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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Privy Seal
+       His Last Venture
+
+Author: Ford Madox Ford
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2008 [EBook #26698]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIVY SEAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Suzanne Shell, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note.
+
+     This is the Second book of the trilogy, The Fifth Queen, by
+     Ford Madox Ford. The other books are The Fifth Queen and The
+     Fifth Queen Crowned.
+
+
+
+                              PRIVY SEAL
+
+                          _His Last Venture_
+
+
+
+
+
+    _"Ille potens ... et lætus cui licet in diem
+    Dixisse: Vixi!..."_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+The Rising Sun,       1
+
+PART TWO
+The Distant Cloud,   75
+
+PART THREE
+The Sunburst,       153
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+Frau Laura Schmedding
+
+who has so often combated
+my prejudices and corrected
+my assertions
+this with affection
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+THE RISING SUN
+
+I
+
+
+The Magister Udal sat in the room of his inn in Paris, where
+customarily the King of France lodged such envoys as came at his
+expense. He had been sent there to Latinise the letters that passed
+between Sir Thomas Wyatt and the King's Ministers of France, for he
+was esteemed the most learned man in these islands. He had groaned
+much at being sent there, for he must leave in England so many
+loves--the great, blonde Margot Poins, that was maid to Katharine
+Howard; the tall, swaying Katharine Howard herself; Judge Cantre's
+wife that had fed him well; and two other women, with all of whom he
+had succeeded easily or succeeded in no wise at all. But the mission
+was so well paid--with as many crowns the day as he had had groats for
+teaching the Lady Mary of England--that fain he had been to go.
+Moreover, it was by way of being a favour of Privy Seal's. The
+magister had written for him a play in English; the rich post was the
+reward--and it was an ill thing, a thing the magister dreaded, to
+refuse the favours of Privy Seal. He consoled himself with the thought
+that the writing of letters in Latin might wash from his mouth the
+savour of the play he had written in the vulgar tongue.
+
+But his work in Paris was ended--for with the flight of Cardinal Pole,
+who had left Paris precipitately upon news that the King of England
+had sent a drunken roisterer to assassinate him, it was imagined that
+soon now more concord between Francis and England might ensue, and the
+magister sat in his room planning his voyage back to Dover. The room
+was great in size, panelled mostly in wood, lit with lampwicks that
+floated in oil dishes and heated with a sea-coal fire, for though it
+was April the magister was of a cold disposition of the hands and
+shins. The inn--of the Golden Astrolabe--was kept by an Englishwoman,
+a masterful widow with a broad face and a great mouth that smiled. She
+stood beside him there. Forty-seven she might have been, and she
+called herself the Widow Annot.
+
+The magister sat over his fire with his gown parted from his legs to
+warm his shins, but his hands waved angrily and his face was
+crestfallen.
+
+'Oh, keeper of a tavern,' he said. 'It is set down in holy writ that
+it is not good for a man to be alone.'
+
+'That a hostess shall keep her tavern clean is writ in the books of
+the provost of Paris town,' the Widow Annot answered, and the shadow
+of her great white hood, which she wore in the older English fashion,
+danced over the brown wooden beams of the ceiling.
+
+'Nay, nay,' he answered, 'it is written there that it is the enjoined
+devoir of every hotelier to provide things fitting for the sojourners'
+ease, pleasure and recreation.'
+
+'The maid is locked in another house,' the hostess answered, 'and
+should have been this three week.' She swung her keys on a black
+riband and gazed at him masterfully. 'Will your magistership eat capon
+or young goat?'
+
+'Capon will have a savour like sawdust, and young goat like the dust
+of the road,' the magister moaned. 'Give me the girl to wait upon me
+again.'
+
+'No maid will wait upon thee,' she answered.
+
+'Even thou thyself?' he asked. He glanced across his shoulder and his
+eyes measured her, hers him. She had large shoulders, a high, full
+stomacher, and her cheeks were an apple-red. 'The maiden was a fair
+piece,' he tittered.
+
+'Therefore you must spoil the ring of the coin,' she answered.
+
+He sighed: 'Then eat you with me. "_Soli cantare periti Arcades._" But
+it is cold here alone of nights.'
+
+They ate goat and green leeks sweetened with honey, and wood thrushes
+pickled in wine, and salt fish from the mouth of the Beauce. And
+because this gave the magister a great thirst he drank much of a
+warmed wine from Burgundy that the hostess brought herself. They sat,
+byside, on cushions on a couch before the warm fire.
+
+'_Filia pulchra mater pulchrior!_' the magister muttered, and he cast
+his arms about her soft and plump waist. 'The maid was a fair skewer,
+the hostess is a plumper roasting bit.' She took his kisses on her
+fire-warmed cheeks, but in the end she thrust him mightily from her
+with a large elbow.
+
+He gasped with the strength of her thrust, and she said:
+
+'Greedy dogs getten them hard cuffs,' and rearranged her neckercher.
+When he tried to come nearer her she laughed and thrust him aback.
+
+'You have tried and tasted,' she said. 'A fuller meal you must pay
+for.'
+
+He stood before her, lean and lank, his gown flapping about his
+calves, his eyes smiling humorously, his lips twitching.
+
+'Oh soft and warm woman,' he cried, 'payment shall be yours'; and
+whilst he fumbled furiously in his clothes-press, he quoted from
+Tully: '_Haec civitas mulieri redimiculum praebuit._' He pulled out
+one small bag: '_Haec in collum._' She took another. '_Haec in
+crines!_' and he added a third, saying: 'Here is all I have,' and cast
+the three into her lap. Whilst she counted the coins composedly on the
+table before her he added: 'Leave me nevertheless the price to come to
+England with.'
+
+'Sir Magister,' she said, turning her large face to him. 'This is not
+one-tenth enough. You have tasted an ensample. Will you have the whole
+meal?'
+
+'Oh, unconscionable,' he cried. 'More I have not!' He began to wave
+his hands. 'Consider what you do do,' he uttered. 'Think of what a
+pest is love. How many have died of it. Pyramus, Thisbe, Dido, Medea,
+Croesus, Callirhoe, Theagines the philosopher ... Consider what writes
+Gordonius: "_Prognosticatio est talis: si non succuratur iis aut in
+maniam cadunt: aut moriuntur._" Unless lovers be succoured either they
+fall into a madness, either they die or grow mad. And Fabian
+Montaltus: "If this passion be not assuaged, the inflammation cometh
+to the brain. It drieth up the blood. Then followeth madness or men
+make themselves away." I would have you ponder of what saith
+Parthenium and what Plutarch in his tales of lovers.'
+
+Her face appeared comely and smooth in his eyes, but she shook her
+head at him.
+
+'These be woeful and pretty stories,' she said. 'I would have you to
+tell me many of them.'
+
+'All through the night,' he said eagerly, and made to clasp her in his
+arms. But she pushed him back again with her hand on his chest.
+
+'All through the night an you will,' she said. 'But first you shall
+tell a prettier tale before a man in a frock.'
+
+He sprang full four feet back at one spring.
+
+'I have wedded no woman, yet,' he said.
+
+'Then it is time you wed one now,' she answered.
+
+'Oh widow, bethink you,' he pleaded. 'Would you spoil so pretty a
+tale? Would you humble so goodly a man's pride?'
+
+'Why, it were a pity,' she said. 'But I am minded to take a husband.'
+
+'You have done well this ten years without one,' he cried out.
+
+Her face seemed to set like adamant as she turned her cheek to him.
+
+'Call it a woman's mad freak,' she said.
+
+'Six and twenty pupils in the fair game of love I have had,' he said.
+'You shall be the seven and twentieth. Twenty and seven are seven and
+two. Seven and two are nine. Now nine is the luckiest of numbers. Be
+you that one.'
+
+'Nay,' she answered. 'It is time you learned husbandry who have taught
+so many and earned so little.'
+
+He slipped himself softly into the cushions beside her.
+
+'Would you spoil so fair a tale?' he said. 'Would you have me to break
+so many vows? I have promised a mort of women marriage, and so long as
+I be not wed I may keep faith with any one of them.'
+
+She held her face away from him and laughed.
+
+'That is as it may be,' she said. 'But when you wed with me to-night
+you will keep faith with one woman.'
+
+'Woman,' he pleaded. 'I am a great scholar.'
+
+'Ay,' she answered, 'and great scholars have climbed to great
+estates.'
+
+She continued to count the coins that came from his little money-bags;
+the shadow of her hood upon the great beams grew more portentous.
+
+'It is thought that your magistership may rise to be Chancellor of the
+Realm of England,' she added.
+
+He clutched his forehead.
+
+'Eheu!' he said. 'If you have heard men say that, you know that wedded
+to thee I could never climb.'
+
+'Then I shall very comfortably keep my inn here in Paris town,' she
+answered. 'You have here fourteen pounds and eleven shillings.'
+
+He stretched forth his lean hands:
+
+'Why, I will marry thee in the morning,' he said, and he moistened his
+lips with the tip of his tongue. Outside the door there was a
+shuffling of several feet.
+
+'I knew not other guests were in the house,' he uttered, and fell
+again to kissing her.
+
+'Knew you not an envoy was come from Cleves?' she whispered.
+
+Her head fell back and he supported it with one trembling hand. He
+shook like a leaf when her voice rang out:
+
+'_Au secours! Au secours!_'
+
+There was a great jangle, light fell into the dusky room through the
+doorhole, and he found himself beneath the eyes of many scullions with
+spits, cooks with carving forks, and kitchenmaids with sharpened
+distaffs of steel.
+
+'Now I will be wed this night,' she laughed.
+
+He moved to the end of the couch and blinked at her in the strong
+light.
+
+'I will be wed this night,' she said again, and rearranged her
+head-dress, revealing, as her sleeves fell open, her white, plump
+arms.
+
+'Why, no!' he answered irresolutely.
+
+She said in French to her aids:
+
+'Come near him with the spits!'
+
+They moved towards him, a white-clad body with their pointed things
+glittering in the light of torches. He sprang behind the great table
+against the window and seized the heavy-leaden sandarach. The French
+scullions knew, tho' he had no French, that he would cleave one of
+their skulls, and they stood, a knot of seven--four men and three
+maids--in blue hoods, in the centre of the room.
+
+'By Mars and by Apollo!' he said, 'I was minded to wed with thee if I
+could no other way. But now, like Phaeton, I will cast myself from the
+window and die, or like the wretches thrown from the rock, called
+Tarpeian. I was minded to a folly: now I am minded rather for death.'
+
+'How nobly thy tongue doth wag, husband,' she said, and cried in
+French for the rogues to be gone. When the door closed upon the lights
+she said in the comfortable gloom: 'I dote upon thy words. My first
+was tongue-tied.' She beckoned him to her and folded her arms. 'Let us
+discourse upon this matter,' she said comfortably. 'Thus I will put
+it: you wed with me or spring from the window.'
+
+'I am even trapped?' he asked.
+
+'So it comes to all foxes that too long seek for capons,' she
+answered.
+
+'But consider,' he said. He sat himself by the fireside upon a stool,
+being minded to avoid temptation.
+
+'I would have your magistership forget the rogues that be without,'
+she said.
+
+'They were a nightmare's tale,' he said.
+
+'Yet forget them not too utterly,' she answered. 'For I am of some
+birth. My father had seven horses and never followed the plough.'
+
+'Oh buxom one!' he answered. 'Of a comfortable birth and girth thou
+art. Yet with thee around my neck I might not easily climb.'
+
+'Magister,' she said, 'whilst thou climbest in London town thy wife
+will bide in Paris.'
+
+'Consider!' he said. 'There is in London town a fair, large maid
+called Margot Poins.'
+
+'Is she more fair than I?' she asked. 'I will swear she is.'
+
+He tilted his stool forward.
+
+'No; no, I swear it,' he said eagerly.
+
+'Then I will swear she is more large.'
+
+'No; not one half so bounteous is her form,' he answered, and moved
+across to the couch.
+
+'Then if you can bear her weight up you can bear mine,' she said, and
+moved away from him.
+
+'Nay,' he answered. 'She would help me on,' and he fumbled in the
+shadows for her hand. She drew herself together into a small space.
+
+'You affect her more than me,' she said, with a swift motion
+simulating jealousy.
+
+'By the breasts of Venus, no!' he answered.
+
+'Oh, once more use such words,' she murmured, and surrendered to him
+her soft hand. He rubbed it between both of his cold ones and uttered:
+
+'By the Paphian Queen: by her teams of doves and sparrows! By the
+bower of Phyllis and the girdle of Egypt's self! I love thee!'
+
+She gurgled 'oh's' of pleasure.
+
+'But this Margot Poins is tirewoman to the Lady Katharine Howard.'
+
+'I am tirewoman to mine own self alone,' she said. 'Therefore you love
+her better.'
+
+'Nay, oh nay,' he said gently. 'But this Lady Katharine Howard is
+mistress to the King's self.'
+
+'And I have been mistress to no married man save my husbands,' she
+answered. 'Therefore you love this Margot Poins better.'
+
+He fingered her soft palm and rubbed it across his own neck.
+
+'Nay, nay,' he said. 'But I must wed with Margot Poins.'
+
+'Why with her more than with me or any other of your score and seven?'
+she said softly.
+
+'Since the Lady Katharine will be Queen,' he answered, and once again
+he was close against her side. She sighed softly.
+
+'Thus if you wed with me you will never be Chancellor,' she said.
+
+'I would not anger the Queen,' he answered. She nestled bountifully
+and warmly against him.
+
+'Swear even again that you like me more than the fair, large wench in
+London town,' she whispered against his ear.
+
+'Even as Jove prized Danaë above the Queen of Heaven, even as
+Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules
+placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of the
+Jews Bathsheba above....'
+
+She murmured 'Oh, oh,' and placed her arms around his shoulders.
+
+'How I love thy brave words!'
+
+'And being Chancellor,' he swore, 'I will come back to thee, oh woman
+of the sweet smiles, honey of Hymettus, Cypriote wine....'
+
+She moved herself a little from him in the darkness.
+
+'And if you do not wed with Margot Poins....'
+
+'I pray a plague may fall upon her, but I must wed with her,' he
+answered. 'Come now; come now!'
+
+'Else the Lady Katharine shall be displeased with your magistership?'
+
+He sought to draw her to him, but she stiffened herself a little.
+
+'And this Lady Katharine is mistress to the King of England's realm?'
+
+His hands moved tremblingly towards her in the darkness.
+
+'And this Lady Katharine shall be Queen?'
+
+A hiss of exasperation came upon his lips, for she had slipped from
+beneath his hands into the darkness.
+
+'Why, then, I will not stay your climbing,' she said. 'Good-night,'
+and in the darkness he heard her sob.
+
+The couch fell backwards as he swore and sprang towards her voice.
+
+'Magister!' she said. 'Hands off! Unwed thou shalt not have me, for I
+have sworn it.'
+
+'I have sworn to wed seven and twenty women,' he said, 'and have
+wedded with none.'
+
+'Nay, nay,' she sobbed. 'Hands off. Henceforth I will make no
+vows--but no one but thee shall wed me.'
+
+'Then wed me, in God's name!' he cried, and, screaming:
+
+'_Ho là! Apportez le prestre!_' she softened herself in his arms.
+
+The magister confronted the lights, the leering scullions and the
+grinning maids with their great mantles; his brown, woodpecker-like
+face was alike crestfallen and thirsty with desire. A lean Dominican,
+with his brown cowl back and spectacles of horn, gabbled over his
+missal and took a crown's fee--then asked another by way of penitence
+for the sin with the maid locked up in another house. When they
+brought the bride favours of pink to pin into her gorget she said:
+
+'I long had loved thee for thy great words, husband. Therefore all
+these I had in readiness.'
+
+With that knot fast upon him, the magister, clasping his gown upon his
+shins, looked askance at the floor. Whilst they made ready the bride,
+with great lights and laughter, she said:
+
+'I was minded to have a comfortable husband. And a comfortable husband
+is a husband much absent. What more comfortable than me in Paris town
+and thee in London city? I keep my inn here, thou mindest thy book
+there. Thou shalt here find a goodly capon upon occasion, and when
+thou hast a better house in London I will come share it.'
+
+'Trapped! Trapped!' the magister muttered to himself. 'Even as was Sir
+Launcelot!'
+
+He considered of the fair and resentful Margot Poins whom it was
+incumbent indeed that he should wed: that Katharine Howard loved her
+well and was in these matters strait-laced. When his eyes measured his
+wife he licked his lips; when his eyes were on the floor his jaw fell.
+At best the new Mistress Udal would be in Paris. He looked at the rope
+tied round the thin middle of the brown priest, and suddenly he leered
+and cast off his cloak.
+
+'Let me remember to keep an equal mind in these hard matters,' he
+quoted, and fell to laughing.
+
+For he remembered that in England no marriage by a friar or monk held
+good in those years. Therefore he was the winner. And the long, square
+room, with the cave bed behind its shutter in the hollow of the wall,
+the light-coloured, square beams, and the foaming basin of bride-ale
+that a fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion
+after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting
+bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the
+blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his
+bassoon that he played before the open door; the two saucy maids
+striving to wrest the bride's stockings one from the other--all these
+things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes. So that, when one of
+the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped
+her in his arms and kissed her till she struggled from him to drink a
+mug of bride-ale.
+
+'_Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras!_' he said. For it was in his mind a
+goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was three days later, in the morning, that his captress said to the
+Magister Udal:
+
+'Husband, it is time that I gave thee the bridal gift.'
+
+The magister, happy with a bellyful of carp, bread and breakfast ale,
+muttered 'Anan?' from above his copy of Lucretius. He sat in the
+window-seat of the great stone kitchen. Upon one long iron spit before
+the fire fourteen trussed capons turned in unison; the wooden shoes of
+the basting-maid clattered industriously; and from the chimney came
+the clank of the invisible smoke-vanes and the be-sooted chains. The
+magister, who loved above all things warmth, a full stomach, a
+comfortable woman and a good book, had all these things; he was well
+minded to stay in Paris town for fourteen days, when they were to slay
+a brown pig from the Ardennes, against whose death he had written an
+elegy in Sapphics.
+
+'For,' said his better half, standing before him with a great loaf
+clasped to her bosom, 'if you turn a horse from the stable between
+full and half full, like as not he will return of fair will to the
+crib.'
+
+'Oh Venus and Hebe in one body,' the magister said, 'I am minded to
+end here my scholarly days.'
+
+'I am minded that ye shall travel far erstwhile,' she answered.
+
+He laid down his book upon a clean chopping-board.
+
+'I know a good harbourage,' he said.
+
+She sat down beside him in the window and fingered the fur on his long
+gown, saying that, in this light, it showed ill-favouredly worm-eaten;
+and he answered that he never had wishes nor money for gowning
+himself, who cultivated the muses upon short commons. She turned
+rightway to the front the medal upon his chest, and folded her arms.
+
+'Whilst ye have no better house to harbour us,' she said, 'this shall
+serve. Let us talk of the to-come.'
+
+He groaned a little.
+
+'Let us love to-day that's here,' he said. 'I will read thee a verse
+from Lucretius, and you shall tell me the history of that fourth
+capon'--he pointed to a browned carcase that, upon the spit, whirled
+its elbows a full third longer than any of the line.
+
+'That is the master roasting-piece,' she said, 'so he browns there not
+too far, nor too close, for the envoy's own eating.'
+
+He considered the chicken with his head to one side.
+
+'It is the place of a wife to be subject to her lord,' he said.
+
+'It is the place of a husband that he fendeth for 's wife,' she
+answered him. She tapped her fingers determinedly upon her elbows.
+
+'So it is,' she continued. 'To-morrow you shall set out for London
+city to make road towards becoming Sir Chancellor.' Whilst he groaned
+she laid down for him her law. He was to go to England, he was to
+strive for great posts: if he gained, she would come share them; if he
+failed, he might at odd moments come back to her fireside. 'Have done
+with groaning now,' she said, stilling his lamentations.' 'Keep them
+even for the next wench that you shall sue to--of me you have had all
+you asked.'
+
+He considered for five seconds, his elbow upon his crossed knees and
+his wrist supporting his lean brown face.
+
+'It is in the essence of it a good bargain,' he said. 'You put against
+the chance of being, you a chancellor's madam, mine of having for
+certain a capon in Paris town.'
+
+He tapped his long nose. 'Nevertheless, for your stake you have cast
+down a very little: three nights of bed and board against the chaining
+me up.'
+
+'Husband,' she answered. 'More than that you shall have.'
+
+He wriggled a little beneath his furs.
+
+'Husband is an ill name,'he commented. 'It smarts.'
+
+'But it fills the belly.'
+
+'Aye,'he said. 'Therefore I am minded to bide here and take with the
+sourness the sweet of it.'
+
+She laughed a little, and, with a great knife, cut a large manchet
+from the loaf between them.
+
+'Nay,' she said, 'to-morrow my army with their spits and forks shall
+drive thee from the door.'
+
+He grinned with his lips. She was fair and fat beneath her hood, but
+she was resolute. 'I have it in me greatly to advance you,' she said.
+
+A boy brought her a trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in
+a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a
+pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart,
+and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow
+chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, and marigold
+seeds with their acrid perfume, and balls of honied suet. She bound
+round it a fair linen cloth that she stitched with a great bone
+needle.
+
+'Oh ingenuous countenance,' the magister mused above the pig's mild
+face. 'Is it not even the spit of the Cleves envoy's? And the Cleves
+envoy shall eat this adorable monster. Oh, cruel anthropophagist!'
+
+She resigned her burden to the spit and gave the loaf to the boy,
+wiped her fingers upon her apron, and said:
+
+'That pig shall help thee far upon thy road.'
+
+'Goes it into my wallet?' he asked joyfully.
+
+She answered: 'Nay; into the Cleves envoy's weam.'
+
+'You speak in hard riddles,' he uttered.
+
+'Nay,' she laughed, 'a baby could unriddle it.' She looked at him for
+a moment to enjoy her triumph of mystery. 'Husband mine, a pig thus
+stuffed is good eating for Cleves men. I have not kept a hostel for
+twelve years for envoys and secretaries without learning what each
+eats with pleasure. And long have I thought that if I wed a man it
+should be such a man as could thrive by learning of envoys' secrets.'
+
+He leaned towards her earnestly.
+
+'You know wherefore the man from Cleves is come?'
+
+'You are, even as I have heard it said, a spy of Thomas Cromwell?' she
+asked in return.
+
+He looked suddenly abashed, but she held to her question.
+
+'I pass for Privy Seal's man,' he answered at last.
+
+'But you have played him false,' she said. He grew pale, glanced over
+his shoulder, and put his finger on his lips.
+
+'I'll wager it was for a woman,' she accused him. She wiped her lips
+with her apron and dropped her hands upon her lap.
+
+'Why, keep troth to Cromwell if you can,' she said.
+
+'I do think his sun sets,' he whispered.
+
+'Why, I am sorry for it,' she answered. 'I have always loved him for a
+brewer's son. My father was a brewer.'
+
+'Cromwell was begotten even by the devil,' Udal answered. 'He made me
+write a comedy in the vulgar tongue.'
+
+'Be it as you will,' she answered. 'You shall know on which side to
+bite your cake better than I.'
+
+He was still a little shaken at the thought of Privy Seal.
+
+'If you know wherefore cometh Cleves' envoy, much it shall help me to
+share the knowledge,' he said at last, 'for by that I may know whether
+Cromwell or we do rise or fall.'
+
+'If you have made a pact with a woman, have very great cares,' she
+answered dispassionately. 'Doubtless you know how the dog wags its
+tail; but you are always a fool with a woman.'
+
+'This woman shall be Queen if Cromwell fall,' the magister said, 'and
+I shall rise with her.'
+
+'But is no woman from Cleves' Queen there now?' she asked.
+
+'Cicely,' he answered highly, 'you know much of capons and beeves, but
+there are queens that are none and do not queen it, and queans that
+are no queens and queen it.'
+
+'And so 'twill be whilst men are men,' she retorted. 'But neither my
+first nor my second had his doxies ruling within my house, do what
+they might beyond the door.'
+
+He tried to impart to her some of the adoration he had for Katharine
+Howard--her learning, her faith, her tallness, her wit, and the
+deserved empiry that she had over King Henry VIII; but she only
+answered:
+
+'Why, kiss the wench all you will, but do not come to tell me how she
+smells!'--and to his new protests: 'Aye, you may well be right and she
+may well be Queen--for I know you will sacrifice your ease for no
+wench that shall not help you somewhere forwards.'
+
+The magister held his hands above his head in shocked negation of this
+injustice--but there came from the street the thin wail of a trumpet;
+another joined it, and a third; the three sounds executed a triple
+convolution and died away one by one. Holding his thin hand out for
+silence and better hearing, he muttered:
+
+'Norfolk's tucket! Then it is true that Norfolk comes to Paris.'
+
+His wife slipped down from her seat.
+
+'Gave I you not the ostler's gossip from Calais three days since?' she
+said, and went towards her roastings.
+
+'But wherefore comes the yellow dog to Paris?' Udal persisted.
+
+'That you may go seek,' she answered. 'But believe always what an
+innkeeper says of who are on the road.'
+
+Udal too slipped down from the window-seat; he buttoned his gown down
+to his shins, pulled his hat over his ears and hurried through the
+galleried courtyard into the comfortless shadows of the street. There
+was no doubt that Norfolk was coming; round the tiny crack that, two
+houses away, served for all the space that the road had between the
+towering housefronts, two men in scarlet and yellow, with leopards and
+lions and fleurs-de-lis on their chests, walked between two in white,
+tabarded with the great lilies of France. They crushed round the
+corner, for there was scarce space for four men abreast; behind them
+squeezed men in purple with the Howard knot, bearing pikes, and men in
+mustard yellow with the eagle's wing and ship badge of the Provost of
+Paris. In the broader space before the arch of Udal's courtyard they
+stayed to wait for the horsemen to disentangle themselves from the
+alley; the Englishmen looked glumly at the tall housefronts; the
+French loosened the mouthplates of their helmets to breathe the air
+for a minute. Hostlers, packmen and pedlars began to fill the space
+behind Udal, and he heard his wife's voice calling shrilly to a cook
+who had run across the yard.
+
+The crowd a little shielded him from the draught which came through
+the arch, and he waited with more contentment. Undoubtedly there was
+Norfolk upon a great yellow horse, so high that it made his bonnet
+almost touch the overhanging storey of the third house; behind him the
+white and gold litter of the provost, who, having three weeks before
+broken his leg at tennis-play, was still unable to sit in a saddle.
+The duke rode as if implacably rigid, his yellow, long face set,
+listening as if with a sour deafness to something that the provost
+from below called to him with a great, laughing voice.
+
+The provost's litter, too, came up alongside the duke's horse in the
+open space, then they all moved forward at the slow processional:
+three steps and a halt for the trumpets to blow a tucket; three more
+and another tucket; the great yellow horse stepping high and casting
+up his head, from which flew many flakes of white foam. With its slow,
+regularly interrupted gait, dominated by the impassive yellow face of
+Norfolk, the whole band had an air of performing a solemn dance, and
+Udal shivered for a long time, till amidst the train of mules bearing
+leathern sacks, cupboards, chests and commodes, he saw come riding a
+familiar figure in a scholar's gown--the young pedagogue and companion
+of the Earl of Surrey. He was a fair, bearded youth with blue eyes,
+riding a restless colt that embroiled itself and plunged amongst the
+mules' legs. The young man leaned forward in the saddle and craned to
+avoid a clothes chest.
+
+The magister called to him:
+
+'Ho, Longstaffe!' and having caught his pleased eyes: _'Ecce quis sto
+in arce plenitatis. Veni atque bibe! Magister sum. Udal sum.
+Longstaffe ave.'_
+
+Longstaffe slipped from his horse, which he left to be rescued by whom
+it might from amongst the hard-angled cases.
+
+'Assuredly,' he said, 'there is no love between that beast and me as
+there was betwixt his lord and Bucephalus,' and he followed Udal into
+the galleried courtyard, where their two gowned figures alone sought
+shelter from the March showers.
+
+'News from overseas there is none,' he said. 'Privy Seal ruleth still
+about the King; the German astronomers have put forth a tract _De
+Quadratura Circuli_; the lost continent of Atlantis is a lost
+continent still--and my bones ache.'
+
+'But your mission?' Udal asked.
+
+The doctor, his hard blue eyes spinning with sardonic humour beneath
+his black beretta, said that his mission, even as Udal's had been, was
+to gain some crowns by setting into the learned language letters that
+should pass between his ambassador and the King's men of France. Udal
+grinned disconcertedly.
+
+'Be certified in your mind,' he said, 'that I am not here a spy or
+informer of Privy Seal's.'
+
+'Forbid it, God,' Doctor Longstaffe answered good-humouredly. None the
+less his jaw hardened beneath his fair beard and he answered, 'I have
+as yet written no letters--_litteras nullas scripsi: argal nihil
+scio_.'
+
+'Why, ye shall drink a warmed draught and eat a drippinged soppet,'
+Udal said, 'and you shall tell me what in England is said of this
+mission.'
+
+He led the fair doctor into the great kitchen, and felt a great stab
+of dislike when the young man set his arm round the hostess's waist
+and kissed her on the red cheeks. The young man laughed:
+
+'Aye indeed; I am _mancipium paucae lectionis_ set beside so learned a
+man as the magister.'
+
+The hostess received him with a bridling favour, rubbing her cheek
+pleasantly, whilst Udal was seeking to persuade himself that, since
+the woman was in law no wife of his, he had no need to fear.
+Nevertheless rage tore him when the doctor, leaning his back against
+the window-side, talked to the woman. She stood between them holding a
+pewter flagon of mulled hypocras upon a salver of burnished pewter.
+
+'Who I be,' he said, gazing complacently at her, 'is a poor student of
+good letters; how I be here is as one of the amanuenses of the Duke of
+Norfolk. Origen, Eusebius telleth, had seven, given him by Ambrosius
+to do his behest. The duke hath but two, given him by the grace of God
+and of the King's high mercy.'
+
+'I make no doubt,' she answered, 'ye be as learned as the seven were.'
+
+'I be twice as hungry,' he laughed; 'but with me it has always been
+"_Quid scribam non quemadmodum_," wherein I follow Seneca.'
+
+'Doctor,' the magister uttered, quivering, 'you shall tell me why this
+mission--which is a very special embassy--at this time cometh to this
+town of Paris.'
+
+'Magister,' the doctor answered, wagging his beard upon his poor
+collar to signify that he desired to keep his neck where it was, 'I
+know not.'
+
+'Injurious man,' Udal fulminated, 'I be no spy.'
+
+The doctor surveyed his perturbation with cross-legged calmness.
+
+'An ye were,' he said--'and it is renowned that ye are--ye could get
+no knowledge from where none is.'
+
+'Why, tell me of a woman,' the hostess said. 'Who is Kat Howard?'
+
+The doctor's blue eyes shot a hard glance at her, and he let his head
+sink down.
+
+'I have copied to her eyes a sonnet or twain,' he said, 'and they were
+writ by my master, Surrey, the Duke o' Norfolk's son.'
+
+'Then these rave upon her as doth the magister?' she asked.
+
+'Why, an ye be jealous of the magister here,' the doctor clipped his
+words precisely, 'cast him away and take me who am a proper
+sweetheart.'
+
+'I be wed,' she answered pleasantly.
+
+'What matters that,' he said, 'when husbands are not near?'
+
+The magister, torn between his unaccustomed gust of jealousy and the
+desire to hide his marriage from a disastrous discovery in England,
+clutched with straining fingers at his gown.
+
+'Tell wherefore cometh your mission,' he said.
+
+'We spoke of a fair woman,' the doctor answered. 'Shame it were before
+Apollo and Priapus that men's missions should come before kings'
+mistresses.'
+
+'It is true, then, that she shall be queen?' Udal's wife asked.
+
+The fall of a great dish in the rear of the tall kitchen gave the
+scholar time to collect his suspicions--for he took it for an easy
+thing that this woman, if she were Udal's leman, might be, she too, a
+spy in the service of Privy Seal.
+
+'Forbid it, God,' he said, 'that ye take my words as other than
+allegorical. The lady Katharine may be spoken of as a king's mistress
+since in truth she were a fit mistress for a king, being fair, devout,
+learned, courteous, tall and sweet-voiced. But that she hath been kind
+to the King, God forbid that I should say it.'
+
+'Aye,' Udal said, 'but if she hath sent this mission?'
+
+Panic rose in the heart of the doctor; he beheld himself there, in
+what seemed a spy's kitchen, asked disastrous questions by a man and
+woman and pinned into a window-seat. For there was no doubt that the
+rumour ran in England that this mission had been sent by the King
+because Katharine Howard so wished it sent. In that age of spies and
+treacheries no man's head was safe on his shoulders--and here were
+Cromwell's spies asking news of Cromwell's chief enemy.
+
+He stretched out a calm hand and spoke slowly:
+
+'Madam hostess,' he said, 'if ye be jealous of the magister ye may
+well be jealous, for great beauty and worship hath this lady.' Yet she
+need be little jealous, for this lady was nowadays prized so high that
+she might marry any man in the land--and learned men were little
+prized. Any man in the land of England she might wed--saving only such
+as were wed, amongst whom was their lord the King, who was happily
+wed to the gracious lady whom my Lord Privy Seal did bring from Cleves
+to be their very virtuous Queen.
+
+Here, it seemed to him, he had cleared himself very handsomely of
+suspicion of ill will to Privy Seal or of wishing ill to Anne of
+Cleves.
+
+'For the rest,' he said, sighing with relief to be away from dangerous
+grounds, 'your magister is safe from the toils of marriage with the
+Lady Katharine.' Still it might be held that jealousy is aroused by
+the loving and not by the returning of that love; for it was very
+certain that the magister much had loved this lady. Many did hold it a
+treachery in him, till now, to the Privy Seal whom he served. But now
+he might love her duteously, since our lord the King had commanded the
+Lady Katharine to join hands with Privy Seal, and Privy Seal to cement
+a friendly edifice in his heart towards the lady. Thus it was no
+treason to Privy Seal in him to love her. But to her it was a treason
+great and not to be comprehended.
+
+He ogled Udal's wife in the gallant manner and prayed her to prepare a
+bed for him in that hostelry. He had been minded to lodge with a
+Frenchman named Clement; but having seen her ...
+
+'Learned sir,' she answered, 'a good bed I have for you.' But if he
+sought to go beyond her lips she had a body-guard of spitmen that the
+magister's self had seen.
+
+The doctor kissed her agreeably and, with a great sigh of relief,
+hurried from the door.
+
+'May Bacchus who maketh mad, and the Furies that pursued Orestes,
+defile the day when I cross this step again,' he muttered as he swung
+under the arch and ran to follow the mule train.
+
+For the magister, by playing with his reputation of being Cromwell's
+spy, had so effectually caused terror of himself to pervade those who
+supported the old faith that he had much ado at times to find company
+even amongst the lovers of good letters.
+
+
+III
+
+
+In the kitchen the spits had ceased turning, the dishes had been borne
+upstairs to the envoy from Cleves, the scullions were wiping knives,
+the maids were rubbing pieces of bread in the dripping pans and
+licking their fingers after the succulent morsels. The magister stood,
+a long crimson blot in the window-way; the hostess was setting flagons
+carefully into the great armoury.
+
+'Madam wife,' the magister said to her at last, when she came near,
+'ye see how weighty it is that I bide here.'
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'I see how weighty it is that ye hasten to
+London.'
+
+His rage broke--he whirled his arms above his head.
+
+'Naughty woman!' he screamed harshly. 'Shalt be beaten.' He strode
+across to the basting range and gripped a great ladle, his brown eyes
+glinting, and stood caressing his thin chin passionately.
+
+She folded her arms complacently.
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'it is well that wives be beaten when they have
+merited it. But, till I have, I have seven cooks and five knaves to
+bear my part.'
+
+Udal's hand fell suddenly and dispiritedly to his side. What indeed
+could he do? He could not beat this woman unless she would be
+beaten--and she stood there, square, buxom, solid and composed. He had
+indeed that sense that all scholars must have in presence of assured
+wives, that she was the better man. Moreover, the rage that had filled
+him in presence of Doctor Longstaffe had cooled down to nothing in
+Longstaffe's absence.
+
+He folded his arms and tried impatiently to think where, in this
+pickle, his feet had landed him. His wife turned once more to place
+flagons in the armoury.
+
+'Woman,' he said at last, in a tone half of majesty, half of appeal,
+'see ye not how weighty it is that I bide here?'
+
+'Husband,' she answered with her tranquil nonchalance, 'see ye not
+how weighty it is that ye waste here no more days?'
+
+'But very well you know,' and he stretched out to her a thin hand,
+'that here be two embassies of mystery: you have had, these three
+days, the Cleves envoy in the house. You have seen that the Duke of
+Norfolk comes here as ambassador.'
+
+She took a stool and sat near his feet to listen to him.
+
+'Now,' he began again, 'if I be in truth a spy for Thomas Cromwell,
+Lord Privy Seal, where can I spy better for him than here? For the
+Cleves people are befriended with Privy Seal; then why come they to
+France, where bide only Privy Seal's enemies? Now Norfolk is the
+chiefest enemy of Privy Seal; then wherefore cometh Norfolk to this
+land, where abide only these foes of Privy Seal?'
+
+She set her elbows on her knees and her knuckles below her chin, and
+gazed up at him like a child.
+
+'Tell me, husband,' she said; 'be ye a true spy for Thomas Cromwell?'
+
+He glanced round him with terror--but no man stood nearer than the
+meat boards across the kitchen, so far out of earshot that they could
+not hear feet upon the bricks.
+
+'Nay, ye may tell me the very truth of the very truth,' she said.
+'These be false days--but my kitchen gear is thine, and nothing doth
+so bind folks together.'
+
+'But other listeners--' he said.
+
+'Hosts and hostesses are listeners,' she answered. ''Tis their trade.
+And their trade it is, too, to fend from them all other listeners.
+Here you may speak. Tell me then, if I may serve you, very truly
+whether ye be a true spy for Thomas Cromwell or against him.'
+
+Her round face, beneath the great white hood, had a childish
+earnestness.
+
+'Why, you are a fair doxy,' he said. He hung his head for some more
+minutes, then he spoke again.
+
+'It is a folly to speak of me as Privy Seal's spy, though I have so
+spoken of myself. For why? It gaineth me worship, maketh men to fear
+me and women to be dazzled by my power. But in truth, I have little
+power.'
+
+'That is the very truth?' she asked.
+
+He nodded nonchalantly and waited again to find very clear words for
+her understanding.
+
+'But, though it be true that I am no spy of Cromwell's, true it is
+also that I am a very poor man who craves very much for money. For I
+love good books that cost much gold; comely women that cost far more;
+succulent meats, sweet wines, high piled fires and warm furs.'
+
+He smacked his lips thinking of these same things.
+
+'I am, in short, no stoic,' he said, 'the stoics being ancient
+curmudgeons that were low-stomached.' Now, he continued, the Old Faith
+he loved well, but not over well; the Protestants he called busy
+knaves, but the New Learning he loved beyond life. Cromwell thwacked
+the Old Faith; he loved him not for that. Cromwell upheld in a sort
+the Protestants; he little loved him for that. 'But the New Learning
+he loveth, and, oh fair sharer of my dreams o' nights, Cromwell
+holdeth the strings of the money-bags.'
+
+She scratched her cheek meditatively, and then unfolded her arms.
+
+'How then ha' ye come by his broad pieces?'
+
+'It is three years since,' he answered, 'that Privy Seal sent for me.
+I had been cast out of my mastership at Eton College, for they
+said--foul liars said--that I had stolen the silver salt-cellars.' He
+had been teaching, for his sins, in the house of the Lord Edmund
+Howard, where he had had his best pupil, but no more salary than what
+his belly could hold of poor mutton. 'So Privy Seal did send for
+me----'
+
+'Kat Howard was thy best pupil?' his wife asked meditatively.
+
+'By the shrine of Saint Eloi--' he commenced to swear.
+
+'Nay, lie not,' she cut him short. 'You love Kat Howard and six other
+wenches. I know it well. What said Privy Seal?'
+
+He meditated again to protest that he loved not Katharine, but her
+quiet stolidity set him to change his mind.
+
+'It was that the Lady Mary of England needed a preceptor, an
+amanuensis, an aid for her studies in the learned language.' For the
+King's Highness' daughter had a great learning and was agate of
+writing a commentary of Plautus his plays. But the Lady Mary hated
+also virulently--and with what cause all men know--the King her
+father. And for years long, since the death of the Queen her
+mother--whom God preserve in Paradise!--for years long the Lady Mary
+had maintained a treasonable correspondence with the King's enemies,
+with the Emperor, with the Bishop of Rome----
+
+'Our Holy Father the Pope,' his wife said, and crossed herself.
+
+'And with this King here of France,' Udal continued, whilst he too
+crossed himself with graceful waves of his brown hand. He continued to
+report that the way in which the Lady Mary sent her letters abroad had
+never been found; that Cromwell had appointed three tutors in
+succession to be aid to the Lady Mary in her studies. Each of these
+three she had broken and cast out from her doors, she being by far the
+more learned, so that, though Privy Seal in his might had seven
+thousand spies throughout the realm of England, he had among them no
+man learned enough to take this place and to spy out the things that
+he would learn.
+
+'Therefore Privy Seal did send for thee, who art accounted the most
+learned doctor in Christendom.' His wife's eyes glowed and her face
+became ruddy with pride in her husband's fame.
+
+The magister waved his hand pleasantly.
+
+'Therefore he did send for me.' Privy Seal had promised him seven
+hundred pounds, farms with sixty pounds by the year, or the headship
+of New College if the magister could discover how the Lady Mary wrote
+her letters abroad.
+
+'So I have stayed three years with the Lady Mary,' Udal said. 'But
+before God,' he asseverated, 'though I have known these twenty-nine
+months that she sent away her letters in the crusts of pudding pies,
+never hath cur Crummock had word of it.'
+
+'A fool he, to set thee to spy upon a petticoat,' she answered
+pleasantly.
+
+'Woman,' he answered hotly, 'crowns I have made by making reports to
+Privy Seal. I have set his men to watch doors and windows where none
+came in or entered; I have reported treasons of men whose heads had
+already fallen by the axe; I have told him of words uttered by maids
+of honour whom he knew full well already miscalled him. Sometimes I
+have had a crown or two from him, sometimes more; but no good man hath
+been hurt by my spying.'
+
+'Husband,' she uttered, with her face set expressionlessly, 'knew ye
+that the Frenchman's cook that made the pudding pies had been taken
+and cast into the Tower gaol?'
+
+Udal's arms flew above his head; his eyes started from their sockets;
+his tongue came forth from his pale mouth to lick his dry lips, and
+his legs failed him so that he sat himself down, wavering from side to
+side in the window-seat.
+
+'Then the commentary of Plautus shall never be written,' he wailed. He
+wrung his hands. 'Whom have they taken else?' he said. 'How knew ye
+these things when I nothing knew? What make of house is this where
+such things be known?'
+
+'Husband,' she answered, 'this house is even an inn. Where many
+travellers pass through, many secrets are known. I know of this cook's
+fate since the fate of cooks is much spoken of in kitchens, and this
+was the cook of a Frenchman, and this is France.'
+
+'Save us, oh pitiful saints!' the magister whispered. 'Who else is
+taken? What more do ye know? Many others have aided. I too. And there
+be friends I love.'
+
+'Husband,' she answered, 'I know no more than this: three days ago the
+cook stood where now you stand----'
+
+He clasped his hair so that his cap fell to the ground.
+
+'Here!' he said. 'But he was in the Tower!'
+
+'He was in the Tower, but stood here free,' she answered. Udal
+groaned.
+
+'Then he hath blabbed. We are lost.'
+
+She answered:
+
+'That may be the truth. But I think it is not. For so the matter is
+that the cook told me.' He was taken and set in the Tower by the men
+of Privy Seal. Yet within ten hours came the men of the King; these
+took him aboard a cogger, the cogger took them to Calais, and at the
+gate of Calais town the King's men kicked him into the country of
+France, he having sworn on oath never more to tread on English soil.
+
+Udal groaned.
+
+'Aye! But what others were taken? What others shall be?'
+
+She shook her head.
+
+The report ran: a boy called Poins, a lady called Elliott, and a lady
+called Howard. Yet all three drank the free air before that day at
+nightfall.
+
+Udal, huddled against the wall, took these blows of fate with a quiver
+for each. In the back of the kitchen the servers, come down from the
+meal of the Cleves envoy, made a great clatter with their dishes of
+pewter and alloy. The hostess, working with her comfortable sway of
+the hips, drove them gently through the door to let a silence fall;
+but gradually Udal's jaw closed, his eyes grew smaller, he started
+suddenly and the muscles of his knees regained their tension. The
+hostess, swishing her many petticoats beneath her, sat down again on
+the stool.
+
+'_Insipiens et infacetus quin sum!_' the magister mused. 'Fool that I
+am! Wherefore see I no clue?' He hung his head; frowned; then started
+anew with his hand on his side.
+
+'Wherefore shall I not read pure joy in this?' he said, 'save that
+Austin waileth: "_Inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos
+strangulat_." I would be joyful--but that I fear.' Norfolk had come
+upon an embassy here; then assuredly Cromwell's power waned, or never
+had this foe of his been sent in this office of honour. The cook was
+cast in the Tower, but set free by the King's men; young Poins was
+cast too, but set free--the Lady Elliott--and the Lady Howard. What
+then? What then?
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'have you naught forgotten?'
+
+Udal, musing with his hand upon his chin, shook his head negligently.
+
+'I keep more track of the King's leman than thou, then,' she said.
+'What was it Longstaffe said of her?'
+
+'Nay,' Udal answered, 'so turned my bowels were with jealousy that
+little I noted.'
+
+'Why, you are a fine spy,' she said. And she repeated to him that
+Longstaffe had reported the King's commanding Katharine and Privy Seal
+to join hands and be friends. Udal shook his head gloomily.
+
+'I would not have my best pupil friends with Cromwell,' he said.
+
+'Oh, magister,' she retorted, with a first touch of scorn in her
+voice; 'have you, who have had so much truck with women, yet to learn
+that you may command a woman to be friends with a man, yet no power on
+earth shall make her love him. Nevertheless, well might Cromwell seek
+to win her love, and thence these pardons.'
+
+Udal started forward upon his tiptoes.
+
+'I must to London!' he cried. She smiled at him as at a child.
+
+'You are come to be of my advice,' she said.
+
+Udal gazed at her with a wondering patronage.
+
+'Why, what a wench it is,' he said, and he crooked his arm around her
+ample waist. His face shone with pleasure. 'Angel!' he uttered; 'for
+Angelos is the Greek for messenger, and signifieth more especially one
+that bringeth good tidings.' Out of all this holus bolus of envoys,
+ambassadors, cooks and prisoners one thing appeared plain to view:
+that, for the first time, _a solis ortus cardine_, Cromwell had
+loosened his grip of some that he held. 'And if Crummock looseneth
+grip, Crummock's power in the land waneth.'
+
+She looked up at him with a coy pleasure.
+
+'Hatest Cromwell then full fell-ly?' she asked.
+
+He put his hands upon her shoulders and solemnly regarded her.
+
+'Woman,' he said; 'this man rideth England with seven thousand spies;
+these three years I have lived in terror of my life. I have had no
+bliss that fear hath not entered into--in very truth _inter delicias
+semper aliquid saevi nos strangulavit_.' His lugubrious tones grew
+higher with hatred; he raised one hand above his head and one gripped
+tight her fat shoulder. 'Terror hath bestridden our realm of England;
+no man dares to whisper his hate even to the rushes. Me! Me! Me!' he
+reached a pitch of high-voiced fury. 'Me! _Virum doctissimum!_ Me, the
+first learned man in Britain, he did force to write a play in the
+vulgar tongue. Me, a master of Latin, to write in English! I had
+pardoned him my terror. I had pardoned him the heads of the good men
+he hath struck off. For that princes should inspire terror is just,
+and that the great ones of the earth should prey one upon the other is
+a thing all history giveth precedent for since the days when Sylla
+hunted to death Marius that sat amidst the ruins of Carthage. But that
+the learned should be put to shame! that good letters should be cast
+into the mire! History showeth no ensample of a man so vile since the
+Emperor Alexander removed his shadow from before the tub of Diogenes.'
+
+'In truth,' she said, blenching a little before his fury, 'I was ever
+one that loved the rolling sound of your Greek and your Roman.'
+
+'Give me my journey money,' he said, 'let me begone to England. For,
+if indeed the Lady Katharine hath the King's ear, much may I aid her
+with my counsels.'
+
+She began to fumble in beneath her apron, and then, as if she
+suddenly remembered herself, she placed her finger upon her lips.
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'I have for you a gift. How it shall value itself
+to you I little know, but I have before been much besought and offered
+high payment for that which now I offer thee. Come.'
+
+The finger still upon her plump lips, she led him to a small door
+behind the chimney stack. They climbed up through cobwebs, ham,
+flitches of smoked beef, and darkness, and the reek of wood-smoke,
+until they came, high up, to a store-room in the slope of a mansard
+roof. Light filtered dimly between the tiles, and many bales and sacks
+lay upon the raftered floor like huge monsters in a huge, dim cave.
+
+'Hearken! make no sound,' she whispered, and in the intense gloom they
+heard a sullen, stertorous, intermittent rumble.
+
+'The envoy sleeps,' she said. She set her eye to a knot-hole in the
+planked wall. ''A sleeps!' she whispered. 'My pigling made a great
+thirst in him. Much wine he drank. Set your eye to the knot-hole.'
+
+With his face glued against the rough wood, the magister could see in
+the large room a great fair man, in a great blue chair behind a
+littered table. His head hung forward, shewed only a pink bald spot in
+the thin hair, and brilliant red ears. A slow rumble of snoring came
+for a long minute, then ceased for as long.
+
+From behind Udal's back came a crash, and he started back to see the
+large woman, who had overturned a chest.
+
+'That is to test how he sleeps,' she said. 'See if he have moved.' The
+man, plain to see through the knot-hole, had stirred no muscle; again
+the heavy rumble of the snore came to them. She spoke quite loudly
+now. 'Why, naught shall wake him these five hours. 'A hath bolted the
+door; thus his secretaries shall not come to him. See now.'
+
+She slid back a board in the wall, and Udal could see into what
+appeared to be a cupboard filled with a litter of papers and of
+parchments. Udal's heart began to beat so that he noted it there; his
+eyes searched hers with a glittering excitement--nevertheless a half
+fear of awakening the envoy kept him from speaking.
+
+'Take them! Take them!' she nudged him with her elbow. 'Six hours ye
+have to read and to copy.'
+
+'What papers are these?' he muttered, his voice thick betwixt
+incredulous joy and fear.
+
+'They be the envoy's papers,' she said; 'doubtless these be his
+letters to the king of this land.... What there may be I know not
+else.'
+
+Udal's hands were in at the hole with the swift clutch of a miser
+visiting his treasure-chest. The woman surveyed him with pleasure and
+with pride in her achievement, and with the calmness of routine she
+fitted a bar across the door of the cupboard where it opened into the
+envoy's room. Udal was fumbling already with the strings of a packet,
+his eyes searching the superscription in the gloom.
+
+'Six hours ye have to read and to copy,' she said happily, 'for, for
+six hours the poppy seed in his wine that he drank shall surely keep
+him snoring.' And, whilst they went again down the stairway, the
+papers secreted beneath the magister's gown, she explained with her
+pride and happiness. The aumbry was so contrived that any envoy or
+secretary sleeping in her best room must needs put his papers therein,
+since there was in the room no other chest that locked. And the King
+of France's chancellors allotted to all envoys her hostelry for a
+lodging; and once there, she made them heavy with wine and poppy seed
+after a receipt she had from an Egyptian, and at the appointed time
+the King of France's men came to read through the papers and to pay
+her much money and many kisses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was six hours later that the magister stood in his own room
+crushing a fillet of papers into the breast of his brown jerkin. The
+hostess, walking always calmly as if disorder of the mind were a thing
+she were a stranger to, had reclimbed the narrow stairway, replaced
+the papers in the envoy's cupboard and returned to her husband. She
+sought, mutely, for commendations, and he gave her them.
+
+'Y'have made me the man that holds the secret of England's future,' he
+said. 'All England that groans beneath Cromwell awaiteth to hear how
+the cat jumps in Cleves. Now I know how the cat jumps in Cleves.'
+
+She wiped the dust from her hands upon her apron.
+
+'See that ye make good use of the knowledge,' she said. She considered
+for a moment whilst he ferreted amongst his clothes in the great black
+press beside the great white bed. 'I have long thought,' she said,
+'that greatly might I be of service to a man of laws and of policies.
+But I have long known that to serve a man is to have little reward
+unless a woman tie him up in fast bonds----' He made one of his broad
+gestures of negation, but she cut in upon his words: 'Aye, so it is. A
+gossip may serve a man how she will, but once his occasion is past he
+shall leave her in the ditch for the first fairer face. So I made
+resolve to make such a man my husband, that his being advanced might
+advance me. For, for sure this shall not be the last spying service I
+shall do thee. Many envoys more shall be lodged in this house and many
+more secrets ye shall learn.'
+
+'Oh beloved Pandora!' he cried; 'opener of all secret places, caskets,
+aumbries, caves of the winds, thrice blessed Sibyl of the keyhole!'
+She nodded her head with grave contentment.
+
+'I chose thee for thy resounding speeches,' she said. Her tranquillity
+and her buxom pleasantness overcame him with sudden affection. He was
+minded to tell her--because indeed she had made his fortunes for
+him--that her marriage to him did not hold good since a friar had read
+the rites.
+
+'I chose thee for thy resounding speeches,' she said, 'and because art
+so ill-clothed i' the ribs. Give me a thin man of policies to move my
+bowels of compassion, say I.' For with her secret closets she might
+make him stand well among the princes, and with her goodly capons set
+grease upon his ribs, poor soul!
+
+'Oh Guenevere!' he said; 'for was it not the queen of Arthur that made
+bag-puddings for his starving knights?'
+
+'Aye,' she said; 'great learning you possess.' A little moisture
+bedewed her blue eyes. 'It grieves me that you must begone. I love to
+hear thy broad o's and a's!'
+
+'Then by all that is fattest in the land hight Cokaigne I will stay
+here, thy dutiful goodman,' he said, and tears filled his own eyes.
+
+'Oh nay,' she answered; 'you shall get yourself into the Chancellery,
+and merry will we feast and devise beneath the gilded roofs.' Her eyes
+sought the brown beams that ceiled the long room. 'I have heard that
+chancellors have always gilded roofs.'
+
+Again the tenderness overcame him for the touch of simple pride in her
+voice. And the confession slipped from his lips:
+
+'Poor befooled soul! Shalt never be a chancellor's dame.'
+
+She was sobbing a little.
+
+'Oh aye,' she said; 'thou shalt yet be chancellor, and I will baste
+thy cooks' ribs an they baste not thy meat full well.' Such a man as
+he would find favour with princes for his glosing tongue--aye, and
+with queens too. At that she covered her face with her apron, and from
+beneath it her voice came forth:
+
+'If this Kat Howard come to be queen, shall not the old faith be
+restored?'
+
+The recollection of this particular certainty affected the magister
+like a stab, for, if the old faith came back, then assuredly marriages
+by friars should again be acknowledged. He cursed himself beneath his
+breath: he was loath to leave the woman in the ditch, her trusting
+face and pleasing ways stirred the strings of his heart. But he was
+more than loath that the wedding should hold a wedding. He shook his
+perplexity from him with starting towards the door.
+
+'Time to be gone!' he said, and added, 'Be certain and take care that
+no Englishman heareth of wedding betwixt thee and me.' It must in
+England work his sure undoing.
+
+She removed her apron and nodded gravely.
+
+'Aye,' she said, 'that is certain enow with Court ladies, such as they
+be to-day.' But she asked that when he went among women she should
+hear nothing of it. For she had had three husbands and several
+courtiers to prove it upon, that it is better to be lied to than to
+know truth.
+
+'There is in the world no woman like to thee!' he said with a great
+sincerity. Once more she nodded.
+
+'Aye, that is the lie that I would hear,' she said. On his part, he
+started suddenly with pain.
+
+'But thee!' he uttered.
+
+'Aye,' she cried again, 'that too is needed. But be very certain of
+this, that not easily will I plant upon thy brow that which most
+husbands wear!' She paused, and once more rubbed her hands. Courteous
+she must be, since her calling called therefor. But assuredly, having
+had three husbands, she had had embraces enow to crave little for men.
+And, if she did that which few good women have a need to--save very
+piteous women in ballads--she would suffer him to belabour her;--she
+nodded again--'And that to a man is a great solace.'
