Giles and Lettice exchanged looks as if to say that she was clutching at straws.
Just then, there came a knock at the parlour door and Williams appeared again. “Excuse me, but Cook has something she might add.”
“Show her in,” said Thomasin.
The woman was still wearing her apron and cap, but she had washed her hands and was wringing them as she shuffled forwards.
“Is there something you know that might help us find Mariot?”
“Please, my lady, just yesterday she was speaking of the new queen riding through the city. I said my brother was painting the Standard in Cheapside: he was commissioned to paint it gold ahead of the procession, and she said she would like to see it.”
“It’s something to go on,” said Giles. “We can ride up there now and take a look, leave no stone unturned.”
Thomasin nodded. “Williams, send round the carriage at once.”
“The ways will be busy at this time,” said Giles. “We might be better on horseback. Carriages tend to get stuck, and we might just be sitting there, frustrated.”
“Horses then, but let us be quick. Lettice, wait here in case she returns, and do not let her leave again.”
“I won’t, even if I have to lock her in the larder!”
“Well, do not go that far.”
Thomasin looked down at her green dress. “I have no riding habit with me, so this will have to do. Come, my lord, we might still catch her.”
They climbed into the saddles of two horses held by the stable boy in the courtyard outside.
“Stay close to me,” urged Giles. “Try not to let distance open between us.”
“You know the way to this Standard?”
“It is a conduit, supplying fresh water to the city. I have passed it many times — east along Thames Street, then straight up Bread Street.”
Thomasin nodded, grabbing the reins. “She may be anywhere along the route, if she is walking there or back. Lead the way. I will follow!”
They took a right out of the Monk’s Place gates and trotted down the street. It was not too busy, but there were distractionsenough: shoppers, children, beggars, carts pulled by horses, single riders like themselves, traders with trays of wares calling as they strolled past, apprentices and servants on errands, suppliers with sacks of wheat or flour.
Thomasin found it easy enough to keep pace with Giles. Although she kept close to his side, her eyes roamed the street’s corners and alleys, as the girl might be hiding down there, although she could not for the life of her think of a reason why she should do so. A girl in grey skirts with long dark hair caught her eye on the corner of Lambeth Hill, but she was too old and turned to reveal a different face than Mariot’s.
Giles slowed behind a woman herding geese and Thomasin reined in her mare. The street had widened into a little square outside the church of St Mary Somerset, but the cluster of horses tethered outside the front made it more difficult to pass. A wedding was about to take place inside and the bells were still ringing as the last guests entered. Patiently, the two riders picked their way through the crowd and veered left into narrow Bread Street, which had a shallow incline. They rode between two rows of tall houses before crossing Knightrider Street where it met with the church of St Olav. On the corner, girls were selling flowers and songbirds in cages, but still there was no sign of Mariot.
They continued to ride north up Bread Street, climbing steadily to the highest part of the city, over Basing Lane and past All Hallows, beyond which the great turret of St Mary le Bow loomed against the clear sky. As they approached the junction with Cheapside, the sounds of a crowd reached them and more people appeared, hurrying as if towards something that mattered.
“What is happening?” Thomasin asked a boy rushing past on foot, afraid that it was some fresh disaster connected with Mariot.
“That preacher woman,” he called back. “The Holy Maid is speaking.”
Thomasin realised this was the woman that the Boleyns had been speaking of, Elizabeth Barton, with her prophecies against Henry and Anne’s marriage. “I have heard of this woman,” she said to Giles. “She speaks ill of the Boleyns, quite upsetting Anne.”
“I wonder how she dares speak in public. If there’s a crowd, it may have drawn Mariot to listen.”
Urging their horses forward, they broke out into Cheapside, the widest, busiest thoroughfare in the city. The group was obvious at once, gathered at the end of the newly gilded Standard, fresh and gleaming. The stone column rose above their heads, culminating in a small cross. About a hundred people had already collected, and more were joining, drawn by a figure who stood on the raised steps, addressing the crowd. Dressed in the familiar black and white of a nun’s habit, her voice travelled far enough to reach Thomasin and Giles as they rose to the edge of the audience. She was a young woman with a plain face. Though she was short in stature, her presence loomed large as she spoke with passion and conviction.
“This marriage will be the undoing of the king. It is against the wishes of our divine Lord, who seeks only the good for his people. If they place a crown upon the head of this viper, it will be doing the devil’s own work, who has tirelessly whispered in the king’s ear, enticed him with fleshly charms in the form of this Boleyn and will have the pleasure of torturing his soul forever in the depths of hell.”
“My goodness,” said Giles, “she does not hold back. This alone is enough to condemn her.”
“And the king has listened, and believed the devil,” Barton continued. “He has drunk of this poisoned chalice and set aside good Queen Catherine, to whom he was truly matched, andfallen under the lusty spell of this common woman, who is widely known to be disfigured in the throat and hand — clear signs that the devil is unable to conceal. She bears another devil in her swollen belly, the fruits of the royal lust, and after she is crowned, she will slowly sap all the king’s strength until he withers and dies, and then she will rule the country.”
