In Defense of the Queen by Michelle Diener Page A

instruct the guards to give her leave to visit Fitzroy when she needs to.” He wrote quickly, sanded the page and rolled it. Sealed it with his crest. “And she can busy herself illuminating these writs and communications.” He indicated a box of scrolls.
    “I will make sure she receives them.” Parker wanted to lift the box and smash it to the floor.
    He picked it up carefully and tucked it under his arm. “Wolsey will try to move her to the dungeon. And when he’s done there, she will be lucky to ever lift a brush again.” Could his voice really stay so level, so cool, and say words like that? When they stuck, hard as an almond swallowed whole, in his throat.
    Henry picked up his quill again, and began signing the papers Bryan had brought him. “Wolsey will answer to me, if that happens.”
    “That may be.” Parker could hear the bleakness in his own voice. “But if it comes to that, it will be too late.”

 
    Chapter Fifteen
     
    Do not you think that if I were about any king, proposing good laws to him, and endeavouring to root out all the cursed seeds of evil that I found in him, I should either be turned out of his court, or, at least, be laughed at for my pains?
    Utopia by Thomas More (translated by H. Morley)
     
    T he men who came for her didn’t knock, but thanks to their number and their haste on the stairs, Susanna heard them coming and was ready.
    She watched the small, tight group of men enter her rooms, and retreated, shaking, into the stairwell.
    She’d been in the Bell Tower, to look at the bell. Otherwise she’d have been trapped in her chambers.
    Wolsey would be behind this. Come to drag her from comfort to the place he’d had in mind for her from the start.
    The White Tower dungeons.
    Her heart beat faster just thinking the name.
    She could not go back up the Bell Tower. If they came looking for her there, there would be no escape. She lifted her skirts and ran silently to her chamber door. Pressed herself against the wall.
    Men were moving furniture, cursing and swearing, and with her heart pounding in her ears, she ran past the open doorway, towards the stairs.
    As her foot touched the first tread, someone burst from her rooms, shouting, and the angry sound of it, the fear of what he was there for, made her leap the stairs three or four at a time.
    She reached the bottom, but before she could take a step towards the front entrance, she heard the handle turn on the big double door. More were coming in the front.
    She spun, taking in dark panelled walls and a twisting passageway as she searched for some escape.
    From above, the stairs creaked with the weight of running feet and the front door was thrown open so hard it slammed against the wall. She found herself five paces down the passage before she realized it, her feet tapping faintly on the stone floor.
    She jerked to a stop as voices called up the stairs, straining to hear what was said. Icy perspiration pricked her brow like a crown of thorns and her breathing was harsh and too fast.
    There was a shouted exchange, and Susanna forced her feet to move. She skidded to a stop again as a door just up from her was flung open.
    She stared straight into Kilburne’s wide eyes.
    Relief dipped her knees until she forced them straight. Without hesitation she ran to him, past him, and spun, to face back the way she’d come, with Kilburne standing between her and whoever was thundering down the passage. He looked over his shoulder at her, his mouth open, but then snapped his attention back to the incoming danger.
    Kilburne had made promises on her behalf, and she thought he was a man of honour. Her life hung on whether this was so.
    “Who goes there?” Kilburne’s voice was so calm, Susanna found her gaze sharpening on him.
    “Lewis, sir.” Kilburne’s second-in-command stepped around the corner, panting. “Seems the Cardinal sent some men to fetch Mistress Horebout to the dungeon. We were just disputing their right to be above, searching