+
+He fled with precipitancy from the thought of this solace, brushing
+through the narrow passages, stalking across the great guest-chamber
+and the greater kitchen where, in the falling dusk, the fires glowed
+red upon the maids' faces and the cooks' aprons, the smoke rose
+unctuously upward tended with rich smells of meat, and the windjacks
+clanked in the chimneys. She trotted behind him, weeping in the
+gloaming.
+
+'If you come to be chancellor in five years,' she whimpered, 'I shall
+come across the seas to ye. If ye fail, this shall be your plenteous
+house.'
+
+Whilst she hung round his neck in the shadowy courtyard and he had
+already one foot in the stirrup, she begged for one more great speech.
+
+'Before Jupiter!' he said, 'I can think of none for crying!'
+
+The big black horse, with its bags before and behind the saddle,
+stirred, so that, standing upon one foot, he fell away from her. But
+he swung astride the saddle, his cloak flying, his long legs clasping
+round the belly. It reared and pawed the twilight mists, but he smote
+it over one ear with his palm, and it stood trembling.
+
+'This is a fine beast y'have given me,' he said, pleasure thrilling
+his limbs.
+
+'I have given it a fine rider!' she cried. He wheeled it near her and
+stooped right down to kiss her face. He was very sure in his saddle,
+having learned the trick of the stirrup from old Rowfant, that had
+taught the King.
+
+'Wife,' he said, 'I have bethought me of this: _Post equitem
+sedet_----' He faltered--'_sedet--Behind the rider sitteth_--But for
+the life of me I know not whether it be _atra cura_ or no.'
+
+And, as he left Paris gates behind him and speeded towards the black
+hills, bending low to face the cold wind of night, for the life of him
+he knew not whether black care sat behind him or no. Only, as night
+came down and he sped forward, he knew that he was speeding for
+England with the great news that the Duke of Cleves was seeking to
+make his peace with the Emperor and the Pope through the mediancy of
+the king of that land and, on the soft road, the hoofs of the horse
+seemed to beat out the rhythm of the words:
+
+'Crummock is down: Cromwell is down. Crummock is down: Cromwell is
+down.'
+
+He rode all through the night thinking of these things, for, because
+he carried letters from the English ambassador to the King of England,
+the gates of no small town could stay his passing through.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Five men talked in the long gallery overlooking the River Thames. It
+was in the Lord Cromwell's house, upon which the April showers fell
+like handsful of peas, with a sifting sound, between showers of
+sunshine that fell themselves like rain, so that at times all the long
+empty gallery was gilded with light and at times it was all saddened
+and frosty. They were talking all, and all with earnestness and
+concern, as all the Court and the city were talking now, of Katharine
+Howard whom the King loved.
+
+The Archbishop leant against one side of a window, close beside him
+his spy Lascelles; the Archbishop's face was round but worn, his large
+eyes bore the trace of sleeplessness, his plump hands were a little
+tremulous within his lawn sleeves.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'we must bow to the breeze. In time to come we may
+stand straight enow.' His eyes seemed to plead with Privy Seal, who
+paced the gallery in short, pursy strides, his plump hands hidden in
+the furs behind his back. Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy, nodded his
+head sagaciously; his yellow hair came from high on his crown and was
+brushed forward towards his brows. He did not speak, being in such
+high company, but looking at him, the Archbishop gained confidence
+from the support of his nod.
+
+'If we needs must go with the Lady Katharine towards Rome,' he pleaded
+again, 'consider that it is but for a short time.' Cromwell passed him
+in his pacing and, unsure of having caught his ear, Cranmer addressed
+himself to Throckmorton and Wriothesley, the two men of forty who
+stood gravely, side by side, fingering their long beards. 'For sure,'
+Cranmer appealed to the three silent men, 'what we must avoid is
+crossing the King's Highness. For his Highness, crossed, hath a swift
+and sudden habit of action.' Wriothesley nodded, and: 'Very sudden,'
+Lascelles allowed himself utterance, in a low voice. Throckmorton's
+eyes alone danced and span; he neither nodded nor spoke, and, because
+he was thought to have a great say in the councils of Privy Seal, it
+was to him that Cranmer once more addressed himself urgently:
+
+'Full-bodied men who are come upon failing years are very prone to
+women. 'Tis a condition of the body, a humour, a malady that passeth.
+But, while it lasteth, it must be bowed to.'
+
+Cromwell, with his deaf face, passed once more before them. He
+addressed himself in brief, sharp tones to Wriothesley:
+
+'You say, in Paris an envoy from Cleves was come a week agone?' and
+passed on.
+
+'It must be bowed to,' Cranmer continued his speech. 'I do maintain
+it. There is no way but to divorce the Queen.' Again Lascelles nodded;
+it was Wriothesley this time who spoke.
+
+'It is a lamentable thing!' and there was a heavy sincerity in his
+utterance, his pose, with his foot weightily upon the ground, being
+that of an honest man. 'But I do think you have the right of it. We,
+and the new faith with us, are between Scylla and Charybdis. For
+certain, our two paths do lie between divorcing the Queen and seeing
+you, great lords, who so well defend us, cast down.'
+
+Coming up behind him, Cromwell placed a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+'Goodly knight,' he said, 'let us hear thy thoughts. His Grace's of
+Canterbury we do know very well. He is for keeping a whole skin!'
+
+Cranmer threw up his hands, and Lascelles looked at the ground.
+Throckmorton's eyes were filled with admiration of this master of his
+that he was betraying now. He muttered in his long, golden beard.
+
+'Pity we must have thy head.'
+
+Wriothesley cleared his throat, and having considered, spoke
+earnestly.
+
+'It is before all things expedient and necessary,' he said, 'that we
+do keep you, my Lord Privy Seal, and you, my Lord of Canterbury, at
+the head of the State.' That was above all necessary. For assuredly
+this land, though these two had brought it to a great pitch of wealth,
+clean living, true faith and prosperity, this land needed my Lord
+Privy Seal before all men to shield it from the treason of the old
+faith. There were many lands now, bringing wealth and commodity to
+the republic, that should soon again revert towards and pay all their
+fruits to Rome; there were many cleaned and whitened churches that
+should again hear the old nasty songs and again be tricked with
+gewgaws of the idolaters. Therefore, before all things, my Lord Privy
+Seal must retain the love of the King's Highness---- Cromwell, who had
+resumed his pacing, stayed for a moment to listen.
+
+'Wherefore brought ye not news of why Cleves' envoy came to Paris
+town?' he said pleasantly. 'All the door turneth upon that hinge.'
+
+Wriothesley stuttered and reddened.
+
+'What gold could purchase, I purchased of news,' he said. 'But this
+envoy would not speak; his knaves took my gold and had no news. The
+King of France's men----'
+
+'Oh aye,' Cromwell continued; 'speak on about the other matter.'
+
+Wriothesley turned his slow mind from his vexation in Paris, whence he
+had come a special journey to report of the envoy from Cleves. He
+spoke again swiftly, turning right round to Cromwell.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'study above all to please the King. For unless you
+guide us we are lost indeed.'
+
+Cromwell worked his lips one upon another and moved a hand.
+
+'Aye,' Wriothesley continued; 'it can be done only by bringing the
+King's Highness and the Lady Katharine to a marriage.'
+
+'Only by that?' Cromwell asked enigmatically.
+
+Throckmorton spoke at last:
+
+'Your lordship jests,' he said; 'since the King is not a man, but a
+high and beneficent prince with a noble stomach.'
+
+Cromwell tapped him upon the cheek.
+
+'That you do see through a millstone I know,' he said. 'But I was
+minded to hear how these men do think. You and I do think alike.'
+
+'Aye, my lord,' Throckmorton answered boldly. 'But in ten minutes I
+must be with the Lady Katharine, and I am minded to hear the upshot of
+this conference.'
+
+Cromwell laughed at him sunnily:
+
+'Go and do your message with the lady. An you hasten, you may return
+ere ever this conference ends, since slow wits like ours need a store
+of words to speak their minds with.'
+
+Lascelles, the silent spy of the archbishop, devoured with envious
+eyes Throckmorton's great back and golden beard. For his life he dared
+not speak three words unbidden in this company. But Throckmorton being
+gone the discussion renewed itself, Wriothesley speaking again.
+
+He voiced always the same ideas, for the same motives: Cromwell must
+maintain his place at the cost of all things, for the sake of all
+these men who leaned upon him. And it was certain that the King loved
+this lady. If he had sent her few gifts and given her no titles nor
+farms, it was because--either of nature or to enhance the King's
+appetite--she shewed a prudish disposition. But day by day and week in
+week out the King went with his little son in his times of ease to the
+rooms of the Lady Mary. And there he went, assuredly, not to see the
+glum face of the daughter that hated him, but to converse in Latin
+with his daughter's waiting-maid of honour. All the Court knew this.
+Who there had not seen how the King smiled when he came new from the
+Lady Mary's rooms? He was heavy enow at all other times. This fair
+woman that hated alike the new faith and all its ways had utterly
+bewitched and enslaved the King's eyes, ears and understanding. If the
+King would have Katharine Howard his wife the King must have her. Anne
+of Cleves must be sent back to Germany; Cromwell must sue for peace
+with the Howard wench; a way must be found to bribe her till the King
+tired of her; then Katharine must go in her turn, once more Cromwell
+would have his own, and the Protestants be reinstated. Cromwell
+retained his silence; at the last he uttered his unfailing words with
+which he closed all these discussions:
+
+'Well, it is a great matter.'
+
+The gusts of rain and showers of sun pursued each other down the
+river; the lights and shadows succeeded upon the cloaked and capped
+shapes of the men who huddled their figures together in the tall
+window. At last the Archbishop lost his patience and cried out:
+
+'What will you _do_? What will you _do_?'
+
+Cromwell swung his figure round before him.
+
+'I will discover what Cleves will do in this matter,' he said. 'All
+dependeth therefrom.'
+
+'Nay; make a peace with Rome,' Cranmer uttered suddenly. 'I am weary
+of these strivings.'
+
+But Wriothesley clenched his fist.
+
+'Before ye shall do that I will die, and twenty thousand others!'
+
+Cranmer quailed.
+
+'Sir,' he temporised. 'We will give back to the Bishop of Rome nothing
+that we have taken of property. But the Bishop of Rome may have
+Peter's Pence and the deciding of doctrines.'
+
+'Canterbury,' Wriothesley said, 'I had rather Antichrist had his old
+goods and gear in this realm than the handling of our faith.'
+
+Cromwell drew in the air through his nostrils, and still smiled.
+
+'Be sure the Bishop of Rome shall have no more gear and no more
+guidance of this realm than his Highness and I need give,' he said.
+'No stranger shall have any say in the councils of this realm.' He
+smiled noiselessly again. 'Still and still, all turneth upon Cleves.'
+
+For the first time Lascelles spoke:
+
+'All turneth upon Cleves,' he said.
+
+Cromwell surveyed him, narrowing his eyes.
+
+'Speak you now of your wisdom,' he uttered with neither friendliness
+nor contempt. Lascelles caressed his shaven chin and spoke:
+
+'The King's Highness I have observed to be a man for women--a man who
+will give all his goods and all his gear to a woman. Assuredly he will
+not take this woman to his leman; his princely stomach revolteth
+against an easy won mastership. He will pay dear, he will pay his
+crown to win her. Yet the King would not give his policies. Neither
+would he retrace his steps for a woman's sake unless Fate too cried
+out that he must.'
+
+Cromwell nodded his head. It pleased him that this young man set a
+virtue sufficiently high upon his prince.
+
+'Sirs,' he said, 'daily have I seen this King in ten years, and I do
+tell ye no man knoweth how the King loves kingcraft as I know.' He
+nodded again to Lascelles, whose small stature seemed to gain bulk,
+whose thin voice seemed to gain volume from this approval and from his
+'Speak on. About Cleves.'
+
+'Sirs,' Lascelles spoke again, 'whiles there remains the shade of a
+chance that Cleves' Duke shall lead the princes of Germany against the
+Emperor and France, assuredly the King shall stay his longing for the
+Lady Katharine. He shall stay firm in his marriage with the Queen.'
+Again Cromwell nodded. 'Till then it booteth little to move towards a
+divorce; but if that day should come, then our Lord Privy Seal must
+bethink himself. That is in our lord's mind.'
+
+'By Bacchus!' Cromwell said, 'your Grace of Canterbury hath a jewel in
+your crony and helper. And again I say, we must wait upon Cleves.' He
+seemed to pursue the sunbeams along the gallery, then returned to say:
+
+'I know ye know I love little to speak my mind. What I think or how I
+will act I keep to myself. But this I will tell you:' Cleves might
+have two minds in sending to France an envoy. On the one hand, he
+might be minded to abandon Henry and make submission to the Emperor
+and to Rome. For, in the end, was not the Duke of Cleves a vassal of
+the Emperor? It might be that. Or it might be that he was sending
+merely to ask the King of France to intercede betwixt him and his
+offended lord. The Emperor was preparing to wage war upon Cleves. That
+was known. And doubtless Cleves, desiring to retain his friendship
+with Henry, might have it in mind to keep friends with both. There
+the matter hinged, Cromwell repeated. For, if Cleves remained loyal to
+the King of England, Henry would hear nothing of divorcing Cleves'
+sister, and would master his desire for Katharine.
+
+'Believe me when I speak,' Cromwell added earnestly. 'Ye do wrong to
+think of this King as a lecher after the common report. He is a man
+very continent for a king. His kingcraft cometh before all women. If
+the Duke of Cleves be firm friend to him, firm friend he will be to
+the Duke's sister. The Lady Howard will be his friend, but the Lady
+Howard will be neither his leman nor his guide to Rome. He will please
+her if he may. But his kingcraft. Never!' He broke off and laughed
+noiselessly at the Archbishop's face of dismay. 'Your Grace would make
+a pact with Rome?' he asked.
+
+'Why, these are very evil times,' Cranmer answered. 'And if the Bishop
+of Rome will give way to us, why may we not give pence to the Bishop
+of Rome?'
+
+'Goodman,' Cromwell answered, 'these are evil times because we men are
+evil.' He pulled a paper from his belt. 'Sirs,' he said, 'will ye know
+what manner of woman this Katharine Howard is?' and to their murmurs
+of assent: 'This lady hath asked to speak with me. Will ye hear her
+speak? Then bide ye here. Throckmorton is gone to seek her.'
+
+
+V
+
+
+Katharine Howard sat in her own room; it had in it little of
+sumptuousness, for all the King so much affected her. It was the room
+she had first had at Hampton after coming to be maid to the King's
+daughter, and it had the old, green hangings that had always been
+round the walls, the long oak table, the box-bed set in the wall, the
+high chair and the three stools round the fire. The only thing she had
+taken of the King was a curtain in red cloth to hang on a rod before
+the door where was a great draught, the leading of the windows being
+rotted. She had lived so poor a life, her father having been a very
+poor lord with many children--she was so attuned to flaws of the wind,
+ill-feeding and harsh clothes, that such a tall room as she there had
+seemed goodly enough for her. Barely three months ago she had come to
+the palace of Greenwich riding upon a mule. Now accident, or maybe the
+design of the dear saints, had set her so high in the King's esteem
+that she might well try a fall with Privy Seal.
+
+She sat there dressed, awaiting the summons to go to him. She wore a
+long dress of red velvet, worked around the breast-lines with little
+silver anchors and hearts, and her hood was of black lawn and fell
+near to her hips behind. And she had read and learned by heart
+passages from Plutarch, from Tacitus, from Diodorus Siculus, from
+Seneca and from Tully, each one inculcating how salutary a thing in a
+man was the love of justice. Therefore she felt herself well prepared
+to try a fall with the chief enemy of her faith, and awaited with
+impatience his summons to speak with him. For she was anxious, now at
+last, to speak out her mind, and Privy Seal's agents had worked upon
+the religious of a poor little convent near her father's house a wrong
+so baleful that she could no longer contain herself. Either Privy Seal
+must redress or she must go to the King for justice to these poor
+women that had taught her the very elements of virtue and lay now in
+gaol.
+
+So she spoke to her two chief friends, her that had been Cicely
+Elliott and her old husband Rochford, the knight of Bosworth Hedge.
+They happened in upon her just after she was attired and had sent her
+maid to fetch her dinner from the buttery.
+
+'Three months agone,' she said, 'the King's Highness did bid me cease
+from crying out upon Privy Seal; and not the King's Highness' self can
+say that in that time I have spoken word against the Lord Cromwell.'
+
+Cicely Elliott, who dressed, in spite of her new wedding, all in black
+for the sake of some dead men, laughed round at her from her little
+stool by the fire.
+
+'God help you! that must have been hard, to keep thy tongue from the
+flail of all Papists.'
+
+The old knight, who was habited like Katharine, all in red, because at
+that season the King favoured that colour, pulled nervously at his
+little goat's beard, for all conversations that savoured of politics
+and religion were to him very fearful. He stood back against the green
+hangings and fidgeted with his feet.
+
+But Katharine, who for the love of the King had been silent, was now
+set to speak her mind.
+
+'It is Seneca,' she said, 'who tells us to have a check upon our
+tongues, but only till the moment approaches to speak.'
+
+'Aye, goodman Seneca!' Cicely laughed round at her. Katharine smoothed
+her hair, but her eyes gleamed deeply.
+
+'The moment approaches,' she said; 'I do like my King, but better I
+like my Church.' She swallowed in her throat. 'I had thought,' she
+said, 'that Privy Seal would stay his harryings of the goodly nuns in
+this land.' But now she had a petition, come that day from Lincoln
+gaol. Cromwell's servants were more bitter still than ever against the
+religious. Here was a false accusation of treason against her
+foster-mother's self. 'I will soon end it or mend it, or lose mine own
+head,' Katharine ended.
+
+'Aye, pull down Cur Crummock,' Cicely said. 'I think the King shall
+not long stay away from thy desires.'
+
+The old knight burst in:
+
+'I take it ill that ye speak of these things. I take it ill. I will
+not have 'ee lose thy head in these quarrels.'
+
+'Husband,' Cicely laughed round at him, 'three years ago Cur Crummock
+had the heads of all my menfolk, having sworn they were traitors.'
+
+'The more reason that he have not mine and thine now,' the old knight
+answered grimly. 'I am not for these meddlings in things that concern
+neither me nor thee.'
+
+Cicely Elliott set her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her
+knuckles. She gazed into the fire and grew moody, as was her wont
+when she had chanced to think of her menfolk that Cromwell had
+executed.
+
+'He might have had my head any day this four years,' she said. 'And
+had you lost my head and me you might have had any other maid any day
+that se'nnight.'
+
+'Nay, I grow too old,' the knight answered. 'A week ago I dropped my
+lance.'
+
+Cicely continued to gaze at nothings in the fire.
+
+'For thee,' she said scornfully to Katharine, 'it were better thou
+hadst never been born than have meddled between kings and ministers
+and faiths and nuns. You are not made for this world. You talk too
+much. Get you across the seas to a nunnery.'
+
+Katharine looked at her pitifully.
+
+'Child,' she said, 'it was not I that spoke of thy menfolk.'
+
+'Get thyself mewed up,' Cicely repeated more hotly; 'thou wilt set all
+this world by the ears. This is no place for virtues learned from
+learned books. This is an ill world where only evil men flourish.'
+
+The old knight still fidgeted to be gone.
+
+'Nay,' Katharine said seriously, 'ye think I will work mine own
+advantage with the King. But I do swear to thee I have it not in my
+mind.'
+
+'Oh, swear not,' Cicely mumbled, 'all the world knoweth thee to be
+that make of fool.'
+
+'I would well to get me made a nun--but first I will bring nunneries
+back from across the seas to this dear land.'
+
+Cicely laughed again--for a long and strident while.
+
+'You will come to no nunnery if you wait till then,' she said. 'Nuns
+without their heads have no vocation.'
+
+'When Cromwell is down, no woman again shall lose her head,' Katharine
+answered hotly.
+
+Cicely only laughed.
+
+'No woman again!' Katharine repeated.
+
+'Blood was tasted when first a queen fell on Tower Hill.' Cicely
+pointed her little finger at her. 'And the taste of blood, even as the
+taste of wine, ensureth a certain oblivion.'
+
+'You miscall your King,' Katharine said.
+
+Cicely laughed and answered: 'I speak of my world.'
+
+Katharine's blood came hot to her cheeks.
+
+'It is a new world from now on,' she answered proudly.
+
+'Till a new queen's blood seal it an old one,' Cicely mocked her
+earnestness. 'Hadst best get thee to a nunnery across the seas.'
+
+'The King did bid me bide here.' Katharine faltered in the least.
+
+'You have spoken of it with him?' Cicely said. 'Why, God help you!'
+
+Katharine sat quietly, her fair hair gilded by the pale light of the
+gusty day, her lips parted a little, her eyelids drooping. It behoved
+her to move little, for her scarlet dress was very nice in its
+equipoise, and fain she was to seem fine in Privy Seal's eyes.
+
+'This King hath a wife to his tail,' Cicely mocked her.
+
+The old knight had recovered his quiet; he had his hand upon his
+haunch, and spoke with his air of wisdom:
+
+'I would have you to cease these talkings of dangerous things,' he
+said. 'I am Rochford of Bosworth Hedge. I have kept my head and my
+lands, and my legs from chains--and how but by leaving to talk of
+dangerous things?'
+
+Katharine moved suddenly in her chair. This speech, though she had
+heard it a hundred times before, struck her now as so craven that she
+forgot alike her desire to keep fine and her friendship for the old
+man's new wife.
+
+'Aye, you have been a coward all your life,' she said: for were not
+her dear nuns in Lincoln gaol, and this was a knight that should have
+redressed wrongs!
+
+Old Rochford smiled with his air of tranquil wisdom and corpulent age.
+
+'I have struck good blows,' he said. 'There have been thirteen ballads
+writ of me.'
+
+'You have kept so close a tongue,' Katharine said to him hotly, 'that
+I know not what you love. Be you for the old faith, or for this Church
+of devils that Cromwell hath set up in the land? Did you love Queen
+Katharine or Queen Anne Boleyn? Were you glad when More died, or did
+you weep? Are you for the Statute of Users, or would you end it? Are
+you for having the Lady Mary called bastard--God pardon me the
+word!--or would you defend her with your life?--I do not know. I have
+spoken with you many times--but I do not know.'
+
+Old Rochford smiled contentedly.
+
+'I have saved my head and my lands in these perilous times by letting
+no man know,' he said.
+
+'Aye,' Katharine met his words with scorn and appeal. 'You have kept
+your head on your shoulders and the rent from your lands in your poke.
+But oh, sir, it is certain that, being a man, you love either the new
+ways or the old; it is certain that, being a spurred knight, you
+should love the old ways. Sir, bethink you and take heed of this: that
+the angels of God weep above England, that the Mother of God weeps
+above England; that the saints of God do weep--and you, a spurred
+knight, do wield a good sword. Sir, when you stand before the gates of
+Heaven, what shall you answer the warders thereof?'
+
+'Please God,' the old knight answered, 'that I have struck some good
+blows.'
+
+'Aye; you have struck blows against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But
+the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their
+kind--the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against
+the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province
+of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but--and how
+much the more?--against the foes of his God.'
+
+In the full flow of her speaking there came in the great, blonde
+Margot Poins, her body-maid. She led by the hand the Magister Udal,
+and behind them followed, with his foxy eyes and long, smooth beard,
+the spy Throckmorton, vivid in his coat of green and scarlet
+stockings. And, at the antipathy of his approach, Katharine's emotions
+grew the more harrowing--as if she were determined to shew this evil
+supporter of her cause how a pure fight should be waged. They moved
+on tiptoe and stood against the hangings at the back.
+
+She stretched out her hands to the old knight.
+
+'Here you be in a pitiful and afflicted land from which the saints
+have been driven out; have you struck one blow for the saints of God?
+Nay, you have held your peace. Here you be where good men have been
+sent to the block: have you decried their fates? You have seen noble
+and beloved women, holy priests, blessed nuns defiled and martyred;
+you have seen the poor despoiled; you have seen that knaves ruled by
+aid of the devil about a goodly king. Have you struck one blow? Have
+you whispered one word?'
+
+The colour rushed into Margot Poins' huge cheeks. She kept her mouth
+open to drink in her mistress's words, and Throckmorton waved his
+hands in applause. Only Udal shuffled in his broken-toed shoes, and
+old Rochford smiled benignly and tapped his chest above the chains.
+
+'I have struck good blows in the quarrels that were mine,' he
+answered.
+
+Katharine wrung her hands.
+
+'Sir, I have read it in books of chivalry, the province of a knight is
+to succour the Church of God, to defend the body of God, to set his
+lance in rest for the Mother of God; to defend noble men cast down,
+and noble women; to aid holy priests and blessed nuns; to succour the
+despoiled poor.'
+
+'Nay, I have read no books of chivalry,' the old man answered; 'I
+cannot read.'
+
+'Ah, there be pitiful things in this world,' Katharine said, and her
+chest was troubled.
+
+'You should quote Hesiodus,' Cicely mocked her suddenly from her
+stool. 'I marked this text when all my menfolk were slain: [Greek:
+pleiê men gar gaia, pleiê de thalassa] so I have laughed ever since.'
+
+Upon her, too, Katharine turned.
+
+'You also,' she said; 'you also.'
+
+'No, before God, I am no coward,' Cicely Elliott said. 'When all my
+menfolk were slain by the headsman something broke in my head, and
+ever since I have laughed. But before God, in my way I have tried to
+plague Cromwell. If he would have had my head he might have.'
+
+'Yet what hast thou done for the Church of God?' Katharine said.
+
+Cicely Elliott sprang to the floor and raised her hands with such
+violence that Throckmorton moved swiftly forward.
+
+'What did the Church of God for me?' she cried. 'Guard your face from
+my nails ere you ask me that again. I had a father; I had two
+brothers; I had two men I loved passing well. They all died upon one
+day upon the one block. Did the saints of God save them? Go see their
+heads upon the gates of York?'
+
+'But if they died for God His pitiful sake,' Katharine said--'if they
+did die in the quarrel of God's wounds----'
+
+Cicely Elliott screamed, with her hands above her head.
+
+'Is that not enow? Is that not enow?'
+
+'Then it is I, not thou, that love them,' Katharine said; 'for I, not
+thou, shall carry on the work for which they died.'
+
+'Oh gaping, pink-faced fool!' Cicely Elliott sneered at her.
+
+She began to laugh, holding her black sides in, her face thrown back.
+Then she closed her mouth and stood smiling.
+
+'You were made for a preacher, coney,' she said. 'Fine to hear thee
+belabouring my old, good knight with doughty words.'
+
+'Gibe as thou wilt; scream as thou wilt----' Katharine began. Cicely
+Elliott tossed in on her words:
+
+'My head ached so. I had the right of it to scream. I cannot be minded
+of my menfolk but my head will ache. But I love thy fine preaching.
+Preach on.'
+
+Katharine raised herself from her chair.
+
+'Words there must be that will move thee,' she said, 'if God will give
+them to me.'
+
+'God hath withdrawn Himself from this world,' Cicely answered. 'All
+mankind goeth a-mumming.'
+
+'It was another thing that Polycrates said.' Katharine, in spite of
+her emotion, was quick to catch the misquotation.
+
+'Coney,' Cicely Elliott answered, 'all men wear masks; all men lie;
+all men desire the goods of all men and seek how they may get them.'
+
+'But Cromwell being down, these things shall change,' Katharine
+answered. '_Res, aetas, usus, semper aliquid apportent novi._'
+
+Cicely Elliott fell back into her chair and laughed.
+
+'What are we amongst that multitude?' she said. 'Listen to me: When my
+menfolk were cast to die, I flew to Gardiner to save them. Gardiner
+would not speak. Now is he Bishop of Winchester--for he had goods of
+my father's, and greased with them the way to his bishop's throne.
+Fanshawe is a goodly Papist; but Cromwell hath let him have goods of
+the Abbey of Bright. Will Fanshawe help thee to bring back the Church?
+Then he must give up his lands. Will Cranmer help thee? Will Miners?
+Coney, I loved Federan, a true man: Miners hath his land to-day, and
+Federan's mother starves. Will Miners help thee to gar the King do
+right? Then the mother of my love Federan must have Miners' land and
+the rents for seven years. Will Cranmer serve thee to bring back the
+Bishop of Rome? Why, Cranmer would burn.'
+
+'But the poorer sort----' Katharine said.
+
+'There is no man will help thee whose help will avail,' Cicely mocked
+at her. 'For hear me: No man now is up in the land that hath not goods
+of the Church; fields of the abbeys; spoons made of the parcel gilt
+from the shrines. There is no rich man now but is rich with stolen
+riches; there is no man now up that was not so set up. And the men
+that be down have lost their heads. Go dig in graves to find men that
+shall help thee.'
+
+'Cromwell shall fall ere May goeth out,' Katharine said.
+
+'Well, the King dotes upon thy sweet face. But Cromwell being down,
+there will remain the men he hath set up. Be they lovers of the old
+faith, or thee? Now, thy pranks will ruin all alike.'
+
+'The King is minded to right these wrongs,' Katharine protested hotly.
+
+'The King! The King!' Cicely laughed. 'Thou lovest the King.... Nay an
+thou lovest the King.... But to be enamoured of the King.... And the
+King enamoured of thee ... why, this pair of lovers cast adrift upon
+the land----'
+
+Katharine said:
+
+'Belike I am enamoured of the King: belike the King of me, I do not
+know. But this I know: he and I are minded to right the wrongs of
+God.'
+
+Cicely Elliott opened her eyes wide.
+
+'Why, thou art a very infectious fanatic!' she said. 'You may well do
+these things. But you must shed much blood. You must widow many men's
+wives. Body of God! I believe thou wouldst.'
+
+'God forbid it!' Katharine said. 'But if He so willeth it, _fiat
+voluntas_.'
+
+'Why, spare no man,' Cicely answered. 'Thou shalt not very easily
+escape.'
+
+It was at this point that the magister was moved to keep no longer
+silence.
+
+'Now, by all the gods of high Olympus!' he cried out, 'such things
+shall not be alleged against me. For I do swear, before Venus and all
+the saints, that I am your man.'
+
+Nevertheless, it was Margot Poins, wavering between her love for her
+magister and her love for her mistress, that most truly was carried
+away by Katharine's eloquence.
+
+'Mistress,' she said, and she indicated both the magister and his tall
+and bearded companion, 'these two have made up a pretty plot upon the
+stairs. There are in it papers from Cleves and a matter of deceiving
+Privy Seal and thou shouldst be kept in ignorance asking to--to----'
+
+Her gruff voice failed and her blushes overcame her, so that she
+wanted for a word. But upon the mention of papers and Privy Seal the
+old knight fidgeted and faltered:
+
+'Why, let us begone.' Cicely Elliott glanced from one to the other of
+them with a malicious glee, and Throckmorton's eyes blinked
+sardonically above his beard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It had been actually upon the stairs that he had come upon the
+magister, newly down from his horse, and both stiff and bruised, with
+Margot Poins hanging about his neck and begging him to spare her a
+moment. Throckmorton crept up the dark stairway with his shoes soled
+with velvet. The magister was seeking to disengage himself from the
+girl with the words that he had a treaty form of the Duke of Cleves in
+his bosom and must hasten on the minute to give it to her mistress.
+
+'Before God!' Throckmorton had said behind his back, 'ye will do no
+such thing,' and Udal had shrieked out like a rabbit caught by a
+ferret in its bury. For here he had seemed to find himself caught by
+the chief spy of Privy Seal upon a direct treason against Privy Seal's
+self.
+
+But, dragging alike the terrified magister and the heavy, blonde girl
+who clung to him out from the dark stairhead into the corridor, where,
+since no one could come upon them unseen or unheard, it was the safest
+place in the palace to speak, Throckmorton had whispered into his ear
+a long, swift speech in which he minced no matters at all.
+
+The time, he said, was ripe to bring down Privy Seal. He
+himself--Throckmorton himself--loved Kat Howard with a love compared
+to which the magister's was a rushlight such as you bought fifty for a
+halfpenny. Privy Seal was ravening for a report of that treaty. They
+must, before all things, bring him a report that was false. For, for
+sure, upon that report Privy Seal would act, and, if they brought him
+a false report, Privy Seal would act falsely.
+
+Udal stood perfectly still, looking at nothing, his thin brown hand
+clasped round his thin brown chin.
+
+'But, above all,' Throckmorton had concluded, 'show ye no papers to
+Kat Howard. For it is very certain that she will have no falsehoods
+employed to bring down Privy Seal, though she hate him as the
+Assyrian cockatrice hateth the symbol of the Cross.'
+
+'Sir Throckmorton,' Margot Poins had uttered, 'though ye be a paid
+spy, ye speak true words there.'
+
+He pulled his beard and blinked at her.
+
+'I am minded to reform,' he said. 'Your mistress hath worked a miracle
+of conversion in me.'
+
+She shrugged her great fair shoulders at this, and spoke to the
+magister:
+
+'It is very true,' she said, 'that this spying knight affects my
+mistress. But whether it be for the love of virtue, or for the love of
+her body, or because the cat jumps that way and there he observeth
+fortune to rise, I leave to God who reads all hearts.'
+
+'There speaks a wench brought up and taught by Protestants,'
+Throckmorton gibed pleasantly at her; 'or ye have caught the trick of
+Kat Howard, who, though she be a Papist as good as I, yet prates
+virtue like a Lutheran.'
+
+'Ye lie!' Margot said; 'my mistress getteth her virtue from good
+letters.'
+
+Throckmorton smiled at her again.
+
+'Wench,' he said, 'in all save doctrine, this Kat Howard and her
+learning are nearer Lutheran than of the old faith.'
+
+With his malice he set himself to bewilder Margot. They made a little,
+shadowy knot in the long corridor. For he wished to give Udal, who in
+his long gown stood deaf-faced, like a statue of contemplation, the
+time to come to a conclusion.
+
+'Why, you are a very mean wag,' Margot said. 'I have heard my
+uncle--who is, as ye wot, a Protestant and a printer--I have heard him
+speak of Luther and of Bucer and of the word of God and suchlike
+canting books, but never once of Seneca and Tully, that my mistress
+loves.'
+
+'Why, ye are learning the trick of tongues,' Throckmorton mocked.
+'Please God, when your mistress cometh to be Queen--may He send it
+soon!--there shall be such a fashion and contagion of talking----'
+
+Having his eyes on Udal, he broke off suddenly, and said with a harsh
+sharpness:
+
+'I have given you time to make a resolution. Speak quickly. Will you
+come into our boat with us that will bring down Privy Seal?'
+
+Udal winced, but Throckmorton held him by the wrist.
+
+'Then unpouch quickly thy Cleves papers,' he said; 'we have but a
+little time to turn them round.'
+
+Udal's thin hand sought nervously the opening of his jerkin beneath
+his gown: he drew it back, moved it forward again, and stood quivering
+with doubt.
+
+Throckmorton stood vaingloriously back upon his feet and combed his
+great beard with his white fingers.
+
+'Magister,' he uttered triumphantly, 'well you wot that such a man as
+you cannot plot for himself alone; you will make naught of your
+treasure trove save a cleft neck!'
+
+And, furtively, cringing back into the dark hangings, a bent, broken
+figure like a miser unpouching his gold, Udal undid his breast
+lacings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was hot from this colloquy that Margot Poins had led the two men in
+upon her mistress in her large dim room. Because she hated the great
+spy, since he loved Kat Howard and had undone many good men with false
+tales, she had not been able to keep her tongue from seeking to wound
+him.
+
+'Ye are too true to mix in plots,' she brought out gruffly.
+
+Cicely Rochford came close to Katharine and measured her neck with the
+span of her small hand.
+
+'There is room!' she said. 'Hast a long and a straight neck.'
+
+Her husband muttered that he liked not these talkings. By diligent
+avoidance of such, he had kept his own hair and neck uncut in
+troublesome times.
+
+'I will take thee to another place,' Cicely threw at him over her
+shoulder. 'Shalt kiss me in a dark room. It is very certain maids'
+talk is no fit hearing for thy jolly old ears.'
+
+She took him delicately at the end of his short white beard between
+her long finger and thumb, and, with her high and mincing step, led
+him through the door.
+
+'God save this room, where all the virtues bide!' she cried out, and
+drew her overskirt closer to her as she passed near the great, bearded
+spy.
+
+Katharine turned and faced Throckmorton.
+
+It is even as the maid saith,' she uttered. 'I am too true to mix in
+plots.'
+
+'Neither will ye give us to death!' Throckmorton faced her back so
+that she paused for breath, and the pause lasted a full minute.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I do give you a fair and a full warning that, if you
+do plot against Privy Seal, and if knowledge of your plotting cometh
+to mine ears--though I ask not to know of them--I will tell of your
+plottings----'
+
+'Oh, before God!' Udal cried out, 'I have suckled you with learned
+writers; I have carried letters for you; will you give me to die?' and
+Margot wailed from a deep chest: 'The magister so well hath loved
+thee. Give him not into die hands of Cur Crummock!--would I had never
+told thee that they plotted!'
+
+'Fool!' Throckmorton said; 'it is to the King she will go with her
+tales.' He sat down upon her yellow-wood table and swung one crimson
+leg before the other, laughing gleefully at Katharine's astonished
+face.
+
+'Sir,' she said at last; 'it is true that I will go, not to my lord
+Privy Seal, but to the King.'
+
+Throckmorton held up one of his white hands to the light and, with the
+other, smoothed down its little finger.
+
+'See you?' he gibed softly at Margot. 'How better I guess this thing,
+mistress, than thou. For I do know her better.'
+
+Katharine looked at him with a soft glance and said pitifully:
+
+'Nevertheless, what shall it profit thee if I take a tale of thy
+treasons to the King's Highness?'
+
+Throckmorton sprang from the table and clapped his heels together on
+the floor.
+
+'It shall get me made an earl,' he said. 'The King will do that much
+for the man that shall rid him of his minister.' He reflected foxily
+and for a quick moment. 'Before God!' he said,'take this tale to the
+King, for it is the true tale: That the Duke of Cleves seeks, in
+France, to have done with his alliance. He will no more cleave to his
+brother-in-law, but will make submission to the Emperor and to Rome!'
+
+He paused, and then finished:
+
+'For that news the King shall love you much more than before. But God
+help me! it takes thee the more out of my reach!'
+
+As they left the room to go to the audience with Cromwell, Katharine,
+squaring the frills of her hood behind her back, could hear Margot
+Poins grumbling to the magister:
+
+'After these long days ye ha' time for five minutes to hold my hand,'
+and the magister, perturbed and fumbling in his bosom, muttered:
+
+'Nay, I have no minutes now. I must write much in Latin ere thy
+mistress return.'
+
+
+VI
+
+
+'By God,' Wriothesley said when she entered the long gallery where the
+men were. 'This is a fair woman!'
+
+She had command of her features, and her eyes were upon the ground; it
+was a part of a woman's upbringing to walk well, and her masters had
+so taught her when she had lived with her grandmother, the old
+duchess. Not the tips of her shoes shewed beneath the zigzag folds of
+her russet-brown underskirt; the tips of her scarlet sleeves netted
+with gold touched the waxed wood of the floor; her hood fell behind to
+the ground, and her fair hair was golden where the sunlight fell on it
+with a last, watery ray.
+
+Upon Privy Seal she raised her eyes; she bent her knees so that her
+gown spread out all around her when she curtsied, and, having arranged
+it with a slow hand, she came to her height again, rustling as if she
+rose from a wave.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I come to pray you to right a great wrong done by
+your servants.'
+
+'By God!' Wriothesley said, 'she speaks high words.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' Cromwell answered--and his eyes graciously dwelt upon
+her tall form. She had clasped her hands before her lap and looked
+into his face. 'Madam Howard, you are more learned in the better
+letters than I; but I would have you call to memory one Pancrates, of
+whom telleth Lucian. Being in a desert or elsewhere, this magician
+could turn sticks, stocks and stakes into servants that did his will.
+Mark you, they did his will--no more and no less.'
+
+'Sir,' Katharine said, 'ye have better servants than ever had
+Pancrates. They do more than your behests.'
+
+Cromwell bent his back, stretched aside his white hand and smiled
+still.
+
+'Ye trow truth,' he said. 'Yet ye do me wrong; for had I the servants
+of Pancrates, assuredly he should hear no groans of injustice from men
+of good will.'
+
+'It is too good hearing,' Katharine said gravely. 'This is my
+tale----'
+
+Once before she had trembled in this man's presence, and still she had
+a catching in the throat as her eyes measured his face. She was mad to
+do right and to right wrongs, yet in his presence the doing of the
+right, the righting of wrongs, seemed less easy than when she stood
+before any other man. 'Sir,' she uttered, 'I have thought ye have done
+ill afore now. I am nowise certain that ye thought your ill-doing an
+evil. I beseech you for a patient hearing.'
+
+But, though she told her story well--and it was an old story that she
+had learned by heart--she could not be rid of the feeling that this
+was a less easy matter than it had seemed to her, to call Cromwell
+accursed. She had a moving tale of wrongs done by Cromwell's servant,
+Dr Barnes, a visitor of a church in Lincolnshire near where her home
+had been. For the lands had been taken from a little priory upon an
+excuse that the nuns lived a lewd life; and so well had she known the
+nuns, going in and out of the convent every week-day, that well she
+knew the falseness of Cromwell's servant's tale.
+
+'Sir,' she said to Cromwell, 'mine own foster-sister had the veil
+there; mine own mother's sister was there the abbess.' She stretched
+out a hand. 'Sir, they dwelled there simply and godly, withdrawn from
+the world; succouring the poor; weaving of fine linens, for much flax
+grew upon those lands by there; and praying God and the saints that
+blessings fall upon this land.'
+
+Wriothesley spoke to her slowly and heavily:
+
+'Such little abbeys ate up the substance of this land in the old days.
+Well have we prospered since they were done away who ate up the
+fatness of this realm. Now husbandmen till their idle soil and cattle
+are in their buildings.'
+
+'Gentleman whose name I know not,' she turned upon him, 'more wealth
+and prosperity God granted us in answer to their prayers than could be
+won by all the husbandmen of Arcadia and all the kine of Cacus. God
+standeth above all men's labours.' But Cromwell's servants had sworn
+away the lands of the small abbey, and now the abbess and her nuns lay
+in gaol accused--and falsely--of having secreted an image of Saint
+Hugh to pray against the King's fortunes.
+
+'Before God,' she said, 'and as Christ is my Saviour, I saw and make
+deposition that these poor simple women did no such thing but loved
+the King as he had been their good father. I have seen them at their
+prayers. Before God, I say to you that they were as folk astonished
+and dismayed; knowing so little of the world that ne one ne other knew
+whence came the word that had bared them to the skies. I have seen
+them--I.'
+
+'Where went they?' Wriothesley said; 'what worked they?'
+
+'Gentleman,' she answered; 'being cast out of their houses and their
+veils, they knew nowhither to go; homes they had none; they lived with
+their own hinds in hovels, like frightened lambs, the saints their
+pastors being driven from their folds.'
+
+'Aye,' Wriothesley said grimly, 'they cumbered the ground; they did
+meet in knots for mutinies.'
+
+'God had appointed them the duty of prayer,' Katharine answered him.
+'They met and prayed in sheds and lodges of the house that had been
+theirs, poor ghosts revisiting and bewailing their earthly homes. I
+have prayed with them.'
+
+'Ye have done a treason in that day,' Wriothesley answered.
+
+'I have done the best that ever I did for this land,' she met him
+fully. 'I prayed naught against the King and the republic. I have
+prayed you and your like might be cast down. So do I still. I stand
+here to avow it. But they never did, and they do lie in gaol.' She
+turned again upon Cromwell and spoke piteously from her full throat.
+'My lord,' she cried. 'Soften your heart and let the wax in your ears
+melt so that ye hear. Your servants swore falsely when they said these
+women lived lewdly; your men swore falsely when they said that these
+women prayed treasonably. For the one count they took their lands and
+houses; for the other they lay them in the gaols. Sir, my lord, your
+servants go up and down this land; sir, my lord, they ride rich men
+with boots of steel and do strangle the poor with gloves of iron. I do
+think ye know they do it; I do pray ye know not. But, sir, if ye will
+right this wrong I will kiss your hands; if you will set up again
+these homes of prayer I will take a veil, and in one of them spend my
+days praying that good befall you and yours.' She paused in her
+speaking and then began again: 'Before I came here I had made me a
+fair speech. I have forgot it, and words come haltingly to me. Sirs,
+ye think I seek mine own aggrandisement; ye think I do wish ye cast
+down. Before God, I wish ye were cast down if ye continue in these
+ways; but I have prayed to God who sent the Pentecostal fires, to
+give me the gift of tongues that shall soften your hearts----'
+
+Cromwell interrupted her, smiling that Venus, who made her so fair,
+gave her no need of a gift of tongues, and Minerva, who made her so
+learned, gave her no need of fairness. For the sake of the one and the
+other, he would very diligently enquire into these women's courses. If
+they ha been guiltless, they should be richly repaid; if they ha been
+guilty, they should be pardoned.
+
+Katharine flushed with a hot anger.
+
+'Ye are a very craven lord,' she said. 'If you may find them guilty,
+you shall have my head. But if you do find them innocent and shield
+them not, I swear I will strive to have thine.' Anger made her blue
+eyes dilate. 'Have you no bowels of compassion for the right? Ye treat
+me as a fair woman--but I speak as a messenger of the King's, that is
+God's, to men who too long have hardened their hearts.'
+
+Throckmorton laid back his head and laughed suddenly at the ceiling;
+Cranmer crossed himself; Wriothesley beat his heel upon the floor and
+shrugged his shoulders bitterly--but Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy,
+kept his eyes upon Throckmorton's face with a puzzled scrutiny.
+
+'Why now does that man laugh?' he asked himself. For it seemed to him
+that by laughing Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. And indeed,
+Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. As policy her speech was
+neither here nor there, but as voicing a spirit, infectious and
+winning to men's hearts, he saw that such speaking should carry her
+very far. And, if it should embroil her more than ever with Cromwell,
+it would the further serve his adventures. He was already conspiring
+to betray Cromwell, and he knew that, very soon now, Cromwell must
+pierce his mask of loyalty; and the more Katharine should have cast
+down her glove to Cromwell, the more he could shelter behind her; and
+the more men she could have made her friends with her beauty and her
+fine speeches, the more friends he too should have to his back when
+the day of discovery came. In the meantime he had in his sleeve a
+trick that he would speedily play upon Cromwell, the most dangerous of
+any that he had played. For below the stairs he had Udal, with his
+news of the envoy from Cleves to France, and with his copies of the
+envoy's letters. But, in her turn, Katharine played him, unwittingly
+enough, a trick that puzzled him.
+
+'Bones of St Nairn!' he said; 'she has him to herself. What mad prank
+will she play now?'
+
+Katharine had drawn Cromwell to the very end of the gallery.
+
+'As I pray that Christ will listen to my pleas when at the last I come
+to Him for pardon and comfort,' she said, 'I swear that I will speak
+true words to you.'
+
+He surveyed her, plump, alert, his lips moving one upon the other. He
+brought one white soft hand from behind his back to play with the furs
+upon his chest.
+
+'Why, I believe you are a very earnest woman,' he said.
+
+'Then, sir,' she said, 'understand that your sun is near its setting.
+We rise, we wane; our little days do run their course. But I do
+believe you love your King his cause more than most men.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said, 'you have been my foremost foe.'
+
+'Till five minutes agone I was,' she said.
+
+He wondered for a moment if she were minded to beg him to aid her in
+growing to be Queen; and he wondered too how that might serve his
+turn. But she spoke again:
+
+'You have very well served the King,' she said. 'You have made him
+rich and potent. I believe ye have none other desire so great as that
+desire to make him potent and high in this world's gear.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said calmly, 'I desire that--and next to found for
+myself a great house that always shall serve the throne as well as I.'
+
+She gave him the right to that with a lowering of her eyebrows.
+
+'I too would see him a most high prince,' she said. 'I would see him
+shed lustre upon his friends, terror upon his foes, and a great light
+upon this realm and age.'
+
+She paused to touch him earnestly with one long hand, and to brush
+back a strand of her hair. Down the gallery she saw Lascelles moving
+to speak with Throckmorton and Wriothesley holding the Archbishop
+earnestly by the sleeve.
+
+'See,' she said, 'you are surrounded now by traitors that will bring
+you down. In foreign lands your cause wavers. I tell you, five minutes
+agone I wished you swept away.'
+
+Cromwell raised his eyebrows.
+
+'Why, I knew that this was difficult fighting,' he said. 'But I know
+not what giveth me your good wishes.'
+
+'My lord,' she answered, 'it came to me in my mind: What man is there
+in the land save Privy Seal that so loveth his master's cause?'
+
+Cromwell laughed.
+
+'How well do you love this King,' he said.
+
+'I love this King; I love this land,' she said, 'as Cato loved Rome or
+Leonidas his realm of Sparta.'
+
+Cromwell pondered, looking down at his foot; his lips moved furtively,
+he folded his hand inside his sleeves; and he shook his head when
+again she made to speak. He desired another minute for thought.
+
+'This I perceive to be the pact you have it in your mind to make,' he
+said at last, 'that if you come to sway the King towards Rome I shall
+still stay his man and yours?'
+
+She looked at him, her lips parted with a slight surprise that he
+should so well have voiced thoughts that she had hardly put into
+words. Then her faith rose in her again and moved her to pitiful
+earnestness.
+
+'My lord,' she uttered, and stretched out one hand. 'Come over to us.
+'Tis such great pity else--'tis such pity else.'
+
+She looked again at Throckmorton, who, in the distance, was surveying
+the Archbishop's spy with a sardonic amusement, and a great
+mournfulness went through her. For there was the traitor and here
+before her was the betrayed. Throckmorton had told her enough to know
+that he was conspiring against his master, and Cromwell trusted
+Throckmorton before any man in the land; and it was as if she saw one
+man with a dagger hovering behind another. With her woman's instinct
+she felt that the man about to die was the better man, though he were
+her foe. She was minded--she was filled with a great desire to say:
+'Believe no word that Throckmorton shall tell you. The Duke of Cleves
+is now abandoning your cause.' That much she had learnt from Udal five
+minutes before. But she could not bring herself to betray
+Throckmorton, who was a traitor for the sake of her cause. ''Tis such
+pity,' she repeated again.
+
+'Good wench,' Cromwell said, 'you are indifferent honest; but never
+while I am the King's man shall the Bishop of Rome take toll again in
+the King's land.'
+
+She threw up her hands.
+
+'Alack!' she said, 'shall not God and His Son our Saviour have their
+part of the King's glory?'
+
+'God is above us all,' he answered. 'But there is no room for two
+heads of a State, and in a State is room but for one army. I will have
+my King so strong that ne Pope ne priest ne noble ne people shall here
+have speech or power. So it is now; I have so made it, the King
+helping me. Before I came this was a distracted State; the King's writ
+ran not in the east, not in the west, not in the north, and hardly in
+the south parts. Now no lord nor no bishop nor no Pope raises head
+against him here. And, God willing, in all the world no prince shall
+stand but by grace of this King's Highness. This land shall have the
+wealth of all the world; this King shall guide this land. There shall
+be rich husbandmen paying no toll to priests, but to the King alone;
+there shall be wealthy merchants paying no tax to any prince nor
+emperor, but only to this King. The King's court shall redress all
+wrongs; the King's voice shall be omnipotent in the council of the
+princes.'
+
+'Ye speak no word of God,' she said pitifully.
+
+'God is very far away,' he answered.
+
+'Sir, my lord,' she cried, and brushed again the tress from her
+forehead. 'Ye have made this King rich with gear of the Church: if ye
+will be friends with me ye shall make this King a pauper to repay; ye
+have made this King stiffen his neck against God's Vicegerent: if you
+and I shall work together ye shall make him re-humble himself. Christ
+the King of all the world was a pauper; Christ the Saviour of all
+mankind humbled Himself before God that was His Saviour.'
+
+Cromwell said 'Amen.'
+
+'Sir,' she said again; 'ye have made this King rich, but I will give
+to him again his power to sleep at night; ye have made this realm
+subject to this King, but, by the help of God, I will make it subject
+again to God. You have set up here a great State, but oh, the children
+of God do weep since ye came. Where is a town where lamentation is not
+heard? Where is a town where no orphan or widow bewails the day that
+saw your birth?' She had sobs in her voice and she wrung her hands.
+'Sir,' she cried, 'I say you are as a dead man already--your day of
+pride is past, whether ye aid us or no. Set yourself then to redress
+as heartily as ye have set yourself in the past to make sad. That land
+is blest whose people are happy; that State is aggrandised whence
+there arise songs praising God for His blessings. You have built up a
+great city of groans; set yourself now to build a kingdom where
+"Praise God" shall be sung. It is a contented people that makes a
+State great; it is the love of God that maketh a people rich.'
+
+Cromwell laughed mirthlessly:
+
+'There are forty thousand men like Wriothesley in England,' he said.
+'God help you if you come against them; there are forty times forty
+thousand and forty times that that pray you not again to set disorder
+loose in this land. I have broken all stiff necks in this realm. See
+you that you come not against some yet.' He stopped, and added: 'Your
+greatest foes should be your own friends if I be a dead man as you
+say.' And he smiled at her bewilderment when he had added: 'I am your
+bulwark and your safeguard.'
+
+... 'For, listen to me,' he took up again his parable. 'Whilst I be
+here I bear the rancour of your friends' hatred. When I am gone you
+shall inherit it.'
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I am not here to hear riddles, but here I am to pray
+you seek the right.'
+
+'Wench,' he said pleasantly, 'there are in this world many rights--you
+have yours; I mine. But mine can never be yours nor yours mine. I am
+not yet so dead as ye say; but if I be dead, I wish you so well that I
+will send you a phial of poison ere I send to take you to the stake.
+For it is certain that if you have not my head I shall have yours.'
+
+She looked at him seriously, though the tears ran down her cheeks.
+
+'Sir,' she uttered, 'I do take you to be a man of your word. Swear to
+me, then, that if upon the fatal hill I do save you your life and your
+estates, you will nowise work the undoing of the Church in time to
+come.'
+
+'Madam Queen that shall be,' he said, 'an ye gave me my life this day,
+to-morrow I would work as I worked yesterday. If ye have faith of your
+cause I have the like of mine.'
+
+She hung her head, and said at last:
+
+'Sir, an ye have a little door here at the gallery end I will go out
+by it'; for she would not again face the men who made the little knot
+before the window. He moved the hangings aside and stood before the
+aperture smiling.
+
+'Ye came to ask a boon of me,' he said. 'Is it your will still that I
+grant it?'
+
+'Sir,' she answered, 'I asked a boon of you that I thought you would
+not grant, so that I might go to the King and shew him your evil
+dealings with his lieges.'
+
+'I knew it well,' he said. 'But the King will not cast me down till
+the King hath had full use of me.'
+
+'You have a very great sight into men's minds,' she uttered, and he
+laughed noiselessly once again.
+
+'I am as God made me,' he said. Then he spoke once more. 'I will read
+your mind if you will. Ye came to me in this crisis, thinking with
+yourself: _Liars go unto the King saying, "This Cromwell is a traitor;
+cast him down, for he seeks your ill." I will go unto the King saying,
+"This Cromwell grindeth the faces of the poor and beareth false
+witness. Cast him down, though he serve you well, since he maketh your
+name to stink to heaven."_ So I read my fellow-men.'
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'it is very true that I will not be linked with
+liars. And it is very true that men do so speak of you to the King's
+Highness.'
+
+'Why,' he answered her debonairly, 'the King shall listen neither to
+them nor to you till the day be come. Then he will act in his own good
+way--upon the pretext that I be a traitor, or upon the pretext that I
+have borne false witness, or upon no pretext at all.'
+
+'Nevertheless will I speak for the truth that shall prevail,' she
+answered.
+
+'Why, God help you!' was his rejoinder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Going back to his friends in the window Cromwell meditated that it was
+possible to imagine a woman that thought so simply; yet it was
+impossible to imagine one that should be able to act with so great a
+simplicity. On the one hand, if she stayed about the King she should
+be his safeguard, for it was very certain that she should not tell the
+King that he was a traitor. And that above all was what Cromwell had
+to fear. He had, for his own purposes, so filled the King with the
+belief that treachery overran his land, that the King saw treachery in
+every man. And Cromwell was aware, well enough, that such of his
+adherents as were Protestant--such men as Wriothesley--had indeed
+boasted that they were twenty thousand swords ready to fall upon even
+the King if he set against the re-forming religion in England. This
+was the greatest danger that he had--that an enemy of his should tell
+the King that Privy Seal had behind his back twenty thousand swords.
+For that side of the matter Katharine Howard was even a safeguard,
+since with her love of truth she would assuredly combat these liars
+with the King.
