He was trying to mold her, to make her into a companion as well as a wife. It was like asking an infant to converse with sages.

Dr. Lily came to the house, as did Dr. Linacre and Dr. Colet; they conversed with her husband, and they laughed frequently, for Thomas laughed a good deal; but a woman could not continue to smile when she had no idea of the cause of laughter.

Sometimes her husband took her walking through the City, pointed out with pride what he considered places of interest.

They would walk through Walbrook and Candlewick Street, through Tower Street to the Great Tower. Then Thomas would tell her stories of what had happened within those gloomy walls, but she found she could not remember which of the kings and queens had taken part in them; and she would be worried because she knew she could not remember. Then he would take her to Goodman's Fields and pick daisies with her; they would make a chain together to hang about her neck; he would laugh and tease her because she was a country girl; but even then she would be afraid that he was making jokes which she did not recognize as such.

Sometimes they would walk along by the river or row over to Southwark, where the people were so poor. Then he would talk of the sufferings of the poor and how he visualised an ideal state where there was no such suffering. He loved to talk of this state which he built up in his imagination. She was rather glad when he did so, for he would not seem to notice that she was not listening, and she could let her mind enjoy memories of New Hall.

At other times they would walk through the Poultry to the Chepe and to Paul's Cross to listen to the preachers. He would glance at her anxiously, hoping that her delight in the sermons equaled his own. He would often talk of Oxford and Cambridge, where so many of his friends had studied. “One day, Jane, I shall take you there,” he promised her. She dreaded that; she felt that such places would be even more oppressive than this City with its noisy crowds.

Once she watched a royal procession in the streets. She saw the King himself—-a disappointing figure, unkingly, she thought, solemn and austere, looking as though he considered such displays a waste of money and time. But with him had been the young Prince of Wales, who must surely be the most handsome Prince in the world. She had cheered with the crowd when he had ridden by on his gray horse, so noble, so beautiful in his purple velvet cloak, his hair gleaming like gold, his sweet face, as someone in the crowd said, as lovely as a girl's, yet masculine withal. It seemed to Jane that the Prince, who was smiling and bowing to all, let his eyes linger for a moment on her. She felt herself blushing; and surely all the homage and admiration she wished to convey must have been there for him to see. Then it had seemed that the Prince had a special smile for Jane; and as she stood there, she was happy—happy to have left New Hall, because there she could never have had a smile from the boy who would one day be the King.

The Prince passed on, but something had happened to Jane; she no longer felt quite so stupid; and when Thomas told her of the coming of King Henry to the throne, she listened eagerly and she found that what he had to tell was of interest to her. Thomas was delighted with that interest, and when they reached The Barge he read her some notes which he had compiled when, as a boy, he had been sent to the household of Cardinal Morton, there to learn what he could. The notes were written in Latin, but he translated them into English for her, and she enjoyed the story of the coming of the Tudor King; she wept over the two little Princes who, Thomas told her, had been murdered in the Tower by the order of their wicked, crook-backed uncle, Richard. She could not weep for the death of Arthur, for, had Arthur lived, that beautiful Prince who had smiled at her would never be a King. So the death of Arthur, she was sure, could not be a tragedy but a blessing in disguise.

Thomas, delighted with her interest, gave her a lesson in Latin; and although she was slow to understand, she began to feel that she might learn a little.

She thought a good deal about the handsome Prince, but a conversation she overheard one day sent her thoughts fearfully to the Prince's father, the flinty-faced King.

John More came to see his son and daughter-in-law. Like Thomas, he was a lawyer, a kindly faced man with shrewd eyes.

He patted Jane's head, wished her happiness and asked her if she were with child. She blushed and said she was not.

Marriage, she heard him tell Thomas, was like putting the hand into a blind bag which was full of eels and snakes. There were seven snakes to every eel.

She did not understand whether that meant he was pleased with his son's marriage or not; and what eels and snakes had to do with her and Thomas she could not imagine.

But there was something which she did understand.

