He kissed her then. “My Meg … my dearest Meg,” he said; and she thought that if that was the last time he called her by her name she would always remember his voice at that moment.

“Mercy is a beautiful name,” he said, “for mercy is one of the most beautiful of all qualities.”

“Do you like Mercy?” asked Margaret of the newcomer.

“Yes,” she answered. “I will be Mercy, because this is your house first, and you were the first Margaret in it.”

Then her father kissed them both and said: “So my Meg stays with me; and in addition I have brought Mercy into the house.”

Her name was Mercy Gigs and she had been left an orphan. She had no fortune, he explained to Margaret, but her own sweet nature. “So, Meg, we must take her into our house. I will be Father to her; your mother will be Mother; and you will be sister to her as you are to Elizabeth and Cecily.”

And so it was that she acquired a new sister, to learn with her and talk with her. She had the advantage of having started her lessons earlier, but she soon realized that Mercy Gigs was a rival, for she had given her devotion to the man who had taken her into his house and become her foster father, and, like Margaret, her one thought was to win his respect and approval.

She too worked hard at her lessons and tried to startle him with her ability to learn. Now when the friends came and asked how Margaret was progressing with her lessons, there would be two little girls to confront them; and Mercy Gigs, the orphan, could confound them even more than Margaret who was, after all, the daughter of a learned man.

“So Mercy will prove my point completely,” Thomas would say with glee. “Mercy is going to be as clever as my own children. Mercy shall be given the best tuition with my own children, and she will show you that most feminine minds are as capable of absorbing knowledge as a sponge absorbs water.”

Then Mercy would blush and smile and be very happy.

Later there came a period of anxiety. It began when, one day, her father took Margaret on his knee and told her that he was going away for a little while.

She put her arms about him and bit her lips to hold back her tears.

“But it will not be for long, Meg,” he said. “I am going into foreign lands. I am going to the universities of Paris and Louvain to see my friends who come to see me when they are here; and perhaps one day, Meg, I shall take you and your mother and your sisters there. How will you like that?”

“I would rather stay here and that you should stay too.”

“Well, Meg, that which we would rather have does not always come about. You will have to look after everybody in the house, will you not? And you will work hard at your lessons whilst I am gone?”

She nodded. “But why must you go? Why must you go?”

“I am going because quite soon I may want to take my family to France. But first I wish to go there alone, to make sure that it is the place my family would like to live in.”

“Of course we should like to live there if you were there. There is no need for you to go first without us.”

He kissed her and put her down.

Her fears had started then. Not only was this due to the fact that he left for France shortly afterward, but she knew from the looks of the servants, from the voices of the people who spoke with her mother, and from her mothers worried looks, that something frightening had happened.

He had not told her what it was; and she knew that could only be because she was too young to understand.

She talked of this matter with Mercy. Mercy was wise and quiet; she too had noticed that something was wrong; she too was afraid.

Once when her mother was baking bread in the kitchen, Margaret said: “Mother, when will my father come back?”

“Soon, my child. Soon.”

“Soon,” said Margaret, “can be a long time for something you greatly wish for. It can be quick for something you hate.”

Jane touched the small head and marveled at this daughter of hers. Margaret was far more like Thomas than like herself; she was more like Thomas than any of the others. Whenever she looked at the child she remembered those days soon after Margaret's birth, when Thomas had walked up and down the room with her to soothe her cries; she remembered that Thomas could soothe her as no one else could. She remembered also how Thomas had talked of what he would do for this child, how she was to be a great and noble woman, how delighted he was with his daughter, how she had charmed him as no son ever could have done.

And it seemed that Thomas must have had preknowledge for Margaret was all that he had wished. Her cleverness astonished her mother; she had already, though not yet five, started on Latin and Greek, and seemed to find the same pleasure in it that most children would in a game of shuttlecock. Jane could feel satisfied when she surveyed her eldest daughter. Surely she had made his marriage a success when she had given him this quaint and solemn daughter.

“Well, my dearest,” said Jane, “your father will be away for a few weeks, and I'll swear that that will seem long to all of us. But when he returns you will be all the more pleased to see him because you have missed him so much.”

“Nothing could please me more,” said Margaret, “than to see him every day.”

Then she went away and gravely did her lessons. Her one aspiration now was to astonish him when he came back.

And eventually he did come back. Margaret must be the first to greet him; and when she heard his voice calling to his family, she sped into the great hall; but Mercy was there beside her.

They stood side by side looking up at him.

He smiled at their grave little faces and lifted them in his arms. He kissed Mercy first; but Margaret knew, and Mercy knew, that that was because he was longing to kiss Margaret more than anyone, for Margaret was his own child and he could never love any as he loved her.

They sat at the big table—the whole household—and everyone was happy because he was home. All the servants, who sat at the table with the family, were happy; and so were those poor travelers who had called in, weary and footsore, because they knew that they could always be sure of a meal in the house of Thomas More.

After the meal, Thomas went first to the schoolroom, and there he marveled and delighted in the progress his daughters had made. Even two-year-old Cecily had started to learn; and he was, he said, mightily pleased. “Why,” he declared, “ 'twas worth being away, for the pleasure it gives me to come back to you.”

But a few days later he took Margaret walking in Goodman's Fields, and made her sit beside him on the grass there; and as they sat, he told her that he had made plans to leave The Barge in Bucklersbury, to leave this City, and to take his family away with him to France.

Margaret cried: “But… Father, you say you love London, and that no other city could ever be home to you.”

“I know, my child. And you?”

“Yes, Father. I love it too.”

“And which would you have—a strange land with your father, or England … London … and no father?”

“I would rather be anywhere with you, Father, than anywhere without you.”

“Then, Margaret, it will be no hardship for you. ‘Better is a dinner of herbs where love is …’, eh? And it will be a dinner of herbs, my dearest, for we shall not be rich.”

“We shall be happy,” said Margaret. “But why must we go?”

“Sometimes I wonder, my Margaret, whether I have made you grow up too quickly. I so long to see you bloom. I want you to be my little companion. I want to discuss all things with you. And I forget what a child you are. Well, I shall tell you this; but it is our secret. You will remember that?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Then listen. A long time ago, before you were born, before I married your mother, our King asked his Parliament for a sum of money. I was a Member—a very junior Member—of that Parliament, and I argued against the King's wishes. Partly because of the words I spoke, Margaret, the King did not get all the money for which he was asking.”

Margaret nodded.

“When the King is given money by the Parliament, it is the peoples money raised by taxes. You do not know what these are, and one day I will explain. But, you see, money has to be taken from the people to give to the King… a little here … a little there … to make a large sum. The cost of food is increased so that some of the money which is paid for it may go to the King. The people had already paid too many of these taxes and the King wanted them to pay more and more. I thought it wrong that he should have the money for which he asked. I thought it wrong that the people should be made even poorer. And I said so.”

“It was wrong, Father.”

“Ah, little Meg, do you say that because you see why it was wrong, or because I say so?”

“Because you say so, Father.”

He kissed her. “Do not trust me too blindly, Meg. I am a mortal man you know. I will say this: I thought what I did was right. The King thought I was wrong. And kings, like little girls … little boys … and even babies, do not like people who prevent their doing those things which they wish to do. So … the King does not like me.”

“Everybody likes you, Father,” she said in disbelief.

“You do,” he said with a laugh. “But everyone—alas!—has not your kind discernment. No, the King does not like me, Meg, and when a king does not like a man, he seeks to harm him in some way.”

She stood up in alarm. She took his hand and tugged at it.

“Whither would you take me, Meg?”

“Let us run away now.”

“Whither shall we run?”