+
+But, on the other hand, the King had his superstitious fears; only
+that night, pale, red-eyed and heavy, and being unable to sleep, he
+had sent to rouse Cromwell and had furiously rated him, calling him
+knave and shaking him by the shoulder, telling him for the twentieth
+time to find a way to make a peace with the Bishop of Rome. These were
+only night-fears--but, if Cleves should desert Henry and
+Protestantism, if all Europe should stand solid for the Pope, Henry's
+night-fears might eat up his day as well. Then indeed Katharine would
+be dangerous. So that she was indeed half foe, half friend.
+
+It hinged all upon Cleves; for if Cleves stood friend to Protestantism
+the King would fear no treason; if Cleves sued for pardon to the
+Emperor and Rome, Henry must swing towards Katharine. Therefore, if
+Cleves stood firm to Protestantism and defied the Emperor, it would be
+safe to work at destroying Katharine; if not, he must leave her by the
+King to defend his very loyalty.
+
+The Archbishop challenged him with uplifted questioning eyebrows, and
+he answered his gaze with:
+
+'God help ye, goodman Bishop; it were easier for thee to deal with
+this maid than for me. She would take thee to her friend if thou
+wouldst curry with Rome.'
+
+'Aye,' Cranmer answered. 'But would Rome have truck with me?' and he
+shook his head bitterly. He had been made Archbishop with no sanction
+from Rome.
+
+Cromwell turned upon Wriothesley; the debonair smile was gone from his
+face; the friendly contempt that he had for the Archbishop was gone
+too; his eyes were hard, cruel and red, his lips hardened.
+
+'Ye have done me a very evil turn,' he said. 'Ye spoke stiff-necked
+folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I
+be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from
+heaven upon Lutherans that cross the King.'
+
+The hard malice of his glance made Wriothesley quail and flush
+heavily.
+
+'I thought ye had been our friend,' he said.
+
+'Wriothesley,' Cromwell answered, 'I tell thee, silly knave, that I be
+friend only to them that love the order and peace I have made, under
+the King's Highness, in this realm. If it be the King's will to
+stablish again the old faith, a hammer of iron will I be upon such as
+do raise their heads against it. It were better ye had never been
+born, it were better ye were dead and asleep, than that ye raised your
+heads against me.' He turned, then he swung back with the sharpness of
+a viper's spring.
+
+'What help have I had of thee and thy friends? I have bolstered up
+Cleves and his Lutherans for ye. What have he and ye done for me and
+my King? Your friend the Duke of Cleves has an envoy in Paris. Have ye
+found for why he comes there? Ye could not. Ye have botched your
+errand to Paris; ye have spoken naughtily in my house to a friend of
+the King's that came friendlily to me.' He shook a fat finger an inch
+from Wriothesley's eyes. 'Have a care! I did send my visitors to smell
+out treason among the convents and abbeys. Wait ye till I send them to
+your conventicles! Ye shall not scape. Body of God! ye shall not
+scape.'
+
+He placed a heavy hand upon Throckmorton's shoulder.
+
+'I would I had sent thee to Paris,' he said. 'No envoy had come there
+whose papers ye had not seen. I warrant thou wouldst have ferreted
+them through.'
+
+Throckmorton's eyes never moved; his mouth opened and he spoke with
+neither triumph nor malice:
+
+'In very truth, Privy Seal,' he said, 'I have ferreted through enow of
+them to know why the envoy came to Paris.'
+
+Cromwell kept his hands still firm upon his spy's shoulder whilst the
+swift thoughts ran through his mind. He scowled still upon
+Wriothesley.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'ye see how I be served. What ye could not find in
+Paris my man found for me in London town.' He moved his face round
+towards the great golden beard of his spy. 'Ye shall have the farms ye
+asked me for in Suffolk,' he said. 'Tell me now wherefore came the
+Cleves envoy to France. Will Cleves stay our ally, or will he send
+like a coward to his Emperor?'
+
+'Privy Seal,' Throckmorton answered expressionlessly--he fingered his
+beard for a moment and felt at the medal depending upon his
+chest--'Cleves will stay your friend and the King's ally.'
+
+A great sigh went up from his three hearers at Throckmorton's lie; and
+impassive as he was, Throckmorton sighed too, imperceptibly beneath
+the mantle of his beard. He had burned his boats. But for the others
+the sigh was of a great contentment. With Cleves to lead the German
+Protestant confederation, the King felt himself strong enough to make
+headway against the Pope, the Emperor and France. So long as the Duke
+of Cleves remained a rebel against his lord the Emperor, the King
+would hold over Protestantism the mantle of his protection.
+
+Cromwell broke in upon their thoughts with his swift speech.
+
+'Sirs,' he uttered, 'then what ye will shall come to pass.
+Wriothesley, I pardon thee; get thee back to Paris to thy mission.
+Archbishop, I trow thou shalt have the head of that wench. Her cousin
+shall be brought here again from France.'
+
+Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy, who kept his gaze upon
+Throckmorton's, saw the large man's eyes shift suddenly from one board
+of the floor to another.
+
+'That man is not true,' he said to himself, and fell into a train of
+musing. But from the others Cromwell had secured the meed of wonder
+that he desired. He had closed the interview with a dramatic speech;
+he had given them something to talk of.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+He held Throckmorton in the small room that contained upon its high
+stand the Privy Seal of England in an embroidered purse. All red and
+gold, this symbol of power held the eye away from the dark-green
+tapestry and from the pigeon-holes filled with parchment scrolls
+wherefrom there depended so many seals each like a gout of blood. The
+room was so high that it appeared small, but there was room for
+Cromwell to pace about, and here, walking from wall to wall, he
+evolved those schemes that so fast held down the realm. He paced
+always, his hands behind his back, his lips moving one upon the other
+as if he ruminated--(His foes said that he talked thus with his
+familiar fiend that had the form of a bee.)--and his black cap with
+ear-flaps always upon his head, for he suffered much with the earache.
+
+He walked now, up and down and up and down, saying nothing, whilst
+from time to time Throckmorton spoke a word or two. Throckmorton
+himself had his doubts--doubts as to how the time when it would be
+safe to let it be known that he had betrayed his master might be found
+to fit in with the time when his master must find that he had betrayed
+him. He had, as he saw it, to gain time for Katharine Howard so she
+might finally enslave the King's desires. That there was one weak spot
+in her armour he thought he knew, and that was her cousin that was
+said to be her lover. That Cromwell knew of her weak spot he knew too;
+that Cromwell through that would strike at her he knew too. All
+depended upon whether he could gain time so that Cromwell should be
+down before he could use his knowledge.
+
+For that reason he had devised the scheme of making Cromwell feel a
+safety about the affairs of Cleves. Udal fortunately wrote a very
+swift Latin. Thus, when going to fetch Katharine to her interview with
+Privy Seal he had found Udal bursting with news of the Cleves embassy
+and with the letters of the Duke of Cleves actually copied on papers
+in his poke, Throckmorton had very swiftly advised with himself how to
+act. He had set Udal very earnestly to writing a false letter from
+Cleves to France--such a letter as Cleves might have written--and this
+false letter, in the magister's Latin, he had placed now in his
+master's hands, and, pacing up and down, Cromwell read from time to
+time from the scrap of paper.
+
+What Cleves had written was that he was fain to make submission to the
+Emperor, and leave the King's alliance. What Cromwell read was this:
+That the high and mighty Prince, the Duke of Cleves, was firmly minded
+to adhere in his allegiance with the King of England: that he feared
+the wrath of the Emperor Charles, who was his very good suzerain and
+over-lord: that if by taxes and tributes he might keep away from his
+territory the armies of the Emperor he would be well content to pay a
+store of gold: that he begged his friend and uncle, King of France, to
+intercede betwixt himself and the Emperor to the end that the Emperor
+might take these taxes and tributes; for that, if the Emperor would
+none of this, come peace, come war, he, the high and mighty Prince,
+Duke of Cleves, Elector of the Empire, was minded to protect in
+Germany the Protestant confession and to raise against the Emperor the
+Princes and Electors of Almain, being Protestants. With the aid of his
+brother-in-law the King of England he would drive the Emperor Charles
+from the German lands together with the heresies of the Romish Bishop
+and all things that pertained to the Emperor Charles and his religion.
+
+Cromwell had listened to the reading of this letter in silence; in
+silence he re-perused it himself, pacing up and down, and in between
+phrases of his thoughts he read passages from it and nodded his head.
+
+That this was a very dangerous enterprise Throckmorton was assured; it
+was the first overt act of his that Privy Seal could discover in him
+as a treachery. In a month or six weeks he must know the truth; but in
+a month or six weeks Katharine must have so enslaved the King that
+all danger from Cromwell would be past. And he trusted that the
+security that Cromwell must feel would gar him delay striking at
+Katharine by means of her cousin.
+
+Cromwell said suddenly:
+
+'How got the magister these papers?' and Throckmorton answered that it
+was through the widow that kept the tavern. Cromwell said negligently:
+
+'Let the magister be rewarded with ten crowns a quarter to his fees.
+Set it down in my tables'; and then like lightning came the query:
+
+'Do ye believe of her cousin and the Lady Katharine?'
+
+Craving a respite for thought and daring to take none for fear
+Cromwell should read him, Throckmorton answered:
+
+'Ye know I think yes.'
+
+'I have said I think no,' Cromwell answered in turn, but
+dispassionately as though it were a matter of the courses of stars;
+'though it is very certain that her cousin is so mad with love for her
+that we had much ado to send him from her to Paris.' He paced three
+times from wall to wall and then spoke again:
+
+'Men enow have said she was too fond with her cousin?'
+
+With despair in his heart Throckmorton answered:
+
+'It is the common talk in Lincolnshire where her home is. I have seen
+a cub in a cowherd's that was said to be her child by him.'
+
+It was useless to speak otherwise to Privy Seal; if he did not report
+these things, twenty others would. But, beneath his impassive face and
+his great beard, despair filled him. He might swear treason against
+Cromwell to the King; but the King would not hear him alone, and
+without the King and Katharine he was a sparrow in Cromwell's hawk's
+talons.
+
+'Why,' Cromwell said, 'since Cleves is true to us we will have this
+woman down. An he had played us false I would have kept her near the
+King.'
+
+This saying, that ran so counter to Throckmorton's schemes, caused him
+such dismay that he cried out:
+
+'God forgive us, why?'
+
+Cromwell smiled at him as one who smiles from a great height, and
+pointed a finger.
+
+'This is a hard fight,' he said; 'we are in some straits. I trow ye
+would have voiced it otherwise.' And then he voiced his own idea--that
+so long as Cleves was friends with him Katharine was an enemy; if
+Cleves fell away she was none the less an enemy, but she would, from
+her love of justice, bear witness to the King that Cromwell was no
+traitor. 'And ye shall be very certain,' he added pleasantly, 'that
+once men see the King so inclined, they will go to the King saying I
+be a traitor, with Protestants like Wriothesley ready to rise and aid
+me. In that pass the Lady Katharine should stay by me, in the King's
+ear.'
+
+A deep and intolerable dejection overcame Throckmorton and forced from
+his lips the words:
+
+'Ye reason most justly.' And again he cursed himself, for he had
+forced Cromwell to this reasoning and action. Yet he dared not say
+that his news of the Cleves embassy was false, that Cleves indeed was
+minded to turn traitor, and that it most would serve Privy Seal's turn
+to stay Katharine Howard up. He dared not say the words, yet he saw
+his safety crumbling, and he saw Privy Seal set to ruin both himself
+and Katharine Howard. For in his heart he could not believe that the
+woman was virtuous, since he believed that no woman was virtuous who
+had been given the opportunity for joyment. As a spy, he had gone
+nosing about in Lincolnshire where Katharine's home had been near her
+cousin's. He had heard many tales against her such as rustics will
+tell against the daughters of poor lords like Katharine's father. And
+these tales, before ever he had come to love her, he had set down in
+Privy Seal's private registers. Now they were like to undo him and
+her. And in truth, according to his premonitions, Cromwell spoke:
+
+'We shall bring very quickly Thomas Culpepper, her cousin, back from
+France. We shall inflame his mind with jealousy of the King. We shall
+find a place where he shall burst upon the King and her together. We
+shall bring witnesses enow from Lincolnshire to swear against her.'
+
+He crossed his hands behind his back.
+
+'This work of fetching her cousin from Paris I will put into the hands
+of Viridus,' he said. 'I believe her to be virtuous, therefore do you
+bring many witnesses, and some that shall swear to have seen her in
+the act. That shall be your employment. For I tell you she hath so
+great a power of pleading that, being innocent, she will with
+difficulty be proved unchaste.'
+
+Throckmorton's head hung upon his shoulders.
+
+'Remember,' Privy Seal said again, 'you and Viridus shall send to find
+her cousin in France. Fill him with tales that his cousin plays the
+leman with the King. He shall burst here like a bolt from heaven. You
+will find him betwixt Calais and Paris town, dallying in evil places
+without a doubt. We sent him thither to frighten Cardinal Pole.'
+
+'Aye,' Throckmorton said, his mind filled with other and bitter
+thoughts. 'He hath frightened the Cardinal from Paris by the mere
+renown of his violence.'
+
+'Then let him do some frighting in our goodly town of London,'
+Cromwell said.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE DISTANT CLOUD
+
+I
+
+
+The young Poins, once an ensign of the King's guard, habited now in
+grey, stood awaiting Thomas Culpepper, Katharine Howard's cousin,
+beneath the new gateway towards the east of Calais. Four days he had
+waited already and never had he dared to stir, save when the gates
+were closed for the night. But it had chanced that one of the
+gatewardens was a man from Lincolnshire--a man, once a follower of the
+plough, whose father had held a farm in the having of Culpepper
+himself.
+
+'----But he sold 'un,' Nicholas Hogben said, 'sold 'un clear away.' He
+made a wry face, winked one eye, and drawing up the right corner of
+his mouth, displayed square, huge teeth. The young Poins making no
+question, he repeated twice: 'Clear away. Right clear away.'
+
+Poins, however, could hold but one thing of a time in his head. And,
+by that striving, dangerous servant of Lord Privy Seal, Throckmorton,
+it had been firmly enjoined upon him that he must not fail to meet
+Thomas Culpepper and stay him upon his road to England. Throckmorton,
+with his great beard and cruel snake's eyes, had said: 'I hold thy
+head in fee. If ye would save it, meet Thomas Culpepper in Calais and
+give him this letter.' The letter he had in his poke. It carried with
+it a deed making Culpepper lieutenant of the stone barges in Calais.
+But he had it too, by word of mouth, that if Thomas Culpepper would
+not be stayed by the letter, he, Hal Poins, must stay him--with the
+sword, with a stab in the back, or by being stabbed himself and
+calling in the guard to lay Thomas Culpepper's self by the heels.
+
+'You will enjoin upon him,' Throckmorton had said, 'how goodly a thing
+is the lieutenancy of stone lighters that in this letter is proffered
+him. You will tell him that, if a barge of stone go astray, it is yet
+a fair way to London, and stone fetches good money from townsmen
+building in Calais. If he will gainsay this you will pick a quarrel
+with him, as by saying he gives you the lie. In short,' Throckmorton
+had finished, earnestly and with a sinuous grace of gesture in his
+long and narrow hands, 'you will stay him.'
+
+It was a desperate measure, yet it was the best he could compass. If
+Culpepper came to London, if he came to the King, Katharine's fortunes
+were not worth a rushlight such as were sold at twenty for a farthing.
+He knew, too, that Viridus had Cromwell's earnest injunctions to send
+a messenger that should hasten Culpepper's return; and, though he had
+seven hundred of Cromwell's spies that he could trust to do Privy
+Seal's errand, he had not one that he could trust to do his own. There
+was no one of them that he could trust. If he took a spy and said: 'At
+all costs stay Culpepper, but observe very strict secrecy from Privy
+Seal's men all,' the spy would very certainly let the news come to
+Privy Seal.
+
+It was in this pass that the thought of the young Poins had come to
+him. Here was a fellow absolutely stupid. He was a brother of
+Katharine Howard's tiring maid who had already come near to losing his
+head in a former intrigue in the Court. He had, at the instigation of
+his sister, carried two Papist letters of Katharine Howard. And, if it
+was the King who pardoned him, it was Throckmorton who first had taken
+him prisoner; it was Throckmorton who had advised him to lie hidden in
+his grandfather's house for a month or two. At the time Throckmorton
+had had no immediate reason to give the boy this counsel. Poins had
+been so small a tool in the past embroilment of Katharine's letter
+that, had he gone straight back to his post in the yeomanry of the
+King's guard, no man would have noticed him. But it had always been
+part of the devious and great bearded man's policy--it had been part
+of his very nature--to play upon people's fears, to trouble them with
+apprehensions. It was part of the tradition that Cromwell had given
+all his men. He ruled England by such fears.
+
+Thus Throckmorton had sent Poins trembling to hide in the old
+printer's his grandfather's house in the wilds of Austin Friars. And
+Throckmorton had impressed upon him that he alone had really saved
+him. It was in his grandfather's mean house that Poins had remained
+for a brace of months, grumbled at by his Protestant uncle and sneered
+at by his malicious Papist grandfather. And it was here that
+Throckmorton had found him, dressed in grey, humbled from his pride
+and raging for things to do.
+
+The boy would be of little service--yet he was all that Throckmorton
+had. If he could hardly be expected to trick Culpepper with his
+tongue, he might wound him with his sword; if he could not kill him he
+might at least scotch him, cause a brawl in Calais town, where,
+because the place was an outpost, brawling was treason, and Culpepper
+might be had by the heels for long enough to let Cromwell fall.
+Therefore, in the low room with the black presses, in the very shadow
+of Cromwell's own walls, Throckmorton--who was given the privacy of
+the place by the Lutheran printer because he was Cromwell's
+man--large, golden-bearded and speaking in meaning whispers, with
+lifting of his eyebrows, had held a long conference with the lad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His dangerous and terrifying presence seemed to dominate, for the
+young Poins, even the dusty archway of the Calais gate--and, even
+though he saw the flat, green and sunny levels of the French
+marshland, with the town of Ardres rising grey and turreted six miles
+away, the young Poins felt that he was still beneath the eyes of
+Throckmorton, the spy who had sought him out in his grandfather's
+house in Austin Friars to send him here across the seas to Calais. Up
+above in the archway the stonemasons who came from Lydd sang their
+Kentish songs as hammers clinked on chisels and the fine dust filtered
+through the scaffold boards. But the young Poins kept his eyes upon
+the dusty and winding road that threaded the dykes from Ardres, and
+thought only that when Thomas Culpepper came he must be stayed. He had
+oiled his sword that had been his father's so that it would slip
+smoothly from the scabbard; he had filed his dagger so that it would
+pierce through thin coat of mail. It was well to be armed, though he
+could not see why Thomas Culpepper should not stay willingly at Calais
+to be lieutenant of the stone lighters and steal stone to fill his
+pockets, since such were the privileges of the post that Throckmorton
+offered him.
+
+'Mayhap, if I stay him, it will get me advancement,' he grumbled
+between his teeth. He was enraged in his slow, fierce way. For
+Throckmorton had promised him only to save his neck if he succeeded.
+There had been no hint of further rewards. He did not speculate upon
+why Thomas Culpepper was to be held in Calais; he did not speculate
+upon why he should wish to come to England; but again and again he
+muttered between his teeth, 'A curst business! a curst business!'
+
+In the mysterious embroilment in which formerly he had taken part, his
+sister had told him that he was carrying letters between the King and
+Kat Howard. Yes; his large, slow sister had promised him great
+advancement for carrying certain letters. And still, in spite of the
+fact that he had been told it was a treason, he believed that the
+letters he had carried for Kat Howard were love letters to the King.
+Nevertheless, for his services he had received no advancement; he had,
+on the contrary, been bidden to leave his comrades of the guard and to
+hide himself. Throckmorton had bidden him do this. And instead of
+advancement, he had received kicks, curses, cords on his wrists, an
+interview with the Lord Privy Seal that still in the remembrance set
+him shivering, and this chance, offered him by Throckmorton, that if
+he stayed Thomas Culpepper he might save his neck.
+
+'Why, then,' he grumbled to himself, 'is it treason to carry the
+King's letters to a wench? Helping the King is no treason. I should be
+advanced, not threatened with a halter. Letters between the King and
+Kat Howard!' He even attempted to himself a clumsy joke, polishing it
+and repolishing it till it came out: 'A King may write to a Kat. A Kat
+may write to a King. But my neck's in danger!'
+
+Beside him, whitened by the dust that fell from above, the gatewarden
+wandered in speech round _his_ grievance.
+
+'You ask me, young lad, if I know Tom Culpepper. Well I know Tom
+Culpepper. Y' ask me if he have passed this way going for England.
+Well I know he have not. For if Tom Culpepper, squire that was of
+Durford and Maintree and Sallowford that was my father's farm--if so
+be Tom Culpepper had passed this way, I had spat in the dust behind
+him as he passed.'
+
+He made his wry face, winked his eye and showed his teeth once more.
+'Spat in the dust--I should ha' spat in the dust,' he remarked again.
+'Or maybe I'd have cast my hat on high wi' "Huzzay, Squahre Tom!"
+according as the mood I was in,' he said. He winked again and waited.
+
+'For sure,' he affirmed after a pause, 'that will move 'ee to ask why
+I du spit in the dust or for why--the thing being contrary--I'd ha'
+cast up my cap.'
+
+The young Poins pulled an onion from his poke.
+
+'If you are so main sure he have not passed the gate,' he said, 'I may
+take my ease.' He sat him down against the gate wall where the April
+sun fell warm through the arch of shadows. He stripped the outer peel
+from the onion and bit into it. 'Good, warming eating,' he said, 'when
+your stomach's astir from the sea.'
+
+'Young lad,' the gatewarden said, 'I'm as fain to swear my mother bore
+me--though God forbid I should swear who my father was, woman being
+woman--as that Thomas Culpepper have not passed this way. For why: I'd
+have cast my hat on high or spat on the ground. And such things done
+mark other things that have passed in the mind of a man. And I have
+done no such thing.'
+
+But because the young Poins sat always silent with his eyes on the
+road to Ardres and slept--being privileged because he was yeoman of
+the King's guard--always in the little stone guard cell of the gateway
+at nights; because, in fact, the young man's whole faculties were set
+upon seeing that Thomas Culpepper did not pass unseen through the
+gate, it was four days before the gatewarden contrived to get himself
+asked why he would have spat in the dust or cast his hat on high. It
+was, as it were, a point of honour that he should be asked for all the
+information that he gave; and he thirsted to tell his tale.
+
+His tale had it that he had been ruined by a wench who had thrown her
+shoe over the mill and married a horse-smith, after having many times
+tickled the rough chin of Nicholas Hogben. Therefore, he had it that
+all women were to be humbled and held down--for all women were
+traitors, praters, liars, worms and vermin. (He made a great play of
+words between wermen, meaning worms, and wermin and wummin.) He had
+been ruined by this woman who had tickled him under the chin--that
+being an ingratiating act, fit to bewitch and muddle a man, like as if
+she had promised him marriage. And then she had married a horse-smith!
+So he was ready and willing, and prayed every night that God would
+send him the chance, to ruin and hold down every woman who walked the
+earth or lay in a bed.
+
+But he had been ruined, too, by Thomas Culpepper, who had sold Durford
+and Maintree and Sallowford--which last was Hogben's father's farm.
+For why? Selling the farm had let in a Lincoln lawyer, and the Lincoln
+lawyer had set the farm to sheep, which last had turned old Hogben,
+the father, out from his furrows to die in a ditch--there being no
+room for farmers and for sheep upon one land. It had sent old Hogben,
+the father, to die in a ditch; it had sent his daughters to the stews
+and his sons to the road for sturdy beggars. So that, but for
+Wallop's band passing that way when Hogben was grinning through the
+rope beneath Lincoln town tree--but for the fact that men were needed
+for Wallop's work in Calais, by the holy blood of Hailes! Hogben would
+have been rating the angel's head in Paradise.
+
+But there had been great call for men to man the walls there in
+Calais, so Wallop's ancient had written his name down on the list,
+beneath the gallows tree, and had taken him away from the Sheriff of
+Lincoln's man.
+
+'So here a be,' he drawled, 'cutting little holes in my pikehead.'
+
+''Tis a folly,' the young Poins said.
+
+'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered, 'you say 'tis a folly to make
+small holes in a pikehead. But for me 'tis the greatest of ornaments.
+Give you, it weakens the pikehead; but 'tis a gradely ornament.'
+
+'Ornaments be folly,' the young Poins reiterated.
+
+'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered again, 'there is the goodliest
+folly that ever was. For if I weaken my eyes and tire my wrists with
+small tappers and little files, and if I weaken the steel with small
+holes, each hole represents a woman I have known undone and cast down
+in her pride by a man. Here be sixty-and-four holes round and firm in
+a pattern. Sixty-and-four women I have known undone.'
+
+He paused and surveyed, winking and moving the scroll that the little
+holes made in the tough steel of his axehead. Where a perforation was
+not quite round, he touched it with his file.
+
+'Hum! ha!' he gloated. 'In the centre of the head is the master hole
+of all, planned out for being cut. But not yet cut! Mark you, 'tis not
+yet cut. That is for the woman I hate most of all women. She is not
+yet cast down that I have heard tell on, though some have said "Aye,"
+some "Nay." Tell me, have you heard yet of a Kat Howard in the stews?'
+
+'There is a Kat Howard is like to be----' the young Poins began. But
+his slow cunning was aroused before he had the sentence out. Who could
+tell what trick was this?
+
+'Like to be what?' the Lincolnshire man badgered him. 'Like to be
+what? To be what?'
+
+'Nay, I know not,' Poins answered.
+
+'Like to be what?' Hogben persisted.
+
+'I know no Kat Howard,' Poins muttered sulkily. For he knew well that
+the Lady Katharine's name was up in the taverns along of Thomas
+Culpepper. And this Lincolnshire cow-dog was a knave too of Thomas's;
+therefore the one Kat Howard who was like to be the King's wench and
+the other Kat Howard known to Hogben might well be one and the same.
+
+'Nay; if you will not, neither even will I,' Hogben said. 'You shall
+have no more of my tale.'
+
+Poins kept his blue eyes along the road. Far away, with an odd leap,
+waving its arms abroad and coming by fits and starts, as a hare
+gambols along a path--a figure was tiny to see, coming from Ardres way
+towards Calais. It passed a load of hay on an ox-cart, and Poins could
+see the peasants beside it scatter, leap the dyke and fly to stand
+panting in the fields. The figure was clenching its fists; then it
+fell to kicking the oxen; when they had overset the cart into the
+dyke, it came dancing along with the same hare's gait.
+
+'That is too like the repute of Thomas Culpepper to be other than
+Thomas Culpepper,' the young Poins said. 'I will go meet him.'
+
+He started to his feet, loosed the sword in its scabbard; but the
+Lincolnshire man had his halberd across the gateway.
+
+'Pass! Shew thy pass!' he said vindictively.
+
+'I go but to meet him,' Poins snarled.
+
+'A good lie; thou goest not,' Hogben answered. 'No Englishman goes
+into the French lands without a pass from the lord controller. An thou
+keepest a shut head I can e'en keep a shut gate.'
+
+None the less he must needs talk or stifle.
+
+'Thee, with thy Kat Howard,' he snarled. 'Would 'ee have me think thy
+Kat was my kitten whose name stunk in our nostrils?'
+
+He shook his finger in Poins' face.
+
+'Here be three of us know Kat Howard,' he said. 'For I know her, since
+for her I must leave home and take the road. And _he_ knoweth her over
+well or over ill, since, to buy her a gown, he sold the three farms,
+Maintree, Durford and Sallowford--which last was my father's farm. And
+_thee_ knowest her. Thee knowest her. To no good, I'se awarned. For
+thou stoppedst in thy speech like a colt before a wood snake. God
+bring down all women, I pray!'
+
+He went on to tell, as if it had been a rosary, the names of the
+ruined women that the holes in his pikehead represented. There was one
+left by the wayside with her child; there was one hung for stealing
+cloth to cover her; there was one whipped for her naughty ways. He
+reached the square mark in the centre as the figure on the road
+reached the gateway.
+
+'Huzzay, Squahre Tom! Here bay three kennath Kat Howard. Let us three
+tak part to kick her down.'
+
+Thomas Culpepper like a green cat flew at his throat, clutched him
+above the steel breastplate, and shook three times, the gatewarden's
+uncovered, dun-coloured head swaying back and forward as if it were a
+loose bundle of clouts on a mop. When they parted company, because he
+could no longer keep his fingers clenched, Hogben fell back; he fell
+back, and they lay with their heels touching each other and their arms
+stretched out in the dust.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Nicholas Hogben was the first to rise. He felt at his neck, swallowed
+as though a piece of apple were stuck in his throat, brushed his
+leather breeches, and picked up his pike.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'you may hold it for main and certain that he have not
+had Kat Howard down. For, having had her down, a would never have
+thrown a man by the throat for miscalling of her. Therefore Kat Howard
+is up for all of he, and I may loosen my feelings.'
+
+He spat gravely at Culpepper's feet. Culpepper lay in the dust, his
+arms stretched out to form a cross, his face dead white and his beard
+of brilliant red pointing at the keystone of the arch of Calais gate.
+Poins lifted his hand, but the pulse still beat, and he dropped it
+moodily in the dust.
+
+'Not dead,' he muttered.
+
+'Dead!' Hogben laughed at him. 'Hath been in a boosing ken. There they
+drug the wine with simples, and the women--may pox fall on all
+women--perfume themselves so that a man goeth stark raving. I warrant
+he had silver buttons to his Lincoln green, but they be torn off. I
+warrant he had gold buckles to his shoen, but they be gone. His sword
+is away, the leather hangers being cut.'
+
+'Wilt not stick him with thy pike, having, as he hath, so mishandled
+thee?'
+
+'O aye,' the Lincolnshire man shewed his strong teeth. 'Thee wouldst
+have Kat Howard from him. But he may live for me, being more like to
+bring her to dismay than ever thee wilt be!'
+
+He looked into the narrow street of the town that the dawn pierced
+into through the gateway. Two skinny men in jerkins drawn tight with
+belts were yawning in a hovel's low doorway. Under his eyes, still
+stretching their arms abroad, they made to slink between the mud walls
+of the next alley.
+
+'Oh, hi! _Arrestez. Vesnez!_' he hailed. '_Cestui à comforter!_' The
+thin men made to break away, halted, hesitated, and then with dragging
+feet made through the pools and filth to the gateway.
+
+'_Tombé! Voleurs! Secourez!_' Hogben pointed at the prostrate figure
+in green. They rubbed their shins on their thin calves and appeared
+bewildered and uncertain.
+
+'_Portez à lous maisons!_' Hogben commanded.
+
+They stood one on each side and bent down, extending skinny arms to
+lift him. Thomas Culpepper sat up and spat in their faces--they fled
+like scared wolves, noiselessly, gazing behind them in trepidation.
+
+'Stay them; thieves ho! Stay them!' Culpepper panted. He scrambled to
+his feet, and stood reeling, his face like death, when he tried to
+make after them.
+
+'God!' he said. 'Give me to drink.'
+
+The young Poins mused under his breath because the man had neither
+sword nor dagger. Therefore it would be impossible to have sword play
+with him. He had, the young man, no ferocity--but he was set there to
+stay Thomas Culpepper's going on to England; he was to stay him by
+word or by deed. Deeds came so much easier than words.
+
+'Squahre Tom!' the Lincolnshire man grunted. 'Reckon you have no
+money. Without groats and more ye shall get nowt to drink in Calais
+town, save water. Water you may have in plenty.'
+
+With a sigh the young Poins unbuckled his belt to get his papers.
+
+'Money I have for you,' he said. 'A main of money.' He was engaged now
+to pass words with this man--and he sighed again.
+
+But Thomas Culpepper disregarded his words and his sigh. He was more
+in the mood to talk Lincolnshire than Kent, for his fever had given
+him a touch of homesickness and the young Poins to him was a very
+foreigner. He shut his eyes to let the Lincolnshire gatewarden's words
+go down to his brain; then with sudden violence he spat out:
+
+'Give me water! What do ah ask but water! Pig! brood of a sow! gi'e me
+water and choke!'
+
+Nicholas Hogben fetched a leather bottle as long as his leg, dusty and
+dinted, but nevertheless bedight with the arms of England, from the
+stone recess where the guard sheltered at nights. He fitted it on to
+the crook of his pike by the handle, and, craning over the drawbridge,
+first smoothed away the leaf-green duck-weed on the moat and then sank
+the bottle in the black water.
+
+'I have money: a main of money for ye,' the young Poins said to Thomas
+Culpepper; but the man, with his red beard and white face, swayed on
+his legs and had ears only for the gurgling and gulping of the water
+as it entered the bottle neck. The black jack swayed and jumped below
+the bridge like a glistening water-beast.
+
+He had little green spangles of duck-weed in his orange beard when he
+took the bottle away, empty, from his mouth. He drew deep gasps of
+breath, and suddenly sat down upon a squared block of stone that the
+masons above were waiting to hoist into place over the archway.
+
+'Good water!' he grunted to Hogben--grunting as all the Lincolnshire
+men did, in those days, like a two-year hog.
+
+'Bean't but that good in all Calais town!' Hogben grunted back to him.
+'Curses on the two wurmen that sent me here.' And indeed, to
+Lincolnshire men the water tasted good, since it reminded them of
+their dyke water, tasting of marshweed and smelling of eggs.
+
+'Tü wurmen!' Culpepper said lazily. 'Hast thou been jigging with _tü_
+puticotties to wunst? One is enow to undo seven men. Who be 'hee?'
+
+The young Poins, with a sulky sense of his importance, uttered:
+
+'I have money for thee--a main of money!'
+
+Culpepper looked at him with sleepy blue eyes.
+
+'Thrice y' ha' told me that,' he said. 'And money is a goodly thing in
+its place--but not to a man with a bellyful of water. Y' shall feel my
+fist when I be rested. Meanwhile wait and, being a cub, hear how _men_
+talk.' He slapped his chest and repeated to Hogben: 'Who be 'ee?'
+
+Hogben, delighted to be asked at last a question, shewed his
+formidable teeth and beneath his familiar contortion of the eyelids
+brought out the words that one of the women who had brought him down
+was her that had brought Squahre Culpepper to sit on a squared stone
+before Calais gate.
+
+'Why, I am a made man, for all you see me sit here,' Culpepper
+answered indolently. 'I ha' done a piece of work for which I am to be
+seised of seven farms in Kent land. See yo'--they send me messengers
+with money to Calais gate.' He pointed his thumb at the young Poins.
+
+The boy, to prove that he was no common messenger, drew his right leg
+up and said:
+
+'Nay, goodman Squire; an ye had slain the Cardinal the farms should
+have been yours. As it lies, ye are no more than lieutenant of Calais
+stone barges.'
+
+'Thou liest,' Culpepper answered negligently, not turning his gaze
+from the gatewarden to whom he addressed a friendly question of, Who
+was the woman that had brought the two of them down.
+
+'Now, Squahre!' the Lincolnshire man grinned delightedly; 'thu hast
+askëd me tü questions. Answer me one: Did _thee_ lie upon her when
+thee put her name up in the township of Stamford?'
+
+'Stamford in Lincolnshire was thy townplace?' Culpepper asked. 'But
+who was thy woman? I ha' had so many women and lied about so many more
+that I never had!'
+
+The Lincolnshire man threw his leather cap to the keystone of the
+archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having
+the solemnity of one who performs his rituals.
+
+'Goodly squahre that thee art!' he said; 'thou has harmed a many
+wenches in truth and in lies.'
+
+Culpepper spied a down feather on his knee.
+
+'Curse the mattress that I lay upon this night,' he said amiably.
+
+He set his head back and blew the feather high into the air so that it
+floated out towards the tranquil and sunny pasture fields of France.
+
+'Cub!' he said to Hal Poins, 'take this as a lesson of the death that
+lies about the pilgrim's path. For why am I not a pilgrim? I was sent
+to rid Paris of a Cardinal Pole, who, being in league with the devil,
+hath a magic tongue. Mark this story well, cub, who art sent me with
+money and gifts from the King in his glory to me that sit upon a
+stone. Now mark--' He extended his white hand. 'This hand, o'
+yestereen, had a ring with a great green stone. Now no ring is here.
+It was given me by my seventeenth leman, who had two eyes that looked
+not together. No twelve robbers had taken it from me by force, since I
+had made a pact with the devil that these wall eyes should never look
+across my face whilst that ring was there. Now, God knows, I may find
+her in Calais. So mark well----' He had been sent to Paris to rid
+France of the Cardinal Pole; for the Cardinal Pole, being a succubus
+of the fiend, had a magical tongue and had been inducing the French
+King to levy arms, in the name of that arch-devil, the Bishop of Rome,
+against their goodly King Henry, upon whom God shed His peace.
+Culpepper raised his bonnet at the Deity's name, stuck it far back on
+his red head, and continued: Therefore the mouth of Cardinal Pole was
+to be stayed in Paris town.
+
+Culpepper smote his breast ferociously and with a black pride.
+
+'And I have stayed it!' he peacocked. 'I and no other. I--T.
+Culpepper--a made man!'
+
+'Not so,' Poins answered stubbornly. 'Thou wast sent to Paris to slay,
+and thou hast not slain!'
+
+'Thou liest!' Culpepper asseverated. 'I was sent to purge Paris town,
+and I ha' purged un. No pothicary had done it better nor Hercules that
+was a stall groom and cleaned stables in antick days.' For, at the
+first breath of news that Culpepper was in the town, at the first
+rumour that the king's assassin was in Paris, Cardinal Pole had
+gathered his purple skirts about his knees; at the second sound he had
+cast them off altogether and, arrayed as a woman or a barber's leech,
+had fled hot foot to Brescia and thence to Rome.
+
+'That was a nothing!' Culpepper asseverated. 'Though I ha' heard said
+that Hercules was made a god for cleaning stables that he found no
+easy task. But I will grant that it was no task for me to cleanse a
+whole town. For I needed no besoms, nor even no dagger, but the mere
+shadow of my beard upon the cobbly stones of Paris sufficed. I say
+nothing of that which befel in the day's journey; but mark this! mark
+what follows!' He had set out from Paris upon a high horse, with a
+high heart; he had frighted off all robbers and all sturdy rogues upon
+the road; he had slept at good inns as became a made man, and had
+bought himself a goodly pair of embroidered gloves which he could well
+pay for out of his superfluity. Being in haste to reach England, where
+he had that that called for him, he had ridden through the town of
+Ardres at nightfall, being minded to ride his horse dead, reach Calais
+gates in the hour, and beat down the gate if the warder would not
+suffer him to enter, it being dark. But outside the town of Ardres
+upon a make of no man's ground, being neither French nor English, he
+had espied a hut, and in the dark hut a lighted window hole that
+sparkled bravely, and, within, a big, fair woman drinking wine between
+candles with the light in her hair and a white tablecloth. And,
+feeling goodly, and Calais gate being shut, whether he broke it down
+one hour or three hours later was all one to him. He had gone into the
+hut to take by force or for payment a glass of wine from the black
+jacks, a kiss from the woman's mouth, and what else of ease the place
+afforded.
+
+'Now I will have you mark, cub,' he said--'cub that shall have to
+learn many wiles if thy throat be not cut by me within the next two
+hours. Mark this, cub: these were no Egyptians!' They were not
+Bohemians, not swearers, not subtle cozeners, not even black a-vised,
+or he would have been on his guard against them; but they were plain,
+fair folks of Normandy. So he had drunk his wine, and cast a main or
+two at dice with the woman and two men, losing no more and no less
+than was decent. And he had drunk more wine and had taken his
+kisses--since it was all one whether he came three hours or four hours
+later to Calais gate. And there had been candles on the table and
+stuffs upon the wall, and a crock on the fire for mulling the wine,
+and a sheet upon the feather bed. But when he awoke in the morning he
+had lain upon the hard earth, between the bare walls. And all that was
+his was gone that was worth the taking.
+
+'Now mark, cub,' he said. 'It was a simple thing this flitting with
+the hangings and the clothes and the pot rolled in bales and hung upon
+my horse. Upon my horse! But what is not simple is that simple folk of
+Normandy should have learned the arts of subtlety and drugging of
+wines. Mark that!' He pointed a finger at Poins.
+
+'Had God been good to you you might have been as good a warring boy as
+Thomas Culpepper, who with the shadow of his hand held back the
+galleons of France and France's knights from the goodly realm of
+England. For this I have done by frighting from Paris, Cardinal Pole
+that was moving the French King to war on us. Had God been good to you
+you might have been as brave. But marvel and consider and humble you
+in the dust to think that a man with my brain pan and all it holds
+could have been so cozened. For sure, a dolt like you would have been
+stripped more clean till you had neither nails to your toes nor hair
+to your eyebrows.'
+
+Hal Poins snarled that Culpepper would have been shaved too but that
+red hair stunk in the nostrils even of cozeners and thieves.
+
+Culpepper wagged his head from side to side.
+
+'This is a main soft stone,' he said; 'I am main weary. When the stone
+grows hard, which is a sign that I shall no longer be minded to rest,
+I will break thy back with a cudgel.'
+
+Poins stamped his foot with rage and tears filled his eyes.
+
+'An thou had a sword!' he said. 'An only thou had a sword!'
+
+'A year-old carrot to baste thee with!' Culpepper answered. 'Swords
+are for men!' He turned to Hogben, who was sitting on the ground
+furbishing his pikehead. 'Heard you the like of my tale?' he asked
+lazily.
+
+'Oh aye!' the Lincolnshire man answered. 'The simple folk of Normandy
+are simple only because they have no suitors. But they ha' learned
+that marlock from the sailors of Rye town. For in Rye town, which is
+the sinkhole of Sussex, you will meet every morning ten travellers
+travelling to France in the livery of Father Adam. Normans can learn,'
+he added sententiously, 'as the beasts of the field can learn from a
+man. My father had a ewe lamb that danced a pavane to my pipe on the
+farm of Sallowford that you sold to buy a woman the third part of a
+gown.'
+
+'Why! Art Nick Hogben?' Culpepper said.
+
+'Hast that question answered,' Hogben said. 'Now answer me one. Liedst
+thou when saidst what thou saidst of that wurman?'
+
+Culpepper on the stone swung his legs vaingloriously:
+
+'I sold three farms to buy her a gown,' he said.
+
+'Aye!' Nick Hogben answered. 'So thou saidst in Stamford town three
+years gone by. And thou saidst more and the manner of it. But betwixt
+the buying the gowns and the more of it lie many things. As this: Did
+she take the gown of thee? Or as this: Having taken the gown of thee,
+did she pay thee in the kind payment should be made in?'
+
+Culpepper looked up at him with a sharp snarl.
+
+'For--' and Nick Hogben shook his head sagaciously, 'Stamford town
+believed the more and the manner of it, and Kat Howard's name is up in
+the town of Stamford. But I have not yet chiselled out the great piece
+that shall come from my pike when certain sure I am that Kat Howard is
+down under a man's foot.'
+
+Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.
+
+'Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!' he said. 'Therefore I will say I
+lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her
+alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned
+in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper
+person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent
+purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord
+Edmund's, house and I had pies and gowns for her. Consider these
+things and make a hole or no hole as thou wilt----'
+
+Nicholas Hogben considered with his eyes on the ground; he scratched
+his head with a black finger.
+
+'I can make nowt out,' he said. 'But I will curse thee for a
+lily-livered hoggit an thou marry Kat Howard.'
+
+'Why, I am minded to marry her,' Culpepper answered, 'over here in
+France,' and he stretched a hand towards the long white road where in
+the distance the French peasants were driving lean beasts for a true
+Englishman's provender in Calais. 'Over here in France. Body of
+God!--Body of God!----' He wavered, being still fevered. 'In England
+it had been otherwise. But here, shivering across plains and
+seas--why, I will wed with her.'
+
+'Talkest like a Blind God Boy,' Hogben said sarcastically. 'How
+knowest she be thine to take?' He pointed at the young Poins. 'Here be
+another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well
+discern if she be thine or whose.'
+
+Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But
+Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was
+from its scabbard and warring in the air.
+
+'Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee--Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!'
+he cried.
+
+'Ass!' Culpepper answered. 'In God's time I will break thy back across
+my knee. But God's time is not yet.'
+
+He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had
+seen.
+
+'Squahre Thomas,' Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, 'that
+young man of Kent saith e'ennow: "Kat Howard is like to----" and then
+he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat
+Howard is like to do or be done by?'
+
+With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think
+rapidly--nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could
+think rapidly always.
+
+'Goodman Thomas Culpepper,' he said in a high voice, 'the mistress
+Katharine Howard I spoke of is thin and dark and small, and married
+to Edward Howard of Biggleswade. She is like to die of a quinsy.'
+
+For well he knew that his advancement depended on his keeping Thomas
+Culpepper on the hither side of the water; and if it muddled his brain
+to have been so usefully mishandled for carrying letters betwixt the
+King's Grace and the Lady Katharine Howard, he knew enough of a
+jealous man to know that that was no news to keep Thomas Culpepper in
+Calais.
+
+Culpepper's animation dropped like the light of a torch that is
+dowsed.
+
+'Put up thy pot skewer,' he said; 'my Kat is tall and fairish and
+unwed. Ha' ye not seen her with the Lady Mary of England's women?'
+
+The young Poins, zealous to be rid of the matter, answered fervently:
+
+'Never. She is not talked of in the Court.'
+
+'That is the best hearing,' Thomas Culpepper said. 'I do absolve thee
+of five kicks for being the messenger of that.'
+
+
+III
+
+
+They were a-walking in the little garden below the windows of the late
+Cardinal's house at Hampton; the April sun shone, for May came on
+apace, and in that sheltered spot the light lay warm and no breezes
+came. They took great pleasure there beneath the windows. One girl
+kept three golden balls flying in the air, whilst three others and two
+lords sought to distract her by inducing her little hound to bark
+shrilly below her hands up at the flying balls that caught in them the
+light of the sun, the blue of the sky, and the red and grey of the
+warm palace walls. Down the nut walk, where the trees that the dead
+Cardinal had set were already fifteen years old and dark with young
+green leaves as bright as little flowers, they had set up archery
+targets. Cicely Elliott, in black and white, flashing like a magpie in
+the alleys, ran races with the Earl of Surrey beneath the blinking
+eyes of her old knight; the Lady Mary, herself habited all in black,
+moved like a dark shadow upon a dial between the little beds upon
+paths of red brick between box hedges as high as your ankles. She
+spoke to none save once when she asked the name of a flower. But
+laughter went up, and it seemed as if, in this first day out of doors,
+all the Court opened its lungs to drink the new air; and they were
+making plans for May Day already.
+
+They asked, too, a riddle: 'An a nutshell from Candlemas loved a merry
+bud in March, how should it come to pleasure and content?' and men who
+had the answer looked wise and shook their sides at guessing faces.
+
+In a bower at the south end of the small garden Katharine Howard sat
+to play cat's-cradle with the old lady of Rochford. This foolish game
+and this foolish old woman, with her unceasing tales of the Queen Anne
+Boleyn--who had been her cousin--gave to Katharine a great feeling of
+ease. With her troubled eyes and weary expression, her occasional
+groans as the rheumatism gnawed at her joints, the old lady minded her
+of the mother she had so seldom seen. She had always been somewhere
+away, all through Katharine's young years, planning and helping her
+father to advancement that never came, and hopeless to control her
+wild children. Thus Katharine had come to love this poor old woman and
+consorted much with her, for she was utterly bewildered to control the
+Lady Mary's maids that were beneath her care.
+
+Katharine held out her hands, parallel, as if she were praying, with
+the strand of blue wool and silver cord criss-cross and diagonal
+betwixt her fingers. The old lady bent above them, silent and puzzled,
+to get the key to the strings. Twice she protruded her gouty fingers,
+with swollen ends; and twice she drew them back to stroke her brows.
+
+'I mind,' she said suddenly, 'that I played cat's-cradle with my
+cousin Anne, that was a sinful queen.' She bent again and puzzled
+about the strings. 'In those days I had a great skill, I mind. We
+revised it to the eleventh change many times before her death.' Again
+she leant forward and again back. 'I did come near my death, too,' she
+added.
+
+Katharine's eyes had been gazing past her; suddenly she asked:
+
+'Was Anne Boleyn loved after she grew to be Queen?'
+
+The old woman's face took on a palsied and haunted look.
+
+'God help you!' she said; 'do you ask that?' and she glanced round her
+furtively in an agony of apprehension. Something had drawn all the gay
+gowns and embroidered stomachers towards the higher terrace. They were
+all alone in the arbour.
+
+'Why,' Katharine said, 'so many innocent creatures have been done to
+death since Cromwell came, that, though she was lewd before and a
+heretic all her days, I think doubts may be.'
+
+The old lady pressed her hand upon her bosom where her heart beat.
+
+'Madam Howard,' she said, 'for my life I know not the truth of the
+matter. There was much trickery; God knoweth the truth.'
+
+Katharine mused for a moment above the cat's-cradle on her fingers.
+Near the joint at the end of the little one there was a small mole.
+
+'Take you the fifth and third strings,' she said. 'The king string
+holds your wrist,' and whilst the old face was still intent upon the
+problem she said:
+
+'I think that if a woman come to be Queen it is odds that she will
+live chastely, how lewd soever she ha' been aforetime.'
+
+Lady Rochford set her fingers in between Katharine's, but when she
+drew them back with the strings upon them, they wavered, lost their
+straightness, knotted and then resolved themselves into a single loop
+as in a swift wind a cloud dies away beneath the eyes of the beholder.
+
+'Why, 'tis pity,' Katharine said.
+
+All the lords and all the ladies were now upon the terrace above. The
+old lady had the string in her broad lap. Suddenly she bent forward,
+her eyes opened.
+
+'She was the enemy of your Church,' she said. 'But this I will tell
+you: upon occasions when men swore she had been with other men o'
+nights, the Queen was in my bed with me!'
+
+Katharine nodded silently.
+
+'Who was I that I dare speak?' the old woman sobbed; and Katharine
+nodded again.
+
+Lady Rochford rubbed together her fat hands as she were ringing them.
+
+'Before God,' she moaned, 'and by the blessed blood of Hailes that
+cured ever my pains, if a soul know a soul I knew Anne. If she was a
+woman like other women before she wedded the King, she was minded to
+be chaste after. Madam Howard,'--and she rocked her fat body to and
+fro upon the seat--'they came to me from both sides, your Papists and
+her heretics; they threatened me to keep silence of what I knew. I was
+to keep silence. I name no names. But they came o' both sides, Papists
+and heretics; though she was middling true to the heretics they could
+not be true to her.'
+
+Katharine answered her own thoughts with:
+
+'Ay; but my cause is the good cause. Men shall be true to it.'
+
+The old lady leaned forward and stroked her hands.
+
+'Dearie,' she said, 'dandling piece, sweet bit, there are no true
+men.' She had an entreaty in her tone, and her large blue eyes gazed
+fixedly. 'Say that my cousin Anne was a heretic. I know naught of it
+save that my bones have ached always since the holy blood of Hailes
+was done away with that was wont to cure me. But the Queen Anne was
+hard driven because of a plotting; and no man stood her friend.' With
+her large and tear-filled eyes she gazed at the palace, where the pear
+trees upon the walls shewed new, pale leaves in the sunlight. 'The
+great Cardinal was hard driven because of a plot, and no man was true
+to him. There is no true man. Hope not for one. Hope not for any one.
+The great Cardinal builded those walls and that palace--and where is
+he?'
+
+'Yet,' Katharine said, 'Privy Seal that is was true to him and
+profited exceedingly.'
+
+Lady Rochford shook her head.
+
+'For a little while truth may help you,' she said; 'but your name in
+the end shall be but a stink.'
+
+'Ay,' Katharine answered her; 'but ye shall gain at the end of all.
+For I hold it for certain that because, to the uttermost dregs of his
+cup, Cromwell was true to his master Wolsey, before the throne of God
+much shall be pardoned him.'
+
+The old woman answered bitterly:
+
+'The throne of God is a long way from here.'
+
+'Please it Mary and the saints,' Katharine said, 'the ten years to
+come shall bring Heaven a thousand leagues nearer to this land.' But
+her words died away because the Lady Rochford's mouth fell open.
+
+From the terrace a great square man led down a tiny, small man, giving
+the child his finger to help him down the steps. It clung to him, the
+little, squared replica of himself, sturdily and with a blonde, small
+face laughing up into his father's that laughed down past a huge
+shoulder. Henry was dressed all in black, and his son too; the boy's
+callow head shone in the sunshine, and they came dallying down the
+little path, many faces and shoulders peering over the terrace wall at
+them. Once the child stumbled, loosed his hold of his father's finger
+and came down upon all fours. He crawled to the pathside, filled his
+little hands with leaves, and held them up towards his sire; and they
+could hear the King say:
+
+'Who-hoop, Ned! Princes walk not like quadrumanes,' as he bent to take
+the leaves. The child twisted himself, gripping his little fingers
+into Henry's garter, and, catching again at his finger, pulled his
+father towards their bower.
+
+The Lady Rochford rose, but Katharine sat where she was to smile upon
+the child and brush his head with a pink tassel of her sleeve. The
+little prince hid his face in the voluminous velvet of his father's
+vast thighs. The King, diffusing a great and embracing pride, laughed
+to Lady Rochford.
+
+'Ye played cat's-cradle,' he said. 'I warrant ye brought it not beyond
+seven changes. Time was when I have done fourteen with a lady if her
+hands were white enough.'
+
+He threw away the green leaves of the clove pinks that his son had
+given him, and took the blue and silver loop from the old woman's
+hands. He sat himself heavily on the bench facing Katharine, and
+crying, 'See you, silly Ned,' held his son's hands apart and fitted
+the cord over the little wrists.
+
+Suddenly he bent clumsily forward and picked up again the carnation
+leaves that lay in green strands upon the floor of the arbour,
+grunting a little with the effort.
+
+'This is the first offering my son ever made me,' he said, and he drew
+a pocket purse from his breast to lay them in. 'Please God he shall
+yet lay at my feet a province or two of our heritage of France.' He
+touched his cap at the Deity's name, and called gruffly at his son:
+'See you, forget not ever that we be Kings of France too, you and I,'
+and the little boy with his cropped head uttered:
+
+'_Rex Angliae, Galliae, Franciae et Hiberniae!_'
+
+'Aye, I ha' learned ye that,' the King said, and roared with laughter.
+Of a sudden he turned his head, without moving his body, towards
+Katharine.
+
+'I ha' news from Norfolk in France,' he said, and, as the Lady
+Rochford made to move, he uttered good-naturedly: 'Aye, avoid. But ye
+may buss my son.'
+
+He stretched back his head, laid an arm along the back of his seat,
+put out his feet and pushed at the child, who played with his
+shoe-tags.
+
+'The boy grows,' he said, and motioned for Katharine to sit beside
+him. Then his face shewed a quick dissatisfaction. 'A brave boy, but a
+should be braver,' and looking down, 'see you not blue lines about 's
+gills?' He caught at her hand with a masterful grip.
+
+'Here we're a picture,' he said: 'a lusty husbandman, his lusty son,
+his lusty wife, resting all beneath his goodly vine.' His face clouded
+again. 'I--I am not lusty; my son, he is not lusty.' He touched her
+cheek. 'Thou art lusty enow--hast such pink cheeks.'
+
+'Aye, we were always lusty at home when we had enow to eat,' Katharine
+said. She took the child upon her knee and blew lightly in his face.
+'I will wager you I will guess his weight within a pound,' she added,
+and began to play a game with the tiny fingers. 'Wherefore do ye habit
+little children in black?'
+
+'Why,' the King answered, 'I know not if I myself appear less
+monstrous in black or red, and my son shall be habited as I be. 'Tis
+to make the trial.'
+
+'Aye,' Katharine said, 'ye think first of yourself. But dress the
+child in white and go in white yourself. And set up a chantry of
+priests to pray the child grow sturdy. It was thus my cousin Surrey's
+life was saved that was erst a weakling.'
+
+'Be Queen,' he said suddenly. 'Marry me. I came here to ask it.'
+
+Her lips parted; she left her hand in his. The expected words had
+come.
+
+'I have thought on it,' she said. 'I knew ye could not long hold to
+child and sire as ye sware ye would.'
+
+'Kat,' he said, 'ye shall do my will. I ha' news from France. Ye gave
+me good rede. I ha' news from Cleves: the Cleves woman shall no more
+be queen of mine. Thee I will have.'
+
+She raised herself from the bench and turned in the entrance of the
+arbour to look at him.
+
+'Give me leave to walk on the path,' she said. 'I have thought on
+this--for I was sure I gave you good advice, and well I knew Cleves
+would sever from ye.' She faltered: 'I ha' thought on it. But 'tis
+different to think on it and to ha' the thing in your face.'
+
+He uttered, 'Make haste,' and she walked down the path. He saw her,
+tall, fair, swaying a little in the wind, raise her face to the
+skies; her long fingers made the sign of the cross, her hood fell
+back. Her lips moved; the fringes of her lashes came down over her
+blue eyes, and she seemed to wrestle with her hands.
