pass so close without calling on my son and daughter Clement.”
Mercy was waiting for him with a heavy heart. Each time she saw him she wondered whether it would be the last.
“John,” she cried to her husband, “how can I greet him merrily? How can I?”
“You must,” John answered. “Who knows, this storm may pass.”
Dinner was on the table waiting for him, and she went out along the Poultry to meet him.
She saw him coming, his arm through that of Will Roper; they were deep in discussion, doubtless talking of the sermon they had just heard.
He embraced her warmly when they met; but his searching eyes saw what she could not hide, and that which he must be seeing in the faces of every member of his family now.
“Why, daughter, it is good indeed to see you. And how do I find you? Merry and well?”
“Merry and well,” she repeated. “Merry and well, Father.”
He put his arm through hers and they walked thus to Bucklersbury; he smiling, a son and daughter on either side of him happy to be with them, for although they had neither of them been born son and daughter of his, he would have them know that he considered them as such.
Friends and acquaintances greeted him as they passed along. There was warmth in the smiles of these people. They bered him when he had been Under-Sheriff of the City; they remembered him as the incorruptible Lord Chancellor. But Mercy interpreted the looks in their eyes—fear, pity, warning.
The blow could not be far off.
Margaret, who loved him perhaps more poignantly than any of them, would have him sign the Oath; Margaret would have him do anything so that she might keep him with her. Mercy knew that. And if she, Mercy, could have pleaded with him, would she have urged him to sign the Oath?
She differed from Margaret. Margaret's love was all-important to her. He was, after all, Margaret's father, and if Margaret could keep him with her she would not care what it cost. But Mercy would never ask him to do what was against his conscience. Mercy would have him do what was right… whatever the consequences to himself and his family.
But that did not mean her suffering was any less acute.
Here was Bucklersbury with its pleasant apothecaries' smells. Here was the old home.
“I never enter it without a thousand memories assailing me,” he said.
And Mercy knew that he was glad to be here again, to recall those happy memories, to treasure them for that time when he would be unable to visit the house in Bucklersbury.
“Come, Father, you will be hungry. Let us eat at once.”
They were at table when the messenger arrived.