The two old people had been lost, broken.
Emma said, 'Thank you, Master Shardlake. I am sorry I did not trust you from the beginning. I did not think anyone could get me away from Hoyland and the Hobbeys, and I had stopped wanting to leave.'
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, and looked at her. 'Why did you let them do it to you, Emma?'
'At first to save myself from marriage to David. But—when I became a boy, I realized how much more power a male child has in the world. And—' she hesitated momentarily, then continued—'in a strange way it was as though wearing his clothes and pretending to be him kept my brother alive. Can you understand that?'
'Perhaps. But later—you could have changed your identity back and claimed your lands. There would have been nothing the Hobbeys could have done.'
She shook her head. 'I had been Hugh for too long by then. There would have been a scandal. And a disfigured young woman, alone, even one with money, has little power. Far less than a man. And I wanted to be a soldier so much.' She laughed mirthlessly. 'What am I, I wonder? Perhaps something new in the world.'
I did not know how to reply. We were silent a few moments, then Emma said, 'I heard they have given up trying to raise the
We were silent a moment. Then I asked, 'What will you do? As I have said before, you can do what you like with your life now. That is what I wanted for you. The Court of Wards has permitted me to hold all your money. I have to hold it for three years, but whatever sums you want, just ask. So far as I am concerned it is yours. God knows you deserve it after what it has cost you. I have it safe in the old gold coins, protected from this endless collapse in the value of money.'
Emma shook her head. 'I do not know, Master Shardlake. I like it at my rooms. You know, I thought it might be more difficult to pass as a boy in the city. But no one looks at you twice, it is easy to blend in. Thank you, by the way, for sending me the money to buy those books.'
'You can buy what you like now. You are rich.'
'Yet still I do not know who or what I am. But I do not want to be a woman, to be an obedient, subservient creature, wear those uncomfortable clothes.'
'You should meet Barak's wife, Tamasin, nobody could ever call her subservient. And it is possible for a woman to be independent, if she has money.'
Then Emma sighed, looked away. She said, 'There is a boy who has a room in my house, who I have gone drinking with some evenings. I—I like him. His name is Bernard.' She reddened slightly, her scars showing pale, then added, 'But I fear he might guess the truth, as Sam Feaveryear did. Love,' she said bitterly, 'it is a very dangerous thing.'
'Emma, it would be difficult for you to assume the identity of a woman now, I know. But I have been thinking. Jack's wife Tamasin could help you, show you how a woman dresses and behaves. She is to be trusted with the story, and you would like her, I am sure.'
'Does she not have a new baby?'
'Yes. But she would be glad to help you, I am sure.'
She shook her head. 'I cannot bear the thought of learning how to become a different person. Not again. No matter how good and kind your friend Tamasin is, it would bring back those days when Hobbey and Fulstowe made me learn how to impersonate Hugh. And wearing skirts again would make me feel hopeless, helpless, as I did when my brother died.'
'But now you have money—'
'Even if I wanted to, I do not think I could do it.' She took a deep breath. 'Master Shardlake, I have been thinking of going abroad, perhaps to the Low Countries, away from England. Perhaps even seeing if I can get a place in one of the universities there. I could never be a soldier now, not after what happened.'
'No.'
'You see, I think you were right, perhaps I am a scholar by nature. But there are no women scholars, are there?'
'There are learned women. The Queen herself has written a book, and the Lady Elizabeth—'
Emma shook her head vigorously. 'They have a dispensation, as royalty.'
I thought, then asked, 'Are you running away from your feelings for this boy Bernard?'
Her face worked, the scars pulling. 'I need time, Master Shardlake. I need some occupation. Would you let me go abroad?'
'It is your life. I have interfered too much with people's fates. I will help you, at any time. But you must come to me.'
She stood up. 'Then I will arrange a passage to Flanders. I will write to you from there. To let you know how I fare.'
'You will go, then?'
'Yes.' Emma rose from the bench and extended a long-fingered hand.
I said, 'Emma, there is one thing I have never asked. Do you still wear the heartstone?'
She looked at me, a warmth in her eyes I had never seen, then shook her head. 'No,' she answered quietly. 'I cast it in the Thames. It was part of my old life with the Hobbeys. I wear the cross my mother gave me now, that you took from Hoyland and gave me in August.'
I smiled. 'Good.'
'I wish I could have thanked that good old lady for what she and poor Michael did, but I could not—' her voice tailed away.
'Practise the deception with her? No. But I have sent word to her that Hugh is safe.'
She said, 'I thank you for everything, Master Shardlake. But I am on my own path now; let it lead where it will.'
I took her hand. The rough calluses formed by the years of archery practice were fading. I watched as Emma Curteys walked back down the path, to all appearances a young gentleman with a firm tread, a fine coat, short brown hair under a black cap. The dead yellow leaves swirled around her feet.
HISTORICAL NOTE
HENRY VIII's French war of 1544-6 was probably the most disastrous policy decision that even he ever made. Henry has sometimes been portrayed as a 'modernizing' monarch, but his attitude to war harked back to medieval times. From the beginning of his reign he wanted the glory of the conquests in France that had garlanded his medieval predecessors. France, however, was now a united and prosperous state, with a far larger population than England's.
Learning nothing from the failure of two previous attempts, in 1544 Henry invaded northern France in a shaky alliance with the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. The objective was for Henry's and Charles's forces to converge on Paris, but Henry diverted his army to attack Boulogne, which he hoped to link to England's remaining French possession of Calais to form an enlarged English territory. But when, after a long and bloody siege, Henry took Boulogne, his own forces were besieged there by the French army. Charles and the French King, Francis I, made a separate peace and the English forces were to remain bottled up in Boulogne for the next eighteen months, supplied with difficulty from England. Henry now faced the weight of France alone; and in addition France sent troops to its ally Scotland, against which Henry was already waging war.
The war was extraordinarily, ruinously expensive—to pay for it Henry sold off much of the monastic land he had taken from the Church in the 1530s, bled England white with taxation, and even debased the coinage through reducing its silver content, starting an unprecedented spiral of inflation. All sections of society were affected, but it was the poor, who had no power to raise the price of their labour, who suffered most.
In the summer of 1545 the French decided to dispose of the problem by invading England. This was a real and very serious threat; the French gathered a fleet with perhaps three times the number of warships England could command, carrying around 30,000 soldiers. The Pope contributed a ship. The enterprise was larger in scale than the Spanish Armada of forty years later. To meet the threat Henry ordered a massive levy of soldiers from the