+
+'Aye,' he muttered to himself half earnest, half sardonic, 'prayer is
+better than thoughts. God strike with palsy them that made me afraid
+to pray.... Aye, pray on, pray on,' he said again. 'But by God and His
+wounds! ye shall be my queen.'
+
+By the time she came back he laughed at her tempestuously, and pushing
+the little prince tenderly with his huge foot, watched him roll on the
+floor catching at the air.
+
+'Why,' he said to her, 'what's the whimsy now? Shalt be the queen.
+'Tis the sole way. 'Tis the way to the light.' He leant forward.
+'Cleves has gone to the bastard called Charles to sue for mercy. Ye
+led me so well to set Francis against Charles that I may snap my
+fingers against both. None but thee could ha' forged that bolt. Child,
+I will make a league with the Pope against Charles or Francis, with
+Francis or Charles. Anne may go hang herself.' He rose to his feet and
+stretched out both his hands, his eyes glowing beneath his deep brows.
+'Body o' God! thou art a very fair woman; and now I will be such a
+king as never was, and take France for mine own and set up Holy Church
+again, and say good prayers and sleep in a warm bed. Body o' God! Body
+o' God!'
+
+'God and the saints save the issue!' she said. 'I am thy servant and
+slave.'
+
+But her tone made him recoil.
+
+'What whimsy's here?' he muttered heavily, and his eyes became
+suffused with red. 'Speak, wench!' He pulled at the stuff round his
+throat. 'I will have peace,' he said. 'I will at last have peace.'
+
+'God send you have it,' she said, and trembled a little, half in fear,
+half in sheer pity at the thought of thwarting him.
+
+'Speak thy fool whimsy,' he muttered huskily. 'Speak!'
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'where is the Queen that is?'
+
+He flared suddenly at her as if she had reproved him.
+
+'At Windsor. 'Tis a better palace than this of mine here.' He shook
+his finger heavily and uttered with a boastful defiance: 'Shalt not
+say I shower no gifts on her. Shalt not say she has no state. I ha'
+sent her seven jennets this day. I shall go bring her golden apples on
+the morrow. Scents she has had o' me; French gowns, Southern fruits.
+No man nor wench shall say I be not princely----' His boasting bluster
+died away before her silence. To please a mute desire in her, he had
+showered more gifts on Anne of Cleves than on any other woman he had
+ever seen; and thinking that she used him ill not to praise him for
+this, he could not hold his tongue: 'What is't to thee what she hath?
+What she hath thou losest. 'Tis a folly.'
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'I will myself to see the Queen that is.'
+
+'And whysomever?' he voiced his astonishment.
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'I have a tickly conscience in divorces. I will
+ask her mine own self.'
+
+He roared out suddenly indistinguishable words, stamped his feet,
+waved his hands at the skies, and lost his voice altogether.
+
+'Aye,' she said, catching at some of his speech, 'I ha' read your
+Highness' depositions. I ha' read depositions of the Archbishop's. But
+I will be satisfied of her own mouth that she be not your wife.'
+
+And when he swore that Anne would lie:
+
+'Nay,' she answered; 'if she will lie to keep her queenship, keep it
+she shall. I am upon the point of honour.'
+
+'Before God!'--and his voice had a sneering haughtiness--'ye will not
+be long of this world if ye steer by the point of honour.'
+
+'Sir,' she cried out and stretched forth her hands; 'for the love of
+Mary who guides the starry counsels and of the saints who sit in
+conclave, speak not in that wise.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and said, with a touch of angry shame:
+
+'God send the world were another world; I would it were other. But I
+am a prince in this one.'
+
+'My lord,' she said; 'if the world so is, kings and princes are here
+to be above the world. In your greatness ye shall change it; with your
+justice ye shall purify it; with your clemencies ye should it chasten
+and amerce. Ye ask me to be a queen. Shall I be a queen and not such a
+queen? No, I tell you; if a woman may swear a great oath, I swear by
+Leonidas that saved Sparta and by Christ Jesus that saved this world,
+so will I come by my queenship and so act in it that, if God give me
+strength the whole world never shall find speck upon mine honour--or
+upon thine if I may sway thee.'
+
+'Why,' he said, 'thy voice is like little flutes.'
+
+He considered, patting his square, soft-shod feet upon the bricks of
+the arbour floor.
+
+'By Guy! I will have thee,' he said; 'though ye twist my senses as
+never woman twisted them--and it is not good for a man to be swayed by
+his women.'
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'in naught would I sway a man save in where my
+conscience pricks and impels me.' She rubbed her hand across her eyes.
+'It is difficult to see the right in these matters. The only way is to
+be firm for God and for the cause of the saints.' She looked down at
+her feet. 'I will be ceaseless in my entreaties to you for them,' she
+uttered. Suddenly again she stretched forth both her hands that had
+sunk to her sides:
+
+'Dear lord,' and her voice was full of pity for herself and for
+entreaty; 'let me go to a convent to pray unceasing for thee.'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'Dear lord,' she repeated; 'use me as thou wilt and I will stay beside
+thee and urge thee to the cause of God.'
+
+Again he shook his head.
+
+'The saints would pardon me it,' she whispered; 'or if I even be
+damned to save England, it were a good burnt-offering.'
+
+'Wench,' he said; 'I was never a man to go a-whoring. I ha' done it,
+but had no savour with it.' His boastfulness returned to the heavy
+voice. 'I am a king that will give. I will give a crown, a realm,
+jewels, honours, monies. All I have I will give; but thou shalt wed
+me.' He threw out his chest and gazed down at her. 'I was ever thus,'
+he said.
+
+'And I ever thus,' she answered him swiftly. 'Mary hath put this thing
+in my mind; and though ye scourge me, ye shall not have it otherwise.'
+
+'Even how?' he said.
+
+'My lord,' she answered; 'if the Queen, so it be true, will say she be
+no wife of thine, I will wed thee. If the Queen, seeing that it is for
+the good of this suffering realm, will give to me her crown, I will
+wed with thee. I wot ye may get for yourself another woman with
+another gear of conscience to bear t'ee children. All the ills of this
+realm came with a divorce of a queen. I do hate the word as I hate
+Judas, and will have no truck with the deed.'
+
+'Ye speak me hard,' he said; 'but no man shall say I could not bear
+with the truth at odd moments.'
+
+A great and hasty eagerness came into her voice.
+
+'Ye say that it is truth?' she cried. 'God hath softened thy heart.'
+
+'God or thee,' he said, and muttered, 'I do not make this avowal to
+the world.' Suddenly he smote his thigh. 'Body o' God!' he called out;
+'the day shall soon come. Cleves falls away, France and Spain are
+sundering. I will sue for peace with the Pope, and set up a chapel to
+Kat's memory.' He breathed as if a weight had fallen from his chest,
+and suddenly laughed: 'But ye must wed me to keep me in the right
+way.'
+
+He changed his tone again.
+
+'Why, go to Anne,' he said; 'she is such a fool she will not lie to
+thee; and, before God, she is no wife of mine.'
+
+'God send ye speak the truth,' she answered; 'but I think few men be
+found that will speak truth in these matters.'
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But it was with Throckmorton that the real pull of the rope came.
+Henry was by then so full of love for her that, save when she crossed
+his purpose, he would have given her her way to the bitter end of
+things. But Throckmorton bewailed her lack of loyalty. He came to her
+on the morning of the next day, having heard that, if the rain held
+off, a cavalcade of seventeen lords, twelve ladies and their
+bodyguards were commanded to ride with her in one train to Windsor,
+where the Queen was.
+
+'I am main sure 'tis for Madam Howard that this cavalcade is ordered,'
+he said; 'for there is none other person in Court to whom his Highness
+would work this honour. And I am main sure that if Madam Howard goeth,
+she goeth with some mad maggot of a purpose.'
+
+His foxy, laughing eyes surveyed her, and he stroked his great beard
+deliberately.
+
+'I ha' not been near ye this two month,' he said, 'but God knows that
+I ha' worked for ye.'
+
+Save to take her to Privy Seal the day before, when Privy Seal had
+sent him, he had in truth not spoken with her for many weeks. He had
+deemed it wise to keep from her.
+
+'Nevertheless,' he said earnestly, 'I know well that thy cause is my
+cause, and that thou wilt spread upon me the mantle of thy favour and
+protection.'
+
+They were in her old room with the green hangings, the high fireplace,
+and before the door the red curtain worked with gold that the King had
+sent her, and Cromwell had given orders that the spy outside should be
+removed, for he was useless. Thus Throckmorton could speak with a
+measure of freedom.
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said; 'ye use me not well in this. Ye are not so
+stable nor so safe in your place as that ye may, without counsel or
+guidance, risk all our necks with these mad pranks.'
+
+'Goodman,' she said, 'I asked ye not to come into my barque. If ye
+hang to the gunwale, is it my fault an ye be drowned in my foundering
+if I founder?'
+
+'Tell me why ye go to Windsor,' he urged.
+
+'Goodman,' she answered, 'to ask the Queen if she be the King's wife.'
+
+'Oh, folly!' he cried out, and added softly, 'Madam Howard, ye be
+monstrous fair. I do think ye be the fairest woman in the world. I
+cannot sleep for thinking on thee.'
+
+'Poor soul!' she mocked him.
+
+'But, bethink you,' he said; 'the Queen is a woman, not a man. All
+your fairness shall not help you with her. Neither yet your sweet
+tongue nor your specious reasons. Nor yet your faith, for she is half
+a Protestant.'
+
+'If she be the King's wife,' Katharine said, 'I will not be Queen. If
+she care enow for her queenship to lie over it, I will not be Queen
+either. For I will not be in any quarrel where lies are--either of my
+side or of another's.'
+
+'God help us all!' Throckmorton mocked her. 'Here is my neck engaged
+on your quarrel--and by now a dozen others. Udal hath lied for you in
+the Cleves matter; so have I. If ye be not Queen to save us ere
+Cromwell's teeth be drawn, our days are over and past.'
+
+He spoke with so much earnestness that Katharine was moved to consider
+her speaking.
+
+'Knight,' she said at last, 'I never asked ye to lie to Cromwell over
+the Cleves matter. I never asked Udal. God knows, I had the rather be
+dead than ye had done it. I flush and grow hot each time I think this
+was done for me. I never asked ye to be of my quarrel--nay, I take
+shame that I have not ere this sent to Privy Seal to say that ye have
+lied, and Cleves is false to him.' She pointed an accusing finger at
+him: 'I take shame; ye have shamed me.'
+
+He laughed a little, but he bent a leg to her.
+
+'Some man must save thee from thy folly's fruits,' he said. 'For some
+men love thee. And I love thee so my head aches.'
+
+She smiled upon him faintly.
+
+'For that, I believe, I have saved thy neck,' she said. 'My conscience
+cried: "Tell Privy Seal the truth"; my heart uttered: "Hast few men
+that love thee and do not pursue thee."'
+
+Suddenly he knelt at her feet and clutched at her hand.
+
+'Leave all this,' he said. 'Ye know not how dangerous a place this
+is.' He began to whisper softly and passionately. 'Come away from
+here. Well ye know that I love 'ee better than any man in land. Well
+ye know. Well ye know. And well ye know no man could so well fend for
+ye or jump nimbly to thy thoughts. The men here be boars and bulls.
+Leave all these dangers; here is a straight issue. Ye shall not sway
+the wild boar king for ever. Come with me.'
+
+As she did not at once find words to stop his speech, he whispered on:
+
+'I have gold enow to buy me a baron's fee in Almain. I have been
+there: in castles in the thick woods, silken bowers may be built----'
+
+But suddenly again he rose to his feet and laughed:
+
+'Why,' he said, 'I hunger for thee: at times 'tis a madness. But 'tis
+past.'
+
+His eyes twinkled again and he waved a hand.
+
+'Mayhap 'tis well that ye go to the Queen,' he said drily. 'If the
+Queen say, "Yea," ye ha' gained all; if "Nay" ye ha' lost naught, for
+ye may alway change your mind. And a true and steadfast cause, a large
+and godly innocence is a thing that gaineth men's hearts and voices.'
+He paused for a moment. 'Ye ha' need o' man's good words,' he said
+drily; then he laughed again. 'Aye: _Nolo episcopari_ was always a
+good cry,' he said.
+
+Katharine looked at him tenderly.
+
+'Ye know my aims are other,' she said, 'or else you would not love me.
+I think ye love me better than any man ever did--though I ha' had a
+store of lovers.'
+
+'Aye,' he nodded at her gravely, 'it is pleasant to be loved.'
+
+She was sitting by her table and leant her hand upon her cheek; she
+had been sewing a white band with pearls and silken roses in red and
+leaves in green, and it fell now to her feet from her lap. Suddenly he
+said:
+
+'Answer me one question of three?'
+
+She did not move, for a feeling of languor that often overcame her in
+Throckmorton's presence made her feel lazy and apt to listen. She
+itched to be Queen--on the morrow or next day; she desired to have the
+King for her own, to wear fair gowns and a crown; to be beloved of the
+poor people and beloved of the saints. But her fate lay upon the knees
+of the gods then: on the morrow the Queen would speak--betwixt then
+and now there was naught for it but to rest. And to hearken to
+Throckmorton was to be surprised as if she listened at a comedy.
+
+'One question of three may be answered,' she said.
+
+'On the forfeit of a kiss,' he added. 'I pray God ye answer none.'
+
+He pondered for a moment, and leaning back against the chimney-piece
+crossed one silk-stockinged, thin, red leg. He spoke very swiftly, so
+that his words were like lightning.
+
+'And the first is: An ye had never come here but elsewhere seen me,
+had ye it in you to ha' loved me? And the second: How ye love the
+King's person? And the third: Were ye your cousin's leman?'
+
+Leaning against the table she seemed slowly to grow stiff in her pose;
+her eyes dilated; the colour left her cheeks. She spoke no word.
+
+'Privy Seal hath sent a man to hasten thy cousin back to here,' he
+said at last, after his eyes had steadily surveyed her face. She sat
+back in her chair, and the strip of sewing fell to wreathe, white and
+red and green, round her skirts on the floor.
+
+'I have sent a botcher to stay his coming,' he said slowly. 'Thy maid
+Margot's brother.'
+
+'I had forgotten Tom,' she said with long pauses between her words.
+She had forgotten her cousin and playmate. She had given no single
+thought to him since a day that she no longer remembered.
+
+Reading the expression of her face and interpreting her slow words,
+Throckmorton was satisfied in his mind that she had been her cousin's.
+
+'He hath passed from Calais to Dover, but I swear to you that he shall
+never come to you,' he said. 'I have others here.' He had none, but he
+was set to comfort her.
+
+'Poor Tom!' she uttered again almost in a whisper.
+
+'Thus,' he uttered slowly, 'you have a great danger.'
+
+She was silent, thinking of her Lincolnshire past, and he began again:
+
+'Therefore ye have need of help from me as I from thee.'
+
+'Aye,' he said, 'you shall advise with me. For at least, if I may not
+have the pleasure of thy body, I will have the enjoyment of thy
+converse.' His voice became husky for a moment. 'Mayhap it is a
+madness in me to cling to thee; I do set in jeopardy my earthly riches
+and my hope of profit. But it is Macchiavelli who says: "_If ye hoard
+gold and at the end have not pleasure in what gold may pay, ye had
+better have loitered in pleasing meadows and hearkened to the
+madrigals of sweet singing fowls._"' He waved his hand: 'Ye see I be
+still somewhat of a philosopher, though at times madness takes me.'
+
+She was still silent--shaken into thinking of the past she had had
+with her cousin when she had been very poor in Lincolnshire; she had
+had leisure to read good letters there, and the time to think of them.
+Now she had not held a book for four days on end.
+
+'You are in a very great danger of your cousin,' Throckmorton was
+repeating. 'Yet I will stay his coming.'
+
+'Knight,' she said, 'this is a folly. If guards be needed to keep me
+from his knife, the King shall give me guards.'
+
+'His knife!' Throckmorton raised his hands in mock surprise. 'His
+knife is a very little thing.'
+
+'Ye would not say it an ye had come anear him when he was crossed,'
+she said. 'I, who am passing brave, fear his knife more than aught
+else in this world.'
+
+'Oh, incorrigible woman,' he cried, 'thinking ever of straight things
+and clear doings. It is not the knife of your cousin, but the devious
+policy of Privy Seal that calleth for fear.'
+
+'Why, or ever Privy Seal bind Tom to his policy he shall bind iron
+bars to make a coil.'
+
+He looked at her with lifted eyebrows, and then scratched with his
+finger nail a tiny speck of mud from his shoe-point, balancing himself
+back against the chimney piece and crossing his red legs above the
+knees.
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said, 'Privy Seal is minded to use thy cousin for a
+battering-ram.' She was hardly minded to listen to him, and he uttered
+stealthily, as if he were sure of moving her: 'Thy cousin shall breach
+a way to the ears of the King--for thy ill fame to enter in.'
+
+She leaned forward a little.
+
+'Tell me of my ill fame,' she said; and at that moment Margot Poins,
+her handmaid, placid still, large, fair and florid, came in to bring
+her mistress an embroidery frame of oak wood painted with red stripes.
+At Throckmorton's glance askance at the cow-like girl, Katharine said:
+'Ye may speak afore Margot Poins. I ha' heard tales of her bringing.'
+
+Margot kneeled at Katharine's feet to stretch a white linen cloth over
+the frame on the floor.
+
+'Privy Seal planneth thus,' Throckmorton answered Katharine's
+challenge. He spoke low and level, hoping to see her twinge at every
+new phrase. 'The King hath put from him every tale of thee; it is not
+easy to bring him tales of those he loves, but very dangerous. But
+Cromwell planneth to bring hither thy cousin and to keep him privily
+till one day cometh the King to be alone with thee in thy bower or
+his. Then, having removed all lets, shall Cromwell gird this cousin to
+spring in upon thee and the King, screaming out and with his sword
+drawn.' Still Katharine did not move, but leaned along her table of
+yellow wood. 'It is not the sword ye shall fear,' he said slowly, 'but
+what cometh after. For, for sure, Privy Seal holdeth, then shall be
+the time to bring witnesses against thee to the hearing of the King.
+And Privy Seal hath witnesses.'
+
+'He would have witnesses,' Katharine answered.
+
+'There be those that will swear----'
+
+'Aye,' she caught him up, speaking very calmly. 'There be those that
+will swear they ha' seen me with a dozen men. With my cousin, with
+Nick Ardham, with one and another of the hinds. Why, he will bring a
+hind to swear I ha' loved him. And he will bring a bastard child or
+twain----' She paused, and he paused too.
+
+At last he said: 'Anan?'
+
+'Ye might do it against Godiva of Coventry, against the blessed
+Katharine or against Caesar's helpmeet in those days,' Katharine said.
+'Margot here can match all thy witnesses from the city of London--men
+that never were in Lincolnshire.'
+
+Margot's face flushed with a tide of exasperation, and, sitting
+motionless, she uttered deeply:
+
+'My uncle the printer hath a man will swear he saw ye walk with a
+fiend having horns and a tail.' And indeed these things were believed
+among the Lutherans that flocked still to Margot's uncle's printing
+room. 'My uncle hath printed this,' she muttered, and fumbled hotly in
+her bosom. She drew out a sheet with coarse black letters upon it and
+cast it across the floor with a flushed disdain at Throckmorton's
+feet. It bore the heading: '_Newes from Lincoln_,' Throckmorton kicked
+with his toe the white scroll and scrutinised Katharine's face
+dispassionately with his foxy eyes that jumped between his lids like
+little beetles of blue. He thrust his cap back upon his head and
+laughed.
+
+'Before God!' he said; 'ye are the joyfullest play that ever I heard.
+And how will Madam Howard act when the King heareth these things?'
+
+Katharine opened her lips with surprise.
+
+'For a subtile man ye are strangely blinded,' she said; 'there is one
+plain way.'
+
+'To deny it and call the saints to witness!' he laughed.
+
+'Even that,' she answered. 'I pray the saints to give me the place and
+time.'
+
+'Ha' ye seen the King in a jealous rage?' he asked.
+
+'Subtile man,' she answered, 'the King knows his world.'
+
+'Aye,' he answered, 'knoweth that women be never chaste.'
+
+Katharine bent to pick up her sewing.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'if the King will not have faith in me I will wed no
+King.'
+
+His jaw fell. 'Ye have so much madness?' he asked.
+
+She stretched towards him the hand that held her sewing now.
+
+'I swear to you,' she said--'and ye know me well--I seek a way to
+bring these rumours to the King's ears.'
+
+He said nothing, revolving these things in his mind.
+
+'Goodly servant,' she began, and he knew from the round and silvery
+sound she drew from her throat that she was minded to make one of the
+long speeches that appalled and delighted him with their childish
+logic and wild honour. 'If it were not that my cousin would run his
+head into danger I would will that he came to the King. Sir, ye are a
+wise man, can ye not see this wisdom? There is no good walking but
+upon sure ground, and I will not walk where the walking is not good.
+Shall I wed this King and have these lies to fear all my life? Shall I
+wed this King and do him this wrong? Neither wisdom nor honour counsel
+me to it. Since I have heard these lies were abroad I have at frequent
+moments thought how I shall bring them before the King.'
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets, stretched his legs out, and
+leaned back as though he were supporting the chimney-piece with his
+back.
+
+'The King knoweth how men will lie about a woman,' she began again.
+'The King knoweth how ye may buy false witness as ye may buy herrings
+in the market-place at so much a score. An the King were such a man as
+not to know these things, I would not wed with him. An the King were
+such a man as not to trust in me, I would not wed with him. I could
+have no peace. I could have no rest. I am not one that ask little, but
+much.'
+
+'Why, you ask much of them that do support your cause,' he laughed
+from his private thinking.
+
+'I do ask this oath of you,' she answered: 'that neither with sword
+nor stiletto, nor with provoked quarrel, nor staves, nor clubs, nor
+assassins, ye do seek to stay my cousin's coming.'
+
+He cut across her purpose with asking again: 'Ha' ye seen the King
+rage jealously?'
+
+'Knight,' she said, 'I will have your oath.' And, as he paused in
+thought, she said: 'Before God! if ye swear it not, I will make the
+King to send for him hither guarded and set around with an hundred
+men.'
+
+'Ye will not have him harmed?' he asked craftily. 'Ye do love him
+better than another?'
+
+She rose to her feet, her lips parted. 'Swear!' she cried.
+
+His fingers felt around his waist, then he raised his hand and
+uttered:
+
+'I do swear that ne with sword ne stiletto, ne with staves nor with
+clubs, ne with any quarrels nor violence so never will I seek thy
+goodly cousin's life.'
+
+He shook his head slowly at her.
+
+'All the men ye have known have prayed ye to be rid of him,' he said;
+'ye will live to rue.'
+
+'Sir,' she answered him, 'I had rather live to rue the injury my
+cousin should do me than live to rue the having injured him.' She
+paused to think for a moment. 'When I am Queen,' she said, 'I will
+have the King set him in a command of ships to sail westward over the
+seas. He shall have the seeking for the Hesperides or the city of
+Atalanta, where still the golden age remains to be a model and
+ensample for us.' Her eyes looked past Throckmorton. 'My cousin hath a
+steadfast nature to be gone on such pilgrimages. And I would the
+discovery were made, this King being King and I his Queen; rather that
+than the regaining of France; more good should come to Christendom.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' Throckmorton grinned at her, 'if men of our day and
+kin do come upon any city where yet remaineth the golden age, very
+soon shall be shewn the miracle of the corruptibility of gold. The
+rod of our corruption no golden state shall defy.'
+
+She smiled friendlily at him.
+
+'There we part company,' she said. 'For I do believe God made this
+world to be bettered. I think, and answer your question, I could never
+ha' loved you. For you be a child of the new Italians and I a disciple
+of the older holders of that land, who wrote, Cato voicing it for
+them, "Virtue spreadeth even as leaven leaveneth bread; a little lump
+in your flour in the end shall redeem all the loaf of the Republic."'
+
+He smiled for a moment noiselessly, his mouth open but no sound coming
+out. Then he coaxed her:
+
+'Answer my two other questions.'
+
+'Knight,' she answered; 'for the truth of the last, ask, with
+thumbscrews, the witnesses ye found in Lincolnshire, and believe them
+as ye list. Or ask at the mouth of a draw-well if fishes be below in
+the water before ye ask a woman if she be chaste. For the other,
+consider of my actions hereafter if I do love the King's person.'
+
+'Why, then, I shall never have kiss from mouth of thine,' he said, and
+pulled his cap down over his eyes to depart.
+
+'When the sun shall set in the east,' she retorted, and gave him her
+hand to kiss.
+
+Margot Poins raised her large, fair head from her stitching after he
+was gone, and asked:
+
+'Tell me truly how ye love the King's person. Often I ha' thought of
+it; for I could love only a man more thin.'
+
+'Child,' Katharine answered, 'his Highness distilleth from his person
+a make of majesty; there is no other such a man in Christendom. His
+Highness culleth from one's heart a make of pity--for, for sure, there
+is not in Christendom a man more tried or more calling to be led
+Godwards. The Greek writers had a myth, that the two wings of Love
+were made of Awe and Pity. Flaws I may find in him; but hot anger
+rises in my heart if I hear him miscalled. I will not perjure myself
+at his bidding; but being with him, I will kneel to him unbidden. I
+will not, to be his queen, have word in a divorce, for I have no
+truck with divorces; but I will humble myself to his Queen that is to
+pray her give me ease and him if the marriage be not consummated. For,
+so I love him that I will humble mine own self in the dust; but so I
+love love and its nobleness that, though I must live and die a
+cookmaid, I will not stoop in evil ways.'
+
+'There is no man worth that guise of love,' Margot answered, her voice
+coming gruff and heavy, 'not the magister himself. I ha' smote one
+kitchenmaid i' the face this noon for making eyes at him.'
+
+
+V
+
+
+'My mad nephew,' Master Printer Badge said to Throckmorton, 'shall
+travel down from his chamber anon. When ye shall see the pickle he is
+in ye shall understand wherefore it needeth ten minutes to his
+downcoming.' To Throckmorton's query he shook his dark, bearded head
+and muttered: 'Nay; ye used him for your own purposes. Ye should know
+better than I what is like to have befallen him.'
+
+Throckmorton swallowed his haste and leant back against the edge of a
+press that was not at work. Of these presses there were four there in
+the middle of the room: tall, black, compounded of iron and wood, the
+square inwards of each rose and fell rhythmically above the flutter of
+the printed leaves that the journeymen withdrew as they rose, and
+replaced, white, unsullied and damp as they came together again. Along
+the walls the apprentice setters stood before the black formes and
+with abstruse, deliberate or hesitating expressions, made swift
+snatches at the little leaden dice. The sifting sound of the leads
+going home and the creak of the presses with the heavy wheeze of one
+printer, huge and grizzled like a walrus, pulling the press-lever back
+and bending forward to run his eyes across the type--wheeze, creak
+and click--made a level and monotonous sound.
+
+'Ye drill well your men,' Throckmorton said lazily, and smoothed his
+white fingers, holding them up against the light, as if they of all
+things most concerned him.
+
+He had received that day at Hampton a letter from the printer here in
+Austin Friars, sent hastening by the hands of the pressman whose idle
+machine he now leant against. 'Sir,' the letter said, 'my nephew saith
+urgently that T.C. is landed at Greenwich. He might not stay him. What
+this importeth best is yknown to your worshipful self. By the swaying
+of the sea which late he overpassed, being tempestive, and by other
+things, my nephew is rendered incoherent. That God may save you and
+guide your counsels and those of your master to the more advantaging
+of the Protestant religion that now, praised be God! standeth higher
+in the realm than ever it did, is the prayer of Jno. Badge the
+Younger.'
+
+Throckmorton had hastened there to the hedges of Austin Friars at the
+fastest of his bargemen's oars. The printer had told him that, but
+that the business was the Lord Privy Seal's and, as he understood,
+went to the advantaging of Protestantism and the casting down of
+Popery, never would he ha' sent with the letter his own printer
+journeyman, busied as they were with printing of his great Bible in
+English.
+
+'Here is an idle press,' he said, pointing at the mute and lugubrious
+instrument of black, 'and I doubt I ha' done wrong.' His moody brow
+beneath the black, dishevelled hair became overcast so that it
+wrinkled into great furrows like crowns. 'I doubt whether I have done
+wrong,' and he folded his immense bare arms, on which the hair was
+like a black boar's, and pondered. 'If I thought I had done wrong, I
+might not sleep seven nights.'
+
+A printer yawned at his loom, and the great dark man shouted at him:
+
+'Foul knave, ye show indolence! Wot ye that ye be printing the Word of
+God to send abroad in this land? Wot ye that for this ye shall stand
+with the elect in Heaven?' He turned upon Throckmorton. 'Sir,' he
+said, 'your master Cromwell advanceth the cause, therefore I ha'
+served him in this matter of the letter. But, sir, I am doubtful that,
+by losing one moment from the printing of the pure Word of God, I have
+not lost more time than a year's work of thy master.'
+
+Throckmorton rubbed gently the long hand that he still held against
+the light.
+
+'Ye fall away from Privy Seal?' he asked.
+
+The printer gazed at him with glowering and suffused eyes, choking in
+his throat. He raised an enormous hand before Throckmorton's face.
+
+'Courtier,' he cried, 'with this hand I ha' stopped an ox, smiting it
+between the eyes. Wo befal the man, traitor to Privy Seal, that I do
+meet and betwixt whose eyes this hand doth fall.' The hand quivered in
+the air with fury. 'I can raise a thousand 'prentices and a thousand
+journeymen to save Privy Seal from any peril; I can raise ten thousand
+citizens, and ten thousand to-morrow again from the shires by
+pamphlets of my printing; I can raise a mighty army thus to shield him
+from Papists and the devil's foul contrivances. An I were a Papist, I
+would pray to him, were he dead, as he were a saint.' Throckmorton
+moved his face a line or two backwards from the gesticulating ham of a
+hand, and blinked his eyes. 'My gold were Privy Seal's an he needed
+it; my blood were his and my prayers. Nevertheless,' and his voice
+took a more exalted note, 'one letter of the Word of God, God aiding
+it, is of more avail than Privy Seal, or I, and all those I can love,
+or he. With his laws and his nose for treason he hath smitten the
+Amalekites above the belt; but a letter of the Word of God can smite
+them hip and thigh, God helping.' He seemed again to choke in his
+throat, and said more quietly: 'But ye shall not think a man in land
+better loveth this godly flail of the monks.'
+
+'Why, I do think ye would stand up against the King's self,'
+Throckmorton said, 'and I am glad to hear it.'
+
+'Against all printers and temporal powers,' the printer answered.
+Amongst the apprentices and journeymen a murmur arose of acclamation
+or of denial, some being of opinion that the King was divine in origin
+and inspiration, but for the most part they supported their master,
+and Throckmorton's blue eyes travelled from one to the other.
+
+But the printer heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
+
+'God be thanked,' he said, 'that keepeth the hearts of princes and
+guideth with His breath all temporal occurrences.' Throckmorton was
+about to touch his cap at the name of Omnipotence, but remembering
+that he was among Protestants changed the direction of his hand and
+scratched his cheek among the little hairs of his beard; 'the signs
+are favourable that our good King's Highness shall still incline to
+our cause and Privy Seal's.'
+
+Throckmorton said: 'Anan?'
+
+'Aye,' the printer said heavily, 'good news is come of Cleves.'
+
+'Ye ha' news from Cleves?' Throckmorton asked swiftly.
+
+'From Cleves not,' the printer answered; 'but from the Court by way of
+Paris and thence from Cleves.' And to the interested spy he related,
+accurately enough, that a make of mouthing, mowing, magister of the
+Latin tongues had come from Paris, having stolen copies of the Cleves
+envoy's letters in that town, and that these letters said that Cleves
+was fast inclined to the true Schmalkaldner league of Lutherans and
+would pay tribute truly, but no more than that do fealty to the
+accursed leaguer of the Pope called Charles the Emperor.
+
+Throckmorton inclined his cap at an angle to the floor.
+
+'How had ye that news that was so secret?' he asked.
+
+The printer shook his dark beard with an air of heavy pleasure.
+
+'Ye have a great organisation of spies,' he said, 'but better is the
+whisper of God among the faithful.'
+
+'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'the magister Udal hath to his
+sweetheart thy niece Margot Poins.'
+
+At her name the printer's eyes filled with a sudden and violent heat.
+
+'Seek another channel,' he cried, and waved his arms at the low
+ceiling. 'Before the face of Almighty God I swear that I ha' no truck
+with Margot my niece. Since she has been sib with the whore of the
+devil called Kat Howard, never hath she told me a secret through her
+paramour or elsewise. A shut head the heavy logget keepeth--let her
+not come within reach of my hand.' He swayed back upon his feet. 'Let
+her not come,' he said. He bent his brows upon Throckmorton. 'I
+marvel,' he uttered, 'that ye who are so faithful a servant o' Privy
+Seal's can have truck with the brother of my niece Margot.'
+
+'Printer,' Throckmorton answered him, 'ye know well that when the
+leaven of Protestantism hath entered in there, houses are divided
+against themselves. A wench may be a foul Papist and serve, if ye
+will, Kat Howard; but her brother shall yet be an indifferent good
+servant for me.'
+
+The printer, who had tolerated that his men should hear his panegyric
+of the Bible and Privy Seal, scowled at them now so that again the
+arms swung to and fro with the levers, the leads clicked. He put his
+great head nearer Throckmorton's and muttered:
+
+'Are ye certain my nephew serveth ye well? He was never wont to favour
+our cause, and, before ye sent him on this errand, he was wont to cry
+out in his cups that he was disgraced for having carried letters
+betwixt Kat Howard and the King. If this were true he was no friend of
+ours.'
+
+'Why, it was true,' Throckmorton uttered negligently.
+
+The printer caught at the spy's wrist, and the measure of his
+earnestness showed the extent of his passion for Privy Seal's cause.
+
+'Use him no more,' he said. 'Both children of my sister were ever
+indifferents. They shall not serve thee well.'
+
+'It was ever Privy Seal's motto and habit to use for his servitors
+those that had their necks in his noose. Such men serve him ever the
+best.'
+
+The printer shook his head gloomily.
+
+'I wager my nephew will yet play the traitor to Privy Seal.'
+
+'I will do it myself ere that,' and Throckmorton yawned, throwing his
+head back.
+
+'The scaldhead is there,' the printer said; and in the doorway there
+stood, supporting himself by the lintel, the young Poins. His face was
+greenish white; a plaster was upon his shaven head; he held up one
+foot as if it pained him to set it to the floor. Through the
+house-place where sat the aged grandfather with his cap pulled over
+his brows, pallid, ironical and seeming indescribably ancient, the
+printer led the spy. The boy hobbled after them, neglecting the old
+man's words:
+
+'Ha' no truck with men of Privy Seal's. Privy Seal hath stolen my
+ground.' In the long shed where they ate all, printer, grandfather,
+apprentices and journeymen, the printer thrust open the door with a
+heavy gesture, entering first and surveying the long trestles.
+
+'Ye can speak here,' he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She
+bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a
+hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey
+woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her
+crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had
+work like other folk, and had been with the printer's mother eight
+years before he was born. His voice, raised to its height, was useless
+to drown her words. She could not hear him; and shrugging his
+shoulders, he said to Throckmorton that she heard less than the walls,
+and that was the best place he had for them to talk in. He slammed the
+door behind him.
+
+Throckmorton set his foot upon the bench that ran between table and
+wall. He scowled fell-ly at the boy, so that his brows came down below
+his nose-top. 'Ye ha' not stayed him,' he said.
+
+The boy burst forth in a torrent of rage and despair. He cursed
+Throckmorton to his face for having sent him upon this errand.
+
+'I ha' been beaten by a gatewarden! by a knave! by a ploughman's son
+from Lincolnshire!' he cried. 'A' cracked my skull with a pikestave
+and kicked me about the ribs when I lay on the ship's floor, sick like
+a pig. God curse the day you sent me to Calais, a gentleman's son, to
+be beat by a boor!' He broke off and began again. 'God curse you and
+the day I saw you! God curse Kat Howard and the day I carried her
+letter! God curse my sister Margot and the day she gar'd me carry the
+letters! And may a swift death of the pox take off Kat Howard's
+cousin--may he rot and stink through the earth above his grave. He
+would not fight with me, but aboard a ship when I was sick set a
+Lincolnshire logget to beat me, a gentleman's son!'
+
+'Why, thy gentility shall survive it,' Throckmorton said. 'But an it
+will not have more beating to its back, ye shall tell me where ye left
+T. Culpepper.'
+
+'At Greenwich,' said the young Poins, and vomited forth curses. The
+old woman came from her pots to peer at the plasters on his skull, and
+then returned to the fire gibbering and wailing that she was not in
+that house plasters for to make.
+
+'Knave,' Throckmorton said, 'an ye will not tell me your tale swiftly
+ye shall right now to the Tower. It is life and death to a leaden
+counter an I find not Culpepper ere nightfall.'
+
+The young Poins stretched forth his arm and groaned.
+
+'Part is bruises and part is sickness of the waves,' he muttered; 'but
+if I make not shift to slit his weazand ere nightfall, pox take all my
+advancement for ever. I will tell my weary tale.'
+
+Throckmorton paused, held his head down, fingered his beard, and said:
+
+'When left ye him at Greenwich?'
+
+'This day at dawn,' Poins answered, and cursed again.
+
+'Drunk or sober?'
+
+'Drunk as a channel codfish.'
+
+The old woman came, a sheaf of jack-knives in her arms, muttering
+along the table.
+
+'Get you to bed,' she croaked. 'I will not ha' warmed new sheets for
+thee, and thee not use them. Get thee to bed.'
+
+Throckmorton pushed her back, and caught the boy by the jacket near
+the throat.
+
+'Ye shall tell me the tale as we go,' he said, and punctuated his
+words by shakes. 'But, oaf that I trusted to do a man's work, ye swing
+beneath a tree this night an we find not the man ye failed to stay.'
+
+The young Poins--he panted out the story as he trotted, wofully
+keeping pace to Throckmorton's great strides between the hedges--had
+stuck to Culpepper as to his shadow, in Calais town. At each turn he
+had showed the warrant to be master of the lighters; he had handed
+over the gold that Throckmorton had given him. But Culpepper had
+turned a deaf ear to him, and, setting up a violent friendship with
+the Lincolnshire gatewarden over pots of beer in a brewhouse, had
+insisted on buying Hogben out of his company and taking him over the
+sea to be witness of his wedding with Katharine Howard. Dogged, and
+thrusting his word and his papers in at every turn, the young Poins
+had pursued them aboard a ship bound for the Thames.
+
+This story came out in jerks and with divagations, but it was evident
+to Throckmorton that the young man had stuck to his task with a dogged
+obtuseness enough to have given offence to a dozen Culpeppers. He had
+begged him, in the inn, to take the lieutenancy of the Calais
+lighters; he had trotted at Culpepper's elbow in the winding streets;
+he had stood in his very path on the gangway to the ship that was to
+take them to Greenwich. At every step he had pulled out of his poke
+the commission for the lieutenancy--so that Throckmorton had in his
+mind, by the time they sat in the stern of the swift barge, the image
+of Culpepper as a savage bulldog pursued along streets and up
+ship-sides by a gambolling bear cub that pulled at his ears and
+danced before him. And he could credit Culpepper only with a saturnine
+and drunken good humour at having very successfully driven Cardinal
+Pole out of Paris. That was the only way in which he could account for
+the fact that Culpepper had not spitted the boy at the first
+onslaught. But for the sheer ill-luck of his sword's having been
+stolen, he might have done it, and been laid by the heels for six
+months in Calais. For Calais being a frontier town of the English
+realm, it was an offence very serious there for English to draw sword
+upon English, however molested.
+
+It was that upon which Throckmorton had counted; and he cursed the day
+when Culpepper had entered the thieves' hut outside Ardres. But for
+that Culpepper must have drawn upon the boy; he must have been lying
+then in irons in Calais holdfast. As it was, there was this long
+chase. God knew whether they would find him in Greenwich; God knew
+where they would find him. He had gone to Greenwich, doubtless,
+because when he had left England the Court had been in Greenwich, and
+he expected there to find his cousin Kat. He would fly to Hampton as
+soon as he knew she was at Hampton; but how soon would he know it? By
+Poins' account, he was too drunk to stand, and had been carried ashore
+on the back of his Lincolnshire henchman. Therefore he might be lying
+in the streets of Greenwich--and Greenwich was a small place. But
+different men carried their liquor so differently, and Culpepper might
+go ashore too drunk to stand and yet reach Hampton sober enow to be
+like a raging bear by eventide.
+
+That above all things Throckmorton dreaded. For that evening Katharine
+would be come back from the interview with Anne of Cleves at Windsor;
+and whether she had succeeded or not with her quest, the King was
+certain to be with her in her room--to rejoice on the one hand, or
+violently to plead his cause on the other. And Throckmorton knew his
+King well enough--he knew, that is to say, his private image of his
+King well enough--to be assured that a meeting between the King then
+and Culpepper there, must lead Katharine to her death. He considered
+the blind, immense body of jealousy that the King was. And, at
+Hampton, Privy Seal would have all avenues open for Culpepper to come
+to his cousin. Privy Seal had detailed Viridus, who had had the matter
+all the while in hand, to inflame Culpepper's mind with jealousy so
+that he should run shouting through the Court with a monstrous outcry.
+
+It was because of this that Throckmorton dreaded to await Culpepper at
+Hampton; there he was sure enow to find him, sooner or later, but
+there would be the many spies of Privy Seal's around all the avenues
+to the palace. He might himself send away the spies, but it was too
+dangerous; for, say what he would, if he held Culpepper from Katharine
+Howard, Cromwell would visit it mercilessly upon him.
+
+He turned the nose of his barge down the broadening, shining grey
+stream towards Greenwich. The wind blew freshly up from the sea; the
+tide ran down, and Throckmorton pulled his bonnet over his eyes to
+shade them from sea and breeze, and the wind that the rowers made. For
+it was the swiftest barge of the kingdom: long, black, and narrow,
+with eight watermen rowing, eight to relieve them, and always eight
+held in reserve at all landing stages for that barge's crew. So well
+Privy Seal had organised even the mutinous men of the river that his
+service might be swift and sudden. Throckmorton had set down the bower
+at the stern, that the wind might have less hold.
+
+Nevertheless it blew cold, and he borrowed a cloak and a pottle of
+sack to warm the young Poins, who had run with him capless and without
+a coat. For, listening to the boy's disjointed tale out in the broad
+reaches below London, Throckmorton recognised that if the young man
+were incredibly a fool he was incredibly steadfast too, and a
+steadfast fool is a good tool to retain for simple work. He had,
+too--the boy--a valuable hatred for Culpepper that he allowed to
+transfer itself to Katharine herself: a brooding hatred that hung in
+his blue eyes as he gazed downwards at the barge floor or spat at the
+planks of the side. Its ferocity was augmented by the patches of
+plaster that stretched over his skull and dropped over one blonde
+eyebrow.
+
+'Cod!' he ejaculated. 'Cod! Cod! Cod!' and waved a fist ferociously at
+the rushes that spiked the waters of the river in their new green.
+'They waited till I was too sick of the sickness of the sea, too sick
+to stand--more mortal sick than ever man was. I hung to a rope and
+might not let go. And Cod! Cod! Cod! Culpepper lay under the
+sterncastle in a hole and set his Lincolnshire beast to baste my
+ribs.'
+
+He spat again with gloomy quiescence into the bottom of the boat.
+
+'In the mid of the sea,' he said, 'where the ship pointed at heaven
+and then at the fiend his home, I hung to a rope and was basted! And
+that whore's son lay in his hole and laughed. For I was a cub, says
+he, and not fit for a man's converse or striking.'
+
+Throckmorton's eyes glimmered a little.
+
+'You have been used as befits no gentleman's son,' he said. 'I will
+see to the righting of your wrongs.'
+
+Poins swore with an amazing obscenity.
+
+'Shall right 'em myself,' he said, 'so I meet T. Culpepper in this
+flesh as a man.'
+
+Throckmorton leaned gently forward and touched his arm.
+
+'I will right thy wrongs,' he said, 'and see to thine advancement; for
+if in this service you ha' failed, yet ha' you been persistent and
+feal.' He dabbled one white hand in the water, 'Nevertheless,' he said
+slowly, 'I would have you consider that your service in this ends
+here.' He spoke still more slowly: 'I would have you to understand
+this. Aforetime I gave you certain instructions as to using your sword
+upon this Culpepper if you might not otherwise stay him.' He held up
+one finger. 'Now mark; your commission is ceased. You shall no longer
+for my service draw sword, knife or dagger, stave nor club, upon this
+man.'
+
+Poins looked at him with gloomy surprise that was changing swiftly to
+hot rage.
+
+'I am under oath to a certain one to use no violence upon this man,'
+Throckmorton said, 'and to encourage no other to do violence.'
+
+Poins thrust his round, brick-red brow out like a turkey cock's from
+the boat cloak into Throckmorton's face.
+
+'I am under no oath of yourn!' he shouted. Throckmorton shrugged his
+shoulders and wagged one finger at him. 'No oath o' yourn!' the boy
+repeated. 'God knows who ye be or why it is so. But I ha' heard ye ha'
+my neck in a noose; I ha' heard ye be dangerous. Yet, before God, I
+swear in your teeth that if I meet this man to his face, or come upon
+his filthy back, drunk, awake, asleep, I will run him through the
+belly and send his soul to hell. He had me, a gentleman's son, basted
+by a hind!'
+
+This long speech exhausted his breath, and he fell back panting.
+
+'I had as soon ye had my head as not,' he muttered desperately, 'since
+I have been basted.'
+
+'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'for your private troubles, I know
+naught of them. There may be some that will thank ye or advance ye for
+spitting of this gallant. But I am not one of them. Nevertheless will
+I be your friend, whom ye would have served better an ye could.'
+
+He smiled in his inward manner and went to polishing of his nails. A
+little later he felt the bruises on the boy's arms, and stayed the
+barge for a moment the stage where, swiftly, eight oarsmen took the
+places of the eight that had rowed two shifts out of three--stayed the
+barge for time enough to purchase for the boy a ham, a little ginger,
+some raw eggs and sack.
+
+The barge rushed forward, with the jar of oars and the sound, like
+satin tearing, of the water at the bows, across the ruffled reaches of
+the broad waters. The gilded roofs, the gabled fronts of the palace at
+Greenwich called Placentia, winked in the fresh sunlight. Throckmorton
+had a great fever of excitement, but having sworn to let his oarsmen
+be scourged with leathern thongs if they made no more efforts, he lay
+back upon the purple cushions and toyed with the strings of the yellow
+ensign that floated behind them. It was his purpose to put heart in
+the boy and to feed his rage, so that alternately he promised to give
+him the warding of the Queen's door--a notable advancement--or
+assented to the lad's gloom when he said that he was fit only for the
+stables, having been beaten by a groom. So that at the quay the boy
+sprang forth mightily, swaying the boat behind him. The trace of his
+sea-sickness had left him; he swore to tear Culpepper's throat apart
+as if it had been capon flesh.
+
+Throckmorton swiftly quartered the gardens, sending, in his passage
+beneath the tall palace arch, a dozen men to search all the paths for
+any drunkards that might there lie hidden. He sent the young Poins to
+search the three alehouses of the village where seamen new landed sat
+to drink. But, having found the sergeant of void palaces asleep in a
+small cell at the house end, he learned that two men, speaking
+Lincolnshire, had been there two hours agone, questing for Master
+Viridus and swearing that they had rid France of the devil and were to
+be made great lords for it. The sergeant, an old, corpulent Spaniard
+who had been in England forty years, having come with the dead Queen
+Katharine and been given this honourable post because the queen had
+loved him, folded his fat hands across his round stomach as he sat on
+the floor, his legs stretched out, his head against the hangings.
+
+'I might not make out if they were lords or what manner of cavaliers,'
+he said. 'They sought some woman whom they would not name, and ran
+through a score of empty rooms. God knows whither they went.'
+
+He pulled his nightcap further over his head, nodded at Throckmorton,
+and resumed his meditations.
+
+There was no finding them in the still and empty corridors of the
+palace; but at the gateway he heard that the two men had clamoured to
+know where they might purchase raw shinbone of beef, and had been
+directed to the house of a widow Emden. There Throckmorton found
+their tracks, for the sacking that covered the window-holes was burst
+outwards, beef-bones lay on the road before the door, and, within, the
+widow, black, begrimed and very drunk, lay inverted on the clay of the
+floor, her head beneath the three legs of the chopping block, so that
+she was as if in a pillory, but too fuddled to do more than wave her
+legs. A prentice who crouched, with a broken head, in a corner of the
+filthy room, said that a man from Lincolnshire, all in Lincoln green,
+with a red beard, had wrought this ruin of beef-bones that he had cast
+through the windows, and had then comforted the screaming widow with
+much strong drink from a black bottle. They had wanted raw beef to
+make them valiant against some wedding, and they threw the beef-bones
+through the sacking because they said the place stunk villainously.
+They seemed, these two, to have visited every hovel in the damp and
+squalid village that lay before the palace gates. They had kicked beds
+of straw over the floors, thrown crocks at the pigs, melted pewter
+plates in the fires.
+
+For pure joy at being afoot and ashore in England again, they had cast
+coins into all the houses and hovels of mud; they had brought out cans
+and casks from the alehouses, and cast pies into the streets, and
+caused the dismal ward to cry out: 'God save free Englishmen!' 'Curse
+the sea!' and 'A plague of Frenchmen that be devils!'
+
+And the after effects of their carnival menaced Throckmorton, for from
+the miserable huts, where ragged women were rearranging the scattered
+straws and wiping egg-yolk from the broken benches, there issued a
+ragged crowd of men with tangled and muddy hair and boys unclothed
+save for sacks that whistled about their lean hips. The liquor that
+Culpepper and Hogben had distributed had rendered them curious or full
+of mutiny and discontent, and they surrounded Throckmorton's brilliant
+figure in its purple velvet, with the gold neck-chains and the
+jewelled hat, and some of them asked for money, and some called him
+'Frenchman,' and some knew him for a spy, and some caught up stones
+and jawbones furtively to cast at him.
+
+But, arrogant and with his head set high, he borrowed a whip from a
+packman that shouldered his way through the street, and lashed at
+their legs and ragged heads. The crowd slunk, one by one, back under
+the darkness that was beneath the roofs of reeds, and the idea of a
+good day that for a moment had risen in their minds at Culpepper's
+legendary approach, sank down and flickered out once more in their
+hungry bellies and fever-dimmed minds.
+
+'God!' he said, 'we will have hangmen here,' and pursued his search.
+He met the young Poins at the head of the village street, and learned
+from him that Culpepper and his supporter had hired horses to ride to
+Hampton and had galloped away three hours before, holding legs of
+mutton by the feet and using them for cudgels to beat their horses.
+
+'Before God!' the boy said, 'an I had money to hire horses I would
+overtake them, if I overtook not the devil erstwhile.'
+
+Throckmorton pulled out his purple purse that was embroidered with
+silk crosses. He extracted from it four crowns of gold.
+
+'Lad,' he said, 'I do not give thee gold to follow Kat Howard's cousin
+with. This is thy wage for the service thou hast done aforetime.' He
+reflected for a moment. 'If thou wilt have a horse--but I urge it
+not--to go to Hampton where thy fellows of the guard are--for, having
+served well ye may once more and without danger rejoin your mates--if
+ye will have such a horse, go to the horseward of the palace and say I
+sent you. Withouten doubt ye are mad to hasten back to your mates, a
+commendable desire. And the King's horses shall hasten faster than any
+hired horse--so that ye may easily overtake a man that hath but two
+hours' start towards Hampton.'
+
+Whilst Poins was already hastening towards the gateway, Throckmorton
+cried to him at a distance:
+
+'Ask at each cross-road guard-house and at all ferries and bridges if
+some have passed that way; and at the landing-stage if perchance
+caballeros have altered their desires and had it in their minds to
+take to boats.'
+
+He sped through the wind to the riverside, set again his oars in
+motion and swept up the tide. It had turned and they made good
+progress.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The Queen sat in her painted gallery at Richmond, and all around her
+her maids sewed and span. The gallery was long; along the panels that
+faced the windows were angels painted in red and blue and gold, and in
+the three centre squares St. George, whose face was the face of the
+King's Highness, in one issued from a yellow city upon a green plain;
+in one with a cherry-coloured lance slew a green dragon from whose
+mouth issued orange-coloured flames; and in one carried away, that he
+might wed her in a rose-coloured tower on a hillside, a princess in a
+black gown with hair painted of real gold.
+
+Whilst the maids sewed in silence the Queen sat still upon a stool.
+Light-skinned, not very stout, with a smooth oval face, she had laid
+her folded hands on the gold and pearl embroidery of her lap and gazed
+away into the distance, thinking. She sat so still that not even the
+lawn tips of her wide hood with its invisible, minute sewings of
+white, quivered. Her gown was of cloth of gold, but since her being in
+England she had learned to wear a train, and in its folds on the
+ground slept a small Italian greyhound. About her neck she had a
+partelet set with green jewels and with pearls. Her maids sewed; the
+spinning-wheels ate away the braided flax from the spindles, and the
+sunlight poured down through the high windows. She was a very fair
+woman then, and many that had seen her there sit had marvelled of the
+King's disfavour for her; but she was accounted wondrous still,
+sitting thus by the hour with the little hounds in the folds of her
+dress. Only her eyes with their half-closed lids gave to her lost
+gaze the appearance of a humour and irony that she never was heard to
+voice.
+
+They turned to the opening door, a flush came into her face, spread
+slowly down her white neck and was lost in the white opening of her
+shoulder-pieces, and she greeted Katharine Howard, kneeling at her
+feet, with an inclination of the head so tiny that you could not see
+the motion. Her eyes remained motionlessly upon the girl's face; only
+the lids moved suddenly when Katharine spoke to her in German.
+
+'You speak my tongue?' the Queen asked, motionless still and speaking
+very low. Katharine remained upon her knees.
+
+'I learned to read books in German when I was a child,' Katharine
+said; 'and since you came I have spoken an hour a day with a German
+astronomer that I might give you pleasure if so be it chanced.'
+
+'So it is well,' the Queen said. 'Not many have so done.'
+
+'God has endowed me with an ease of tongues,' Katharine answered;
+'many others would have ventured it for your Grace's pleasure. But
+your tongue is a hard tongue.'
+
+'I have needed to learn hard sentences in yours,' the Queen said, 'and
+have had many masters many hours of the day. I will have you stand up
+upon your feet.'
+
+Katharine remained upon her knees.
+
+'I will have you stand up upon your feet,' the Queen repeated.
+
+'I have a prayer to make,' Katharine answered.
+
+The Queen looked for a minute straight before her, then slowly turned
+her head to one side. When her gaze rested upon her women they rose
+and, with a clatter of their feet and a rustle of garments, carrying
+their white sewings and their spinning-wheels stilled, went away down
+the gallery. The German lord of Overstein, bearded and immense in the
+then German fashion, came from behind the retreating women to stand
+before the Queen signifying that he would offer his interpretership.
+She dismissed him without speaking, letting her eyes rest upon him.
+She was the most silent woman in the world, but all people said that
+no queen had women and men servers that needed fewer words or so
+discreetly did their devoirs.
+
+The silence and the bright light of the sun swathed these two women's
+figures, so that Katharine seemed to hear the flutter against the
+window-glass of a brown butterfly that, having sheltered in the hall
+all winter, now sought to take a part in the new brightness of the
+world. Katharine kept her knees, her eyes upon the floor; the Queen,
+motionless and soft, let her eyes rest upon Katharine's hood. From
+time to time they travelled to her face, to the medallion that hung
+from her neck, and to her dark green skirt of velvet that lay around
+her upon the floor. The butterfly sought another window; the Queen
+spoke at last.
+
+'You seek my queenship'; and in her still voice there was neither
+passion, nor pity, nor question, nor resignation.
+
+Katharine raised her eyes: they saw the imprisoned butterfly, but she
+found no words.
+
+'You have more courage than I,' the Queen said.
+
+Suddenly she made a single gesture with her hands, as if she swept
+something from her lap: some invisible dust--and that was all. Still
+Katharine did not move nor speak; she had prepared speeches--speeches
+against the Queen's being disdainful, enraged, or dissolved in tears.
+She had read in books all night from Aulus Gellius to Cicero to get
+wisdom. But here there were no speeches called for; no speeches could
+be made. The significance of the Queen's gesture of sweeping dust from
+her lap slowly overwhelmed her.
+
+'You have more courage than I,' the Queen repeated, as though slowly
+she were making a catalogue of Katharine's qualities to set
+dispassionately against her own; and again her eyes moved over
+Katharine. With her first swift gesture she drew from the stool-top a
+pamphlet of writing, upon which she had sat. Her face grew slowly red.