John More said to his son: “So, your piece of folly in the Parliament has cost me a hundred pounds.”

“My piece of folly?”

“Now listen, son Thomas. I have been wrongfully imprisoned on a false charge, and my release was only won in payment of a hundred pounds. All London knows that I paid the fine for you. You were the culprit. You spoke with such fire against the grant the King was asking that it was all but halved by the Parliament. The King wishes his subjects to know that he'll not brook such conduct. You have done a foolish thing. A pair of greedy royal eyes are turned upon us, and methinks they will never lose sight of us.”

“Father, as a burgess of London, I deemed it meet to oppose the King's spending of his subjects' money.”

“As a subject of the King, you have acted like a fool, even though as a burgess you may have acted like an honest man. You are a meddler, my son. You will never rise to the top of our profession unless you give your mind to the study of law, and to nothing else. I kept you short of money at Oxford….”

“Aye, that you did—so that I often went hungry and was unable to pay for the repair of my boots. I had to sing at the doors of rich men for alms, and to run up and down the quadrangles for half an hour before bedtime, or the coldness of my body would have kept me from sleep altogether.”

“And you bear me a grudge for that, eh, my son?”

“Nay, Father. For, having no money to spend on folly, I must give all my energies to learning; and knowledge is a greater prize than meat for supper—even if it is not always of the law!”

“Thomas, I understand you not. You are a good son, and yet you are a fool. Instead of giving yourself entirely to the study of the law, what do you do? When that fellow Erasmus came to England you spent much time … discoursing, I hear, prattling the hours away, studying Greek and Latin together … when I wished you to work at the law. And now that you are accounted a worthy and utter barrister, and you are made a burgess, what do you do? You… a humble subject of the King, must arouse the King's wrath.”

“Father, one day, if I am a rich man, I will repay the hundred pounds.”

“Pah!” said John More. “If you are a rich man you will hear from the King, and I doubt you would remain a rich man long enough to pay your father that hundred pounds. For, my son… and let us speak low, for I would not have this go beyond us … the King will not forget you. You have escaped, you think. You have done your noble act and your father has paid his fine. Do not think that is an end of this matter.” He lowered his voice still more. “This King of ours is a cold-hearted man. Money is the love of his life; but one of his light o' loves is revenge. You have thwarted his love; you have wounded her deeply. You … a young man, who have, with your writings, already attracted attention to yourself so that your name is known in Europe, and when scholars visit this country you are one of those with whom they seek to converse. You have set yourself up to enlighten the people, and you have done this in Parliament. What you have said is this: ‘The King's coffers are full to bursting, good people, and you are poor. Therefore, as a burgess of your Parliament, I will work to remedy these matters.’ The King will not forget that. Depend upon it, he will seek an opportunity of letting you know that no subject of his—be he ever so learned, and whatever admiration scholars lay at his feet—shall insult the King and his beloved spouse, riches.”

“Then, Father, I am fortunate to be a poor man; and how many men can truly rejoice in their poverty?”

“You take these matters lightly, my son. But have a care. The King watches you. If you prosper he will have your treasure.”

“Then I pray, Father, that my treasures will be those which the King does not envy—my friends, my writing, my honor.”

“Tut!” said the shrewd lawyer. “This is fools' talk. Learn wisdom with your Greek and Latin. It'll stand you in better stead than either.”

Jane was frightened. That man with the cruel face hated her husband. She took her father-in-law's warning to heart if Thomas did not.

Often she dreamed of the hard-faced King, and in her dreams his great coffers burst open while Thomas took out the gold and gave it to the beggars in Candlewick Street.

She knew she had a very strange and alarming husband; and often, when she wept a little during the silence of the night, she wondered whether it would have been much worse to have remained unmarried all her life than to have become the wife of Thomas More.


* * *

HER POSITION was not relieved by the coming of the man from Rotterdam.

Jane had heard much of him; and of all the learned friends who struck terror into her heart, this man frightened her more than any.