+
+'It did not need this long writing against my person,' she said. 'I
+take it grievously.'
+
+Katharine moved upon her knees as if she had been stung by an
+intolerable accusation.
+
+'Before God!----' she began to say.
+
+'Well, I believe you had no part in the writing,' the Queen
+interrupted her. 'Yet the more I say you have courage: to wed a man
+that will write lies of another woman's body and powers.'
+
+Katharine sat still; the Queen's slow anger faded slowly away.
+
+'I do not see why this King thinks you more fair than I be,' she said
+dispassionately; 'but what draweth the love of man to woman is not yet
+known.'
+
+Again she repeated:
+
+'There was no need of this writing against me. The King has never
+played the husband's part to me; I would have you tell him, if I go in
+danger from him, that, for me, he may go his ways. I have no mind to
+stay him, nor to be a queen in this country. Here, it is said, they
+slay queens.'
+
+'If I will be Queen, it is that God may bless this realm and King with
+the old faith again,' Katharine said. Anne's eyelids narrowed.
+
+'It is best known to yourself why you will be Queen,' she said. 'It is
+best known to God what faith he will have in this your realm. I know
+not what faith he liketh best, nor yet what side of a queen's
+functions most commendeth itself unto you.'
+
+She seemed to withdraw herself more and more from any struggle, as if
+she were a novice that took an invisible veil--and she uttered only
+requests as to the world into which she would withdraw from this one.
+
+'I am not minded to go back to Cleves,' she stipulated; for she had
+thought much and long in her stillnesses of what she would have; 'the
+Duke, my brother, is to blame for having brought me to this pass.
+Moreover, he is not able to defend his lands; so that if, with a
+proper establishing and revenue, I go back to Cleves, the Emperor
+Charles, who hath a tooth for gold, may too easily undo me. I would
+have a castle here in England; for England is an island, and well
+defended in all its avenues, and its King a man of honour and his word
+to such as never cross him, as never will I.'
+
+She spoke slowly, as if in her mind she were ticking off little notes
+pencilled on her tablets; for since she could not read she had a
+memory that she could trust to. 'I will have a castle built me not
+strong enough to withstand the King's forces, since those I make no
+call to withstand, but strong enough to guard me against robber bands
+and the insurrections that are ordinary. Upon a slope that shall take
+the sun in winter, with trees about beneath which I may sit in the
+heat of summer-time. I will have a good show of servants, because I am
+a princess of noble lineage; I will have most of them Germans that I
+may speak easily with them, but some English, understanding German, so
+that the King may be advised I work no treasons against him. From time
+to time I will have the King to visit and to talk with me courteously
+and fairly as well he can: this in order to counterpart and destroy
+the report that I smell foul and am so ill to see that it makes a man
+ill----'
+
+Her eyes, resting upon Katharine, closed slightly again with a tiny
+malice.
+
+'I will have you not to fear that, upon such visits, I will use wiles
+to entrap the King. I do not favour him. I am not content to be queen
+of this country. It is as fair as my own country. In summer it is more
+cool, in the winter time more temperate. Meats here are good; cooks
+are better than with us. What a woman and a princess in this world
+would have is here all at the best, save only its men, and the most
+dangerous of all its men is the King.'
+
+Katharine's ready anger rose at her words, though before the Queen's
+speeches had flowed above her head and left her speechless and
+ashamed.
+
+'The King is known throughout Christendom,' she said, 'for the
+royallest prince, the noblest speaker, the most princely horseman, the
+most munificent and the most learned in the law.'
+
+'That he may be,' the Queen smiled faintly, 'to them that have never
+crossed him. It has been my ill-destiny so to do.'
+
+'Madam,' Katharine cried out, 'never man was so crossed, ill-served,
+evilly-led, or betrayed. Ye may not mislike him if at times he be
+petulant. I do the more praise him for it.'
+
+'Why, you do love him,' the Queen said. 'I have no cause so to do.'
+
+Katharine caught at one of her hands.
+
+'Your Grace,' she said, 'Queen and high potentate, this realm calleth
+out that some one person do lead the King aright. Before God, I think
+I do not seek powers or temporal crowns. Maybe it is sweet to sit in a
+painted gallery and be a queen, but I have very little considered it;
+only, here is a King that crieth for the peace of God, a people that
+clamoureth aloud to be led back to the ways of God, a land parched for
+rain, swept by gales of wind and pestilences, bewailing the lost
+favour of God, and the Holy Church devastated that standeth between
+God and the realm.' The Queen listened to her as if, having made her
+stipulations, she had no more personal interest in the matter and were
+listening to the tale of a journey. 'Before God!' Katharine said, 'if
+you were not a virgin for the King, or if the King have coerced you to
+forswearing yourself in this matter, I would not be the King's wife,
+but his concubine. Only, sore is his need of me; he hath sworn it many
+times, and I do believe it, that I best, if anyone may, may give him
+rest with my converse and lead him to peace. He hath sworn that never
+woman save I made him so clearly to see his path to goodness; and
+never woman save I, at convenient seasons, have made him so forget his
+many cares.'
+
+'Why, you have still more courage than I had thought,' the Queen said,
+'to take a man so dangerous upon so little assurance.' She moved the
+hand that Katharine touched in her lap neither forward nor away; but
+at last she said:
+
+'I am neither of your country nor for it; neither of your faith nor
+against it. But, being here, here I do sojourn. I came not here of
+mine own will. Men have handled me as they would, as if I had been a
+doll. But, if I may have as much of the sun as shines, and as much of
+comfort as the realm affords its better sort, being a princess, and to
+be treated with some reverence, I care not if ye take King, crown, and
+commonalty, so ye leave me the ruling of my house and the freedom to
+wash my face how I will. I had as soon see England linked again with
+the Papists as the Schmalkaldners; I had as lief see the King married
+to you as another; I had as lief all men do what they will so they
+leave me to go my ways and feed me well.'
+
+She looked again upon Katharine, and for the first time spoke as if
+she were addressing her:
+
+'I make out that you are a woman with an itch to meddle at the
+righting of the world. There have been more men than women at the
+task, but such an one was I never. The King was never man of mine, nor
+should have been had I any say in the matter.' She half closed her
+eyes again. 'Doubtless had it been otherwise the King would have
+constrained me by threats and tortures to forswear myself. I am as I
+was when I came to Dover. As the King saw me so he left me. Yet do I
+maintain and avow it was rather because he feared alliance with my
+brother's party than for any foulness of my person.'
+
+Katharine passed her hands over her eyes.
+
+'I do feel myself a thief and a cozener,' she said.
+
+'Ye be none,' the Queen said; 'ye take no more than what I least prize
+of this world. Had it not been thee it might have been a worse; for
+assuredly I was not made to foot it with this King.'
+
+'Nevertheless----' Katharine began. But the Queen was no more content
+to listen to her.
+
+'Ye are as some I have known,' she said; 'they scruple to take what
+they very much crave, though it hang ready to drop into their hands;
+because they much crave it, therefore they scruple.' She had a small
+golden bullet beneath her clasped hands, and she cast it into a basin
+of silver that stood on a tripod beside her skirts. At the silvery
+clash and roll of the ball's running sound on the metal, doors opened
+along the gallery, and servitors came in bearing Rhenish wine in glass
+flagons and, upon great salvers, cakes in the forms of hearts or
+twisted into true-love-knots of pastry.
+
+Katharine noted these things as being worthy of imitation.
+
+'It is no more to me,' the Queen said, 'to lose the other things to
+you than to lose to you the wine that you shall drink or a pile of
+cakes.' Nevertheless she left Katharine upon her knees till she had
+taken her cup, for it pleased her that her servitors should see her
+treated with due worship.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+It was noon of that day when Katharine Howard set out again from
+Richmond to ride back to Hampton Court; and at noon of that day
+Throckmorton's barge shot dangerously beneath London Bridge, hastening
+to Hampton Court. At noon Thomas Culpepper passed over London Bridge,
+because a great crowd pressed across it from the south going to see a
+burning at Smithfield; at noon, too, or five minutes later, the young
+Poins galloped furiously past the end of the bridge and did not cross
+over, but sped through Southwark towards Hampton Court. And at noon or
+thereabouts the King, dressed in green as a husbandman, sat on a log
+to await a gun-fire, in the forest that was near to Richmond river
+path opposite Isleworth. He had given to Katharine a paper that she
+was to deliver to the master gunner of Richmond Palace in case the
+Queen Anne did satisfy her that the marriage was no marriage. So that,
+when among the green glades where the great trees let down their
+branches near the sward and shewed little tips of tender green leaves,
+he heard three thuds come echoing, he sprang to his feet, and, smiting
+his great, green-clothed thigh, he cried out: 'Ha! I be young again!'
+He pulled to his lips the mouth of the English horn that was girdled
+across his shoulder and under his arm; he set his feet wide apart,
+filled his lungs with air, and blew a thin, clear call. At once there
+issued from brakes, thickets and glades the figures of men, dressed
+like the King in yeoman's green, bearing bows over their shoulders,
+horns at their elbows, or having straining dogs in their leashes.
+
+'Ho!' the King said to his chief verderer, a man of sixty with a grey
+beard, but so that all others could hear; 'be it well understood that
+I will have you shew some ladies what make of thing it is to rule over
+jolly Englishmen.' He directed them how he would have them drive the
+deer at the end of the glade; he saw to the setting up of white wands
+of peeled willows and, taking from his yeoman-companion, that was the
+Earl of Surrey, his great bow, he shot a mighty shaft along the glade,
+to shew how far away he would have the deer to pass like swift ghosts
+between the aisles of the trees.
+
+But the palace of Hampton lay deserted and given up to scullions, who
+lay in the sunlight and took their rare ease. For a great many lords
+that could shoot well with the bow were gone to play the yeoman with
+the King; and a great many that had sumptuous and gallant apparel were
+gone to join the ladies riding back from Richmond; and the King's
+whole council, together with many lords that were awful or reverend in
+their appearance, were gone to sit in the scaffold to see the burning
+of the friar that had denied the King's supremacy of the Church and
+the burnings of the six Protestants that had denied the presence of
+Christ's body in the Sacrament. Only Privy Seal, who had ordered these
+things, was still walking in his gallery where he so often had walked
+of late.
+
+He had with him Wriothesley, whose face was utterly downcast and
+abashed; he walked turning more swiftly than had been his wont ever
+before. Wriothesley hung down his great bearded, honest head and
+sighed three times.
+
+'Sir,' he said at last, 'I see before us nothing but that ye make to
+divorce the Queen Anne.' And the words seemed to come from him as if
+they cost him his heart's blood.
+
+Cromwell paused before him, his hands behind his back, his feet apart.
+
+'The weighty question,' he said, 'is this: Who hath betrayed me: of
+Udal; of the alewife that he should have had the papers of; or
+Throckmorton?'
+
+He had that morning received from Cleves, in the letter of his agent
+there, the certain proof that the Duke had written to the Emperor
+Charles making an utter submission to save his land from ruin, and as
+utterly abjuring his alliance with the King his brother-in-law and
+with the Schmalkaldner league and its Protestant princes. Cromwell had
+immediately called to him Wriothesley that was that day ordering the
+horses to take him back to Paris town. He had given him this news,
+which, if it were secret then, must in a month be made known to all
+the world. To Wriothesley the Protestant this blow was the falling in
+of the world; here was Protestantism at an end and dead. There
+remained nothing but to save the necks of some to carry on the faith
+to distant days. Therefore he had brought out his reluctant words to
+urge Privy Seal to the divorce of Anne of Cleves. There was no other
+way; there was no other issue. Privy Seal must abjure Cleves' Queen,
+and the very savour of a desire for a Protestant league.
+
+But for Privy Seal the problem was not what to do, a thing he might
+settle in a minute's swift thought, but the discovery of who had
+betrayed him--for his whole life had been given to bringing together
+his machine of service. You might determine an alliance or a divorce
+between breath and breath; but the training of your instruments, the
+weeding out of them that had flaws in their fidelities; the exhibiting
+of a swift and awful vengeance upon mutineers--these were the things
+that called for thinking and long furrowing of brows. He considered of
+this point whilst Wriothesley spoke long and earnestly.
+
+It was expedient before all things that Privy Seal keep the helm of
+the State; it was very certain that the King should not long keep to
+his marriage with the lady from Cleves; lamentable it was that Cleves
+had fallen away from Protestantism and from the league that so goodly
+had promised for truth in religion. But so, alas that the day had
+come! so it was. The King was a man brave and royal in his degree, but
+unstable, so that to keep him to Protestantism and good government a
+firm man was earnestly needed. There was none other man than Privy
+Seal. Let him consider earnestly that if it tasted ill with his
+conscience to move this divorce, yet elsewise such great ills should
+strike the kingdom, that far better it were to deaden his conscience
+than to sacrifice for a queen of doubtful faith the best hope that
+they had then, all of them, in the world. He spoke for many minutes in
+this strain, for twice the clock struck the half-hour from the tower
+above the gallery.
+
+Finally, long-bearded, solemn, and richly attired as he was,
+Wriothesley went down upon one knee, and, laying his bonnet on the
+ground, stretched out a long hand.
+
+'My lord,' he said, 'I do beseech you that you stay with us and
+succour us. We are a small band, but zealous and well-caparisoned.
+Bethink you that you put this land in peril if by maintaining this
+Queen ye do endanger your precious neck. For I were loath to take arms
+against the King's Majesty, and we are loyal and faithful subjects
+all; yet sooner than ye should fall----'
+
+Cromwell stood over him, looking at him dispassionately, his hands
+still behind his back.
+
+'Well, it is a great matter,' he uttered elusively. He moved as if to
+walk off, then suddenly turned upon his heel again. 'Ye do me more ill
+by speaking in that guise than ever Cleves or Gardiner or all my
+enemies have done. For assuredly if rumours of your words should reach
+the King when he was ill-affected, it should go hardly with me.'
+
+He paused, and then spoke gently.
+
+'And assuredly ye do me more wrong than ill,' he said. 'For this I
+swear to you, ye have heard evil enow of me to have believed some. But
+there is no man dare call me traitor in his heart of them that do know
+me. And this I tell you: I had rather die a thousand deaths than that
+ye should prop me up against the majesty and awe of government. By so
+doing ye might, at a hazard, save my life, but for certain ye would
+imperil that for which I have given my life.'
+
+Again he paused and paced, and again came back in his traces to where
+Wriothesley knelt.
+
+'Some danger there is for me,' he said, 'but I think it a very little
+one. The King knoweth too well how good a servant and how profitable I
+have been to him. I do think he will not cast me away to please a
+woman. Yet this is a very notable woman--ye wot of whom I speak; but I
+hope very soon to have one to my hand that shall utterly cast down and
+soil her in the eyes of the King's Highness.'
+
+'Ye do think her unchaste?' Wriothesley asked. 'I have heard you
+say----'
+
+'Knight,' Cromwell answered; 'what I think will not be revealed to-day
+nor to-morrow, but only at the Day of Judgment. Nevertheless, so do I
+love my master's cause that--if it peril mine own upon that awful
+occasion--I so will strive to tear this woman down.'
+
+Wriothesley rose, stiff and angular.
+
+'God keep the issue!' he said.
+
+'Why, get you gone,' Cromwell said. 'But this I pray you gently: that
+ye restrain your fellows' tongues from speaking treason and heresy.
+Three of your friends, as you know, I must burn this day for such
+speakings; you, too--you yourself, too--I must burn if it come to that
+pass, or you shall die by the block. For I will have this land
+purged.' His cold eyes flamed dangerously for a minute. 'Fool!' he
+thundered, 'I will have this land purged of treasons and schisms. Get
+you gone before I advise further with myself of your haughty and
+stiff-necked speeches. For learn this: that before all creeds, and
+before all desires, and before all women, and before all men, standeth
+the good of this commonwealth, and state, and King, whose servant I
+be. Get you gone and report my words ere I come terribly among ye.'
+
+Making his desultory pacings from end to end of the gallery, Cromwell
+considered that in that speech he had done a good morning's work, for
+assuredly these men put him in peril. More than one of these dangerous
+proclaimings of loyalty to him rather than to the King had come to his
+ears. They must be put an end to.
+
+But this issue faded from his mind. Left to himself, he let his hands
+twitch as feverishly as they would. Cleves and its Duke had played him
+false! His sheet anchor was gone! There remained only, then, the
+device of proving to the King that Katharine Howard was a monster of
+unchastity. For so strong was the witness that he had gathered against
+her that he could not but try his Fate once more--to give the King, as
+so often he had done, proof of how diligently his minister fended for
+him and how requisite he was, as a man who had eyes in every corner of
+this realm.
+
+To do that it was necessary that he should find her cousin; he had all
+the others under lock and key already in that palace. But her
+cousin--he must come soon or he would come too late!
+
+Privy Seal was a man of immense labours, that carried him to burning
+his lamp into hours when all other men in land slept in their beds.
+And, at that date, he had a many letters to indite, because the
+choosing of burgesses for the Parliament was going forward, and he had
+ado in some burghs to make the citizens choose the men that he bade
+them have. He gave to each shire and burgh long thought and minute
+commands. He knew the mayor of each town, and had note-books telling
+him the opinions and deeds of every man that had freedom to elect all
+over England. And into each man he had instilled the terror of his
+vengeance. This needed anxious labours, and it was the measure of his
+concern that he stayed now from this work to meditate a full ten
+minutes upon this matter of bringing Thomas Culpepper before the King.
+
+Thus, when, after he had for many hours been busy with his papers,
+Lascelles, the gentleman informer of the Archbishop's, came to tell
+him that he had seen Thomas Culpepper at Greenwich that dawn and had
+followed him to the burning at Smithfield, whence he had hastened to
+Hampton, the Lord Privy Seal took from his neck his own golden collar
+of knighthood and cast it over Lascelles' neck. In part this was
+because he had never before been so glad in his life, and in part
+because it was his policy to reward very richly them that did him a
+chance service.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'I grudge that ye be the Archbishop's man and not
+mine, so your judgment jumps with mine.'
+
+And indeed Lascelles' judgment had jumped with Privy Seal's. He was
+the Archbishop's confidential gentleman; he swayed in many things the
+Archbishop's judgments. Yet in this one thing Cranmer had been too
+afraid to jump with him.
+
+'To me,' Lascelles said, 'it appeared that the sole thing to be done
+was to strike at the esteem of the King for Kat Howard, and the sole
+method to strike at her was through her dealings with her cousin.'
+
+'Sir,' Cromwell interrupted him, 'in this ye have hit upon mine own
+secret judgment that I had told to no man save my private servants.'
+
+Lascelles bent his knee to acknowledge this great praise.
+
+'Very gracious lord,' he said, 'his Grace of Canterbury opines rather
+that this woman must be propitiated. He hath sent her books to please
+her tickle fancy of erudition; he hath sent her Latin chronicles and
+Saxon to prove to her, if he may, that the English priesthood is older
+than that of Rome. He is minded to convince her if he may, or, if he
+may not, he plans to make submission to her, to commend her learning
+and in all things to flatter her--for she is very approachable by
+these channels, more than by any other.'
+
+In short, as Lascelles made it appear to Cromwell's attentive brain,
+the Archbishop was, as always, anxious to run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds. He was a schismatic bishop, appointed by the King and
+the King's creature, not the Bishop of Rome's. So that if with his
+high pen and his great gift of penning weighty sentences, he might
+bring Kat Howard to acknowledging him bishop and archbishop, he was
+ready so to do. If he must make submission to her judgment, he was
+ready so to do.
+
+'Yet,' Lascelles concluded, 'I have urged him against these courses;
+or yet not against these courses, but to this other end in any case.'
+For it was certain that Kat Howard would have no truck with Cranmer.
+She would make him go on his knees to Rome and then she would burn
+him; or if she did not burn him she would make him end his days with a
+hair shirt in the cell of an anchorite. 'I hold it manifested,'
+Lascelles said, 'that this lady is such an one as will listen to no
+reason nor policy, neither will she palter, for whatever device, with
+them that have not lifelong paid lip-service to the arch-devil whose
+seat is in Rome.'
+
+Cromwell nodded his head once more to commend the Archbishop's
+gentleman with a perfect acquiescence.
+
+It had chanced that that morning Lascelles had gone to Greenwich to
+fetch for the Archbishop some books and tractates. The Archbishop was
+minded to lend them to the Bishop Hugh Latimer of Worcester; that day
+he was to dispute publicly with the friar Forest that was cast to be
+burned. And, coming to Greenwich, still thinking much upon Katharine
+Howard and her cousin, at the dawn, Lascelles had seen the tall,
+drunken, red-bearded man in green, with his squat, broad gossip in
+grey, come staggering up from the ship at the public quay.
+
+'I did leave my burthen of books,' he said; 'for what be Bishop Hugh
+Latimer's arguments from a pulpit to a burning priest to the pulling
+down of this woman?' He had dogged Thomas Culpepper and his crony; he
+had seen him burst open windows, cast meat about in the mud and feed
+the populace of the Greenwich hamlet.
+
+'And for sure,' he said, 'if the King's Highness should see this man's
+filthiness and foul demeanour, he will not be fain to feed after such
+a make of hound.'
+
+Coming to Smithfield, where Culpepper stayed to cheer on the business,
+Lascelles had very swiftly begged the Archbishop, where, behind Hugh
+Larimer's pulpit, he sat to see Friar Forest corrected--had very
+swiftly begged the Archbishop to give him leave to come to Hampton.
+
+'Sir,' Lascelles said, 'with a great sigh he gave me leave; for much
+he fears to have a hand in this matter.'
+
+'Why, he shall have no hand,' Cromwell said. He clapped his hands, and
+told the blonde page-boy that appeared to send him very quickly
+Viridus, that had had this matter in his care.
+
+Lascelles recounted shortly how he had set four men to watch Thomas
+Culpepper till he came to Hampton, and very swiftly to send word of
+when he came. Then the spy dropped his voice and pulled out a
+parchment from his bosom.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'whilst Culpepper was in the palace of Greenwich I
+made haste to go on board the ship that had brought him from Calais,
+being minded if I could to discover what was discoverable concerning
+his coming.'
+
+He dropped his voice still further.
+
+'Sir,' he began again, 'there be those in this realm, and maybe very
+close to your own person, that would have stayed his coming. For upon
+that ship lay a boy, sore sick of the sea and very beaten, by name
+Harry Poins. Wherefore, or at whose commands, he had done this I had
+no occasion to discover, since he lay like a sick dog and might not
+see nor hear nor speak; but this it was told me he had done: in every
+way he sought to let and hinder T. Culpepper's coming to England with
+so marked an importunity that at last Culpepper did set his crony to
+beat this boy.' He paused again. 'And this too I discovered, taking it
+from the boy's person, for in my avocations and service to his Grace,
+whom God preserve and honour! I have much practised these
+abstractions.'
+
+Lascelles held the parchment, from which fell a seal like a drop of
+blood.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'this agreement is sealed with your own seal; it is
+from one Throckmorton in your service. It maketh this T. Culpepper
+lieutenant of barges and lighters in the town and port of Calais. It
+enjoineth upon him to stay diligently there and zealously to
+persevere in these duties.'
+
+Cromwell neither started nor moved; he stood looking down at the floor
+for a minute space; then he held out his hand for the parchment,
+considered the seal and the subscription, let his eyes course over the
+lines of Throckmorton's handwriting that made a black patch on the
+surface soiled with sea-water and sweat, and uttered composedly:
+
+'Why, it is well; it is monstrous well that you have saved this
+parchment from coming to evil hands.'
+
+He rolled it neatly, placed it in his belt, and four times stamped his
+foot on the floor.
+
+There came in at this signal, Viridus, the one of his secretaries that
+had first instructed Katharine Howard as to her demeanour. Since then,
+he had had among his duties the watching over Thomas Culpepper. Calm,
+furtive, with his thin hands clasped before him, the Sieur Viridus
+answered the swift, hard questions of his master. He was more attached
+and did more services to the Chancellor of the Augmentations, whom he
+kept mostly mindful of such farms and fields as Privy Seal intended
+should be given to benefit his particular friends and servants; for he
+had a mind that would hold many details of figures and directions.
+
+Thus, he had sent two men to Calais and the road Paris-ward with
+injunctions to meet Thomas Culpepper and tell him tales of Katharine
+Howard's lewdness in the King's Court; to tell him, too, that the
+farms in Kent, promised him as a guerdon for ridding Paris of the
+Cardinal Pole, were deeded and signed to him, but that evil men sought
+to have them away.
+
+'Ye sent no boy to stay him at Calais with lieutenancy of barges?'
+Cromwell asked, swiftly and hard in voice.
+
+'No boy ne no man,' Viridus answered.
+
+He had acted by the card of Privy Seal's injunctions; men were posted
+at Calais, at Dover, at Ashford, at Maidstone, at Sandwich, at
+Rochester, at Greenwich, at all the landing places of London. Each
+several one was instructed to tell Thomas Culpepper some new story
+that, if Culpepper were not already hastening to Hampton, should make
+him mend his paces. If he were hastening to Hampton they were to leave
+him be. All these things were done as Privy Seal had directed.
+
+'What witnesses have ye here from Lincolnshire?' Cromwell asked.
+
+In his monotonous sing-song Viridus named these people: Under lock and
+key in the King's cellary house, five from Stamford that had heard
+Culpepper swear Kat Howard was his leman--these had really heard this
+thing, and called for no priming; under instruction in the Well Ward
+gate chamber, four that should swear a certain boy was her
+child--these needed to have their tales evened as to the night the
+child was born, and how it had been brought from the Lord Edmund's
+house wrapped in a napkin. In his own pantry, Viridus had three under
+guard and admonition of his own--these should swear that whenas they
+served the Lord Edmund they had seen at several times Culpepper with
+her in thickets, or climbing to her window in the night, or at dawn
+coming away from her chamber door. These needed to be instructed as to
+all these things.
+
+Cromwell listened with little nods, marking each item of these
+instructions.
+
+'Listen now to me,' he said; 'give attentive ear.' Viridus dropped his
+eyes to the floor, as one who lends all his faculties to be
+subservient to his hearing. 'At six or thereabouts T. Culpepper shall
+reach this Court. Ye shall have men ready to bring him straightway to
+thee. At seven or thereabouts shall come the Lady Katharine to her
+room; with her shall come the King's Highness, habited as a yeoman. Be
+attentive. Next Katharine Howard's door is the door of the Lady
+Deedes. Her I have this day sent to other quarters. Having T.
+Culpepper with you, you shall go to this room of the Lady Deedes. You
+shall sit at the table with the door a little opened, so that ye may
+see when the King's Highness cometh. But you shall sit opposite T.
+Culpepper that he may not see.' Viridus remained like a statue carved
+of wood, motionless, his head inclined to the ground. Lascelles had
+his head forward, his mouth a little open. 'Whilst you wait you shall
+have with you the deeds giving to T. Culpepper his farms in Kent.
+These ye shall display to him. Ye shall dilate upon the goodness of
+the fields, upon the commodity in barns and oasthouses, upon the
+sweetness of the water wells, upon the goodliness of the air. But when
+the King shall be entered into the Lady Katharine's room you shall
+give T. Culpepper to drink of a certain flagon of wine that I shall
+give to you. When he hath drunk you shall begin to hint that all is
+ill with the lady he would wed; as thus you shall say: "Aye, your nest
+is well lined, but how of the bird?" And you shall talk of her having
+consorted much with a large yeoman. And when you shall observe him to
+be much heated with the subtle drug and your hintings, you shall say
+to him, "Lo, next this door is the door of the Lady Katharine. Go see
+if perchance she have not even now this yeoman with her."'
+
+Viridus nodded his head once up and down; Lascelles clapped his hands
+twice for joy at this contrivance. Cromwell added further injunctions:
+that Viridus should have in the corner of the gallery a man that
+should come hastening to him, the Lord Privy Seal, where he walked in
+the gallery; another who, at his own signal, should hastily bring the
+witnesses prepared against Kat Howard; another who should bring the
+engrossment of a command to behead T. Culpepper that night in the
+King's Tower House, and yet another who should bring up guards and
+captains. All these, in their separate companies, should be set in the
+great room abovestairs next the King's chapel, so that they might
+swiftly and without hindrance or accident come down the little stair
+to the Lady Katharine's room. Again Viridus once bowed his head,
+moving his lips the while repeating these commands in words as they
+were uttered.
+
+Cromwell paused again to think, then he added:
+
+'I will set this gentleman, Lascelles, to bring T. Culpepper to you.
+And because I will make very certain that this man shall not touch the
+person of the King, I will have this gentleman to stay with you in the
+room where you be, to follow with you T. Culpepper into the Lady
+Katharine's room. He shall run with you betwixt T. Culpepper and the
+King; but if T. Culpepper be minded to fall upon the Lady Katharine,
+ye shall not either of you stay him. It were best if he might stab her
+dead. Doubtless he shall.'
+
+'Before God!' Lascelles cried out, 'would I were a king to have so
+masterful and devising a minister as Privy Seal!'
+
+'Get you gone,' Privy Seal said to Viridus. 'I ha' no need to tell you
+that if ye do faithfully and to a good issue carry out this play, you
+shall be greatly rewarded so that few shall hold their heads higher
+than you in the land. Ye know how I befriend my friends. But know too
+this: that if this scheme miscarry, either of your fault or another's,
+either through inattention or ill chance, either through treason or
+dullness of the brain of man, down to the least pin of it, ye shall
+not this night sleep in your bed, nor ever more shall you be seen in
+daylight above the earth.' He pointed suddenly from the window to the
+low sun. 'Have a care that ye so act as ye shall see that disc again!'
+
+Viridus spoke no word, but having waited a minute to hear if Privy
+Seal had more to enjoin, noiselessly and with his hands folded before
+him as they had been when he came, moved away over the shining floor.
+He went to tell the old, shivering Chancellor of the Augmentations
+that he must absent himself upon their common master's errands. 'I
+misdoubt some heads will fall to-night,' he added as he went; 'our
+lord's nose for treasons is sharpened again.' And that creature of
+Privy Seal's shook beneath the furs that he wore, though it was
+already April; for the Chancellor had his private reasons to dread
+Privy Seal's outbursts of suspicion.
+
+In the gallery, Privy Seal still spoke earnestly with Lascelles.
+
+'I give this part of honour and privilege to thee,' he said; 'for
+though I was well prepared in all things, I trow I may trust thee
+better than another person.'
+
+Lascelles was to watch for Culpepper, to hasten to Viridus, to attend
+upon the pair of them as the pilot-fish attendeth upon the ghostly and
+silent shark, not to leave them till the work was accomplished, or,
+upon the least sign of treason in Viridus or another, to come
+hastening as never man hastened, to Privy Seal.
+
+'For,' Cromwell ended, 'ye have felt like me how, if this realm is to
+be saved, saved it shall be by this thing alone.'
+
+Lascelles, who had had no opening to speak, opened now his lips. Great
+ferreter as he was, he had discovered former servants of the Duchess
+of Norfolk, that were ready, for consideration of threats, to swear
+that they had seen the Lady Katharine when a child in her
+grandmother's house to be over familiar with one Francis Dearham. He
+himself had these witnesses earmarked and attainable, and he was upon
+the point of offering them to Privy Seal. But he recollected that
+Privy Seal had witnesses enow of his own. To-morrow was also a day;
+and the King, if he would not now listen to tales against Kat Howard,
+might be brought to give ear to those and others added in a year's
+time, or when he began to tire of his woman as all men tire of women.
+Therefore he once more closed his lips. And Cromwell spoke as if his
+thoughts of a truth jumped together with Lascelles'.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'I would willingly bribe you from the service of his
+Grace of Canterbury to come into mine. But it may be that I shall not
+long outlive these days. Therefore I enjoin upon you these things:
+Serve well your master; guide him, for he needeth guidance, subtly as
+to-day ye would have guided him. I will not take you from him for this
+cause, that there is little need in one house of two that think alike.
+One sufficeth. For two houses with like minds are stronger than one
+that is bicephalous. Therefore serve you well Cranmer as in my day I
+served well the great Cardinal; so at his death, even as I at
+Wolsey's, ye may rise very high.'
+
+He went swiftly into his little cabinet, and returning, had in his
+hand a little book.
+
+'Read well in this,' he said, 'where much I have read. You shall see
+in it mine own annotations. This is "_Il Principe_" of Macchiavelli;
+there is none other book like it in the world. Study of it well: read
+it upon your walks. I am a simple man, yet hath it made me.'
+
+Shadows were falling into the gallery, for the descending sun had come
+behind the dark, tall elms beyond the river.
+
+'Upon my faith,' Cromwell said, 'and as I hope to enter into Paradise
+by the aid of Christ the King that commended faithful servants, I tell
+you I had great joy when you told me this woman's cousin had come into
+these parts. But greater joy than any were mine could I discern in
+this land a disciple that could carry on my work. As yet I have seen
+none; yet ponder well upon this book. God may work in thee, as in me,
+great changes by its study.... Get you gone.'
+
+He continued long to pace the gallery, his hands behind his back, his
+cap pulled over his narrow eyes; it grew dusk so that his figure could
+scarce be seen where it was at the further end. He looked from the
+casement up into the moon, small and tenuous in the pale western
+skies. He had been going over in his mind the details of how he had
+commanded Culpepper to be brought before the King. And at the last
+when he considered again that Culpepper might well strike his cousin
+dead at his feet, and that then she would have no tongue to stand
+against calumnies withal, he uttered the words:
+
+'I think I hold them.'
+
+And, pondering upon the wonderful destiny that had brought him up from
+a trooper in Italy to these high places, he saluted the moon with his
+crooked forefinger--for the moon was the president at his birth.
+
+'Why,' he uttered aloud, 'I have survived four queens' days.'
+
+For Katharine of Aragon he had seen die; and Anne Boleyn had died on
+the scaffold; and Jane Seymour was dead in childbed; and now, with the
+news from Cleves, Anne's reign was over and done with.
+
+'Four queens,' he repeated.
+
+And, turning swiftly to the door, he commanded that Throckmorton be
+sent him at once when he came to the archway.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+THE SUNBURST
+
+I
+
+
+In the great place of Smithfield, towards noon, Thomas Culpepper sat
+his horse on the outskirts of the crowd. By his side Hogben, the
+gatewarden, had much ado to hold his pikestaff across his horse's
+crupper in the thick of the people.
+
+The pavement of heads filled the place--bare some of them, some of
+them covered, according as their owners had cast their caps on high
+for joy at the Bishop of Worcester's words against the Papist that was
+to be burned, or as they pressed their thumbs harder down in disfavour
+and waited to shew their joy at the hanging of the three Protestants
+that should follow. In the centre towered on high a great gallows from
+which depended a chain; and at the end of the chain, half-hidden by
+the people, but shewing his shoulders and his head, a man in a friar's
+cowl. And, towering as high as the gallows, painted green as to its
+coat and limbs, but gilt in the helmet and brandishing a great spear,
+was the image called David Darvel Gatheren that the Papist Welsh
+adored. This image had been brought there that, in its burning, it
+might consume the friar Forest. It gazed, red-cheeked and wooden,
+across the sunlight space at the pulpit of the Bishop of Worcester in
+his white cassock and black hat, waving his white arms and exhorting
+the man in the gallows to repent at the last moment. Some words of
+Latimer might now and again be heard; the chained friar stood upon the
+rungs of a ladder set against the gallows post; he hung down his head
+and shook it, but no word could be heard to come from his lips.
+
+'Damnable heretic and foul traitor!' Latimer's urgings came across the
+sea of heads. 'Here sitteth his Majesty's council----' At these words
+went up a little buzz of question, but sufficient from all that great
+crowd to send as it were a wind that blew away the Bishop's words. For
+the style 'his Majesty' was so new to the land that people were
+questioning what new council this might be, or what lord's whose style
+they did not know. Latimer waved his arm behind him, half turning, to
+indicate the King's men. These ministers, bravely bonneted so that the
+jewels sparkled, habited in brown so that the red cloth covering their
+tiers of seats shewed between their arms and shoulders, sat, like a
+gay bank of flowers above the lake of heads, surrounded by many other
+lords and ladies in shining colours. They sat there ready to sign the
+pardon that was prepared if the friar would be moved by fear or by the
+Bishop's argument to hang his head and recant.
+
+The friar, truly, hung his head, clung to the rungs of the ladder,
+trembled so that all men might see, and once caught furiously at the
+iron chain and shook it; but no word came from his lips. Culpepper was
+bursting with pride and satisfaction because he was a made man and
+would have all the world to know it. He swung his green bonnet round
+his red head and called for huzzays when the friar shewed fear. Hogben
+called for huzzays for Squahre Tom of Lincoln, and many men cheered.
+But the silence dropped again, and the Bishop's words, raised now very
+high, dominated the sunlight and eddied around the tall faces of the
+house fronts behind.
+
+'Here have sat the nobles of the realm and the King's Majesty's most
+honourable council only to have granted pardon to you, wretched
+creature, if but some spark of repentance would have happened in ye.'
+Hanging his cowled poll beneath the beam that reached gigantic and
+black across the crowd, the friar shook his head slowly. 'Declared to
+you your errors I have,' cried Latimer. 'Openly and manifestly by the
+scriptures of God, with many and godly exhortations have I moved you
+to repentance. Yet will you neither hear nor speak----'
+
+'Bones of St. Nairn!' Culpepper cried; 'here is too much speaking and
+no work. Huzzay! e caitiffs. Burn. Burn. Burn. For the honour of
+England.' And, starting from his figure at the verge of the crowd,
+cries went up of 'Huzzay!' of 'Burn!' and 'St George for London!' and
+unquiet rumours and struggles and waving in the crowd of heads, so
+that the Bishop's voice was not heard any more that day.
+
+But through the crowd a silence fell as the image slowly and
+totteringly moved forward, ankle deep only in the crowd. Ropes from
+the figure's neck ran out and tightened--some among the crowd began to
+sing the song against Welsh Papists that ran--
+
+    _'David Darvel Gatheren_
+    _As sayeth the Welshmen_
+    _Fetched outlaws out of hell!_'
+
+and the burden of it rose so loud that the image swayed over and fell
+unheard. At that too a silence fell, and presently there came the
+sound of axes chopping. The friar, swaying on his ladder, looked down
+and then made a great sign of the cross. The Bishop in his pulpit,
+raising his white arms in horror and imprecation, seemed to be giving
+the signal for new uproars.
+
+Whilst he shouted with delight, Culpepper felt a man catch at his leg.
+He kicked his foot loose, but his hand on the bridle was clutched.
+There was a fair man at his horse's shoulder that bore Privy Seal's
+lion badge upon his chest. His face was upturned, and in the clamour
+he spoke indistinguishable words. Culpepper struck towards the mouth
+with his fist; the man shrank back, but stood, nevertheless, close
+still in the crowd. When the silence fell again, Culpepper could hear
+amongst the swift chopping of the axes the words--
+
+'I rede ye ride swiftly to Hampton. I am the Lord Cromwell's man.'
+
+Culpepper brought his excited mind from the thought of the burning and
+the joy of the day, with its crowd and its odour of men, and sunshine
+and tumult.
+
+'Ye say? Swine,' he shouted. 'Come aside!' He caught at the man's
+collar and kicked his horse and pulled at its jaws till it drew them
+out of the thin crowd to a street's opening.
+
+'Sir,' the man said--he had a goodly cloth suit of dark green that
+spoke to his being of weight in some house-hold--'ye are like to lose
+your farms at Bromley an ye hasten not to Master Viridus, who holdeth
+the deedings to you.'
+
+Culpepper uttered an inarticulate roar and smote his patient horse on
+the side of the head for two minutes of fierce blows, digging with his
+heels into the girthings.
+
+'Sir,' the man said again, 'some lord will have these lands an ye come
+not to Hampton ere six of the clock. I know not the way of it that be
+a servant. But Master Viridus sent me with this message.'
+
+Already a thin swirl of blue smoke was ascending past the friar's
+figure to the bright sky; it caressed the beam of the gallows and
+Culpepper's bloodshot eye pursued it upwards.
+
+'Before God!' he muttered, 'I was set to see this burning. Ye have
+seen many; I never a one.' A new spasm of rage caught him: he dragged
+at his horse's head, and shouting, 'Gallop! gallop!' set off into the
+dark streets, his crony behind his back.
+
+In the Poultry he knocked over a man in a red coat that had a gold
+chain about his neck; on the Chepe he jumped his horse across a
+pigman's booth--it brought down Hogben, horse and pike; three drunken
+men were fighting in Paternoster Street--Culpepper charged above their
+bodies; but very shortly he came through Temple Bar and was in the
+marshes and fields. Well out between the hedgerows he was aware that
+one galloped behind him. He drew a violent rein where the Cow Brook
+crossed the deep muddied road and looked back.
+
+'Sir,' he called, 'this night I will hold a mouse on a chain above a
+coal fire. So I will see a burning, and my cousin Kat shall see it
+with me.' He spurred on again.
+
+By the time he was come to Brentford four men, habited like the first,
+rode behind him. When he stayed to let his horse drink from the river
+opposite Richmond Hill, he was aware that across the stream a pageant
+with sweet music marched a little beyond the further bank. He could
+see the tops of pikes and pennons amid the tree trunks.
+
+He muttered that such a pageant he would very soon make for himself;
+for, filled with the elation of his new magnificence, since Privy Seal
+was his friend and Viridus was earnest to do him favour, he imagined
+that no captain nor lord in that land soon should overpass him. For
+that any lord should desire his new lands troubled him little; only he
+hastened to cut that lord's throat and to kiss his cousin Kat.
+
+It was a quarter before six when he drew rein in the green yard that
+lay before the King's arch in Hampton. There befel the strangest
+scuffle there; flaring for a moment and gone out like the gunpowder
+they sometimes lit in saucers for sport. A man called Lascelles came
+slowly from under the arch to meet him, and then, running over the
+green grass from the little side door, came the young Poins in red
+breeches, pulling off a red coat that he had had but half the time to
+don and tugging at his sword whose hilt was caught in the sleeve hole.
+Even as he issued, Lascelles, walking slowly, began to run and to
+call. Four other men of Privy Seal's ran from under the arch, and the
+four men that had followed behind him so far, closed their horses
+round his. The boy had his sword out and his coat gave as he ran.
+Lascelles closed near him on the grass, stretched out a foot to trip,
+and the boy lay sprawling, his hands stretched out, his sword three
+yards before him. The four men that had run from the arch had him up
+upon his feet and held his arms when Culpepper had ridden the hundred
+yards from the gate to them.
+
+'Why,' said Culpepper, gazing upon the boy's face, 'it was thee
+wouldst have my farms.' He spat in the boy's face and rode
+complacently under the archway where were many men of Privy Seal's in
+the side chambers and on the steps that ran steeply to the King's new
+hall.
+
+'I do conceive now,' Culpepper, in descending from his horse, spoke to
+Lascelles, 'wherefore that knave would have had me stay in Calais and
+be warder of barges. 'A would have my lands here.'
+
+Word was given him that he must without delay go to the Sieur Viridus,
+and in a high good humour he followed the lead of Lascelles through
+the rabbit warren of small and new passages of the palace. In them it
+was already nearly dark.
+
+It was in that way that, landing at the barge stage, a little stiff
+with the cold of his barge journey, Throckmorton came upon the young
+Poins in his scarlet breeches, his face cut and bleeding in his
+contact with the earth, his sword gone. Privy Seal's men that had
+fallen upon him had kicked him out of the palace gates. They had no
+warrant yet to take him; the quarrel was none of theirs. The boy was
+of the King's Guard, it was true, but his company lay then at the
+Tower.
+
+Throckmorton cursed at him when he heard his news; and when he heard
+that Culpepper was then in the palace where window lights already
+shone before him, he ran to the archway. He had no time for reflection
+save as he ran. Word was given him in the archway itself that Privy
+Seal would see him instantly and with great haste and urgency. He
+asked only for news where Thomas Culpepper was, and ran, upon the
+disastrous hearing that Viridus had taken him up the privy stairway.
+And, in that darkness, thoughts ran in his head. Disaster was here.
+But what? Privy Seal called for him. He had no time for Privy Seal.
+Culpepper was gone to Kat Howard's room. Viridus there had taken him.
+There was no other room up the winding staircase to which he could
+go. Here was disaster! For whether he stayed Culpepper or no, Privy
+Seal must know that he had betrayed him. As he ran swiftly the
+desperate alternative coursed in his mind. Rich, the Chancellor of the
+Augmentations, and he had their tale pat, that Privy Seal was secretly
+raising the realm against the King. He himself had got good matter
+that morning listening to the treasonable talking of the printer
+Badge.
+
+Several men in the stair angle would have stopped him when at last he
+was at foot of the winding stairs. He whispered:
+
+'I be Throckmorton upon my master's business,' and was through and in
+the darkness of the stairway.
+
+Why was there no cresset? Why were there these men? It came into his
+mind that already the King had heard Culpepper. Already Katharine was
+arrested. He groaned as he mounted the stairs. For in that case, with
+those men behind him, he was in a gaol already. He paused to go back;
+then it came to him that, if he could win forward and find the King,
+who alone, by giving ear, could save him, he would yet not know first
+how Katharine had fared. He had a great stabbing at his heart with
+that thought, and once more mounted.
+
+From the door next hers there streamed a light. Hers was closed. He
+ran to it and knocked, leaning his head against the panels to listen.
+There was no sound, no sound at all when he knocked again. It was
+intolerable. He thrust the door open. No woman was there and no man.
+He went in. He thought: 'If the room be in disorder----'
+
+He made out in the twilight that the room stood as always; the chair
+loomed where it should; there was a spark on the hearth; the books
+were ordered on the table; no stool was overturned. He stood amid
+these things, his heart beating tumultuously, his ears pricked up,
+stilling his breathing to listen, in the blue twilight, like a wild
+beast.
+
+A voice said:
+
+'Body o' God! Throckmorton!' beneath its breath, the light of the next
+door grew large and smaller again; he caught from there the words:
+'It is Throckmorton.' And at the sound Throckmorton loosened his
+dagger in its sheath. Some glimmering of the plan reached him; they
+were awaiting Katharine's coming, and a great load fell from his mind.
+She was not yet taken.
+
+He paused to stroke his beard for fear it was disordered, pulled from
+over his shoulder the medallion on the chain; it had flown there as he
+ran. He pushed ajar the next door a minute later, having thought many
+thoughts and appearing stately and calm.
+
+He replaced the door at its exact angle and gazed at the three silent
+men. Thomas Culpepper, his brows knotted, his lips moving, was holding
+his head askew to see the measurements upon a map of his farm at
+Bromley. That Lascelles had gone out and come back saying that one
+Throckmorton was in the next room was nothing to him. The next room
+was nothing to him; he was there to hear of his farms.
+
+Viridus, silent, dark and enigmatic, gazed at a spot upon the table;
+Lascelles, his mouth a little open, his eyes dilated, had his hands
+upon it.
+
+Without speaking, Throckmorton noted that the room was empty save for
+the table and benches; the hangings had been taken down; all the
+furnishings were gone. That morning the room had been well filled,
+warm, and in the occupancy of the Lady Deedes. Therefore Cromwell had
+worked this change. No other had this power. They waited, then, those
+three, for the coming of Katharine Howard or the King. Lascelles
+shewed fear and surprise at his being there; therefore Lascelles was
+deeply concerned in this matter. Lascelles was in the service of
+Cranmer that morning; now he sat there. Thus he, too, for certain, was
+in this plan; he was a new servant to Privy Seal--and new servants are
+zealous. With Viridus he had had some talk of events. Therefore
+Lascelles was the greatest danger.
+
+Throckmorton moved slowly behind Culpepper and sat down beside him; in
+his left hand he had his small dagger, its blue blade protruding from
+the ham; Culpepper beside him was at his right. He said very softly in
+Italian to Lascelles:
+
+'Both your hands are upon the table; if you move one my dagger pierces
+your eye to the brain. So also if you speak in the English language.'
+
+Lascelles muttered: 'Judas! _Traditore!_' Viridus sat motionless, and
+Culpepper moved his finger across the plan of the farm.
+
+'Here is the mixen,' he appealed to Viridus, who nodded.
+
+It was as if Throckmorton, with his slow manner and low voice, was a
+friend who had come in to speak to Lascelles about the weather or the
+burnings. He was no concern of Culpepper's, nor was Lascelles who had
+spoken no word at all.
+
+Throckmorton kept his head turned towards Lascelles as if he were
+still addressing him, and spoke in the same level voice, still in
+Italian.
+
+'Viridus, to thee I speak. This is a very great matter.' Unconsciously
+he used the set form of words of Privy Seal. 'Consider well these
+things. The day of our master is nigh at an end. Rich, Chancellor of
+the Augmentations, thy crony and master, and my ally, hath made a plan
+to go with me to the King this night with witnesses and papers
+accusing Privy Seal of raising the land against his Highness. Will you
+join with us, or will you be lost with Privy Seal?'
+
+Viridus kept his eyes upon the same spot of the table.
+
+'Tell me more,' he said. 'This matter is very weighty.' His tone was
+level, monotonous and still. He too might have been saying that the
+sunshine that day had been long.
+
+'A fad to talk Latin of ye courtiers,' Culpepper said with
+uninterested scorn. 'Ye will forget God's language of English.' He
+slapped Throckmorton on the sleeve. 'See, what a fine farm I have for
+my deserts,' he said.
+
+'Ye shall have better,' Throckmorton said. 'I have moved the King in
+your behalf.' But he kept his eyes on Lascelles.
+
+Culpepper cast back his cap from his eyes and leant away the better to
+slap Throckmorton on the back.
+
+'Ye ha' heard o' my deeds,' he said.
+
+'All England rings with them,' Throckmorton said. He interjected,
+'Still! hound!' to Lascelles in Italian, and went on to Culpepper: 'I
+ha' moved the King to come this night to thy cousin's room hard by for
+I knew ye would go to her. The King is hot to speak with thee. Comport
+thyself as I do bid thee and art a made man indeed.'
+
+Culpepper laughed with hysterical delight.
+
+'By Cock!' he shouted. 'Master Viridus, thou art naught to this. Three
+farms shall not content me nor yet ten.'
+
+Throckmorton's eyes shot a glance at Viridus and back again to
+Lascelles' face.
+
+'If you speak I slay you,' he said. Lascelles' eyes started from his
+head, his mouth worked, and on the table his hands jerked
+convulsively. But Throckmorton had seen that Viridus still sat
+motionless.
+
+'By Cock!' Culpepper cried. 'By Guy and Cock! let me kiss thee.'
+
+'Sir,' Throckmorton said, 'I pray you speak no more words, not at all
+till I bid you speak. I am a very great lord here; you shall observe
+gravity and decorum or never will I bring you to the King. You are not
+made for Courts.'
+
+'Oh, I kiss your hands,' Culpepper answered him. 'But wherefore have
+you a dagger?'
+
+'Sir,' Throckmorton said again, 'I will have you silent, for if the
+King should pass the door he will be offended by your babble.' He
+interjected to Viridus, speaking in Italian, 'Speak thou to this fool
+and engage him to think. I can give you no more grounds, but you must
+quickly decide either to go with Rich the Chancellor and myself or to
+remain the liege of the Privy Seal.'
+
+Never once did he take his eyes from Lascelles, and the sweat stood
+upon his forehead. Once when Lascelles moved he slid the dagger along
+the table with a sharp motion and a gasping of breath, as a pincer
+pressed to the death will make a faint. Yet his voice neither raised
+itself nor fell one shade.
+
+'And if I will aid you in this, what reward do I get?' Viridus asked.
+He too spoke low and unmovedly, keeping his eyes upon the table.
+
+'The one-half of my enrichments for five years, the one-half of those
+of the Chancellor, and my voice for you with the King and with the new
+Queen.'
+
+'And if I will not go with you?'
+
+'Then when the King passeth this door I do cry out "Treason! treason!"
+and you, I, and this man, and this shall to-night sleep in the King's
+prison, not in Privy Seal's. And I will have you think that I am sib
+and rib with Kat Howard who shall sway the King if her cousin be
+induced not to play the beast.'
+
+Viridus spoke no word; but when Culpepper, idle and gaping, reached
+out his hand to take the black flagon of wine that was between them
+under the candles on the table, Viridus stretched forth his hand and
+clasped the bottle.
+
+'It is not expedient that you drink,' he said.
+
+'Why somever then?' Culpepper asked.
+
+'That neither do you make a beast of yourself if you come before the
+King's great majesty this night,' Viridus said in his cold and
+minatory voice, 'not yet smell beastly of liquors when you kiss the
+King his hand.'
+
+Culpepper said:
+
+'By Cock! I had forgot the King's highness.'
+
+'See that you kneel before him and speak not; see that you raise your
+eyes not from the floor nor breathe loudly; see that when the King's
+high and awful majesty dismisses you you go quietly.' Throckmorton
+spoke. 'See that you speak not with nor of your cousin. For so
+dreadful is a king, and this King more than others; and so terrible
+his wrath and desire of worship--and this King's more than
+others--that if ye speak above a whisper's sound, if ye act other than
+as a babe before its preceptor's rod, you are cast out utterly and
+undone. You shall never more have farms nor lands; you shall never
+more have joyance nor gladness; you shall rot forgotten in a hole as
+you had never done brave things for the King's grace.'
+
+'By Cock!' Culpepper said, 'it seems it is easier to talk of a king
+than with one.'
+
+'See that you remember it,' Throckmorton said, 'for with great trouble
+have I brought this King so far to talk with you!'
+
+He moved his dagger yet nearer to Lascelles' form and held his finger
+to his lip. Viridus had never once moved; he stayed now as still as
+ever. Culpepper crammed his hand over his lips.
+
+For from without there came the sound of voices and, in that dead
+silence, the rustle of a woman's gown, swishing and soft. A deep voice
+uttered heavily:
+
+'Aye, I know your feelings. I have had my sadness.' It paused for a
+moment, and mouthed on: 'I can cap your Lucretius too with "_Usque
+adeo res humanas vis abdita----_"' It seemed that for a moment the
+speaker stayed before the door where all three held their breaths. 'I
+have read more of the Fathers, of late days, than of the writers
+profane.'
+
+They heard the breathing of a heavy man who had mounted stairs. The
+voice sounded more faintly:
+
+'Now you have naught further to think of than the goodly words of
+Ecclesiastes: "_Et cognovi quod non esset melius, nisi laetare
+et...._"' The voice died dead away with the closing of the door. And
+as a torch passed, Throckmorton knew that the King had waited there
+whilst light was being made in Katharine's room. He said softly to
+Viridus:
+
+'Whilst I go unto them you shall hold this dagger against this fool's
+throat. We gain as many hours as we may hold him from blabbing to
+Privy Seal. And consider that we must bring to the King Rich and Udal
+and many other witnesses this night.'
+
+'Throckmorton,' Viridus said, 'before thou goest thou shalt satisfy me
+of many things. I have not yet given myself into thy hands.'
+
+
+II
+
+
+A weary sadness had beset Katharine Howard ever since she had knelt
+before Anne of Cleves at Richmond, and it was of this the King had
+spoken outside the door whilst they had waited for light to be made.
+
+All Anne's protesting that willingly she rendered up a distasteful
+crown could not make Katharine hugely glad with the manner of her own
+taking it. And, when a messenger, dressed as a yeoman in green, had
+come into the bright gallery to beg the Queen and that fair lady the
+Lady Katharine Howard to come a-riding side by side and witness the
+sports that certain poor yeomen made in the woods upon Thames-side,
+she felt a sinking in her heart that no Rhenish of the Queen's could
+relieve. She desired to be alone and to pray--or to be alone with
+Henry and speak out her heart and devise how they might atone to the
+Queen. But she must ride at the Queen's right hand with the Duke of
+Suffolk at her left. It was so between their captives that the Cæsars
+had ridden into Rome after the taking of barbaric kings. But she had
+waged no war.
+
+She did not, in her heart, call shame upon the King; she knew him to
+be a heavy man with bitter sorrows who must in these violentnesses and
+brave shows find refuge and surcease; it was her province to endure
+and to find excuse for him. But to herself she quoted that phrase of
+Lucretius that the King again repeated: there was a hidden destiny
+that tamed the shows of the great; and she was the mutest of that
+throng that upon white horses, all with little flags flying and horns
+blowing, cantered to see the yeomen shoot. For the ladies and knights,
+avid of these things, loved above all good bowmanry and wagered with
+out-stretched hands for the marksmen that most they deemed to have
+skill or that usually seemed to enjoy the fortunate favours of chance
+and the winds.
+
+But, being alone with the King--(for when the Queen rode back to
+Richmond the notable bowman in green walked, holding Katharine's
+stirrup, back to Hampton at her saddle-bow)--she could not stay
+herself from venting her griefs.
+
+'_Et cognovi quod non esset melius nisi laetari et facere bene in vita
+sua_'--Henry finished his quotation when they were within her room. He
+sat himself down in her chair and stretched his legs apart; being
+tired with his long walk at her saddle bow, the more boisterous part
+of his great pleasure had left him. He was no more minded to slap his
+thigh, but he felt, as it was his favourite image of blessedness to
+desire, like a husbandman who sat beneath his vine and knew his
+harvesting prosper.
+
+'Body of God!' he said, 'this is the best day of my life. There doth
+no cloud remain. Here is the sunburst. For Cleves hath cut himself
+adrift; I need have no more truck with Anne; you have no more cause
+nor power to bend yourself from me; to-morrow the Parliament meets,
+such a Parliament to do my will as never before met in a Republic;
+therefore I have no more need of Cromwell.' He snapped his thumb and
+finger as if he were throwing away a pinch of dust, and when she fell
+to her knees before his chair, placed his hand upon her head and,
+smiling, huge and indulgent, spoke on.
+
+'This is such a day as seldom I have known since I was a child.' He
+leaned forward to stroke her dusky and golden hair and laid his hand
+upon her shoulder, his fingers touching her flushed cheek.
+
+'On other days I have said with Horace, who is more to my taste than
+your Lucretius: "_That man is great and happy who at day's end may
+say: To-day I have lived, what of storms or black clouds on the morrow
+betide._"'...
+
+He crossed his great legs encased in green, set his heavy head to one
+side and, though he could see she was minded to pray to him,
+continued to speak like a man uttering of his memories.
+
+'Such days as that of Horace I have known. But never yet such a day as
+to-day, which, good in itself, leadeth on to goodness and fair
+prospects for a certain morrow.' He smiled again. 'Why, I am no more
+an old man as I had thought to be. I have walked that far path beside
+thy horse.' It pleased him for two things: because he had walked with
+little fatigue and because he had been enabled to show her great and
+prodigal honour by so serving her for groom. 'This too I set to thy
+account as my good omen. And that thou art. No woman shall have such
+honours as thou in this land, save only the Mother of God.' And, after
+touching his green and jewelled bonnet, he cast it from his head on to
+the table.
+
+'Sir,' she cried out, and clasping her hands uttered her words in
+anguish and haste. 'Great kings and lords upon their affiancing day
+have ever had the habit of granting their brides a boon or twain--as
+the conferring of the revenues of a province, or the pardoning of
+criminals.'
+
+'Why, an thou come not to me to pardon Privy Seal----' he began.
+
+'Sir,' she cut in on his words, 'I crave no pardon for Privy Seal; but
+let me speak my mind.'
+
+He said tenderly:
+
+'Art in the mood to talk! Talk on! for I know no way to hinder thee.'
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I ask thee no pardon for Privy Seal, neither his
+goods ne his life. I maintain this man hath well served thee and is no
+traitor; but since that he hath ground the faces of the poor, hath
+made thee to be hated by bringing of false witness, hath made the
+thirsty earth shrink from drinking of blood, hath cast down the
+Church--since that this man in this way hath brought peril upon the
+republic and upon the souls of poor and witless folk, this man hath
+wrought worse treasons than any that I wot of. If ye will adjudge him
+to die, I am no fool to say: No!'
+
+Henry wrinkled his brows and said:
+
+'Grinding the faces of the poor is in law no treason. Yet I may not
+slay him save upon the occasion of treason. I would a man would come
+to me that could prove him traitor.'
+
+Kneeling before the King she grasped each of his knees with one of her
+hands.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'this is your occasion, none of mine. I would ye
+would reconcile it to your conscience so to act to him as I would have
+you, for his injustice to the poor and for his cogged oaths. But yet
+grant me this: to cog oaths for the downfall of Privy Seal upon the
+occasion of treason ye must have many other innocents implicated with
+him; such men as have had no idea, no suspicion, no breath of treason
+in their hearts. Grant me their lives. Sir, let me tell you a tale
+that I read in Seneca.' She moved her body nearer to him upon the
+floor, set her hands upon his two arms and gazed, beseeching and
+piteous, up into his face.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'you may read it in Seneca for yourself that upon the
+occasion of Cinna's treachery being made known to the Emperor
+Augustus, the Emperor lay at night debating this matter in his mind.
+For on the one side, says he in words like this: "_Shall I pardon this
+man after that he hath assailed my life, my life that I have preserved
+in so many battles by sea and by land, after I have stablished one
+single peace throughout the globe into all the corners thereof? Shall
+he go free who has considered with himself not only to slay me but to
+slay me when I offered sacrifice, ere its consummation, so that I may
+be damned as well as slain? Shall I pardon this man?_" And, upon the
+other side, the Emperor Augustus, lying in the black of the night,
+being a prince, even as thou art, prone to leniency, said such words
+as these: "_Why dost thou, Augustus, live, if it is of import to so
+many people that thou diest? Shall there never be an end to thy
+vengeance and thy punishments? Is thy single life of such worth that
+so much ruin shall for ever be wrought to preserve it?_"'
+
+'Why, I have had these thoughts,' Henry said. 'Speak on. What did this
+Emperor that thought like me?'
+
+'Sir,' Katharine continued, and now she had her hands upon his
+shoulders, 'the Empress Livia his wife lay beside him and was aware of
+these his night sweats and his anguishes. "_And the counsels of a
+woman; shall these be listened to?_" she spoke to him. "_Do thou in
+this what the Physicians follow when their accustomed recipes are of
+no avail to cure. They do try the contrary drugs. By severity thou
+hast never, sire, profited from the beginning to this very hour that
+is; Lepidus has followed to death Savidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio
+followed Murena; Eynatius, Caepio. Commence to essay at this pass how
+clemency shall act in cure. Cinna is convicted: pardon him. Further to
+harm thee he hath no power, and it shall for ever redound to thy
+glory._"'
+
+She leaned upon him with all her weight, having her arms about his
+neck.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'the Emperor Augustus listened to his wife, and the
+days that followed are styled the Golden Age of Rome, he and the
+Empress having great glory.'
+
+Henry scratched his head, holding his beard back from her face that
+lay upon his chest; she drew herself from him and once more laid her
+hands upon his knees. Her fair face was piteous and afraid; her lips
+trembled.
+
+'Dear lord,' she began tremulously, 'I live in this world, and, great
+pity 'tis! I cannot but have seen how many have died by the block and
+faggots. Yet is there no end to this. Even to-day they have burnt upon
+the one part and the other. I do know thy occasions, thy trials, thy
+troubles. But think, sir, upon the Empress Livia. Cromwell being dead,
+find then a Cinna to pardon. Thou hast with thy great and princely
+endeavourings given a Roman peace to the world. Let now a Golden Age
+begin in this dear land.'
+
+She rose to her feet and stretched out both her hands.
+
+'These be the glories that I crave,' she said. 'I would have the glory
+of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy
+Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good
+counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But
+if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I
+beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for
+my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me
+as of such a noble woman of Rome.'
+
+Henry leaned forward and stroked first one knee and then the other.
+
+'Why, I will pardon some,' he said. 'It had not need of so many words
+of thine. I am sick of slaughterings when you speak.' A haughty and
+challenging frown came into his face; his brows wrinkled furiously; he
+gazed at the opening door that moved half imperceptibly, slowly, in
+the half light, after the accustomed manner, so that one within might
+have time to cry out if a visitor was not welcome. For, for the most
+part, in those days, ladies set bolts across their doors.
+
+Throckmorton stood there, blinking his eyes in the candle-light, and,
+slowly, he fell upon his knees.
+
+'Majesty,' he said, 'I knew not.'
+
+The King maintained a forbidding silence, his green bulk inert and
+dangerous.
+
+'This lady's cousin,' Throckmorton pronounced his words slowly, 'is
+new come from France whence he hath driven out from Paris town the
+Cardinal Pole.'
+
+The King lifted one hand from his thigh, and, heavily, let it fall
+again.
+
+Throckmorton felt his way still further.
+
+'This lady's cousin would speak with this lady in cousin-ship. He was
+set in my care by my lord Privy Seal. I have brought him thus far in
+safety. For some have made attacks upon him with swords.'
+
+Katharine's hand went to her throat where she stood, tall and half
+turning from the King to Throckmorton. The word 'Wherefore?' came from
+her lips.
+
+'Wherefore, I know not,' Throckmorton answered her steadily. His eyes
+shifted for a moment from the King and rested upon her face. 'But this
+I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.'
+
+'Belike,' the King said, 'these swordsmen were friends of Pole.'
+
+'Belike,' Throckmorton answered.
+
+He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.
+
+'For his sake,' he said, 'it were well if your Grace, having rewarded
+him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to
+Edinbro' in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and
+observe.'
+
+'Belike,' the King said. 'Get you gone.' But Throckmorton stayed there
+on his knees and the King uttered: 'Anan?'
+
+'Majesty,' Throckmorton said, 'I would ye would see this man who is a
+poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you
+reward him and send him from hence ere worse befall him.'
+
+The King raised his brows.
+
+'Ye love this man well,' he said.
+
+'Here is too much beating about the bush,' burst from Katharine's
+lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little
+and pale in the half light of the two candles. 'This cousin of mine
+loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of
+mine shall cause disorders--for indeed he is of disordered intervals.
+Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.'
+
+'Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,' Henry said. 'Let us see
+this yokel.' He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting,
+for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he
+must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St Thomas' shrine.
+
+Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin
+came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass
+the sill, and looking never at her but at the King's shoes, he knelt
+him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the
+midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:
+
+'Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought me food and
+dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.'
+
+Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:
+
+'Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe
+silence in the awful presence of kings.'
+
+Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a
+minute's space.
+
+'Silence!' he said. 'Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this
+lady's tongue?' He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.
+
+'Ye have done well,' he said. 'Give me your sword. I will knight you.
+I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight's fee farm of a hundred
+pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye
+were about my nephew's courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro'.' He
+waved his hand to Throckmorton. 'See him disposed,' he said.
+
+Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in
+his seat and thundered:
+
+'Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I
+ha' heard ye ha' made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By God,
+I am Harry of Windsor!'
+
+He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green
+shoulders below him.
+
+'Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,' he said. 'Get you gone!'
+
+Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the
+door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.
+
+'Poor Tom,' she cried. 'Best it is for thee and me that thou goest.
+Here thou hast no place.' He shook his head like a man in a daze and
+was gone.
+
+'Art too patient with the springald,' the King said.
+
+He thundered 'Body of God!' again when he saw Throckmorton once more
+fall to his knees.
+
+'Sire,' he said--and for the first time he faltered in his level
+tones--'a very great treason has come to my ken this day!'
+
+'Holy altar fires!' the King growled, 'let your treasons wait. Here
+hath this lady been talking to me very reasonably of a golden age.'
+
+'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to
+support him. 'This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain
+Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have
+seen it in thy town of London.'
+
+Katharine cried out, 'Ah!'
+
+The King leapt to his feet.
+
+'Ho, I will arm,' he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his
+hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But,
+even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret
+rebellions.
+
+'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he
+challenged her:
+
+'This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will
+to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of
+the printer, John Badge----' and he repeated the speech of the
+saturnine man--'that "_he would raise a thousand prentices and a
+thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could
+raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the
+shires!_"'
+
+Katharine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to
+sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to assure her
+that these words were true.
+
+But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.
+
+'Let us arm my guard,' he said. 'I will play Nero to London town.'
+
+Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.
+
+'Majesty,' he said, 'I have this man in my keeping.' And indeed, at
+his passing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and
+bring him to Hampton. 'I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your
+warrant, and Privy Seal's I dare not ask.'
+
+The King stayed in his pacing.
+
+'Thou art a jewel of a man,' he said. 'By Cock, I would I had many
+like thee.' And at the news that the head of this confederacy was
+taken his sudden fear fell. 'I will see this man. Bring him to me.'
+
+'Sire,' Katharine said, 'we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!'
+
+'Madam,' Throckmorton dared to speak. 'This is the man that hath
+printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath
+uttered more lewdnesses of your chastity.'
+
+'The more I will have him pardoned,' Katharine said, 'that his
+Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.'
+
+Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify
+that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.
+
+'God send you never rue it,' he said. 'Majesty,' he continued to the
+King, 'give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about
+this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal's. For Privy Seal hath a
+mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me
+half-an-hour's space and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion
+to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and
+to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal
+is a false and damnable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I
+swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.'
+
+He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his
+other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the
+Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge
+when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that
+he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves.
+And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his
+armoury, to the Ambassador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne
+Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great
+houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the
+Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was minded to lay
+before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For,
+with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had
+gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned,
+she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for
+his ears were pricked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of
+the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the
+point of his dagger.
+
+The King said:
+
+'Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say
+that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee
+if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak
+of.'
+
+Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a
+moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against
+the door-post and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and passionate
+glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in
+silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him
+harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain
+that ever was in his life.
+
+And gazing back at him, Katharine's eyes were filled with pity, so
+sick he appeared to be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Body of God!' the King said in the silence that fell upon them. 'Now
+I hold Cromwell.'
+
+Katharine cried out, 'Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!'
+
+He caught her masterfully in his arms.
+
+'This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,' he said.
+
+She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.
+
+'I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me
+go.'
+
+He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.
+
+'Listen to me,' she cried, 'listen to me! There have been broadsides
+printed against the truth of my body; there have been witnesses
+prepared against me. I will have you swear that you will read of these
+broadsides, and consider of these witnesses.'
+
+'Before God,' he said, 'I will hang the printers, and slay the
+witnesses with my fist. I know how these things be made.' He shook his
+fist. 'I love thee so that were they true, and wert thou the woman of
+Sodom, I would have thee to my Queen!'
+
+She cried out 'Ah!'
+
+'Child,' he calmed himself, 'I will keep my hands from thee. But I
+would fain have the kisses of thy mouth.'
+
+She went to lean upon her table, for her knees trembled.
+
+'Let me speak,' she said.
+
+'Why, none hinders,' he answered her kindly.
+
+'I swear I do love thee, so that thy voice is as the blows of hammers
+upon iron to me,' she said. 'I may have little rest, save when I speak
+with thee, for that sustaineth thy servant. But I fear these days and
+ways. This is a very crooked riddle. So much I desire thee that I am
+tremulous to take thee. If it be a madness call it a madness, but
+grant me this!'
+
+She looked at him distractedly, brushing her hands across her eyes.
+
+'It feels within my heart that I must do a penance,' she said. 'I have
+been wishful to feel upon my brow the pressure of the great crown.
+Therefore, grant me this: that I may not feel it. And be this the
+penance!'
+
+'Child,' he said, 'how may you be a Queen, and not crowned with pomp
+and state?'
+
+'Majesty,' she faltered, 'to prepare myself against that high office I
+have been reading in chronicles of the lives of them that have been
+Queens of England. It was his Grace of Canterbury that sent me these
+books for another purpose. But there ye shall read--in Asser and the
+Saxon Chronicles--how that the old Queens of Saxondom, when that they
+were humble or were wives coming after the first, sat not upon the
+throne to be crowned and sacred, but--so it was with Judith that was
+stepmother to King Alfred, and with some others whose names in this
+hurry I may not discover nor remember in my mind--they were, upon some
+holidays, shewn to the people as being the King's wife.'
+
+She hung her head.
+
+'For that I am humble in truth before the world and before my mother
+Mary in Heaven, and for that I am not thy first Queen, but even thy
+fifth; so I would be shewn and never crowned.'
+
+She leaned back against the table, supporting herself with her hands
+against its edges; her eyes piteously devoured his face.
+
+'Why, child,' he said, 'so thou wilt be that fifth Queen; whether thou
+wilt be a Queen crowned or a Queen shewn, what care I?'
+
+She no longer refused herself to his arms, for she had no more
+strength.
+
+'Mary be judge between me and them that speak against me,' she said,
+'I can no more hold out against my joy or longings.'
+
+'Sha't wear a hair shirt,' he said tenderly. 'Sha't go in sackcloth.
+Sha't have enow to do praying for me and thee. But hast no need of
+prayers.' He lulled her in his arms, swaying on his feet. 'Hast a
+great tongue. Speakest many words. But art a very child. God send thee
+all the joy I purpose thee. And, an thou hast sins, weight me further
+down in hell therewith.'
+
+The light of the candles threw their locked shadows along the wall and
+up the ceilings. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, so that she
+seemed to be dead and her listless hands were open in her skirts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Privy Seal
+       His Last Venture
+
+Author: Ford Madox Ford
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2008 [EBook #26698]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIVY SEAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Suzanne Shell, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="tr"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note.</p><p>This is the Second book of the trilogy, The Fifth Queen, by Ford Madox Ford. The other books are The Fifth Queen and The Fifth Queen Crowned.</p></div>
+
+<h1>PRIVY SEAL</h1>
+
+<h2><i>His Last Venture</i></h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10"><i>"Ille potens ... et l&aelig;tus cui licet in diem</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i14"><i>Dixisse: Vixi!..."</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+
+<table summary="Contents">
+<tr><td class="td1" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">part one</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#PART_ONE">The Rising Sun,</a></td><td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="td1" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">part two</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#PART_TWO">The Distant Cloud,</a></td><td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr><td class="td1" colspan="2"><span class="smcap">part three</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="#PART_THREE">The Sunburst,</a></td><td class="tocpg"><a href="#Page_153">153</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h2>To<br />
+Frau Laura Schmedding</h2>
+
+<h3>who has so often combated<br />
+my prejudices and corrected<br />
+my assertions<br />
+this with affection
+</h3>
+
+
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_ONE" id="PART_ONE"></a>PART ONE</h2>
+
+<h2>THE RISING SUN</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Magister Udal sat in the room of his inn in Paris, where
+customarily the King of France lodged such envoys as came at his
+expense. He had been sent there to Latinise the letters that passed
+between Sir Thomas Wyatt and the King's Ministers of France, for he
+was esteemed the most learned man in these islands. He had groaned
+much at being sent there, for he must leave in England so many
+loves&mdash;the great, blonde Margot Poins, that was maid to Katharine
+Howard; the tall, swaying Katharine Howard herself; Judge Cantre's
+wife that had fed him well; and two other women, with all of whom he
+had succeeded easily or succeeded in no wise at all. But the mission
+was so well paid&mdash;with as many crowns the day as he had had groats for
+teaching the Lady Mary of England&mdash;that fain he had been to go.
+Moreover, it was by way of being a favour of Privy Seal's. The
+magister had written for him a play in English; the rich post was the
+reward&mdash;and it was an ill thing, a thing the magister dreaded, to
+refuse the favours of Privy Seal. He consoled himself with the thought
+that the writing of letters in Latin might wash from his mouth the
+savour of the play he had written in the vulgar tongue.</p>
+
+<p>But his work in Paris was ended&mdash;for with the flight of Cardinal Pole,
+who had left Paris precipitately upon news that the King of England
+had sent a drunken roisterer to assassinate him, it was imagined that
+soon now more concord between Francis and England might ensue, and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>magister sat in his room planning his voyage back to Dover. The room
+was great in size, panelled mostly in wood, lit with lampwicks that
+floated in oil dishes and heated with a sea-coal fire, for though it
+was April the magister was of a cold disposition of the hands and
+shins. The inn&mdash;of the Golden Astrolabe&mdash;was kept by an Englishwoman,
+a masterful widow with a broad face and a great mouth that smiled. She
+stood beside him there. Forty-seven she might have been, and she
+called herself the Widow Annot.</p>
+
+<p>The magister sat over his fire with his gown parted from his legs to
+warm his shins, but his hands waved angrily and his face was
+crestfallen.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, keeper of a tavern,' he said. 'It is set down in holy writ that
+it is not good for a man to be alone.'</p>
+
+<p>'That a hostess shall keep her tavern clean is writ in the books of
+the provost of Paris town,' the Widow Annot answered, and the shadow
+of her great white hood, which she wore in the older English fashion,
+danced over the brown wooden beams of the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, nay,' he answered, 'it is written there that it is the enjoined
+devoir of every hotelier to provide things fitting for the sojourners'
+ease, pleasure and recreation.'</p>
+
+<p>'The maid is locked in another house,' the hostess answered, 'and
+should have been this three week.' She swung her keys on a black
+riband and gazed at him masterfully. 'Will your magistership eat capon
+or young goat?'</p>
+
+<p>'Capon will have a savour like sawdust, and young goat like the dust
+of the road,' the magister moaned. 'Give me the girl to wait upon me
+again.'</p>
+
+<p>'No maid will wait upon thee,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Even thou thyself?' he asked. He glanced across his shoulder and his
+eyes measured her, hers him. She had large shoulders, a high, full
+stomacher, and her cheeks were an apple-red. 'The maiden was a fair
+piece,' he tittered.</p>
+
+<p>'Therefore you must spoil the ring of the coin,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed: 'Then eat you with me. "<i>Soli cantare periti Arcades.</i>" But
+it is cold here alone of nights.'</p>
+
+<p>They ate goat and green leeks sweetened with honey,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span> and wood thrushes
+pickled in wine, and salt fish from the mouth of the Beauce. And
+because this gave the magister a great thirst he drank much of a
+warmed wine from Burgundy that the hostess brought herself. They sat,
+byside, on cushions on a couch before the warm fire.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Filia pulchra mater pulchrior!</i>' the magister muttered, and he cast
+his arms about her soft and plump waist. 'The maid was a fair skewer,
+the hostess is a plumper roasting bit.' She took his kisses on her
+fire-warmed cheeks, but in the end she thrust him mightily from her
+with a large elbow.</p>
+
+<p>He gasped with the strength of her thrust, and she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Greedy dogs getten them hard cuffs,' and rearranged her neckercher.
+When he tried to come nearer her she laughed and thrust him aback.</p>
+
+<p>'You have tried and tasted,' she said. 'A fuller meal you must pay
+for.'</p>
+
+<p>He stood before her, lean and lank, his gown flapping about his
+calves, his eyes smiling humorously, his lips twitching.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh soft and warm woman,' he cried, 'payment shall be yours'; and
+whilst he fumbled furiously in his clothes-press, he quoted from
+Tully: '<i>Haec civitas mulieri redimiculum praebuit.</i>' He pulled out
+one small bag: '<i>Haec in collum.</i>' She took another. '<i>Haec in
+crines!</i>' and he added a third, saying: 'Here is all I have,' and cast
+the three into her lap. Whilst she counted the coins composedly on the
+table before her he added: 'Leave me nevertheless the price to come to
+England with.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir Magister,' she said, turning her large face to him. 'This is not
+one-tenth enough. You have tasted an ensample. Will you have the whole
+meal?'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, unconscionable,' he cried. 'More I have not!' He began to wave
+his hands. 'Consider what you do do,' he uttered. 'Think of what a
+pest is love. How many have died of it. Pyramus, Thisbe, Dido, Medea,
+Croesus, Callirhoe, Theagines the philosopher ... Consider what writes
+Gordonius: "<i>Prognosticatio est talis: si non<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> succuratur iis aut in
+maniam cadunt: aut moriuntur.</i>" Unless lovers be succoured either they
+fall into a madness, either they die or grow mad. And Fabian
+Montaltus: "If this passion be not assuaged, the inflammation cometh
+to the brain. It drieth up the blood. Then followeth madness or men
+make themselves away." I would have you ponder of what saith
+Parthenium and what Plutarch in his tales of lovers.'</p>
+
+<p>Her face appeared comely and smooth in his eyes, but she shook her
+head at him.</p>
+
+<p>'These be woeful and pretty stories,' she said. 'I would have you to
+tell me many of them.'</p>
+
+<p>'All through the night,' he said eagerly, and made to clasp her in his
+arms. But she pushed him back again with her hand on his chest.</p>
+
+<p>'All through the night an you will,' she said. 'But first you shall
+tell a prettier tale before a man in a frock.'</p>
+
+<p>He sprang full four feet back at one spring.</p>
+
+<p>'I have wedded no woman, yet,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Then it is time you wed one now,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh widow, bethink you,' he pleaded. 'Would you spoil so pretty a
+tale? Would you humble so goodly a man's pride?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it were a pity,' she said. 'But I am minded to take a husband.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have done well this ten years without one,' he cried out.</p>
+
+<p>Her face seemed to set like adamant as she turned her cheek to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Call it a woman's mad freak,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Six and twenty pupils in the fair game of love I have had,' he said.
+'You shall be the seven and twentieth. Twenty and seven are seven and
+two. Seven and two are nine. Now nine is the luckiest of numbers. Be
+you that one.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' she answered. 'It is time you learned husbandry who have taught
+so many and earned so little.'</p>
+
+<p>He slipped himself softly into the cushions beside her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Would you spoil so fair a tale?' he said. 'Would you have me to break
+so many vows? I have promised a mort of women marriage, and so long as
+I be not wed I may keep faith with any one of them.'</p>
+
+<p>She held her face away from him and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'That is as it may be,' she said. 'But when you wed with me to-night
+you will keep faith with one woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Woman,' he pleaded. 'I am a great scholar.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ay,' she answered, 'and great scholars have climbed to great
+estates.'</p>
+
+<p>She continued to count the coins that came from his little money-bags;
+the shadow of her hood upon the great beams grew more portentous.</p>
+
+<p>'It is thought that your magistership may rise to be Chancellor of the
+Realm of England,' she added.</p>
+
+<p>He clutched his forehead.</p>
+
+<p>'Eheu!' he said. 'If you have heard men say that, you know that wedded
+to thee I could never climb.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then I shall very comfortably keep my inn here in Paris town,' she
+answered. 'You have here fourteen pounds and eleven shillings.'</p>
+
+<p>He stretched forth his lean hands:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I will marry thee in the morning,' he said, and he moistened his
+lips with the tip of his tongue. Outside the door there was a
+shuffling of several feet.</p>
+
+<p>'I knew not other guests were in the house,' he uttered, and fell
+again to kissing her.</p>
+
+<p>'Knew you not an envoy was come from Cleves?' she whispered.</p>
+
+<p>Her head fell back and he supported it with one trembling hand. He
+shook like a leaf when her voice rang out:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Au secours! Au secours!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>There was a great jangle, light fell into the dusky room through the
+doorhole, and he found himself beneath the eyes of many scullions with
+spits, cooks with carving forks, and kitchenmaids with sharpened
+distaffs of steel.</p>
+
+<p>'Now I will be wed this night,' she laughed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He moved to the end of the couch and blinked at her in the strong
+light.</p>
+
+<p>'I will be wed this night,' she said again, and rearranged her
+head-dress, revealing, as her sleeves fell open, her white, plump
+arms.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, no!' he answered irresolutely.</p>
+
+<p>She said in French to her aids:</p>
+
+<p>'Come near him with the spits!'</p>
+
+<p>They moved towards him, a white-clad body with their pointed things
+glittering in the light of torches. He sprang behind the great table
+against the window and seized the heavy-leaden sandarach. The French
+scullions knew, tho' he had no French, that he would cleave one of
+their skulls, and they stood, a knot of seven&mdash;four men and three
+maids&mdash;in blue hoods, in the centre of the room.</p>
+
+<p>'By Mars and by Apollo!' he said, 'I was minded to wed with thee if I
+could no other way. But now, like Phaeton, I will cast myself from the
+window and die, or like the wretches thrown from the rock, called
+Tarpeian. I was minded to a folly: now I am minded rather for death.'</p>
+
+<p>'How nobly thy tongue doth wag, husband,' she said, and cried in
+French for the rogues to be gone. When the door closed upon the lights
+she said in the comfortable gloom: 'I dote upon thy words. My first
+was tongue-tied.' She beckoned him to her and folded her arms. 'Let us
+discourse upon this matter,' she said comfortably. 'Thus I will put
+it: you wed with me or spring from the window.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am even trapped?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'So it comes to all foxes that too long seek for capons,' she
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>'But consider,' he said. He sat himself by the fireside upon a stool,
+being minded to avoid temptation.</p>
+
+<p>'I would have your magistership forget the rogues that be without,'
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>'They were a nightmare's tale,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Yet forget them not too utterly,' she answered. 'For I am of some
+birth. My father had seven horses and never followed the plough.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Oh buxom one!' he answered. 'Of a comfortable birth and girth thou
+art. Yet with thee around my neck I might not easily climb.'</p>
+
+<p>'Magister,' she said, 'whilst thou climbest in London town thy wife
+will bide in Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'Consider!' he said. 'There is in London town a fair, large maid
+called Margot Poins.'</p>
+
+<p>'Is she more fair than I?' she asked. 'I will swear she is.'</p>
+
+<p>He tilted his stool forward.</p>
+
+<p>'No; no, I swear it,' he said eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>'Then I will swear she is more large.'</p>
+
+<p>'No; not one half so bounteous is her form,' he answered, and moved
+across to the couch.</p>
+
+<p>'Then if you can bear her weight up you can bear mine,' she said, and
+moved away from him.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' he answered. 'She would help me on,' and he fumbled in the
+shadows for her hand. She drew herself together into a small space.</p>
+
+<p>'You affect her more than me,' she said, with a swift motion
+simulating jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>'By the breasts of Venus, no!' he answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, once more use such words,' she murmured, and surrendered to him
+her soft hand. He rubbed it between both of his cold ones and uttered:</p>
+
+<p>'By the Paphian Queen: by her teams of doves and sparrows! By the
+bower of Phyllis and the girdle of Egypt's self! I love thee!'</p>
+
+<p>She gurgled 'oh's' of pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>'But this Margot Poins is tirewoman to the Lady Katharine Howard.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am tirewoman to mine own self alone,' she said. 'Therefore you love
+her better.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, oh nay,' he said gently. 'But this Lady Katharine Howard is
+mistress to the King's self.'</p>
+
+<p>'And I have been mistress to no married man save my husbands,' she
+answered. 'Therefore you love this Margot Poins better.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He fingered her soft palm and rubbed it across his own neck.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, nay,' he said. 'But I must wed with Margot Poins.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why with her more than with me or any other of your score and seven?'
+she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>'Since the Lady Katharine will be Queen,' he answered, and once again
+he was close against her side. She sighed softly.</p>
+
+<p>'Thus if you wed with me you will never be Chancellor,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I would not anger the Queen,' he answered. She nestled bountifully
+and warmly against him.</p>
+
+<p>'Swear even again that you like me more than the fair, large wench in
+London town,' she whispered against his ear.</p>
+
+<p>'Even as Jove prized Dana&euml; above the Queen of Heaven, even as
+Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules
+placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of the
+Jews Bathsheba above....'</p>
+
+<p>She murmured 'Oh, oh,' and placed her arms around his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>'How I love thy brave words!'</p>
+
+<p>'And being Chancellor,' he swore, 'I will come back to thee, oh woman
+of the sweet smiles, honey of Hymettus, Cypriote wine....'</p>
+
+<p>She moved herself a little from him in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'And if you do not wed with Margot Poins....'</p>
+
+<p>'I pray a plague may fall upon her, but I must wed with her,' he
+answered. 'Come now; come now!'</p>
+
+<p>'Else the Lady Katharine shall be displeased with your magistership?'</p>
+
+<p>He sought to draw her to him, but she stiffened herself a little.</p>
+
+<p>'And this Lady Katharine is mistress to the King of England's realm?'</p>
+
+<p>His hands moved tremblingly towards her in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'And this Lady Katharine shall be Queen?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A hiss of exasperation came upon his lips, for she had slipped from
+beneath his hands into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, then, I will not stay your climbing,' she said. 'Good-night,'
+and in the darkness he heard her sob.</p>
+
+<p>The couch fell backwards as he swore and sprang towards her voice.</p>
+
+<p>'Magister!' she said. 'Hands off! Unwed thou shalt not have me, for I
+have sworn it.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have sworn to wed seven and twenty women,' he said, 'and have
+wedded with none.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, nay,' she sobbed. 'Hands off. Henceforth I will make no
+vows&mdash;but no one but thee shall wed me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then wed me, in God's name!' he cried, and, screaming:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Ho l&agrave;! Apportez le prestre!</i>' she softened herself in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>The magister confronted the lights, the leering scullions and the
+grinning maids with their great mantles; his brown, woodpecker-like
+face was alike crestfallen and thirsty with desire. A lean Dominican,
+with his brown cowl back and spectacles of horn, gabbled over his
+missal and took a crown's fee&mdash;then asked another by way of penitence
+for the sin with the maid locked up in another house. When they
+brought the bride favours of pink to pin into her gorget she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I long had loved thee for thy great words, husband. Therefore all
+these I had in readiness.'</p>
+
+<p>With that knot fast upon him, the magister, clasping his gown upon his
+shins, looked askance at the floor. Whilst they made ready the bride,
+with great lights and laughter, she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I was minded to have a comfortable husband. And a comfortable husband
+is a husband much absent. What more comfortable than me in Paris town
+and thee in London city? I keep my inn here, thou mindest thy book
+there. Thou shalt here find a goodly capon upon occasion, and when
+thou hast a better house in London I will come share it.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Trapped! Trapped!' the magister muttered to himself. 'Even as was Sir
+Launcelot!'</p>
+
+<p>He considered of the fair and resentful Margot Poins whom it was
+incumbent indeed that he should wed: that Katharine Howard loved her
+well and was in these matters strait-laced. When his eyes measured his
+wife he licked his lips; when his eyes were on the floor his jaw fell.
+At best the new Mistress Udal would be in Paris. He looked at the rope
+tied round the thin middle of the brown priest, and suddenly he leered
+and cast off his cloak.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me remember to keep an equal mind in these hard matters,' he
+quoted, and fell to laughing.</p>
+
+<p>For he remembered that in England no marriage by a friar or monk held
+good in those years. Therefore he was the winner. And the long, square
+room, with the cave bed behind its shutter in the hollow of the wall,
+the light-coloured, square beams, and the foaming basin of bride-ale
+that a fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion
+after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting
+bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the
+blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his
+bassoon that he played before the open door; the two saucy maids
+striving to wrest the bride's stockings one from the other&mdash;all these
+things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes. So that, when one of
+the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped
+her in his arms and kissed her till she struggled from him to drink a
+mug of bride-ale.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras!</i>' he said. For it was in his mind a
+goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was three days later, in the morning, that his captress said to the
+Magister Udal:</p>
+
+<p>'Husband, it is time that I gave thee the bridal gift.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The magister, happy with a bellyful of carp, bread and breakfast ale,
+muttered 'Anan?' from above his copy of Lucretius. He sat in the
+window-seat of the great stone kitchen. Upon one long iron spit before
+the fire fourteen trussed capons turned in unison; the wooden shoes of
+the basting-maid clattered industriously; and from the chimney came
+the clank of the invisible smoke-vanes and the be-sooted chains. The
+magister, who loved above all things warmth, a full stomach, a
+comfortable woman and a good book, had all these things; he was well
+minded to stay in Paris town for fourteen days, when they were to slay
+a brown pig from the Ardennes, against whose death he had written an
+elegy in Sapphics.</p>
+
+<p>'For,' said his better half, standing before him with a great loaf
+clasped to her bosom, 'if you turn a horse from the stable between
+full and half full, like as not he will return of fair will to the
+crib.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh Venus and Hebe in one body,' the magister said, 'I am minded to
+end here my scholarly days.'</p>
+
+<p>'I am minded that ye shall travel far erstwhile,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>He laid down his book upon a clean chopping-board.</p>
+
+<p>'I know a good harbourage,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down beside him in the window and fingered the fur on his long
+gown, saying that, in this light, it showed ill-favouredly worm-eaten;
+and he answered that he never had wishes nor money for gowning
+himself, who cultivated the muses upon short commons. She turned
+rightway to the front the medal upon his chest, and folded her arms.</p>
+
+<p>'Whilst ye have no better house to harbour us,' she said, 'this shall
+serve. Let us talk of the to-come.'</p>
+
+<p>He groaned a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us love to-day that's here,' he said. 'I will read thee a verse
+from Lucretius, and you shall tell me the history of that fourth
+capon'&mdash;he pointed to a browned carcase that, upon the spit, whirled
+its elbows a full third longer than any of the line.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'That is the master roasting-piece,' she said, 'so he browns there not
+too far, nor too close, for the envoy's own eating.'</p>
+
+<p>He considered the chicken with his head to one side.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the place of a wife to be subject to her lord,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'It is the place of a husband that he fendeth for 's wife,' she
+answered him. She tapped her fingers determinedly upon her elbows.</p>
+
+<p>'So it is,' she continued. 'To-morrow you shall set out for London
+city to make road towards becoming Sir Chancellor.' Whilst he groaned
+she laid down for him her law. He was to go to England, he was to
+strive for great posts: if he gained, she would come share them; if he
+failed, he might at odd moments come back to her fireside. 'Have done
+with groaning now,' she said, stilling his lamentations.' 'Keep them
+even for the next wench that you shall sue to&mdash;of me you have had all
+you asked.'</p>
+
+<p>He considered for five seconds, his elbow upon his crossed knees and
+his wrist supporting his lean brown face.</p>
+
+<p>'It is in the essence of it a good bargain,' he said. 'You put against
+the chance of being, you a chancellor's madam, mine of having for
+certain a capon in Paris town.'</p>
+
+<p>He tapped his long nose. 'Nevertheless, for your stake you have cast
+down a very little: three nights of bed and board against the chaining
+me up.'</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she answered. 'More than that you shall have.'</p>
+
+<p>He wriggled a little beneath his furs.</p>
+
+<p>'Husband is an ill name,'he commented. 'It smarts.'</p>
+
+<p>'But it fills the belly.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,'he said. 'Therefore I am minded to bide here and take with the
+sourness the sweet of it.'</p>
+
+<p>She laughed a little, and, with a great knife, cut a large manchet
+from the loaf between them.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' she said, 'to-morrow my army with their spits and forks shall
+drive thee from the door.'</p>
+
+<p>He grinned with his lips. She was fair and fat beneath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> her hood, but
+she was resolute. 'I have it in me greatly to advance you,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>A boy brought her a trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in
+a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a
+pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart,
+and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow
+chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, and marigold
+seeds with their acrid perfume, and balls of honied suet. She bound
+round it a fair linen cloth that she stitched with a great bone
+needle.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh ingenuous countenance,' the magister mused above the pig's mild
+face. 'Is it not even the spit of the Cleves envoy's? And the Cleves
+envoy shall eat this adorable monster. Oh, cruel anthropophagist!'</p>
+
+<p>She resigned her burden to the spit and gave the loaf to the boy,
+wiped her fingers upon her apron, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'That pig shall help thee far upon thy road.'</p>
+
+<p>'Goes it into my wallet?' he asked joyfully.</p>
+
+<p>She answered: 'Nay; into the Cleves envoy's weam.'</p>
+
+<p>'You speak in hard riddles,' he uttered.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' she laughed, 'a baby could unriddle it.' She looked at him for
+a moment to enjoy her triumph of mystery. 'Husband mine, a pig thus
+stuffed is good eating for Cleves men. I have not kept a hostel for
+twelve years for envoys and secretaries without learning what each
+eats with pleasure. And long have I thought that if I wed a man it
+should be such a man as could thrive by learning of envoys' secrets.'</p>
+
+<p>He leaned towards her earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>'You know wherefore the man from Cleves is come?'</p>
+
+<p>'You are, even as I have heard it said, a spy of Thomas Cromwell?' she
+asked in return.</p>
+
+<p>He looked suddenly abashed, but she held to her question.</p>
+
+<p>'I pass for Privy Seal's man,' he answered at last.</p>
+
+<p>'But you have played him false,' she said. He grew pale, glanced over
+his shoulder, and put his finger on his lips.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I'll wager it was for a woman,' she accused him. She wiped her lips
+with her apron and dropped her hands upon her lap.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, keep troth to Cromwell if you can,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'I do think his sun sets,' he whispered.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I am sorry for it,' she answered. 'I have always loved him for a
+brewer's son. My father was a brewer.'</p>
+
+<p>'Cromwell was begotten even by the devil,' Udal answered. 'He made me
+write a comedy in the vulgar tongue.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be it as you will,' she answered. 'You shall know on which side to
+bite your cake better than I.'</p>
+
+<p>He was still a little shaken at the thought of Privy Seal.</p>
+
+<p>'If you know wherefore cometh Cleves' envoy, much it shall help me to
+share the knowledge,' he said at last, 'for by that I may know whether
+Cromwell or we do rise or fall.'</p>
+
+<p>'If you have made a pact with a woman, have very great cares,' she
+answered dispassionately. 'Doubtless you know how the dog wags its
+tail; but you are always a fool with a woman.'</p>
+
+<p>'This woman shall be Queen if Cromwell fall,' the magister said, 'and
+I shall rise with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'But is no woman from Cleves' Queen there now?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Cicely,' he answered highly, 'you know much of capons and beeves, but
+there are queens that are none and do not queen it, and queans that
+are no queens and queen it.'</p>
+
+<p>'And so 'twill be whilst men are men,' she retorted. 'But neither my
+first nor my second had his doxies ruling within my house, do what
+they might beyond the door.'</p>
+
+<p>He tried to impart to her some of the adoration he had for Katharine
+Howard&mdash;her learning, her faith, her tallness, her wit, and the
+deserved empiry that she had over King Henry VIII; but she only
+answered:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, kiss the wench all you will, but do not come to tell me how she
+smells!'&mdash;and to his new protests: 'Aye, you may well be right and she
+may well be Queen&mdash;for I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> know you will sacrifice your ease for no
+wench that shall not help you somewhere forwards.'</p>
+
+<p>The magister held his hands above his head in shocked negation of this
+injustice&mdash;but there came from the street the thin wail of a trumpet;
+another joined it, and a third; the three sounds executed a triple
+convolution and died away one by one. Holding his thin hand out for
+silence and better hearing, he muttered:</p>
+
+<p>'Norfolk's tucket! Then it is true that Norfolk comes to Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>His wife slipped down from her seat.</p>
+
+<p>'Gave I you not the ostler's gossip from Calais three days since?' she
+said, and went towards her roastings.</p>
+
+<p>'But wherefore comes the yellow dog to Paris?' Udal persisted.</p>
+
+<p>'That you may go seek,' she answered. 'But believe always what an
+innkeeper says of who are on the road.'</p>
+
+<p>Udal too slipped down from the window-seat; he buttoned his gown down
+to his shins, pulled his hat over his ears and hurried through the
+galleried courtyard into the comfortless shadows of the street. There
+was no doubt that Norfolk was coming; round the tiny crack that, two
+houses away, served for all the space that the road had between the
+towering housefronts, two men in scarlet and yellow, with leopards and
+lions and fleurs-de-lis on their chests, walked between two in white,
+tabarded with the great lilies of France. They crushed round the
+corner, for there was scarce space for four men abreast; behind them
+squeezed men in purple with the Howard knot, bearing pikes, and men in
+mustard yellow with the eagle's wing and ship badge of the Provost of
+Paris. In the broader space before the arch of Udal's courtyard they
+stayed to wait for the horsemen to disentangle themselves from the
+alley; the Englishmen looked glumly at the tall housefronts; the
+French loosened the mouthplates of their helmets to breathe the air
+for a minute. Hostlers, packmen and pedlars began to fill the space
+behind Udal, and he heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> his wife's voice calling shrilly to a cook
+who had run across the yard.</p>
+
+<p>The crowd a little shielded him from the draught which came through
+the arch, and he waited with more contentment. Undoubtedly there was
+Norfolk upon a great yellow horse, so high that it made his bonnet
+almost touch the overhanging storey of the third house; behind him the
+white and gold litter of the provost, who, having three weeks before
+broken his leg at tennis-play, was still unable to sit in a saddle.
+The duke rode as if implacably rigid, his yellow, long face set,
+listening as if with a sour deafness to something that the provost
+from below called to him with a great, laughing voice.</p>
+
+<p>The provost's litter, too, came up alongside the duke's horse in the
+open space, then they all moved forward at the slow processional:
+three steps and a halt for the trumpets to blow a tucket; three more
+and another tucket; the great yellow horse stepping high and casting
+up his head, from which flew many flakes of white foam. With its slow,
+regularly interrupted gait, dominated by the impassive yellow face of
+Norfolk, the whole band had an air of performing a solemn dance, and
+Udal shivered for a long time, till amidst the train of mules bearing
+leathern sacks, cupboards, chests and commodes, he saw come riding a
+familiar figure in a scholar's gown&mdash;the young pedagogue and companion
+of the Earl of Surrey. He was a fair, bearded youth with blue eyes,
+riding a restless colt that embroiled itself and plunged amongst the
+mules' legs. The young man leaned forward in the saddle and craned to
+avoid a clothes chest.</p>
+
+<p>The magister called to him:</p>
+
+<p>'Ho, Longstaffe!' and having caught his pleased eyes: <i>'Ecce quis sto
+in arce plenitatis. Veni atque bibe! Magister sum. Udal sum.
+Longstaffe ave.'</i></p>
+
+<p>Longstaffe slipped from his horse, which he left to be rescued by whom
+it might from amongst the hard-angled cases.</p>
+
+<p>'Assuredly,' he said, 'there is no love between that beast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> and me as
+there was betwixt his lord and Bucephalus,' and he followed Udal into
+the galleried courtyard, where their two gowned figures alone sought
+shelter from the March showers.</p>
+
+<p>'News from overseas there is none,' he said. 'Privy Seal ruleth still
+about the King; the German astronomers have put forth a tract <i>De
+Quadratura Circuli</i>; the lost continent of Atlantis is a lost
+continent still&mdash;and my bones ache.'</p>
+
+<p>'But your mission?' Udal asked.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor, his hard blue eyes spinning with sardonic humour beneath
+his black beretta, said that his mission, even as Udal's had been, was
+to gain some crowns by setting into the learned language letters that
+should pass between his ambassador and the King's men of France. Udal
+grinned disconcertedly.</p>
+
+<p>'Be certified in your mind,' he said, 'that I am not here a spy or
+informer of Privy Seal's.'</p>
+
+<p>'Forbid it, God,' Doctor Longstaffe answered good-humouredly. None the
+less his jaw hardened beneath his fair beard and he answered, 'I have
+as yet written no letters&mdash;<i>litteras nullas scripsi: argal nihil
+scio</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, ye shall drink a warmed draught and eat a drippinged soppet,'
+Udal said, 'and you shall tell me what in England is said of this
+mission.'</p>
+
+<p>He led the fair doctor into the great kitchen, and felt a great stab
+of dislike when the young man set his arm round the hostess's waist
+and kissed her on the red cheeks. The young man laughed:</p>
+
+<p>'Aye indeed; I am <i>mancipium paucae lectionis</i> set beside so learned a
+man as the magister.'</p>
+
+<p>The hostess received him with a bridling favour, rubbing her cheek
+pleasantly, whilst Udal was seeking to persuade himself that, since
+the woman was in law no wife of his, he had no need to fear.
+Nevertheless rage tore him when the doctor, leaning his back against
+the window-side, talked to the woman. She stood between them holding a
+pewter flagon of mulled hypocras upon a salver of burnished pewter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Who I be,' he said, gazing complacently at her, 'is a poor student of
+good letters; how I be here is as one of the amanuenses of the Duke of
+Norfolk. Origen, Eusebius telleth, had seven, given him by Ambrosius
+to do his behest. The duke hath but two, given him by the grace of God
+and of the King's high mercy.'</p>
+
+<p>'I make no doubt,' she answered, 'ye be as learned as the seven were.'</p>
+
+<p>'I be twice as hungry,' he laughed; 'but with me it has always been
+"<i>Quid scribam non quemadmodum</i>," wherein I follow Seneca.'</p>
+
+<p>'Doctor,' the magister uttered, quivering, 'you shall tell me why this
+mission&mdash;which is a very special embassy&mdash;at this time cometh to this
+town of Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>'Magister,' the doctor answered, wagging his beard upon his poor
+collar to signify that he desired to keep his neck where it was, 'I
+know not.'</p>
+
+<p>'Injurious man,' Udal fulminated, 'I be no spy.'</p>
+
+<p>The doctor surveyed his perturbation with cross-legged calmness.</p>
+
+<p>'An ye were,' he said&mdash;'and it is renowned that ye are&mdash;ye could get
+no knowledge from where none is.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, tell me of a woman,' the hostess said. 'Who is Kat Howard?'</p>
+
+<p>The doctor's blue eyes shot a hard glance at her, and he let his head
+sink down.</p>
+
+<p>'I have copied to her eyes a sonnet or twain,' he said, 'and they were
+writ by my master, Surrey, the Duke o' Norfolk's son.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then these rave upon her as doth the magister?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, an ye be jealous of the magister here,' the doctor clipped his
+words precisely, 'cast him away and take me who am a proper
+sweetheart.'</p>
+
+<p>'I be wed,' she answered pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>'What matters that,' he said, 'when husbands are not near?'</p>
+
+<p>The magister, torn between his unaccustomed gust of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> jealousy and the
+desire to hide his marriage from a disastrous discovery in England,
+clutched with straining fingers at his gown.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell wherefore cometh your mission,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'We spoke of a fair woman,' the doctor answered. 'Shame it were before
+Apollo and Priapus that men's missions should come before kings'
+mistresses.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is true, then, that she shall be queen?' Udal's wife asked.</p>
+
+<p>The fall of a great dish in the rear of the tall kitchen gave the
+scholar time to collect his suspicions&mdash;for he took it for an easy
+thing that this woman, if she were Udal's leman, might be, she too, a
+spy in the service of Privy Seal.</p>
+
+<p>'Forbid it, God,' he said, 'that ye take my words as other than
+allegorical. The lady Katharine may be spoken of as a king's mistress
+since in truth she were a fit mistress for a king, being fair, devout,
+learned, courteous, tall and sweet-voiced. But that she hath been kind
+to the King, God forbid that I should say it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Udal said, 'but if she hath sent this mission?'</p>
+
+<p>Panic rose in the heart of the doctor; he beheld himself there, in
+what seemed a spy's kitchen, asked disastrous questions by a man and
+woman and pinned into a window-seat. For there was no doubt that the
+rumour ran in England that this mission had been sent by the King
+because Katharine Howard so wished it sent. In that age of spies and
+treacheries no man's head was safe on his shoulders&mdash;and here were
+Cromwell's spies asking news of Cromwell's chief enemy.</p>
+
+<p>He stretched out a calm hand and spoke slowly:</p>
+
+<p>'Madam hostess,' he said, 'if ye be jealous of the magister ye may
+well be jealous, for great beauty and worship hath this lady.' Yet she
+need be little jealous, for this lady was nowadays prized so high that
+she might marry any man in the land&mdash;and learned men were little
+prized. Any man in the land of England she might wed&mdash;saving only such
+as were wed, amongst whom was their lord the King, who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> was happily
+wed to the gracious lady whom my Lord Privy Seal did bring from Cleves
+to be their very virtuous Queen.</p>
+
+<p>Here, it seemed to him, he had cleared himself very handsomely of
+suspicion of ill will to Privy Seal or of wishing ill to Anne of
+Cleves.</p>
+
+<p>'For the rest,' he said, sighing with relief to be away from dangerous
+grounds, 'your magister is safe from the toils of marriage with the
+Lady Katharine.' Still it might be held that jealousy is aroused by
+the loving and not by the returning of that love; for it was very
+certain that the magister much had loved this lady. Many did hold it a
+treachery in him, till now, to the Privy Seal whom he served. But now
+he might love her duteously, since our lord the King had commanded the
+Lady Katharine to join hands with Privy Seal, and Privy Seal to cement
+a friendly edifice in his heart towards the lady. Thus it was no
+treason to Privy Seal in him to love her. But to her it was a treason
+great and not to be comprehended.</p>
+
+<p>He ogled Udal's wife in the gallant manner and prayed her to prepare a
+bed for him in that hostelry. He had been minded to lodge with a
+Frenchman named Clement; but having seen her ...</p>
+
+<p>'Learned sir,' she answered, 'a good bed I have for you.' But if he
+sought to go beyond her lips she had a body-guard of spitmen that the
+magister's self had seen.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor kissed her agreeably and, with a great sigh of relief,
+hurried from the door.</p>
+
+<p>'May Bacchus who maketh mad, and the Furies that pursued Orestes,
+defile the day when I cross this step again,' he muttered as he swung
+under the arch and ran to follow the mule train.</p>
+
+<p>For the magister, by playing with his reputation of being Cromwell's
+spy, had so effectually caused terror of himself to pervade those who
+supported the old faith that he had much ado at times to find company
+even amongst the lovers of good letters.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span></p>
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the kitchen the spits had ceased turning, the dishes had been borne
+upstairs to the envoy from Cleves, the scullions were wiping knives,
+the maids were rubbing pieces of bread in the dripping pans and
+licking their fingers after the succulent morsels. The magister stood,
+a long crimson blot in the window-way; the hostess was setting flagons
+carefully into the great armoury.</p>
+
+<p>'Madam wife,' the magister said to her at last, when she came near,
+'ye see how weighty it is that I bide here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she said, 'I see how weighty it is that ye hasten to
+London.'</p>
+
+<p>His rage broke&mdash;he whirled his arms above his head.</p>
+
+<p>'Naughty woman!' he screamed harshly. 'Shalt be beaten.' He strode
+across to the basting range and gripped a great ladle, his brown eyes
+glinting, and stood caressing his thin chin passionately.</p>
+
+<p>She folded her arms complacently.</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she said, 'it is well that wives be beaten when they have
+merited it. But, till I have, I have seven cooks and five knaves to
+bear my part.'</p>
+
+<p>Udal's hand fell suddenly and dispiritedly to his side. What indeed
+could he do? He could not beat this woman unless she would be
+beaten&mdash;and she stood there, square, buxom, solid and composed. He had
+indeed that sense that all scholars must have in presence of assured
+wives, that she was the better man. Moreover, the rage that had filled
+him in presence of Doctor Longstaffe had cooled down to nothing in
+Longstaffe's absence.</p>
+
+<p>He folded his arms and tried impatiently to think where, in this
+pickle, his feet had landed him. His wife turned once more to place
+flagons in the armoury.</p>
+
+<p>'Woman,' he said at last, in a tone half of majesty, half of appeal,
+'see ye not how weighty it is that I bide here?'</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she answered with her tranquil nonchalance,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> 'see ye not
+how weighty it is that ye waste here no more days?'</p>
+
+<p>'But very well you know,' and he stretched out to her a thin hand,
+'that here be two embassies of mystery: you have had, these three
+days, the Cleves envoy in the house. You have seen that the Duke of
+Norfolk comes here as ambassador.'</p>
+
+<p>She took a stool and sat near his feet to listen to him.</p>
+
+<p>'Now,' he began again, 'if I be in truth a spy for Thomas Cromwell,
+Lord Privy Seal, where can I spy better for him than here? For the
+Cleves people are befriended with Privy Seal; then why come they to
+France, where bide only Privy Seal's enemies? Now Norfolk is the
+chiefest enemy of Privy Seal; then wherefore cometh Norfolk to this
+land, where abide only these foes of Privy Seal?'</p>
+
+<p>She set her elbows on her knees and her knuckles below her chin, and
+gazed up at him like a child.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me, husband,' she said; 'be ye a true spy for Thomas Cromwell?'</p>
+
+<p>He glanced round him with terror&mdash;but no man stood nearer than the
+meat boards across the kitchen, so far out of earshot that they could
+not hear feet upon the bricks.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, ye may tell me the very truth of the very truth,' she said.
+'These be false days&mdash;but my kitchen gear is thine, and nothing doth
+so bind folks together.'</p>
+
+<p>'But other listeners&mdash;' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Hosts and hostesses are listeners,' she answered. ''Tis their trade.
+And their trade it is, too, to fend from them all other listeners.
+Here you may speak. Tell me then, if I may serve you, very truly
+whether ye be a true spy for Thomas Cromwell or against him.'</p>
+
+<p>Her round face, beneath the great white hood, had a childish
+earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you are a fair doxy,' he said. He hung his head for some more
+minutes, then he spoke again.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a folly to speak of me as Privy Seal's spy, though I have so
+spoken of myself. For why? It gaineth me wor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>ship, maketh men to fear
+me and women to be dazzled by my power. But in truth, I have little
+power.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is the very truth?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He nodded nonchalantly and waited again to find very clear words for
+her understanding.</p>
+
+<p>'But, though it be true that I am no spy of Cromwell's, true it is
+also that I am a very poor man who craves very much for money. For I
+love good books that cost much gold; comely women that cost far more;
+succulent meats, sweet wines, high piled fires and warm furs.'</p>
+
+<p>He smacked his lips thinking of these same things.</p>
+
+<p>'I am, in short, no stoic,' he said, 'the stoics being ancient
+curmudgeons that were low-stomached.' Now, he continued, the Old Faith
+he loved well, but not over well; the Protestants he called busy
+knaves, but the New Learning he loved beyond life. Cromwell thwacked
+the Old Faith; he loved him not for that. Cromwell upheld in a sort
+the Protestants; he little loved him for that. 'But the New Learning
+he loveth, and, oh fair sharer of my dreams o' nights, Cromwell
+holdeth the strings of the money-bags.'</p>
+
+<p>She scratched her cheek meditatively, and then unfolded her arms.</p>
+
+<p>'How then ha' ye come by his broad pieces?'</p>
+
+<p>'It is three years since,' he answered, 'that Privy Seal sent for me.
+I had been cast out of my mastership at Eton College, for they
+said&mdash;foul liars said&mdash;that I had stolen the silver salt-cellars.' He
+had been teaching, for his sins, in the house of the Lord Edmund
+Howard, where he had had his best pupil, but no more salary than what
+his belly could hold of poor mutton. 'So Privy Seal did send for
+me&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Kat Howard was thy best pupil?' his wife asked meditatively.</p>
+
+<p>'By the shrine of Saint Eloi&mdash;' he commenced to swear.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, lie not,' she cut him short. 'You love Kat Howard and six other
+wenches. I know it well. What said Privy Seal?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He meditated again to protest that he loved not Katharine, but her
+quiet stolidity set him to change his mind.</p>
+
+<p>'It was that the Lady Mary of England needed a preceptor, an
+amanuensis, an aid for her studies in the learned language.' For the
+King's Highness' daughter had a great learning and was agate of
+writing a commentary of Plautus his plays. But the Lady Mary hated
+also virulently&mdash;and with what cause all men know&mdash;the King her
+father. And for years long, since the death of the Queen her
+mother&mdash;whom God preserve in Paradise!&mdash;for years long the Lady Mary
+had maintained a treasonable correspondence with the King's enemies,
+with the Emperor, with the Bishop of Rome&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'Our Holy Father the Pope,' his wife said, and crossed herself.</p>
+
+<p>'And with this King here of France,' Udal continued, whilst he too
+crossed himself with graceful waves of his brown hand. He continued to
+report that the way in which the Lady Mary sent her letters abroad had
+never been found; that Cromwell had appointed three tutors in
+succession to be aid to the Lady Mary in her studies. Each of these
+three she had broken and cast out from her doors, she being by far the
+more learned, so that, though Privy Seal in his might had seven
+thousand spies throughout the realm of England, he had among them no
+man learned enough to take this place and to spy out the things that
+he would learn.</p>
+
+<p>'Therefore Privy Seal did send for thee, who art accounted the most
+learned doctor in Christendom.' His wife's eyes glowed and her face
+became ruddy with pride in her husband's fame.</p>
+
+<p>The magister waved his hand pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>'Therefore he did send for me.' Privy Seal had promised him seven
+hundred pounds, farms with sixty pounds by the year, or the headship
+of New College if the magister could discover how the Lady Mary wrote
+her letters abroad.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'So I have stayed three years with the Lady Mary,' Udal said. 'But
+before God,' he asseverated, 'though I have known these twenty-nine
+months that she sent away her letters in the crusts of pudding pies,
+never hath cur Crummock had word of it.'</p>
+
+<p>'A fool he, to set thee to spy upon a petticoat,' she answered
+pleasantly.</p>
+
+<p>'Woman,' he answered hotly, 'crowns I have made by making reports to
+Privy Seal. I have set his men to watch doors and windows where none
+came in or entered; I have reported treasons of men whose heads had
+already fallen by the axe; I have told him of words uttered by maids
+of honour whom he knew full well already miscalled him. Sometimes I
+have had a crown or two from him, sometimes more; but no good man hath
+been hurt by my spying.'</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she uttered, with her face set expressionlessly, 'knew ye
+that the Frenchman's cook that made the pudding pies had been taken
+and cast into the Tower gaol?'</p>
+
+<p>Udal's arms flew above his head; his eyes started from their sockets;
+his tongue came forth from his pale mouth to lick his dry lips, and
+his legs failed him so that he sat himself down, wavering from side to
+side in the window-seat.</p>
+
+<p>'Then the commentary of Plautus shall never be written,' he wailed. He
+wrung his hands. 'Whom have they taken else?' he said. 'How knew ye
+these things when I nothing knew? What make of house is this where
+such things be known?'</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she answered, 'this house is even an inn. Where many
+travellers pass through, many secrets are known. I know of this cook's
+fate since the fate of cooks is much spoken of in kitchens, and this
+was the cook of a Frenchman, and this is France.'</p>
+
+<p>'Save us, oh pitiful saints!' the magister whispered. 'Who else is
+taken? What more do ye know? Many others have aided. I too. And there
+be friends I love.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she answered, 'I know no more than this: three days ago the
+cook stood where now you stand&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He clasped his hair so that his cap fell to the ground.</p>
+
+<p>'Here!' he said. 'But he was in the Tower!'</p>
+
+<p>'He was in the Tower, but stood here free,' she answered. Udal
+groaned.</p>
+
+<p>'Then he hath blabbed. We are lost.'</p>
+
+<p>She answered:</p>
+
+<p>'That may be the truth. But I think it is not. For so the matter is
+that the cook told me.' He was taken and set in the Tower by the men
+of Privy Seal. Yet within ten hours came the men of the King; these
+took him aboard a cogger, the cogger took them to Calais, and at the
+gate of Calais town the King's men kicked him into the country of
+France, he having sworn on oath never more to tread on English soil.</p>
+
+<p>Udal groaned.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye! But what others were taken? What others shall be?'</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>The report ran: a boy called Poins, a lady called Elliott, and a lady
+called Howard. Yet all three drank the free air before that day at
+nightfall.</p>
+
+<p>Udal, huddled against the wall, took these blows of fate with a quiver
+for each. In the back of the kitchen the servers, come down from the
+meal of the Cleves envoy, made a great clatter with their dishes of
+pewter and alloy. The hostess, working with her comfortable sway of
+the hips, drove them gently through the door to let a silence fall;
+but gradually Udal's jaw closed, his eyes grew smaller, he started
+suddenly and the muscles of his knees regained their tension. The
+hostess, swishing her many petticoats beneath her, sat down again on
+the stool.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Insipiens et infacetus quin sum!</i>' the magister mused. 'Fool that I
+am! Wherefore see I no clue?' He hung his head; frowned; then started
+anew with his hand on his side.</p>
+
+<p>'Wherefore shall I not read pure joy in this?' he said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> 'save that
+Austin waileth: "<i>Inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos
+strangulat</i>." I would be joyful&mdash;but that I fear.' Norfolk had come
+upon an embassy here; then assuredly Cromwell's power waned, or never
+had this foe of his been sent in this office of honour. The cook was
+cast in the Tower, but set free by the King's men; young Poins was
+cast too, but set free&mdash;the Lady Elliott&mdash;and the Lady Howard. What
+then? What then?</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she said, 'have you naught forgotten?'</p>
+
+<p>Udal, musing with his hand upon his chin, shook his head negligently.</p>
+
+<p>'I keep more track of the King's leman than thou, then,' she said.
+'What was it Longstaffe said of her?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' Udal answered, 'so turned my bowels were with jealousy that
+little I noted.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you are a fine spy,' she said. And she repeated to him that
+Longstaffe had reported the King's commanding Katharine and Privy Seal
+to join hands and be friends. Udal shook his head gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>'I would not have my best pupil friends with Cromwell,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, magister,' she retorted, with a first touch of scorn in her
+voice; 'have you, who have had so much truck with women, yet to learn
+that you may command a woman to be friends with a man, yet no power on
+earth shall make her love him. Nevertheless, well might Cromwell seek
+to win her love, and thence these pardons.'</p>
+
+<p>Udal started forward upon his tiptoes.</p>
+
+<p>'I must to London!' he cried. She smiled at him as at a child.</p>
+
+<p>'You are come to be of my advice,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>Udal gazed at her with a wondering patronage.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, what a wench it is,' he said, and he crooked his arm around her
+ample waist. His face shone with pleasure. 'Angel!' he uttered; 'for
+Angelos is the Greek for messenger, and signifieth more especially one
+that bringeth good tidings.' Out of all this holus bolus of envoys,
+ambassadors, cooks and prisoners one thing appeared plain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> to view:
+that, for the first time, <i>a solis ortus cardine</i>, Cromwell had
+loosened his grip of some that he held. 'And if Crummock looseneth
+grip, Crummock's power in the land waneth.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked up at him with a coy pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>'Hatest Cromwell then full fell-ly?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>He put his hands upon her shoulders and solemnly regarded her.</p>
+
+<p>'Woman,' he said; 'this man rideth England with seven thousand spies;
+these three years I have lived in terror of my life. I have had no
+bliss that fear hath not entered into&mdash;in very truth <i>inter delicias
+semper aliquid saevi nos strangulavit</i>.' His lugubrious tones grew
+higher with hatred; he raised one hand above his head and one gripped
+tight her fat shoulder. 'Terror hath bestridden our realm of England;
+no man dares to whisper his hate even to the rushes. Me! Me! Me!' he
+reached a pitch of high-voiced fury. 'Me! <i>Virum doctissimum!</i> Me, the
+first learned man in Britain, he did force to write a play in the
+vulgar tongue. Me, a master of Latin, to write in English! I had
+pardoned him my terror. I had pardoned him the heads of the good men
+he hath struck off. For that princes should inspire terror is just,
+and that the great ones of the earth should prey one upon the other is
+a thing all history giveth precedent for since the days when Sylla
+hunted to death Marius that sat amidst the ruins of Carthage. But that
+the learned should be put to shame! that good letters should be cast
+into the mire! History showeth no ensample of a man so vile since the
+Emperor Alexander removed his shadow from before the tub of Diogenes.'</p>
+
+<p>'In truth,' she said, blenching a little before his fury, 'I was ever
+one that loved the rolling sound of your Greek and your Roman.'</p>
+
+<p>'Give me my journey money,' he said, 'let me begone to England. For,
+if indeed the Lady Katharine hath the King's ear, much may I aid her
+with my counsels.'</p>
+
+<p>She began to fumble in beneath her apron, and then, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> if she
+suddenly remembered herself, she placed her finger upon her lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' she said, 'I have for you a gift. How it shall value itself
+to you I little know, but I have before been much besought and offered
+high payment for that which now I offer thee. Come.'</p>
+
+<p>The finger still upon her plump lips, she led him to a small door
+behind the chimney stack. They climbed up through cobwebs, ham,
+flitches of smoked beef, and darkness, and the reek of wood-smoke,
+until they came, high up, to a store-room in the slope of a mansard
+roof. Light filtered dimly between the tiles, and many bales and sacks
+lay upon the raftered floor like huge monsters in a huge, dim cave.</p>
+
+<p>'Hearken! make no sound,' she whispered, and in the intense gloom they
+heard a sullen, stertorous, intermittent rumble.</p>
+
+<p>'The envoy sleeps,' she said. She set her eye to a knot-hole in the
+planked wall. ''A sleeps!' she whispered. 'My pigling made a great
+thirst in him. Much wine he drank. Set your eye to the knot-hole.'</p>
+
+<p>With his face glued against the rough wood, the magister could see in
+the large room a great fair man, in a great blue chair behind a
+littered table. His head hung forward, shewed only a pink bald spot in
+the thin hair, and brilliant red ears. A slow rumble of snoring came
+for a long minute, then ceased for as long.</p>
+
+<p>From behind Udal's back came a crash, and he started back to see the
+large woman, who had overturned a chest.</p>
+
+<p>'That is to test how he sleeps,' she said. 'See if he have moved.' The
+man, plain to see through the knot-hole, had stirred no muscle; again
+the heavy rumble of the snore came to them. She spoke quite loudly
+now. 'Why, naught shall wake him these five hours. 'A hath bolted the
+door; thus his secretaries shall not come to him. See now.'</p>
+
+<p>She slid back a board in the wall, and Udal could see into what
+appeared to be a cupboard filled with a litter of papers and of
+parchments. Udal's heart began to beat so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> that he noted it there; his
+eyes searched hers with a glittering excitement&mdash;nevertheless a half
+fear of awakening the envoy kept him from speaking.</p>
+
+<p>'Take them! Take them!' she nudged him with her elbow. 'Six hours ye
+have to read and to copy.'</p>
+
+<p>'What papers are these?' he muttered, his voice thick betwixt
+incredulous joy and fear.</p>
+
+<p>'They be the envoy's papers,' she said; 'doubtless these be his
+letters to the king of this land.... What there may be I know not
+else.'</p>
+
+<p>Udal's hands were in at the hole with the swift clutch of a miser
+visiting his treasure-chest. The woman surveyed him with pleasure and
+with pride in her achievement, and with the calmness of routine she
+fitted a bar across the door of the cupboard where it opened into the
+envoy's room. Udal was fumbling already with the strings of a packet,
+his eyes searching the superscription in the gloom.</p>
+
+<p>'Six hours ye have to read and to copy,' she said happily, 'for, for
+six hours the poppy seed in his wine that he drank shall surely keep
+him snoring.' And, whilst they went again down the stairway, the
+papers secreted beneath the magister's gown, she explained with her
+pride and happiness. The aumbry was so contrived that any envoy or
+secretary sleeping in her best room must needs put his papers therein,
+since there was in the room no other chest that locked. And the King
+of France's chancellors allotted to all envoys her hostelry for a
+lodging; and once there, she made them heavy with wine and poppy seed
+after a receipt she had from an Egyptian, and at the appointed time
+the King of France's men came to read through the papers and to pay
+her much money and many kisses.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was six hours later that the magister stood in his own room
+crushing a fillet of papers into the breast of his brown jerkin. The
+hostess, walking always calmly as if disorder of the mind were a thing
+she were a stranger to, had reclimbed the narrow stairway, replaced
+the papers in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> the envoy's cupboard and returned to her husband. She
+sought, mutely, for commendations, and he gave her them.</p>
+
+<p>'Y'have made me the man that holds the secret of England's future,' he
+said. 'All England that groans beneath Cromwell awaiteth to hear how
+the cat jumps in Cleves. Now I know how the cat jumps in Cleves.'</p>
+
+<p>She wiped the dust from her hands upon her apron.</p>
+
+<p>'See that ye make good use of the knowledge,' she said. She considered
+for a moment whilst he ferreted amongst his clothes in the great black
+press beside the great white bed. 'I have long thought,' she said,
+'that greatly might I be of service to a man of laws and of policies.
+But I have long known that to serve a man is to have little reward
+unless a woman tie him up in fast bonds&mdash;&mdash;' He made one of his broad
+gestures of negation, but she cut in upon his words: 'Aye, so it is. A
+gossip may serve a man how she will, but once his occasion is past he
+shall leave her in the ditch for the first fairer face. So I made
+resolve to make such a man my husband, that his being advanced might
+advance me. For, for sure this shall not be the last spying service I
+shall do thee. Many envoys more shall be lodged in this house and many
+more secrets ye shall learn.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh beloved Pandora!' he cried; 'opener of all secret places, caskets,
+aumbries, caves of the winds, thrice blessed Sibyl of the keyhole!'
+She nodded her head with grave contentment.</p>
+
+<p>'I chose thee for thy resounding speeches,' she said. Her tranquillity
+and her buxom pleasantness overcame him with sudden affection. He was
+minded to tell her&mdash;because indeed she had made his fortunes for
+him&mdash;that her marriage to him did not hold good since a friar had read
+the rites.</p>
+
+<p>'I chose thee for thy resounding speeches,' she said, 'and because art
+so ill-clothed i' the ribs. Give me a thin man of policies to move my
+bowels of compassion, say I.' For with her secret closets she might
+make him stand well among the princes, and with her goodly capons set
+grease upon his ribs, poor soul!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Oh Guenevere!' he said; 'for was it not the queen of Arthur that made
+bag-puddings for his starving knights?'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' she said; 'great learning you possess.' A little moisture
+bedewed her blue eyes. 'It grieves me that you must begone. I love to
+hear thy broad o's and a's!'</p>
+
+<p>'Then by all that is fattest in the land hight Cokaigne I will stay
+here, thy dutiful goodman,' he said, and tears filled his own eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh nay,' she answered; 'you shall get yourself into the Chancellery,
+and merry will we feast and devise beneath the gilded roofs.' Her eyes
+sought the brown beams that ceiled the long room. 'I have heard that
+chancellors have always gilded roofs.'</p>
+
+<p>Again the tenderness overcame him for the touch of simple pride in her
+voice. And the confession slipped from his lips:</p>
+
+<p>'Poor befooled soul! Shalt never be a chancellor's dame.'</p>
+
+<p>She was sobbing a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh aye,' she said; 'thou shalt yet be chancellor, and I will baste
+thy cooks' ribs an they baste not thy meat full well.' Such a man as
+he would find favour with princes for his glosing tongue&mdash;aye, and
+with queens too. At that she covered her face with her apron, and from
+beneath it her voice came forth:</p>
+
+<p>'If this Kat Howard come to be queen, shall not the old faith be
+restored?'</p>
+
+<p>The recollection of this particular certainty affected the magister
+like a stab, for, if the old faith came back, then assuredly marriages
+by friars should again be acknowledged. He cursed himself beneath his
+breath: he was loath to leave the woman in the ditch, her trusting
+face and pleasing ways stirred the strings of his heart. But he was
+more than loath that the wedding should hold a wedding. He shook his
+perplexity from him with starting towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Time to be gone!' he said, and added, 'Be certain and take care that
+no Englishman heareth of wedding betwixt thee and me.' It must in
+England work his sure undoing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She removed her apron and nodded gravely.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' she said, 'that is certain enow with Court ladies, such as they
+be to-day.' But she asked that when he went among women she should
+hear nothing of it. For she had had three husbands and several
+courtiers to prove it upon, that it is better to be lied to than to
+know truth.</p>
+
+<p>'There is in the world no woman like to thee!' he said with a great
+sincerity. Once more she nodded.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, that is the lie that I would hear,' she said. On his part, he
+started suddenly with pain.</p>
+
+<p>'But thee!' he uttered.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' she cried again, 'that too is needed. But be very certain of
+this, that not easily will I plant upon thy brow that which most
+husbands wear!' She paused, and once more rubbed her hands. Courteous
+she must be, since her calling called therefor. But assuredly, having
+had three husbands, she had had embraces enow to crave little for men.
+And, if she did that which few good women have a need to&mdash;save very
+piteous women in ballads&mdash;she would suffer him to belabour her;&mdash;she
+nodded again&mdash;'And that to a man is a great solace.'</p>
+
+<p>He fled with precipitancy from the thought of this solace, brushing
+through the narrow passages, stalking across the great guest-chamber
+and the greater kitchen where, in the falling dusk, the fires glowed
+red upon the maids' faces and the cooks' aprons, the smoke rose
+unctuously upward tended with rich smells of meat, and the windjacks
+clanked in the chimneys. She trotted behind him, weeping in the
+gloaming.</p>
+
+<p>'If you come to be chancellor in five years,' she whimpered, 'I shall
+come across the seas to ye. If ye fail, this shall be your plenteous
+house.'</p>
+
+<p>Whilst she hung round his neck in the shadowy courtyard and he had
+already one foot in the stirrup, she begged for one more great speech.</p>
+
+<p>'Before Jupiter!' he said, 'I can think of none for crying!'</p>
+
+<p>The big black horse, with its bags before and behind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> the saddle,
+stirred, so that, standing upon one foot, he fell away from her. But
+he swung astride the saddle, his cloak flying, his long legs clasping
+round the belly. It reared and pawed the twilight mists, but he smote
+it over one ear with his palm, and it stood trembling.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a fine beast y'have given me,' he said, pleasure thrilling
+his limbs.</p>
+
+<p>'I have given it a fine rider!' she cried. He wheeled it near her and
+stooped right down to kiss her face. He was very sure in his saddle,
+having learned the trick of the stirrup from old Rowfant, that had
+taught the King.</p>
+
+<p>'Wife,' he said, 'I have bethought me of this: <i>Post equitem
+sedet</i>&mdash;&mdash;' He faltered&mdash;'<i>sedet&mdash;Behind the rider sitteth</i>&mdash;But for
+the life of me I know not whether it be <i>atra cura</i> or no.'</p>
+
+<p>And, as he left Paris gates behind him and speeded towards the black
+hills, bending low to face the cold wind of night, for the life of him
+he knew not whether black care sat behind him or no. Only, as night
+came down and he sped forward, he knew that he was speeding for
+England with the great news that the Duke of Cleves was seeking to
+make his peace with the Emperor and the Pope through the mediancy of
+the king of that land and, on the soft road, the hoofs of the horse
+seemed to beat out the rhythm of the words:</p>
+
+<p>'Crummock is down: Cromwell is down. Crummock is down: Cromwell is
+down.'</p>
+
+<p>He rode all through the night thinking of these things, for, because
+he carried letters from the English ambassador to the King of England,
+the gates of no small town could stay his passing through.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>Five men talked in the long gallery overlooking the River Thames. It
+was in the Lord Cromwell's house, upon which the April showers fell
+like handsful of peas, with a sifting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> sound, between showers of
+sunshine that fell themselves like rain, so that at times all the long
+empty gallery was gilded with light and at times it was all saddened
+and frosty. They were talking all, and all with earnestness and
+concern, as all the Court and the city were talking now, of Katharine
+Howard whom the King loved.</p>
+
+<p>The Archbishop leant against one side of a window, close beside him
+his spy Lascelles; the Archbishop's face was round but worn, his large
+eyes bore the trace of sleeplessness, his plump hands were a little
+tremulous within his lawn sleeves.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'we must bow to the breeze. In time to come we may
+stand straight enow.' His eyes seemed to plead with Privy Seal, who
+paced the gallery in short, pursy strides, his plump hands hidden in
+the furs behind his back. Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy, nodded his
+head sagaciously; his yellow hair came from high on his crown and was
+brushed forward towards his brows. He did not speak, being in such
+high company, but looking at him, the Archbishop gained confidence
+from the support of his nod.</p>
+
+<p>'If we needs must go with the Lady Katharine towards Rome,' he pleaded
+again, 'consider that it is but for a short time.' Cromwell passed him
+in his pacing and, unsure of having caught his ear, Cranmer addressed
+himself to Throckmorton and Wriothesley, the two men of forty who
+stood gravely, side by side, fingering their long beards. 'For sure,'
+Cranmer appealed to the three silent men, 'what we must avoid is
+crossing the King's Highness. For his Highness, crossed, hath a swift
+and sudden habit of action.' Wriothesley nodded, and: 'Very sudden,'
+Lascelles allowed himself utterance, in a low voice. Throckmorton's
+eyes alone danced and span; he neither nodded nor spoke, and, because
+he was thought to have a great say in the councils of Privy Seal, it
+was to him that Cranmer once more addressed himself urgently:</p>
+
+<p>'Full-bodied men who are come upon failing years are very prone to
+women. 'Tis a condition of the body, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> humour, a malady that passeth.
+But, while it lasteth, it must be bowed to.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell, with his deaf face, passed once more before them. He
+addressed himself in brief, sharp tones to Wriothesley:</p>
+
+<p>'You say, in Paris an envoy from Cleves was come a week agone?' and
+passed on.</p>
+
+<p>'It must be bowed to,' Cranmer continued his speech. 'I do maintain
+it. There is no way but to divorce the Queen.' Again Lascelles nodded;
+it was Wriothesley this time who spoke.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a lamentable thing!' and there was a heavy sincerity in his
+utterance, his pose, with his foot weightily upon the ground, being
+that of an honest man. 'But I do think you have the right of it. We,
+and the new faith with us, are between Scylla and Charybdis. For
+certain, our two paths do lie between divorcing the Queen and seeing
+you, great lords, who so well defend us, cast down.'</p>
+
+<p>Coming up behind him, Cromwell placed a hand upon his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Goodly knight,' he said, 'let us hear thy thoughts. His Grace's of
+Canterbury we do know very well. He is for keeping a whole skin!'</p>
+
+<p>Cranmer threw up his hands, and Lascelles looked at the ground.
+Throckmorton's eyes were filled with admiration of this master of his
+that he was betraying now. He muttered in his long, golden beard.</p>
+
+<p>'Pity we must have thy head.'</p>
+
+<p>Wriothesley cleared his throat, and having considered, spoke
+earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>'It is before all things expedient and necessary,' he said, 'that we
+do keep you, my Lord Privy Seal, and you, my Lord of Canterbury, at
+the head of the State.' That was above all necessary. For assuredly
+this land, though these two had brought it to a great pitch of wealth,
+clean living, true faith and prosperity, this land needed my Lord
+Privy Seal before all men to shield it from the treason of the old
+faith. There were many lands now, bringing wealth and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> commodity to
+the republic, that should soon again revert towards and pay all their
+fruits to Rome; there were many cleaned and whitened churches that
+should again hear the old nasty songs and again be tricked with
+gewgaws of the idolaters. Therefore, before all things, my Lord Privy
+Seal must retain the love of the King's Highness&mdash;&mdash; Cromwell, who had
+resumed his pacing, stayed for a moment to listen.</p>
+
+<p>'Wherefore brought ye not news of why Cleves' envoy came to Paris
+town?' he said pleasantly. 'All the door turneth upon that hinge.'</p>
+
+<p>Wriothesley stuttered and reddened.</p>
+
+<p>'What gold could purchase, I purchased of news,' he said. 'But this
+envoy would not speak; his knaves took my gold and had no news. The
+King of France's men&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh aye,' Cromwell continued; 'speak on about the other matter.'</p>
+
+<p>Wriothesley turned his slow mind from his vexation in Paris, whence he
+had come a special journey to report of the envoy from Cleves. He
+spoke again swiftly, turning right round to Cromwell.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'study above all to please the King. For unless you
+guide us we are lost indeed.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell worked his lips one upon another and moved a hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Wriothesley continued; 'it can be done only by bringing the
+King's Highness and the Lady Katharine to a marriage.'</p>
+
+<p>'Only by that?' Cromwell asked enigmatically.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton spoke at last:</p>
+
+<p>'Your lordship jests,' he said; 'since the King is not a man, but a
+high and beneficent prince with a noble stomach.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell tapped him upon the cheek.</p>
+
+<p>'That you do see through a millstone I know,' he said. 'But I was
+minded to hear how these men do think. You and I do think alike.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, my lord,' Throckmorton answered boldly. 'But in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> ten minutes I
+must be with the Lady Katharine, and I am minded to hear the upshot of
+this conference.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell laughed at him sunnily:</p>
+
+<p>'Go and do your message with the lady. An you hasten, you may return
+ere ever this conference ends, since slow wits like ours need a store
+of words to speak their minds with.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles, the silent spy of the archbishop, devoured with envious
+eyes Throckmorton's great back and golden beard. For his life he dared
+not speak three words unbidden in this company. But Throckmorton being
+gone the discussion renewed itself, Wriothesley speaking again.</p>
+
+<p>He voiced always the same ideas, for the same motives: Cromwell must
+maintain his place at the cost of all things, for the sake of all
+these men who leaned upon him. And it was certain that the King loved
+this lady. If he had sent her few gifts and given her no titles nor
+farms, it was because&mdash;either of nature or to enhance the King's
+appetite&mdash;she shewed a prudish disposition. But day by day and week in
+week out the King went with his little son in his times of ease to the
+rooms of the Lady Mary. And there he went, assuredly, not to see the
+glum face of the daughter that hated him, but to converse in Latin
+with his daughter's waiting-maid of honour. All the Court knew this.
+Who there had not seen how the King smiled when he came new from the
+Lady Mary's rooms? He was heavy enow at all other times. This fair
+woman that hated alike the new faith and all its ways had utterly
+bewitched and enslaved the King's eyes, ears and understanding. If the
+King would have Katharine Howard his wife the King must have her. Anne
+of Cleves must be sent back to Germany; Cromwell must sue for peace
+with the Howard wench; a way must be found to bribe her till the King
+tired of her; then Katharine must go in her turn, once more Cromwell
+would have his own, and the Protestants be reinstated. Cromwell
+retained his silence; at the last he uttered his unfailing words with
+which he closed all these discussions:</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it is a great matter.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The gusts of rain and showers of sun pursued each other down the
+river; the lights and shadows succeeded upon the cloaked and capped
+shapes of the men who huddled their figures together in the tall
+window. At last the Archbishop lost his patience and cried out:</p>
+
+<p>'What will you <i>do</i>? What will you <i>do</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell swung his figure round before him.</p>
+
+<p>'I will discover what Cleves will do in this matter,' he said. 'All
+dependeth therefrom.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay; make a peace with Rome,' Cranmer uttered suddenly. 'I am weary
+of these strivings.'</p>
+
+<p>But Wriothesley clenched his fist.</p>
+
+<p>'Before ye shall do that I will die, and twenty thousand others!'</p>
+
+<p>Cranmer quailed.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he temporised. 'We will give back to the Bishop of Rome nothing
+that we have taken of property. But the Bishop of Rome may have
+Peter's Pence and the deciding of doctrines.'</p>
+
+<p>'Canterbury,' Wriothesley said, 'I had rather Antichrist had his old
+goods and gear in this realm than the handling of our faith.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell drew in the air through his nostrils, and still smiled.</p>
+
+<p>'Be sure the Bishop of Rome shall have no more gear and no more
+guidance of this realm than his Highness and I need give,' he said.
+'No stranger shall have any say in the councils of this realm.' He
+smiled noiselessly again. 'Still and still, all turneth upon Cleves.'</p>
+
+<p>For the first time Lascelles spoke:</p>
+
+<p>'All turneth upon Cleves,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell surveyed him, narrowing his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Speak you now of your wisdom,' he uttered with neither friendliness
+nor contempt. Lascelles caressed his shaven chin and spoke:</p>
+
+<p>'The King's Highness I have observed to be a man for women&mdash;a man who
+will give all his goods and all his gear to a woman. Assuredly he will
+not take this woman to his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> leman; his princely stomach revolteth
+against an easy won mastership. He will pay dear, he will pay his
+crown to win her. Yet the King would not give his policies. Neither
+would he retrace his steps for a woman's sake unless Fate too cried
+out that he must.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell nodded his head. It pleased him that this young man set a
+virtue sufficiently high upon his prince.</p>
+
+<p>'Sirs,' he said, 'daily have I seen this King in ten years, and I do
+tell ye no man knoweth how the King loves kingcraft as I know.' He
+nodded again to Lascelles, whose small stature seemed to gain bulk,
+whose thin voice seemed to gain volume from this approval and from his
+'Speak on. About Cleves.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sirs,' Lascelles spoke again, 'whiles there remains the shade of a
+chance that Cleves' Duke shall lead the princes of Germany against the
+Emperor and France, assuredly the King shall stay his longing for the
+Lady Katharine. He shall stay firm in his marriage with the Queen.'
+Again Cromwell nodded. 'Till then it booteth little to move towards a
+divorce; but if that day should come, then our Lord Privy Seal must
+bethink himself. That is in our lord's mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'By Bacchus!' Cromwell said, 'your Grace of Canterbury hath a jewel in
+your crony and helper. And again I say, we must wait upon Cleves.' He
+seemed to pursue the sunbeams along the gallery, then returned to say:</p>
+
+<p>'I know ye know I love little to speak my mind. What I think or how I
+will act I keep to myself. But this I will tell you:' Cleves might
+have two minds in sending to France an envoy. On the one hand, he
+might be minded to abandon Henry and make submission to the Emperor
+and to Rome. For, in the end, was not the Duke of Cleves a vassal of
+the Emperor? It might be that. Or it might be that he was sending
+merely to ask the King of France to intercede betwixt him and his
+offended lord. The Emperor was preparing to wage war upon Cleves. That
+was known. And doubtless Cleves, desiring to retain his friendship
+with Henry, might have it in mind to keep friends with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> both. There
+the matter hinged, Cromwell repeated. For, if Cleves remained loyal to
+the King of England, Henry would hear nothing of divorcing Cleves'
+sister, and would master his desire for Katharine.</p>
+
+<p>'Believe me when I speak,' Cromwell added earnestly. 'Ye do wrong to
+think of this King as a lecher after the common report. He is a man
+very continent for a king. His kingcraft cometh before all women. If
+the Duke of Cleves be firm friend to him, firm friend he will be to
+the Duke's sister. The Lady Howard will be his friend, but the Lady
+Howard will be neither his leman nor his guide to Rome. He will please
+her if he may. But his kingcraft. Never!' He broke off and laughed
+noiselessly at the Archbishop's face of dismay. 'Your Grace would make
+a pact with Rome?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, these are very evil times,' Cranmer answered. 'And if the Bishop
+of Rome will give way to us, why may we not give pence to the Bishop
+of Rome?'</p>
+
+<p>'Goodman,' Cromwell answered, 'these are evil times because we men are
+evil.' He pulled a paper from his belt. 'Sirs,' he said, 'will ye know
+what manner of woman this Katharine Howard is?' and to their murmurs
+of assent: 'This lady hath asked to speak with me. Will ye hear her
+speak? Then bide ye here. Throckmorton is gone to seek her.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Katharine Howard sat in her own room; it had in it little of
+sumptuousness, for all the King so much affected her. It was the room
+she had first had at Hampton after coming to be maid to the King's
+daughter, and it had the old, green hangings that had always been
+round the walls, the long oak table, the box-bed set in the wall, the
+high chair and the three stools round the fire. The only thing she had
+taken of the King was a curtain in red cloth to hang on a rod before
+the door where was a great draught, the leading of the windows being
+rotted. She had lived so poor a life,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> her father having been a very
+poor lord with many children&mdash;she was so attuned to flaws of the wind,
+ill-feeding and harsh clothes, that such a tall room as she there had
+seemed goodly enough for her. Barely three months ago she had come to
+the palace of Greenwich riding upon a mule. Now accident, or maybe the
+design of the dear saints, had set her so high in the King's esteem
+that she might well try a fall with Privy Seal.</p>
+
+<p>She sat there dressed, awaiting the summons to go to him. She wore a
+long dress of red velvet, worked around the breast-lines with little
+silver anchors and hearts, and her hood was of black lawn and fell
+near to her hips behind. And she had read and learned by heart
+passages from Plutarch, from Tacitus, from Diodorus Siculus, from
+Seneca and from Tully, each one inculcating how salutary a thing in a
+man was the love of justice. Therefore she felt herself well prepared
+to try a fall with the chief enemy of her faith, and awaited with
+impatience his summons to speak with him. For she was anxious, now at
+last, to speak out her mind, and Privy Seal's agents had worked upon
+the religious of a poor little convent near her father's house a wrong
+so baleful that she could no longer contain herself. Either Privy Seal
+must redress or she must go to the King for justice to these poor
+women that had taught her the very elements of virtue and lay now in
+gaol.</p>
+
+<p>So she spoke to her two chief friends, her that had been Cicely
+Elliott and her old husband Rochford, the knight of Bosworth Hedge.
+They happened in upon her just after she was attired and had sent her
+maid to fetch her dinner from the buttery.</p>
+
+<p>'Three months agone,' she said, 'the King's Highness did bid me cease
+from crying out upon Privy Seal; and not the King's Highness' self can
+say that in that time I have spoken word against the Lord Cromwell.'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Elliott, who dressed, in spite of her new wedding, all in black
+for the sake of some dead men, laughed round at her from her little
+stool by the fire.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'God help you! that must have been hard, to keep thy tongue from the
+flail of all Papists.'</p>
+
+<p>The old knight, who was habited like Katharine, all in red, because at
+that season the King favoured that colour, pulled nervously at his
+little goat's beard, for all conversations that savoured of politics
+and religion were to him very fearful. He stood back against the green
+hangings and fidgeted with his feet.</p>
+
+<p>But Katharine, who for the love of the King had been silent, was now
+set to speak her mind.</p>
+
+<p>'It is Seneca,' she said, 'who tells us to have a check upon our
+tongues, but only till the moment approaches to speak.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, goodman Seneca!' Cicely laughed round at her. Katharine smoothed
+her hair, but her eyes gleamed deeply.</p>
+
+<p>'The moment approaches,' she said; 'I do like my King, but better I
+like my Church.' She swallowed in her throat. 'I had thought,' she
+said, 'that Privy Seal would stay his harryings of the goodly nuns in
+this land.' But now she had a petition, come that day from Lincoln
+gaol. Cromwell's servants were more bitter still than ever against the
+religious. Here was a false accusation of treason against her
+foster-mother's self. 'I will soon end it or mend it, or lose mine own
+head,' Katharine ended.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, pull down Cur Crummock,' Cicely said. 'I think the King shall
+not long stay away from thy desires.'</p>
+
+<p>The old knight burst in:</p>
+
+<p>'I take it ill that ye speak of these things. I take it ill. I will
+not have 'ee lose thy head in these quarrels.'</p>
+
+<p>'Husband,' Cicely laughed round at him, 'three years ago Cur Crummock
+had the heads of all my menfolk, having sworn they were traitors.'</p>
+
+<p>'The more reason that he have not mine and thine now,' the old knight
+answered grimly. 'I am not for these meddlings in things that concern
+neither me nor thee.'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Elliott set her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her
+knuckles. She gazed into the fire and grew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> moody, as was her wont
+when she had chanced to think of her menfolk that Cromwell had
+executed.</p>
+
+<p>'He might have had my head any day this four years,' she said. 'And
+had you lost my head and me you might have had any other maid any day
+that se'nnight.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, I grow too old,' the knight answered. 'A week ago I dropped my
+lance.'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely continued to gaze at nothings in the fire.</p>
+
+<p>'For thee,' she said scornfully to Katharine, 'it were better thou
+hadst never been born than have meddled between kings and ministers
+and faiths and nuns. You are not made for this world. You talk too
+much. Get you across the seas to a nunnery.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine looked at her pitifully.</p>
+
+<p>'Child,' she said, 'it was not I that spoke of thy menfolk.'</p>
+
+<p>'Get thyself mewed up,' Cicely repeated more hotly; 'thou wilt set all
+this world by the ears. This is no place for virtues learned from
+learned books. This is an ill world where only evil men flourish.'</p>
+
+<p>The old knight still fidgeted to be gone.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' Katharine said seriously, 'ye think I will work mine own
+advantage with the King. But I do swear to thee I have it not in my
+mind.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, swear not,' Cicely mumbled, 'all the world knoweth thee to be
+that make of fool.'</p>
+
+<p>'I would well to get me made a nun&mdash;but first I will bring nunneries
+back from across the seas to this dear land.'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely laughed again&mdash;for a long and strident while.</p>
+
+<p>'You will come to no nunnery if you wait till then,' she said. 'Nuns
+without their heads have no vocation.'</p>
+
+<p>'When Cromwell is down, no woman again shall lose her head,' Katharine
+answered hotly.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely only laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'No woman again!' Katharine repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'Blood was tasted when first a queen fell on Tower Hill.' Cicely
+pointed her little finger at her. 'And the taste of blood, even as the
+taste of wine, ensureth a certain oblivion.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'You miscall your King,' Katharine said.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely laughed and answered: 'I speak of my world.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine's blood came hot to her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>'It is a new world from now on,' she answered proudly.</p>
+
+<p>'Till a new queen's blood seal it an old one,' Cicely mocked her
+earnestness. 'Hadst best get thee to a nunnery across the seas.'</p>
+
+<p>'The King did bid me bide here.' Katharine faltered in the least.</p>
+
+<p>'You have spoken of it with him?' Cicely said. 'Why, God help you!'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine sat quietly, her fair hair gilded by the pale light of the
+gusty day, her lips parted a little, her eyelids drooping. It behoved
+her to move little, for her scarlet dress was very nice in its
+equipoise, and fain she was to seem fine in Privy Seal's eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'This King hath a wife to his tail,' Cicely mocked her.</p>
+
+<p>The old knight had recovered his quiet; he had his hand upon his
+haunch, and spoke with his air of wisdom:</p>
+
+<p>'I would have you to cease these talkings of dangerous things,' he
+said. 'I am Rochford of Bosworth Hedge. I have kept my head and my
+lands, and my legs from chains&mdash;and how but by leaving to talk of
+dangerous things?'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine moved suddenly in her chair. This speech, though she had
+heard it a hundred times before, struck her now as so craven that she
+forgot alike her desire to keep fine and her friendship for the old
+man's new wife.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, you have been a coward all your life,' she said: for were not
+her dear nuns in Lincoln gaol, and this was a knight that should have
+redressed wrongs!</p>
+
+<p>Old Rochford smiled with his air of tranquil wisdom and corpulent age.</p>
+
+<p>'I have struck good blows,' he said. 'There have been thirteen ballads
+writ of me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have kept so close a tongue,' Katharine said to him hotly, 'that
+I know not what you love. Be you for the old faith, or for this Church
+of devils that Cromwell hath set up in the land? Did you love Queen
+Katharine or Queen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> Anne Boleyn? Were you glad when More died, or did
+you weep? Are you for the Statute of Users, or would you end it? Are
+you for having the Lady Mary called bastard&mdash;God pardon me the
+word!&mdash;or would you defend her with your life?&mdash;I do not know. I have
+spoken with you many times&mdash;but I do not know.'</p>
+
+<p>Old Rochford smiled contentedly.</p>
+
+<p>'I have saved my head and my lands in these perilous times by letting
+no man know,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Katharine met his words with scorn and appeal. 'You have kept
+your head on your shoulders and the rent from your lands in your poke.
+But oh, sir, it is certain that, being a man, you love either the new
+ways or the old; it is certain that, being a spurred knight, you
+should love the old ways. Sir, bethink you and take heed of this: that
+the angels of God weep above England, that the Mother of God weeps
+above England; that the saints of God do weep&mdash;and you, a spurred
+knight, do wield a good sword. Sir, when you stand before the gates of
+Heaven, what shall you answer the warders thereof?'</p>
+
+<p>'Please God,' the old knight answered, 'that I have struck some good
+blows.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye; you have struck blows against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But
+the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their
+kind&mdash;the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against
+the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province
+of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but&mdash;and how
+much the more?&mdash;against the foes of his God.'</p>
+
+<p>In the full flow of her speaking there came in the great, blonde
+Margot Poins, her body-maid. She led by the hand the Magister Udal,
+and behind them followed, with his foxy eyes and long, smooth beard,
+the spy Throckmorton, vivid in his coat of green and scarlet
+stockings. And, at the antipathy of his approach, Katharine's emotions
+grew the more harrowing&mdash;as if she were determined to shew this evil
+supporter of her cause how a pure fight should be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span> waged. They moved
+on tiptoe and stood against the hangings at the back.</p>
+
+<p>She stretched out her hands to the old knight.</p>
+
+<p>'Here you be in a pitiful and afflicted land from which the saints
+have been driven out; have you struck one blow for the saints of God?
+Nay, you have held your peace. Here you be where good men have been
+sent to the block: have you decried their fates? You have seen noble
+and beloved women, holy priests, blessed nuns defiled and martyred;
+you have seen the poor despoiled; you have seen that knaves ruled by
+aid of the devil about a goodly king. Have you struck one blow? Have
+you whispered one word?'</p>
+
+<p>The colour rushed into Margot Poins' huge cheeks. She kept her mouth
+open to drink in her mistress's words, and Throckmorton waved his
+hands in applause. Only Udal shuffled in his broken-toed shoes, and
+old Rochford smiled benignly and tapped his chest above the chains.</p>
+
+<p>'I have struck good blows in the quarrels that were mine,' he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine wrung her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir, I have read it in books of chivalry, the province of a knight is
+to succour the Church of God, to defend the body of God, to set his
+lance in rest for the Mother of God; to defend noble men cast down,
+and noble women; to aid holy priests and blessed nuns; to succour the
+despoiled poor.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, I have read no books of chivalry,' the old man answered; 'I
+cannot read.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ah, there be pitiful things in this world,' Katharine said, and her
+chest was troubled.</p>
+
+<p>'You should quote Hesiodus,' Cicely mocked her suddenly from her
+stool. 'I marked this text when all my menfolk were slain:
+&#960;&#955;&#949;&#7985;&#951; &#956;&#8050;&#957;
+&#947;&#8048;&#961; &#947;&#8118;&#953;&#945;,
+&#960;&#955;&#949;&#7985;&#951; &#948;&#8051;
+&#952;&#8048;&#955;&#945;&#963;&#963;&#945; so I have laughed ever since.'</p>
+
+<p>Upon her, too, Katharine turned.</p>
+
+<p>'You also,' she said; 'you also.'</p>
+
+<p>'No, before God, I am no coward,' Cicely Elliott said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> 'When all my
+menfolk were slain by the headsman something broke in my head, and
+ever since I have laughed. But before God, in my way I have tried to
+plague Cromwell. If he would have had my head he might have.'</p>
+
+<p>'Yet what hast thou done for the Church of God?' Katharine said.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Elliott sprang to the floor and raised her hands with such
+violence that Throckmorton moved swiftly forward.</p>
+
+<p>'What did the Church of God for me?' she cried. 'Guard your face from
+my nails ere you ask me that again. I had a father; I had two
+brothers; I had two men I loved passing well. They all died upon one
+day upon the one block. Did the saints of God save them? Go see their
+heads upon the gates of York?'</p>
+
+<p>'But if they died for God His pitiful sake,' Katharine said&mdash;'if they
+did die in the quarrel of God's wounds&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Elliott screamed, with her hands above her head.</p>
+
+<p>'Is that not enow? Is that not enow?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then it is I, not thou, that love them,' Katharine said; 'for I, not
+thou, shall carry on the work for which they died.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh gaping, pink-faced fool!' Cicely Elliott sneered at her.</p>
+
+<p>She began to laugh, holding her black sides in, her face thrown back.
+Then she closed her mouth and stood smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'You were made for a preacher, coney,' she said. 'Fine to hear thee
+belabouring my old, good knight with doughty words.'</p>
+
+<p>'Gibe as thou wilt; scream as thou wilt&mdash;&mdash;' Katharine began. Cicely
+Elliott tossed in on her words:</p>
+
+<p>'My head ached so. I had the right of it to scream. I cannot be minded
+of my menfolk but my head will ache. But I love thy fine preaching.
+Preach on.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine raised herself from her chair.</p>
+
+<p>'Words there must be that will move thee,' she said, 'if God will give
+them to me.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'God hath withdrawn Himself from this world,' Cicely answered. 'All
+mankind goeth a-mumming.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was another thing that Polycrates said.' Katharine, in spite of
+her emotion, was quick to catch the misquotation.</p>
+
+<p>'Coney,' Cicely Elliott answered, 'all men wear masks; all men lie;
+all men desire the goods of all men and seek how they may get them.'</p>
+
+<p>'But Cromwell being down, these things shall change,' Katharine
+answered. '<i>Res, aetas, usus, semper aliquid apportent novi.</i>'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Elliott fell back into her chair and laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'What are we amongst that multitude?' she said. 'Listen to me: When my
+menfolk were cast to die, I flew to Gardiner to save them. Gardiner
+would not speak. Now is he Bishop of Winchester&mdash;for he had goods of
+my father's, and greased with them the way to his bishop's throne.
+Fanshawe is a goodly Papist; but Cromwell hath let him have goods of
+the Abbey of Bright. Will Fanshawe help thee to bring back the Church?
+Then he must give up his lands. Will Cranmer help thee? Will Miners?
+Coney, I loved Federan, a true man: Miners hath his land to-day, and
+Federan's mother starves. Will Miners help thee to gar the King do
+right? Then the mother of my love Federan must have Miners' land and
+the rents for seven years. Will Cranmer serve thee to bring back the
+Bishop of Rome? Why, Cranmer would burn.'</p>
+
+<p>'But the poorer sort&mdash;&mdash;' Katharine said.</p>
+
+<p>'There is no man will help thee whose help will avail,' Cicely mocked
+at her. 'For hear me: No man now is up in the land that hath not goods
+of the Church; fields of the abbeys; spoons made of the parcel gilt
+from the shrines. There is no rich man now but is rich with stolen
+riches; there is no man now up that was not so set up. And the men
+that be down have lost their heads. Go dig in graves to find men that
+shall help thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'Cromwell shall fall ere May goeth out,' Katharine said.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, the King dotes upon thy sweet face. But Cromwell being down,
+there will remain the men he hath set up.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> Be they lovers of the old
+faith, or thee? Now, thy pranks will ruin all alike.'</p>
+
+<p>'The King is minded to right these wrongs,' Katharine protested hotly.</p>
+
+<p>'The King! The King!' Cicely laughed. 'Thou lovest the King.... Nay an
+thou lovest the King.... But to be enamoured of the King.... And the
+King enamoured of thee ... why, this pair of lovers cast adrift upon
+the land&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine said:</p>
+
+<p>'Belike I am enamoured of the King: belike the King of me, I do not
+know. But this I know: he and I are minded to right the wrongs of
+God.'</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Elliott opened her eyes wide.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, thou art a very infectious fanatic!' she said. 'You may well do
+these things. But you must shed much blood. You must widow many men's
+wives. Body of God! I believe thou wouldst.'</p>
+
+<p>'God forbid it!' Katharine said. 'But if He so willeth it, <i>fiat
+voluntas</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, spare no man,' Cicely answered. 'Thou shalt not very easily
+escape.'</p>
+
+<p>It was at this point that the magister was moved to keep no longer
+silence.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, by all the gods of high Olympus!' he cried out, 'such things
+shall not be alleged against me. For I do swear, before Venus and all
+the saints, that I am your man.'</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it was Margot Poins, wavering between her love for her
+magister and her love for her mistress, that most truly was carried
+away by Katharine's eloquence.</p>
+
+<p>'Mistress,' she said, and she indicated both the magister and his tall
+and bearded companion, 'these two have made up a pretty plot upon the
+stairs. There are in it papers from Cleves and a matter of deceiving
+Privy Seal and thou shouldst be kept in ignorance asking to&mdash;to&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Her gruff voice failed and her blushes overcame her, so that she
+wanted for a word. But upon the mention of papers and Privy Seal the
+old knight fidgeted and faltered:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Why, let us begone.' Cicely Elliott glanced from one to the other of
+them with a malicious glee, and Throckmorton's eyes blinked
+sardonically above his beard.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It had been actually upon the stairs that he had come upon the
+magister, newly down from his horse, and both stiff and bruised, with
+Margot Poins hanging about his neck and begging him to spare her a
+moment. Throckmorton crept up the dark stairway with his shoes soled
+with velvet. The magister was seeking to disengage himself from the
+girl with the words that he had a treaty form of the Duke of Cleves in
+his bosom and must hasten on the minute to give it to her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!' Throckmorton had said behind his back, 'ye will do no
+such thing,' and Udal had shrieked out like a rabbit caught by a
+ferret in its bury. For here he had seemed to find himself caught by
+the chief spy of Privy Seal upon a direct treason against Privy Seal's
+self.</p>
+
+<p>But, dragging alike the terrified magister and the heavy, blonde girl
+who clung to him out from the dark stairhead into the corridor, where,
+since no one could come upon them unseen or unheard, it was the safest
+place in the palace to speak, Throckmorton had whispered into his ear
+a long, swift speech in which he minced no matters at all.</p>
+
+<p>The time, he said, was ripe to bring down Privy Seal. He
+himself&mdash;Throckmorton himself&mdash;loved Kat Howard with a love compared
+to which the magister's was a rushlight such as you bought fifty for a
+halfpenny. Privy Seal was ravening for a report of that treaty. They
+must, before all things, bring him a report that was false. For, for
+sure, upon that report Privy Seal would act, and, if they brought him
+a false report, Privy Seal would act falsely.</p>
+
+<p>Udal stood perfectly still, looking at nothing, his thin brown hand
+clasped round his thin brown chin.</p>
+
+<p>'But, above all,' Throckmorton had concluded, 'show ye no papers to
+Kat Howard. For it is very certain that she will have no falsehoods
+employed to bring down Privy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> Seal, though she hate him as the
+Assyrian cockatrice hateth the symbol of the Cross.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir Throckmorton,' Margot Poins had uttered, 'though ye be a paid
+spy, ye speak true words there.'</p>
+
+<p>He pulled his beard and blinked at her.</p>
+
+<p>'I am minded to reform,' he said. 'Your mistress hath worked a miracle
+of conversion in me.'</p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her great fair shoulders at this, and spoke to the
+magister:</p>
+
+<p>'It is very true,' she said, 'that this spying knight affects my
+mistress. But whether it be for the love of virtue, or for the love of
+her body, or because the cat jumps that way and there he observeth
+fortune to rise, I leave to God who reads all hearts.'</p>
+
+<p>'There speaks a wench brought up and taught by Protestants,'
+Throckmorton gibed pleasantly at her; 'or ye have caught the trick of
+Kat Howard, who, though she be a Papist as good as I, yet prates
+virtue like a Lutheran.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye lie!' Margot said; 'my mistress getteth her virtue from good
+letters.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton smiled at her again.</p>
+
+<p>'Wench,' he said, 'in all save doctrine, this Kat Howard and her
+learning are nearer Lutheran than of the old faith.'</p>
+
+<p>With his malice he set himself to bewilder Margot. They made a little,
+shadowy knot in the long corridor. For he wished to give Udal, who in
+his long gown stood deaf-faced, like a statue of contemplation, the
+time to come to a conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you are a very mean wag,' Margot said. 'I have heard my
+uncle&mdash;who is, as ye wot, a Protestant and a printer&mdash;I have heard him
+speak of Luther and of Bucer and of the word of God and suchlike
+canting books, but never once of Seneca and Tully, that my mistress
+loves.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, ye are learning the trick of tongues,' Throckmorton mocked.
+'Please God, when your mistress cometh to be Queen&mdash;may He send it
+soon!&mdash;there shall be such a fashion and contagion of talking&mdash;&mdash;'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Having his eyes on Udal, he broke off suddenly, and said with a harsh
+sharpness:</p>
+
+<p>'I have given you time to make a resolution. Speak quickly. Will you
+come into our boat with us that will bring down Privy Seal?'</p>
+
+<p>Udal winced, but Throckmorton held him by the wrist.</p>
+
+<p>'Then unpouch quickly thy Cleves papers,' he said; 'we have but a
+little time to turn them round.'</p>
+
+<p>Udal's thin hand sought nervously the opening of his jerkin beneath
+his gown: he drew it back, moved it forward again, and stood quivering
+with doubt.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton stood vaingloriously back upon his feet and combed his
+great beard with his white fingers.</p>
+
+<p>'Magister,' he uttered triumphantly, 'well you wot that such a man as
+you cannot plot for himself alone; you will make naught of your
+treasure trove save a cleft neck!'</p>
+
+<p>And, furtively, cringing back into the dark hangings, a bent, broken
+figure like a miser unpouching his gold, Udal undid his breast
+lacings.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>It was hot from this colloquy that Margot Poins had led the two men in
+upon her mistress in her large dim room. Because she hated the great
+spy, since he loved Kat Howard and had undone many good men with false
+tales, she had not been able to keep her tongue from seeking to wound
+him.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye are too true to mix in plots,' she brought out gruffly.</p>
+
+<p>Cicely Rochford came close to Katharine and measured her neck with the
+span of her small hand.</p>
+
+<p>'There is room!' she said. 'Hast a long and a straight neck.'</p>
+
+<p>Her husband muttered that he liked not these talkings. By diligent
+avoidance of such, he had kept his own hair and neck uncut in
+troublesome times.</p>
+
+<p>'I will take thee to another place,' Cicely threw at him over her
+shoulder. 'Shalt kiss me in a dark room. It is very certain maids'
+talk is no fit hearing for thy jolly old ears.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She took him delicately at the end of his short white beard between
+her long finger and thumb, and, with her high and mincing step, led
+him through the door.</p>
+
+<p>'God save this room, where all the virtues bide!' she cried out, and
+drew her overskirt closer to her as she passed near the great, bearded
+spy.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine turned and faced Throckmorton.</p>
+
+<p>It is even as the maid saith,' she uttered. 'I am too true to mix in
+plots.'</p>
+
+<p>'Neither will ye give us to death!' Throckmorton faced her back so
+that she paused for breath, and the pause lasted a full minute.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'I do give you a fair and a full warning that, if you
+do plot against Privy Seal, and if knowledge of your plotting cometh
+to mine ears&mdash;though I ask not to know of them&mdash;I will tell of your
+plottings&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, before God!' Udal cried out, 'I have suckled you with learned
+writers; I have carried letters for you; will you give me to die?' and
+Margot wailed from a deep chest: 'The magister so well hath loved
+thee. Give him not into die hands of Cur Crummock!&mdash;would I had never
+told thee that they plotted!'</p>
+
+<p>'Fool!' Throckmorton said; 'it is to the King she will go with her
+tales.' He sat down upon her yellow-wood table and swung one crimson
+leg before the other, laughing gleefully at Katharine's astonished
+face.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said at last; 'it is true that I will go, not to my lord
+Privy Seal, but to the King.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton held up one of his white hands to the light and, with the
+other, smoothed down its little finger.</p>
+
+<p>'See you?' he gibed softly at Margot. 'How better I guess this thing,
+mistress, than thou. For I do know her better.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine looked at him with a soft glance and said pitifully:</p>
+
+<p>'Nevertheless, what shall it profit thee if I take a tale of thy
+treasons to the King's Highness?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton sprang from the table and clapped his heels together on
+the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'It shall get me made an earl,' he said. 'The King will do that much
+for the man that shall rid him of his minister.' He reflected foxily
+and for a quick moment. 'Before God!' he said,'take this tale to the
+King, for it is the true tale: That the Duke of Cleves seeks, in
+France, to have done with his alliance. He will no more cleave to his
+brother-in-law, but will make submission to the Emperor and to Rome!'</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and then finished:</p>
+
+<p>'For that news the King shall love you much more than before. But God
+help me! it takes thee the more out of my reach!'</p>
+
+<p>As they left the room to go to the audience with Cromwell, Katharine,
+squaring the frills of her hood behind her back, could hear Margot
+Poins grumbling to the magister:</p>
+
+<p>'After these long days ye ha' time for five minutes to hold my hand,'
+and the magister, perturbed and fumbling in his bosom, muttered:</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, I have no minutes now. I must write much in Latin ere thy
+mistress return.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>'By God,' Wriothesley said when she entered the long gallery where the
+men were. 'This is a fair woman!'</p>
+
+<p>She had command of her features, and her eyes were upon the ground; it
+was a part of a woman's upbringing to walk well, and her masters had
+so taught her when she had lived with her grandmother, the old
+duchess. Not the tips of her shoes shewed beneath the zigzag folds of
+her russet-brown underskirt; the tips of her scarlet sleeves netted
+with gold touched the waxed wood of the floor; her hood fell behind to
+the ground, and her fair hair was golden where the sunlight fell on it
+with a last, watery ray.</p>
+
+<p>Upon Privy Seal she raised her eyes; she bent her knees<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> so that her
+gown spread out all around her when she curtsied, and, having arranged
+it with a slow hand, she came to her height again, rustling as if she
+rose from a wave.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'I come to pray you to right a great wrong done by
+your servants.'</p>
+
+<p>'By God!' Wriothesley said, 'she speaks high words.'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' Cromwell answered&mdash;and his eyes graciously dwelt upon
+her tall form. She had clasped her hands before her lap and looked
+into his face. 'Madam Howard, you are more learned in the better
+letters than I; but I would have you call to memory one Pancrates, of
+whom telleth Lucian. Being in a desert or elsewhere, this magician
+could turn sticks, stocks and stakes into servants that did his will.
+Mark you, they did his will&mdash;no more and no less.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' Katharine said, 'ye have better servants than ever had
+Pancrates. They do more than your behests.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell bent his back, stretched aside his white hand and smiled
+still.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye trow truth,' he said. 'Yet ye do me wrong; for had I the servants
+of Pancrates, assuredly he should hear no groans of injustice from men
+of good will.'</p>
+
+<p>'It is too good hearing,' Katharine said gravely. 'This is my
+tale&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Once before she had trembled in this man's presence, and still she had
+a catching in the throat as her eyes measured his face. She was mad to
+do right and to right wrongs, yet in his presence the doing of the
+right, the righting of wrongs, seemed less easy than when she stood
+before any other man. 'Sir,' she uttered, 'I have thought ye have done
+ill afore now. I am nowise certain that ye thought your ill-doing an
+evil. I beseech you for a patient hearing.'</p>
+
+<p>But, though she told her story well&mdash;and it was an old story that she
+had learned by heart&mdash;she could not be rid of the feeling that this
+was a less easy matter than it had seemed to her, to call Cromwell
+accursed. She had a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> moving tale of wrongs done by Cromwell's servant,
+Dr Barnes, a visitor of a church in Lincolnshire near where her home
+had been. For the lands had been taken from a little priory upon an
+excuse that the nuns lived a lewd life; and so well had she known the
+nuns, going in and out of the convent every week-day, that well she
+knew the falseness of Cromwell's servant's tale.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said to Cromwell, 'mine own foster-sister had the veil
+there; mine own mother's sister was there the abbess.' She stretched
+out a hand. 'Sir, they dwelled there simply and godly, withdrawn from
+the world; succouring the poor; weaving of fine linens, for much flax
+grew upon those lands by there; and praying God and the saints that
+blessings fall upon this land.'</p>
+
+<p>Wriothesley spoke to her slowly and heavily:</p>
+
+<p>'Such little abbeys ate up the substance of this land in the old days.
+Well have we prospered since they were done away who ate up the
+fatness of this realm. Now husbandmen till their idle soil and cattle
+are in their buildings.'</p>
+
+<p>'Gentleman whose name I know not,' she turned upon him, 'more wealth
+and prosperity God granted us in answer to their prayers than could be
+won by all the husbandmen of Arcadia and all the kine of Cacus. God
+standeth above all men's labours.' But Cromwell's servants had sworn
+away the lands of the small abbey, and now the abbess and her nuns lay
+in gaol accused&mdash;and falsely&mdash;of having secreted an image of Saint
+Hugh to pray against the King's fortunes.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God,' she said, 'and as Christ is my Saviour, I saw and make
+deposition that these poor simple women did no such thing but loved
+the King as he had been their good father. I have seen them at their
+prayers. Before God, I say to you that they were as folk astonished
+and dismayed; knowing so little of the world that ne one ne other knew
+whence came the word that had bared them to the skies. I have seen
+them&mdash;I.'</p>
+
+<p>'Where went they?' Wriothesley said; 'what worked they?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Gentleman,' she answered; 'being cast out of their houses and their
+veils, they knew nowhither to go; homes they had none; they lived with
+their own hinds in hovels, like frightened lambs, the saints their
+pastors being driven from their folds.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Wriothesley said grimly, 'they cumbered the ground; they did
+meet in knots for mutinies.'</p>
+
+<p>'God had appointed them the duty of prayer,' Katharine answered him.
+'They met and prayed in sheds and lodges of the house that had been
+theirs, poor ghosts revisiting and bewailing their earthly homes. I
+have prayed with them.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye have done a treason in that day,' Wriothesley answered.</p>
+
+<p>'I have done the best that ever I did for this land,' she met him
+fully. 'I prayed naught against the King and the republic. I have
+prayed you and your like might be cast down. So do I still. I stand
+here to avow it. But they never did, and they do lie in gaol.' She
+turned again upon Cromwell and spoke piteously from her full throat.
+'My lord,' she cried. 'Soften your heart and let the wax in your ears
+melt so that ye hear. Your servants swore falsely when they said these
+women lived lewdly; your men swore falsely when they said that these
+women prayed treasonably. For the one count they took their lands and
+houses; for the other they lay them in the gaols. Sir, my lord, your
+servants go up and down this land; sir, my lord, they ride rich men
+with boots of steel and do strangle the poor with gloves of iron. I do
+think ye know they do it; I do pray ye know not. But, sir, if ye will
+right this wrong I will kiss your hands; if you will set up again
+these homes of prayer I will take a veil, and in one of them spend my
+days praying that good befall you and yours.' She paused in her
+speaking and then began again: 'Before I came here I had made me a
+fair speech. I have forgot it, and words come haltingly to me. Sirs,
+ye think I seek mine own aggrandisement; ye think I do wish ye cast
+down. Before God, I wish ye were cast down if ye continue in these
+ways; but I have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> prayed to God who sent the Pentecostal fires, to
+give me the gift of tongues that shall soften your hearts&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell interrupted her, smiling that Venus, who made her so fair,
+gave her no need of a gift of tongues, and Minerva, who made her so
+learned, gave her no need of fairness. For the sake of the one and the
+other, he would very diligently enquire into these women's courses. If
+they ha been guiltless, they should be richly repaid; if they ha been
+guilty, they should be pardoned.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine flushed with a hot anger.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye are a very craven lord,' she said. 'If you may find them guilty,
+you shall have my head. But if you do find them innocent and shield
+them not, I swear I will strive to have thine.' Anger made her blue
+eyes dilate. 'Have you no bowels of compassion for the right? Ye treat
+me as a fair woman&mdash;but I speak as a messenger of the King's, that is
+God's, to men who too long have hardened their hearts.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton laid back his head and laughed suddenly at the ceiling;
+Cranmer crossed himself; Wriothesley beat his heel upon the floor and
+shrugged his shoulders bitterly&mdash;but Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy,
+kept his eyes upon Throckmorton's face with a puzzled scrutiny.</p>
+
+<p>'Why now does that man laugh?' he asked himself. For it seemed to him
+that by laughing Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. And indeed,
+Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. As policy her speech was
+neither here nor there, but as voicing a spirit, infectious and
+winning to men's hearts, he saw that such speaking should carry her
+very far. And, if it should embroil her more than ever with Cromwell,
+it would the further serve his adventures. He was already conspiring
+to betray Cromwell, and he knew that, very soon now, Cromwell must
+pierce his mask of loyalty; and the more Katharine should have cast
+down her glove to Cromwell, the more he could shelter behind her; and
+the more men she could have made her friends with her beauty and her
+fine speeches, the more friends he too should have to his back when
+the day of discovery came. In the meantime he had in his sleeve a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>
+trick that he would speedily play upon Cromwell, the most dangerous of
+any that he had played. For below the stairs he had Udal, with his
+news of the envoy from Cleves to France, and with his copies of the
+envoy's letters. But, in her turn, Katharine played him, unwittingly
+enough, a trick that puzzled him.</p>
+
+<p>'Bones of St Nairn!' he said; 'she has him to herself. What mad prank
+will she play now?'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine had drawn Cromwell to the very end of the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>'As I pray that Christ will listen to my pleas when at the last I come
+to Him for pardon and comfort,' she said, 'I swear that I will speak
+true words to you.'</p>
+
+<p>He surveyed her, plump, alert, his lips moving one upon the other. He
+brought one white soft hand from behind his back to play with the furs
+upon his chest.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I believe you are a very earnest woman,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Then, sir,' she said, 'understand that your sun is near its setting.
+We rise, we wane; our little days do run their course. But I do
+believe you love your King his cause more than most men.'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' he said, 'you have been my foremost foe.'</p>
+
+<p>'Till five minutes agone I was,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>He wondered for a moment if she were minded to beg him to aid her in
+growing to be Queen; and he wondered too how that might serve his
+turn. But she spoke again:</p>
+
+<p>'You have very well served the King,' she said. 'You have made him
+rich and potent. I believe ye have none other desire so great as that
+desire to make him potent and high in this world's gear.'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' he said calmly, 'I desire that&mdash;and next to found for
+myself a great house that always shall serve the throne as well as I.'</p>
+
+<p>She gave him the right to that with a lowering of her eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>'I too would see him a most high prince,' she said. 'I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> would see him
+shed lustre upon his friends, terror upon his foes, and a great light
+upon this realm and age.'</p>
+
+<p>She paused to touch him earnestly with one long hand, and to brush
+back a strand of her hair. Down the gallery she saw Lascelles moving
+to speak with Throckmorton and Wriothesley holding the Archbishop
+earnestly by the sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>'See,' she said, 'you are surrounded now by traitors that will bring
+you down. In foreign lands your cause wavers. I tell you, five minutes
+agone I wished you swept away.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell raised his eyebrows.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I knew that this was difficult fighting,' he said. 'But I know
+not what giveth me your good wishes.'</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she answered, 'it came to me in my mind: What man is there
+in the land save Privy Seal that so loveth his master's cause?'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'How well do you love this King,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'I love this King; I love this land,' she said, 'as Cato loved Rome or
+Leonidas his realm of Sparta.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell pondered, looking down at his foot; his lips moved furtively,
+he folded his hand inside his sleeves; and he shook his head when
+again she made to speak. He desired another minute for thought.</p>
+
+<p>'This I perceive to be the pact you have it in your mind to make,' he
+said at last, 'that if you come to sway the King towards Rome I shall
+still stay his man and yours?'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him, her lips parted with a slight surprise that he
+should so well have voiced thoughts that she had hardly put into
+words. Then her faith rose in her again and moved her to pitiful
+earnestness.</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she uttered, and stretched out one hand. 'Come over to us.
+'Tis such great pity else&mdash;'tis such pity else.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked again at Throckmorton, who, in the distance, was surveying
+the Archbishop's spy with a sardonic amusement, and a great
+mournfulness went through her. For there was the traitor and here
+before her was the betrayed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> Throckmorton had told her enough to know
+that he was conspiring against his master, and Cromwell trusted
+Throckmorton before any man in the land; and it was as if she saw one
+man with a dagger hovering behind another. With her woman's instinct
+she felt that the man about to die was the better man, though he were
+her foe. She was minded&mdash;she was filled with a great desire to say:
+'Believe no word that Throckmorton shall tell you. The Duke of Cleves
+is now abandoning your cause.' That much she had learnt from Udal five
+minutes before. But she could not bring herself to betray
+Throckmorton, who was a traitor for the sake of her cause. ''Tis such
+pity,' she repeated again.</p>
+
+<p>'Good wench,' Cromwell said, 'you are indifferent honest; but never
+while I am the King's man shall the Bishop of Rome take toll again in
+the King's land.'</p>
+
+<p>She threw up her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Alack!' she said, 'shall not God and His Son our Saviour have their
+part of the King's glory?'</p>
+
+<p>'God is above us all,' he answered. 'But there is no room for two
+heads of a State, and in a State is room but for one army. I will have
+my King so strong that ne Pope ne priest ne noble ne people shall here
+have speech or power. So it is now; I have so made it, the King
+helping me. Before I came this was a distracted State; the King's writ
+ran not in the east, not in the west, not in the north, and hardly in
+the south parts. Now no lord nor no bishop nor no Pope raises head
+against him here. And, God willing, in all the world no prince shall
+stand but by grace of this King's Highness. This land shall have the
+wealth of all the world; this King shall guide this land. There shall
+be rich husbandmen paying no toll to priests, but to the King alone;
+there shall be wealthy merchants paying no tax to any prince nor
+emperor, but only to this King. The King's court shall redress all
+wrongs; the King's voice shall be omnipotent in the council of the
+princes.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye speak no word of God,' she said pitifully.</p>
+
+<p>'God is very far away,' he answered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Sir, my lord,' she cried, and brushed again the tress from her
+forehead. 'Ye have made this King rich with gear of the Church: if ye
+will be friends with me ye shall make this King a pauper to repay; ye
+have made this King stiffen his neck against God's Vicegerent: if you
+and I shall work together ye shall make him re-humble himself. Christ
+the King of all the world was a pauper; Christ the Saviour of all
+mankind humbled Himself before God that was His Saviour.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell said 'Amen.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said again; 'ye have made this King rich, but I will give
+to him again his power to sleep at night; ye have made this realm
+subject to this King, but, by the help of God, I will make it subject
+again to God. You have set up here a great State, but oh, the children
+of God do weep since ye came. Where is a town where lamentation is not
+heard? Where is a town where no orphan or widow bewails the day that
+saw your birth?' She had sobs in her voice and she wrung her hands.
+'Sir,' she cried, 'I say you are as a dead man already&mdash;your day of
+pride is past, whether ye aid us or no. Set yourself then to redress
+as heartily as ye have set yourself in the past to make sad. That land
+is blest whose people are happy; that State is aggrandised whence
+there arise songs praising God for His blessings. You have built up a
+great city of groans; set yourself now to build a kingdom where
+"Praise God" shall be sung. It is a contented people that makes a
+State great; it is the love of God that maketh a people rich.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell laughed mirthlessly:</p>
+
+<p>'There are forty thousand men like Wriothesley in England,' he said.
+'God help you if you come against them; there are forty times forty
+thousand and forty times that that pray you not again to set disorder
+loose in this land. I have broken all stiff necks in this realm. See
+you that you come not against some yet.' He stopped, and added: 'Your
+greatest foes should be your own friends if I be a dead man as you
+say.' And he smiled at her bewilderment when he had added: 'I am your
+bulwark and your safeguard.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>... 'For, listen to me,' he took up again his parable. 'Whilst I be
+here I bear the rancour of your friends' hatred. When I am gone you
+shall inherit it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'I am not here to hear riddles, but here I am to pray
+you seek the right.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wench,' he said pleasantly, 'there are in this world many rights&mdash;you
+have yours; I mine. But mine can never be yours nor yours mine. I am
+not yet so dead as ye say; but if I be dead, I wish you so well that I
+will send you a phial of poison ere I send to take you to the stake.
+For it is certain that if you have not my head I shall have yours.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him seriously, though the tears ran down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she uttered, 'I do take you to be a man of your word. Swear to
+me, then, that if upon the fatal hill I do save you your life and your
+estates, you will nowise work the undoing of the Church in time to
+come.'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Queen that shall be,' he said, 'an ye gave me my life this day,
+to-morrow I would work as I worked yesterday. If ye have faith of your
+cause I have the like of mine.'</p>
+
+<p>She hung her head, and said at last:</p>
+
+<p>'Sir, an ye have a little door here at the gallery end I will go out
+by it'; for she would not again face the men who made the little knot
+before the window. He moved the hangings aside and stood before the
+aperture smiling.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye came to ask a boon of me,' he said. 'Is it your will still that I
+grant it?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she answered, 'I asked a boon of you that I thought you would
+not grant, so that I might go to the King and shew him your evil
+dealings with his lieges.'</p>
+
+<p>'I knew it well,' he said. 'But the King will not cast me down till
+the King hath had full use of me.'</p>
+
+<p>'You have a very great sight into men's minds,' she uttered, and he
+laughed noiselessly once again.</p>
+
+<p>'I am as God made me,' he said. Then he spoke once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> more. 'I will read
+your mind if you will. Ye came to me in this crisis, thinking with
+yourself: <i>Liars go unto the King saying, "This Cromwell is a traitor;
+cast him down, for he seeks your ill." I will go unto the King saying,
+"This Cromwell grindeth the faces of the poor and beareth false
+witness. Cast him down, though he serve you well, since he maketh your
+name to stink to heaven."</i> So I read my fellow-men.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'it is very true that I will not be linked with
+liars. And it is very true that men do so speak of you to the King's
+Highness.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he answered her debonairly, 'the King shall listen neither to
+them nor to you till the day be come. Then he will act in his own good
+way&mdash;upon the pretext that I be a traitor, or upon the pretext that I
+have borne false witness, or upon no pretext at all.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nevertheless will I speak for the truth that shall prevail,' she
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, God help you!' was his rejoinder.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>Going back to his friends in the window Cromwell meditated that it was
+possible to imagine a woman that thought so simply; yet it was
+impossible to imagine one that should be able to act with so great a
+simplicity. On the one hand, if she stayed about the King she should
+be his safeguard, for it was very certain that she should not tell the
+King that he was a traitor. And that above all was what Cromwell had
+to fear. He had, for his own purposes, so filled the King with the
+belief that treachery overran his land, that the King saw treachery in
+every man. And Cromwell was aware, well enough, that such of his
+adherents as were Protestant&mdash;such men as Wriothesley&mdash;had indeed
+boasted that they were twenty thousand swords ready to fall upon even
+the King if he set against the re-forming religion in England. This
+was the greatest danger that he had&mdash;that an enemy of his should tell
+the King that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> Privy Seal had behind his back twenty thousand swords.
+For that side of the matter Katharine Howard was even a safeguard,
+since with her love of truth she would assuredly combat these liars
+with the King.</p>
+
+<p>But, on the other hand, the King had his superstitious fears; only
+that night, pale, red-eyed and heavy, and being unable to sleep, he
+had sent to rouse Cromwell and had furiously rated him, calling him
+knave and shaking him by the shoulder, telling him for the twentieth
+time to find a way to make a peace with the Bishop of Rome. These were
+only night-fears&mdash;but, if Cleves should desert Henry and
+Protestantism, if all Europe should stand solid for the Pope, Henry's
+night-fears might eat up his day as well. Then indeed Katharine would
+be dangerous. So that she was indeed half foe, half friend.</p>
+
+<p>It hinged all upon Cleves; for if Cleves stood friend to Protestantism
+the King would fear no treason; if Cleves sued for pardon to the
+Emperor and Rome, Henry must swing towards Katharine. Therefore, if
+Cleves stood firm to Protestantism and defied the Emperor, it would be
+safe to work at destroying Katharine; if not, he must leave her by the
+King to defend his very loyalty.</p>
+
+<p>The Archbishop challenged him with uplifted questioning eyebrows, and
+he answered his gaze with:</p>
+
+<p>'God help ye, goodman Bishop; it were easier for thee to deal with
+this maid than for me. She would take thee to her friend if thou
+wouldst curry with Rome.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Cranmer answered. 'But would Rome have truck with me?' and he
+shook his head bitterly. He had been made Archbishop with no sanction
+from Rome.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell turned upon Wriothesley; the debonair smile was gone from his
+face; the friendly contempt that he had for the Archbishop was gone
+too; his eyes were hard, cruel and red, his lips hardened.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye have done me a very evil turn,' he said. 'Ye spoke stiff-necked
+folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I
+be the flail of the monks I may be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> hail, a lightning, a bolt from
+heaven upon Lutherans that cross the King.'</p>
+
+<p>The hard malice of his glance made Wriothesley quail and flush
+heavily.</p>
+
+<p>'I thought ye had been our friend,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Wriothesley,' Cromwell answered, 'I tell thee, silly knave, that I be
+friend only to them that love the order and peace I have made, under
+the King's Highness, in this realm. If it be the King's will to
+stablish again the old faith, a hammer of iron will I be upon such as
+do raise their heads against it. It were better ye had never been
+born, it were better ye were dead and asleep, than that ye raised your
+heads against me.' He turned, then he swung back with the sharpness of
+a viper's spring.</p>
+
+<p>'What help have I had of thee and thy friends? I have bolstered up
+Cleves and his Lutherans for ye. What have he and ye done for me and
+my King? Your friend the Duke of Cleves has an envoy in Paris. Have ye
+found for why he comes there? Ye could not. Ye have botched your
+errand to Paris; ye have spoken naughtily in my house to a friend of
+the King's that came friendlily to me.' He shook a fat finger an inch
+from Wriothesley's eyes. 'Have a care! I did send my visitors to smell
+out treason among the convents and abbeys. Wait ye till I send them to
+your conventicles! Ye shall not scape. Body of God! ye shall not
+scape.'</p>
+
+<p>He placed a heavy hand upon Throckmorton's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'I would I had sent thee to Paris,' he said. 'No envoy had come there
+whose papers ye had not seen. I warrant thou wouldst have ferreted
+them through.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton's eyes never moved; his mouth opened and he spoke with
+neither triumph nor malice:</p>
+
+<p>'In very truth, Privy Seal,' he said, 'I have ferreted through enow of
+them to know why the envoy came to Paris.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell kept his hands still firm upon his spy's shoulder whilst the
+swift thoughts ran through his mind. He scowled still upon
+Wriothesley.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'ye see how I be served. What ye could not find in
+Paris my man found for me in London town.' He moved his face round
+towards the great golden beard of his spy. 'Ye shall have the farms ye
+asked me for in Suffolk,' he said. 'Tell me now wherefore came the
+Cleves envoy to France. Will Cleves stay our ally, or will he send
+like a coward to his Emperor?'</p>
+
+<p>'Privy Seal,' Throckmorton answered expressionlessly&mdash;he fingered his
+beard for a moment and felt at the medal depending upon his
+chest&mdash;'Cleves will stay your friend and the King's ally.'</p>
+
+<p>A great sigh went up from his three hearers at Throckmorton's lie; and
+impassive as he was, Throckmorton sighed too, imperceptibly beneath
+the mantle of his beard. He had burned his boats. But for the others
+the sigh was of a great contentment. With Cleves to lead the German
+Protestant confederation, the King felt himself strong enough to make
+headway against the Pope, the Emperor and France. So long as the Duke
+of Cleves remained a rebel against his lord the Emperor, the King
+would hold over Protestantism the mantle of his protection.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell broke in upon their thoughts with his swift speech.</p>
+
+<p>'Sirs,' he uttered, 'then what ye will shall come to pass.
+Wriothesley, I pardon thee; get thee back to Paris to thy mission.
+Archbishop, I trow thou shalt have the head of that wench. Her cousin
+shall be brought here again from France.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy, who kept his gaze upon
+Throckmorton's, saw the large man's eyes shift suddenly from one board
+of the floor to another.</p>
+
+<p>'That man is not true,' he said to himself, and fell into a train of
+musing. But from the others Cromwell had secured the meed of wonder
+that he desired. He had closed the interview with a dramatic speech;
+he had given them something to talk of.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p>
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>He held Throckmorton in the small room that contained upon its high
+stand the Privy Seal of England in an embroidered purse. All red and
+gold, this symbol of power held the eye away from the dark-green
+tapestry and from the pigeon-holes filled with parchment scrolls
+wherefrom there depended so many seals each like a gout of blood. The
+room was so high that it appeared small, but there was room for
+Cromwell to pace about, and here, walking from wall to wall, he
+evolved those schemes that so fast held down the realm. He paced
+always, his hands behind his back, his lips moving one upon the other
+as if he ruminated&mdash;(His foes said that he talked thus with his
+familiar fiend that had the form of a bee.)&mdash;and his black cap with
+ear-flaps always upon his head, for he suffered much with the earache.</p>
+
+<p>He walked now, up and down and up and down, saying nothing, whilst
+from time to time Throckmorton spoke a word or two. Throckmorton
+himself had his doubts&mdash;doubts as to how the time when it would be
+safe to let it be known that he had betrayed his master might be found
+to fit in with the time when his master must find that he had betrayed
+him. He had, as he saw it, to gain time for Katharine Howard so she
+might finally enslave the King's desires. That there was one weak spot
+in her armour he thought he knew, and that was her cousin that was
+said to be her lover. That Cromwell knew of her weak spot he knew too;
+that Cromwell through that would strike at her he knew too. All
+depended upon whether he could gain time so that Cromwell should be
+down before he could use his knowledge.</p>
+
+<p>For that reason he had devised the scheme of making Cromwell feel a
+safety about the affairs of Cleves. Udal fortunately wrote a very
+swift Latin. Thus, when going to fetch Katharine to her interview with
+Privy Seal he had found Udal bursting with news of the Cleves embassy
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> with the letters of the Duke of Cleves actually copied on papers
+in his poke, Throckmorton had very swiftly advised with himself how to
+act. He had set Udal very earnestly to writing a false letter from
+Cleves to France&mdash;such a letter as Cleves might have written&mdash;and this
+false letter, in the magister's Latin, he had placed now in his
+master's hands, and, pacing up and down, Cromwell read from time to
+time from the scrap of paper.</p>
+
+<p>What Cleves had written was that he was fain to make submission to the
+Emperor, and leave the King's alliance. What Cromwell read was this:
+That the high and mighty Prince, the Duke of Cleves, was firmly minded
+to adhere in his allegiance with the King of England: that he feared
+the wrath of the Emperor Charles, who was his very good suzerain and
+over-lord: that if by taxes and tributes he might keep away from his
+territory the armies of the Emperor he would be well content to pay a
+store of gold: that he begged his friend and uncle, King of France, to
+intercede betwixt himself and the Emperor to the end that the Emperor
+might take these taxes and tributes; for that, if the Emperor would
+none of this, come peace, come war, he, the high and mighty Prince,
+Duke of Cleves, Elector of the Empire, was minded to protect in
+Germany the Protestant confession and to raise against the Emperor the
+Princes and Electors of Almain, being Protestants. With the aid of his
+brother-in-law the King of England he would drive the Emperor Charles
+from the German lands together with the heresies of the Romish Bishop
+and all things that pertained to the Emperor Charles and his religion.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell had listened to the reading of this letter in silence; in
+silence he re-perused it himself, pacing up and down, and in between
+phrases of his thoughts he read passages from it and nodded his head.</p>
+
+<p>That this was a very dangerous enterprise Throckmorton was assured; it
+was the first overt act of his that Privy Seal could discover in him
+as a treachery. In a month or six weeks he must know the truth; but in
+a month or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> six weeks Katharine must have so enslaved the King that
+all danger from Cromwell would be past. And he trusted that the
+security that Cromwell must feel would gar him delay striking at
+Katharine by means of her cousin.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell said suddenly:</p>
+
+<p>'How got the magister these papers?' and Throckmorton answered that it
+was through the widow that kept the tavern. Cromwell said negligently:</p>
+
+<p>'Let the magister be rewarded with ten crowns a quarter to his fees.
+Set it down in my tables'; and then like lightning came the query:</p>
+
+<p>'Do ye believe of her cousin and the Lady Katharine?'</p>
+
+<p>Craving a respite for thought and daring to take none for fear
+Cromwell should read him, Throckmorton answered:</p>
+
+<p>'Ye know I think yes.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have said I think no,' Cromwell answered in turn, but
+dispassionately as though it were a matter of the courses of stars;
+'though it is very certain that her cousin is so mad with love for her
+that we had much ado to send him from her to Paris.' He paced three
+times from wall to wall and then spoke again:</p>
+
+<p>'Men enow have said she was too fond with her cousin?'</p>
+
+<p>With despair in his heart Throckmorton answered:</p>
+
+<p>'It is the common talk in Lincolnshire where her home is. I have seen
+a cub in a cowherd's that was said to be her child by him.'</p>
+
+<p>It was useless to speak otherwise to Privy Seal; if he did not report
+these things, twenty others would. But, beneath his impassive face and
+his great beard, despair filled him. He might swear treason against
+Cromwell to the King; but the King would not hear him alone, and
+without the King and Katharine he was a sparrow in Cromwell's hawk's
+talons.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' Cromwell said, 'since Cleves is true to us we will have this
+woman down. An he had played us false I would have kept her near the
+King.'</p>
+
+<p>This saying, that ran so counter to Throckmorton's schemes, caused him
+such dismay that he cried out:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'God forgive us, why?'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell smiled at him as one who smiles from a great height, and
+pointed a finger.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a hard fight,' he said; 'we are in some straits. I trow ye
+would have voiced it otherwise.' And then he voiced his own idea&mdash;that
+so long as Cleves was friends with him Katharine was an enemy; if
+Cleves fell away she was none the less an enemy, but she would, from
+her love of justice, bear witness to the King that Cromwell was no
+traitor. 'And ye shall be very certain,' he added pleasantly, 'that
+once men see the King so inclined, they will go to the King saying I
+be a traitor, with Protestants like Wriothesley ready to rise and aid
+me. In that pass the Lady Katharine should stay by me, in the King's
+ear.'</p>
+
+<p>A deep and intolerable dejection overcame Throckmorton and forced from
+his lips the words:</p>
+
+<p>'Ye reason most justly.' And again he cursed himself, for he had
+forced Cromwell to this reasoning and action. Yet he dared not say
+that his news of the Cleves embassy was false, that Cleves indeed was
+minded to turn traitor, and that it most would serve Privy Seal's turn
+to stay Katharine Howard up. He dared not say the words, yet he saw
+his safety crumbling, and he saw Privy Seal set to ruin both himself
+and Katharine Howard. For in his heart he could not believe that the
+woman was virtuous, since he believed that no woman was virtuous who
+had been given the opportunity for joyment. As a spy, he had gone
+nosing about in Lincolnshire where Katharine's home had been near her
+cousin's. He had heard many tales against her such as rustics will
+tell against the daughters of poor lords like Katharine's father. And
+these tales, before ever he had come to love her, he had set down in
+Privy Seal's private registers. Now they were like to undo him and
+her. And in truth, according to his premonitions, Cromwell spoke:</p>
+
+<p>'We shall bring very quickly Thomas Culpepper, her cousin, back from
+France. We shall inflame his mind with jealousy of the King. We shall
+find a place where he shall<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> burst upon the King and her together. We
+shall bring witnesses enow from Lincolnshire to swear against her.'</p>
+
+<p>He crossed his hands behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>'This work of fetching her cousin from Paris I will put into the hands
+of Viridus,' he said. 'I believe her to be virtuous, therefore do you
+bring many witnesses, and some that shall swear to have seen her in
+the act. That shall be your employment. For I tell you she hath so
+great a power of pleading that, being innocent, she will with
+difficulty be proved unchaste.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton's head hung upon his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>'Remember,' Privy Seal said again, 'you and Viridus shall send to find
+her cousin in France. Fill him with tales that his cousin plays the
+leman with the King. He shall burst here like a bolt from heaven. You
+will find him betwixt Calais and Paris town, dallying in evil places
+without a doubt. We sent him thither to frighten Cardinal Pole.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Throckmorton said, his mind filled with other and bitter
+thoughts. 'He hath frightened the Cardinal from Paris by the mere
+renown of his violence.'</p>
+
+<p>'Then let him do some frighting in our goodly town of London,'
+Cromwell said.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_TWO" id="PART_TWO"></a>PART TWO</h2>
+
+<h2>THE DISTANT CLOUD</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>The young Poins, once an ensign of the King's guard, habited now in
+grey, stood awaiting Thomas Culpepper, Katharine Howard's cousin,
+beneath the new gateway towards the east of Calais. Four days he had
+waited already and never had he dared to stir, save when the gates
+were closed for the night. But it had chanced that one of the
+gatewardens was a man from Lincolnshire&mdash;a man, once a follower of the
+plough, whose father had held a farm in the having of Culpepper
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>'&mdash;&mdash;But he sold 'un,' Nicholas Hogben said, 'sold 'un clear away.' He
+made a wry face, winked one eye, and drawing up the right corner of
+his mouth, displayed square, huge teeth. The young Poins making no
+question, he repeated twice: 'Clear away. Right clear away.'</p>
+
+<p>Poins, however, could hold but one thing of a time in his head. And,
+by that striving, dangerous servant of Lord Privy Seal, Throckmorton,
+it had been firmly enjoined upon him that he must not fail to meet
+Thomas Culpepper and stay him upon his road to England. Throckmorton,
+with his great beard and cruel snake's eyes, had said: 'I hold thy
+head in fee. If ye would save it, meet Thomas Culpepper in Calais and
+give him this letter.' The letter he had in his poke. It carried with
+it a deed making Culpepper lieutenant of the stone barges in Calais.
+But he had it too, by word of mouth, that if Thomas Culpepper would
+not be stayed by the letter, he, Hal Poins, must stay him&mdash;with the
+sword, with a stab in the back, or by being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> stabbed himself and
+calling in the guard to lay Thomas Culpepper's self by the heels.</p>
+
+<p>'You will enjoin upon him,' Throckmorton had said, 'how goodly a thing
+is the lieutenancy of stone lighters that in this letter is proffered
+him. You will tell him that, if a barge of stone go astray, it is yet
+a fair way to London, and stone fetches good money from townsmen
+building in Calais. If he will gainsay this you will pick a quarrel
+with him, as by saying he gives you the lie. In short,' Throckmorton
+had finished, earnestly and with a sinuous grace of gesture in his
+long and narrow hands, 'you will stay him.'</p>
+
+<p>It was a desperate measure, yet it was the best he could compass. If
+Culpepper came to London, if he came to the King, Katharine's fortunes
+were not worth a rushlight such as were sold at twenty for a farthing.
+He knew, too, that Viridus had Cromwell's earnest injunctions to send
+a messenger that should hasten Culpepper's return; and, though he had
+seven hundred of Cromwell's spies that he could trust to do Privy
+Seal's errand, he had not one that he could trust to do his own. There
+was no one of them that he could trust. If he took a spy and said: 'At
+all costs stay Culpepper, but observe very strict secrecy from Privy
+Seal's men all,' the spy would very certainly let the news come to
+Privy Seal.</p>
+
+<p>It was in this pass that the thought of the young Poins had come to
+him. Here was a fellow absolutely stupid. He was a brother of
+Katharine Howard's tiring maid who had already come near to losing his
+head in a former intrigue in the Court. He had, at the instigation of
+his sister, carried two Papist letters of Katharine Howard. And, if it
+was the King who pardoned him, it was Throckmorton who first had taken
+him prisoner; it was Throckmorton who had advised him to lie hidden in
+his grandfather's house for a month or two. At the time Throckmorton
+had had no immediate reason to give the boy this counsel. Poins had
+been so small a tool in the past embroilment of Katharine's letter
+that, had he gone straight back to his post in the yeomanry of the
+King's guard, no man would have noticed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> him. But it had always been
+part of the devious and great bearded man's policy&mdash;it had been part
+of his very nature&mdash;to play upon people's fears, to trouble them with
+apprehensions. It was part of the tradition that Cromwell had given
+all his men. He ruled England by such fears.</p>
+
+<p>Thus Throckmorton had sent Poins trembling to hide in the old
+printer's his grandfather's house in the wilds of Austin Friars. And
+Throckmorton had impressed upon him that he alone had really saved
+him. It was in his grandfather's mean house that Poins had remained
+for a brace of months, grumbled at by his Protestant uncle and sneered
+at by his malicious Papist grandfather. And it was here that
+Throckmorton had found him, dressed in grey, humbled from his pride
+and raging for things to do.</p>
+
+<p>The boy would be of little service&mdash;yet he was all that Throckmorton
+had. If he could hardly be expected to trick Culpepper with his
+tongue, he might wound him with his sword; if he could not kill him he
+might at least scotch him, cause a brawl in Calais town, where,
+because the place was an outpost, brawling was treason, and Culpepper
+might be had by the heels for long enough to let Cromwell fall.
+Therefore, in the low room with the black presses, in the very shadow
+of Cromwell's own walls, Throckmorton&mdash;who was given the privacy of
+the place by the Lutheran printer because he was Cromwell's
+man&mdash;large, golden-bearded and speaking in meaning whispers, with
+lifting of his eyebrows, had held a long conference with the lad.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>His dangerous and terrifying presence seemed to dominate, for the
+young Poins, even the dusty archway of the Calais gate&mdash;and, even
+though he saw the flat, green and sunny levels of the French
+marshland, with the town of Ardres rising grey and turreted six miles
+away, the young Poins felt that he was still beneath the eyes of
+Throckmorton, the spy who had sought him out in his grandfather's
+house in Austin Friars to send him here across the seas to Calais. Up
+above in the archway the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> stonemasons who came from Lydd sang their
+Kentish songs as hammers clinked on chisels and the fine dust filtered
+through the scaffold boards. But the young Poins kept his eyes upon
+the dusty and winding road that threaded the dykes from Ardres, and
+thought only that when Thomas Culpepper came he must be stayed. He had
+oiled his sword that had been his father's so that it would slip
+smoothly from the scabbard; he had filed his dagger so that it would
+pierce through thin coat of mail. It was well to be armed, though he
+could not see why Thomas Culpepper should not stay willingly at Calais
+to be lieutenant of the stone lighters and steal stone to fill his
+pockets, since such were the privileges of the post that Throckmorton
+offered him.</p>
+
+<p>'Mayhap, if I stay him, it will get me advancement,' he grumbled
+between his teeth. He was enraged in his slow, fierce way. For
+Throckmorton had promised him only to save his neck if he succeeded.
+There had been no hint of further rewards. He did not speculate upon
+why Thomas Culpepper was to be held in Calais; he did not speculate
+upon why he should wish to come to England; but again and again he
+muttered between his teeth, 'A curst business! a curst business!'</p>
+
+<p>In the mysterious embroilment in which formerly he had taken part, his
+sister had told him that he was carrying letters between the King and
+Kat Howard. Yes; his large, slow sister had promised him great
+advancement for carrying certain letters. And still, in spite of the
+fact that he had been told it was a treason, he believed that the
+letters he had carried for Kat Howard were love letters to the King.
+Nevertheless, for his services he had received no advancement; he had,
+on the contrary, been bidden to leave his comrades of the guard and to
+hide himself. Throckmorton had bidden him do this. And instead of
+advancement, he had received kicks, curses, cords on his wrists, an
+interview with the Lord Privy Seal that still in the remembrance set
+him shivering, and this chance, offered him by Throck<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>morton, that if
+he stayed Thomas Culpepper he might save his neck.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, then,' he grumbled to himself, 'is it treason to carry the
+King's letters to a wench? Helping the King is no treason. I should be
+advanced, not threatened with a halter. Letters between the King and
+Kat Howard!' He even attempted to himself a clumsy joke, polishing it
+and repolishing it till it came out: 'A King may write to a Kat. A Kat
+may write to a King. But my neck's in danger!'</p>
+
+<p>Beside him, whitened by the dust that fell from above, the gatewarden
+wandered in speech round <i>his</i> grievance.</p>
+
+<p>'You ask me, young lad, if I know Tom Culpepper. Well I know Tom
+Culpepper. Y' ask me if he have passed this way going for England.
+Well I know he have not. For if Tom Culpepper, squire that was of
+Durford and Maintree and Sallowford that was my father's farm&mdash;if so
+be Tom Culpepper had passed this way, I had spat in the dust behind
+him as he passed.'</p>
+
+<p>He made his wry face, winked his eye and showed his teeth once more.
+'Spat in the dust&mdash;I should ha' spat in the dust,' he remarked again.
+'Or maybe I'd have cast my hat on high wi' "Huzzay, Squahre Tom!"
+according as the mood I was in,' he said. He winked again and waited.</p>
+
+<p>'For sure,' he affirmed after a pause, 'that will move 'ee to ask why
+I du spit in the dust or for why&mdash;the thing being contrary&mdash;I'd ha'
+cast up my cap.'</p>
+
+<p>The young Poins pulled an onion from his poke.</p>
+
+<p>'If you are so main sure he have not passed the gate,' he said, 'I may
+take my ease.' He sat him down against the gate wall where the April
+sun fell warm through the arch of shadows. He stripped the outer peel
+from the onion and bit into it. 'Good, warming eating,' he said, 'when
+your stomach's astir from the sea.'</p>
+
+<p>'Young lad,' the gatewarden said, 'I'm as fain to swear my mother bore
+me&mdash;though God forbid I should swear who my father was, woman being
+woman&mdash;as that Thomas Culpepper have not passed this way. For why: I'd
+have cast my hat on high or spat on the ground. And such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> things done
+mark other things that have passed in the mind of a man. And I have
+done no such thing.'</p>
+
+<p>But because the young Poins sat always silent with his eyes on the
+road to Ardres and slept&mdash;being privileged because he was yeoman of
+the King's guard&mdash;always in the little stone guard cell of the gateway
+at nights; because, in fact, the young man's whole faculties were set
+upon seeing that Thomas Culpepper did not pass unseen through the
+gate, it was four days before the gatewarden contrived to get himself
+asked why he would have spat in the dust or cast his hat on high. It
+was, as it were, a point of honour that he should be asked for all the
+information that he gave; and he thirsted to tell his tale.</p>
+
+<p>His tale had it that he had been ruined by a wench who had thrown her
+shoe over the mill and married a horse-smith, after having many times
+tickled the rough chin of Nicholas Hogben. Therefore, he had it that
+all women were to be humbled and held down&mdash;for all women were
+traitors, praters, liars, worms and vermin. (He made a great play of
+words between wermen, meaning worms, and wermin and wummin.) He had
+been ruined by this woman who had tickled him under the chin&mdash;that
+being an ingratiating act, fit to bewitch and muddle a man, like as if
+she had promised him marriage. And then she had married a horse-smith!
+So he was ready and willing, and prayed every night that God would
+send him the chance, to ruin and hold down every woman who walked the
+earth or lay in a bed.</p>
+
+<p>But he had been ruined, too, by Thomas Culpepper, who had sold Durford
+and Maintree and Sallowford&mdash;which last was Hogben's father's farm.
+For why? Selling the farm had let in a Lincoln lawyer, and the Lincoln
+lawyer had set the farm to sheep, which last had turned old Hogben,
+the father, out from his furrows to die in a ditch&mdash;there being no
+room for farmers and for sheep upon one land. It had sent old Hogben,
+the father, to die in a ditch; it had sent his daughters to the stews
+and his sons to the road for sturdy beggars. So that, but for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>
+Wallop's band passing that way when Hogben was grinning through the
+rope beneath Lincoln town tree&mdash;but for the fact that men were needed
+for Wallop's work in Calais, by the holy blood of Hailes! Hogben would
+have been rating the angel's head in Paradise.</p>
+
+<p>But there had been great call for men to man the walls there in
+Calais, so Wallop's ancient had written his name down on the list,
+beneath the gallows tree, and had taken him away from the Sheriff of
+Lincoln's man.</p>
+
+<p>'So here a be,' he drawled, 'cutting little holes in my pikehead.'</p>
+
+<p>''Tis a folly,' the young Poins said.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered, 'you say 'tis a folly to make
+small holes in a pikehead. But for me 'tis the greatest of ornaments.
+Give you, it weakens the pikehead; but 'tis a gradely ornament.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ornaments be folly,' the young Poins reiterated.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered again, 'there is the goodliest
+folly that ever was. For if I weaken my eyes and tire my wrists with
+small tappers and little files, and if I weaken the steel with small
+holes, each hole represents a woman I have known undone and cast down
+in her pride by a man. Here be sixty-and-four holes round and firm in
+a pattern. Sixty-and-four women I have known undone.'</p>
+
+<p>He paused and surveyed, winking and moving the scroll that the little
+holes made in the tough steel of his axehead. Where a perforation was
+not quite round, he touched it with his file.</p>
+
+<p>'Hum! ha!' he gloated. 'In the centre of the head is the master hole
+of all, planned out for being cut. But not yet cut! Mark you, 'tis not
+yet cut. That is for the woman I hate most of all women. She is not
+yet cast down that I have heard tell on, though some have said "Aye,"
+some "Nay." Tell me, have you heard yet of a Kat Howard in the stews?'</p>
+
+<p>'There is a Kat Howard is like to be&mdash;&mdash;' the young Poins began. But
+his slow cunning was aroused before he had the sentence out. Who could
+tell what trick was this?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Like to be what?' the Lincolnshire man badgered him. 'Like to be
+what? To be what?'</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, I know not,' Poins answered.</p>
+
+<p>'Like to be what?' Hogben persisted.</p>
+
+<p>'I know no Kat Howard,' Poins muttered sulkily. For he knew well that
+the Lady Katharine's name was up in the taverns along of Thomas
+Culpepper. And this Lincolnshire cow-dog was a knave too of Thomas's;
+therefore the one Kat Howard who was like to be the King's wench and
+the other Kat Howard known to Hogben might well be one and the same.</p>
+
+<p>'Nay; if you will not, neither even will I,' Hogben said. 'You shall
+have no more of my tale.'</p>
+
+<p>Poins kept his blue eyes along the road. Far away, with an odd leap,
+waving its arms abroad and coming by fits and starts, as a hare
+gambols along a path&mdash;a figure was tiny to see, coming from Ardres way
+towards Calais. It passed a load of hay on an ox-cart, and Poins could
+see the peasants beside it scatter, leap the dyke and fly to stand
+panting in the fields. The figure was clenching its fists; then it
+fell to kicking the oxen; when they had overset the cart into the
+dyke, it came dancing along with the same hare's gait.</p>
+
+<p>'That is too like the repute of Thomas Culpepper to be other than
+Thomas Culpepper,' the young Poins said. 'I will go meet him.'</p>
+
+<p>He started to his feet, loosed the sword in its scabbard; but the
+Lincolnshire man had his halberd across the gateway.</p>
+
+<p>'Pass! Shew thy pass!' he said vindictively.</p>
+
+<p>'I go but to meet him,' Poins snarled.</p>
+
+<p>'A good lie; thou goest not,' Hogben answered. 'No Englishman goes
+into the French lands without a pass from the lord controller. An thou
+keepest a shut head I can e'en keep a shut gate.'</p>
+
+<p>None the less he must needs talk or stifle.</p>
+
+<p>'Thee, with thy Kat Howard,' he snarled. 'Would 'ee<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> have me think thy
+Kat was my kitten whose name stunk in our nostrils?'</p>
+
+<p>He shook his finger in Poins' face.</p>
+
+<p>'Here be three of us know Kat Howard,' he said. 'For I know her, since
+for her I must leave home and take the road. And <i>he</i> knoweth her over
+well or over ill, since, to buy her a gown, he sold the three farms,
+Maintree, Durford and Sallowford&mdash;which last was my father's farm. And
+<i>thee</i> knowest her. Thee knowest her. To no good, I'se awarned. For
+thou stoppedst in thy speech like a colt before a wood snake. God
+bring down all women, I pray!'</p>
+
+<p>He went on to tell, as if it had been a rosary, the names of the
+ruined women that the holes in his pikehead represented. There was one
+left by the wayside with her child; there was one hung for stealing
+cloth to cover her; there was one whipped for her naughty ways. He
+reached the square mark in the centre as the figure on the road
+reached the gateway.</p>
+
+<p>'Huzzay, Squahre Tom! Here bay three kennath Kat Howard. Let us three
+tak part to kick her down.'</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Culpepper like a green cat flew at his throat, clutched him
+above the steel breastplate, and shook three times, the gatewarden's
+uncovered, dun-coloured head swaying back and forward as if it were a
+loose bundle of clouts on a mop. When they parted company, because he
+could no longer keep his fingers clenched, Hogben fell back; he fell
+back, and they lay with their heels touching each other and their arms
+stretched out in the dust.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>Nicholas Hogben was the first to rise. He felt at his neck, swallowed
+as though a piece of apple were stuck in his throat, brushed his
+leather breeches, and picked up his pike.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he said, 'you may hold it for main and certain that he have not
+had Kat Howard down. For, having had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> her down, a would never have
+thrown a man by the throat for miscalling of her. Therefore Kat Howard
+is up for all of he, and I may loosen my feelings.'</p>
+
+<p>He spat gravely at Culpepper's feet. Culpepper lay in the dust, his
+arms stretched out to form a cross, his face dead white and his beard
+of brilliant red pointing at the keystone of the arch of Calais gate.
+Poins lifted his hand, but the pulse still beat, and he dropped it
+moodily in the dust.</p>
+
+<p>'Not dead,' he muttered.</p>
+
+<p>'Dead!' Hogben laughed at him. 'Hath been in a boosing ken. There they
+drug the wine with simples, and the women&mdash;may pox fall on all
+women&mdash;perfume themselves so that a man goeth stark raving. I warrant
+he had silver buttons to his Lincoln green, but they be torn off. I
+warrant he had gold buckles to his shoen, but they be gone. His sword
+is away, the leather hangers being cut.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wilt not stick him with thy pike, having, as he hath, so mishandled
+thee?'</p>
+
+<p>'O aye,' the Lincolnshire man shewed his strong teeth. 'Thee wouldst
+have Kat Howard from him. But he may live for me, being more like to
+bring her to dismay than ever thee wilt be!'</p>
+
+<p>He looked into the narrow street of the town that the dawn pierced
+into through the gateway. Two skinny men in jerkins drawn tight with
+belts were yawning in a hovel's low doorway. Under his eyes, still
+stretching their arms abroad, they made to slink between the mud walls
+of the next alley.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, hi! <i>Arrestez. Vesnez!</i>' he hailed. '<i>Cestui &agrave; comforter!</i>' The
+thin men made to break away, halted, hesitated, and then with dragging
+feet made through the pools and filth to the gateway.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Tomb&eacute;! Voleurs! Secourez!</i>' Hogben pointed at the prostrate figure
+in green. They rubbed their shins on their thin calves and appeared
+bewildered and uncertain.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Portez &agrave; lous maisons!</i>' Hogben commanded.</p>
+
+<p>They stood one on each side and bent down, extending skinny arms to
+lift him. Thomas Culpepper sat up and spat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> in their faces&mdash;they fled
+like scared wolves, noiselessly, gazing behind them in trepidation.</p>
+
+<p>'Stay them; thieves ho! Stay them!' Culpepper panted. He scrambled to
+his feet, and stood reeling, his face like death, when he tried to
+make after them.</p>
+
+<p>'God!' he said. 'Give me to drink.'</p>
+
+<p>The young Poins mused under his breath because the man had neither
+sword nor dagger. Therefore it would be impossible to have sword play
+with him. He had, the young man, no ferocity&mdash;but he was set there to
+stay Thomas Culpepper's going on to England; he was to stay him by
+word or by deed. Deeds came so much easier than words.</p>
+
+<p>'Squahre Tom!' the Lincolnshire man grunted. 'Reckon you have no
+money. Without groats and more ye shall get nowt to drink in Calais
+town, save water. Water you may have in plenty.'</p>
+
+<p>With a sigh the young Poins unbuckled his belt to get his papers.</p>
+
+<p>'Money I have for you,' he said. 'A main of money.' He was engaged now
+to pass words with this man&mdash;and he sighed again.</p>
+
+<p>But Thomas Culpepper disregarded his words and his sigh. He was more
+in the mood to talk Lincolnshire than Kent, for his fever had given
+him a touch of homesickness and the young Poins to him was a very
+foreigner. He shut his eyes to let the Lincolnshire gatewarden's words
+go down to his brain; then with sudden violence he spat out:</p>
+
+<p>'Give me water! What do ah ask but water! Pig! brood of a sow! gi'e me
+water and choke!'</p>
+
+<p>Nicholas Hogben fetched a leather bottle as long as his leg, dusty and
+dinted, but nevertheless bedight with the arms of England, from the
+stone recess where the guard sheltered at nights. He fitted it on to
+the crook of his pike by the handle, and, craning over the drawbridge,
+first smoothed away the leaf-green duck-weed on the moat and then sank
+the bottle in the black water.</p>
+
+<p>'I have money: a main of money for ye,' the young Poins said to Thomas
+Culpepper; but the man, with his red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> beard and white face, swayed on
+his legs and had ears only for the gurgling and gulping of the water
+as it entered the bottle neck. The black jack swayed and jumped below
+the bridge like a glistening water-beast.</p>
+
+<p>He had little green spangles of duck-weed in his orange beard when he
+took the bottle away, empty, from his mouth. He drew deep gasps of
+breath, and suddenly sat down upon a squared block of stone that the
+masons above were waiting to hoist into place over the archway.</p>
+
+<p>'Good water!' he grunted to Hogben&mdash;grunting as all the Lincolnshire
+men did, in those days, like a two-year hog.</p>
+
+<p>'Bean't but that good in all Calais town!' Hogben grunted back to him.
+'Curses on the two wurmen that sent me here.' And indeed, to
+Lincolnshire men the water tasted good, since it reminded them of
+their dyke water, tasting of marshweed and smelling of eggs.</p>
+
+<p>'T&uuml; wurmen!' Culpepper said lazily. 'Hast thou been jigging with <i>t&uuml;</i>
+puticotties to wunst? One is enow to undo seven men. Who be 'hee?'</p>
+
+<p>The young Poins, with a sulky sense of his importance, uttered:</p>
+
+<p>'I have money for thee&mdash;a main of money!'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper looked at him with sleepy blue eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'Thrice y' ha' told me that,' he said. 'And money is a goodly thing in
+its place&mdash;but not to a man with a bellyful of water. Y' shall feel my
+fist when I be rested. Meanwhile wait and, being a cub, hear how <i>men</i>
+talk.' He slapped his chest and repeated to Hogben: 'Who be 'ee?'</p>
+
+<p>Hogben, delighted to be asked at last a question, shewed his
+formidable teeth and beneath his familiar contortion of the eyelids
+brought out the words that one of the women who had brought him down
+was her that had brought Squahre Culpepper to sit on a squared stone
+before Calais gate.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I am a made man, for all you see me sit here,' Culpepper
+answered indolently. 'I ha' done a piece of work for which I am to be
+seised of seven farms in Kent land.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> See yo'&mdash;they send me messengers
+with money to Calais gate.' He pointed his thumb at the young Poins.</p>
+
+<p>The boy, to prove that he was no common messenger, drew his right leg
+up and said:</p>
+
+<p>'Nay, goodman Squire; an ye had slain the Cardinal the farms should
+have been yours. As it lies, ye are no more than lieutenant of Calais
+stone barges.'</p>
+
+<p>'Thou liest,' Culpepper answered negligently, not turning his gaze
+from the gatewarden to whom he addressed a friendly question of, Who
+was the woman that had brought the two of them down.</p>
+
+<p>'Now, Squahre!' the Lincolnshire man grinned delightedly; 'thu hast
+ask&euml;d me t&uuml; questions. Answer me one: Did <i>thee</i> lie upon her when
+thee put her name up in the township of Stamford?'</p>
+
+<p>'Stamford in Lincolnshire was thy townplace?' Culpepper asked. 'But
+who was thy woman? I ha' had so many women and lied about so many more
+that I never had!'</p>
+
+<p>The Lincolnshire man threw his leather cap to the keystone of the
+archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having
+the solemnity of one who performs his rituals.</p>
+
+<p>'Goodly squahre that thee art!' he said; 'thou has harmed a many
+wenches in truth and in lies.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper spied a down feather on his knee.</p>
+
+<p>'Curse the mattress that I lay upon this night,' he said amiably.</p>
+
+<p>He set his head back and blew the feather high into the air so that it
+floated out towards the tranquil and sunny pasture fields of France.</p>
+
+<p>'Cub!' he said to Hal Poins, 'take this as a lesson of the death that
+lies about the pilgrim's path. For why am I not a pilgrim? I was sent
+to rid Paris of a Cardinal Pole, who, being in league with the devil,
+hath a magic tongue. Mark this story well, cub, who art sent me with
+money and gifts from the King in his glory to me that sit upon a
+stone. Now mark&mdash;' He extended his white hand. 'This hand, o'
+yestereen, had a ring with a great green stone. Now no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> ring is here.
+It was given me by my seventeenth leman, who had two eyes that looked
+not together. No twelve robbers had taken it from me by force, since I
+had made a pact with the devil that these wall eyes should never look
+across my face whilst that ring was there. Now, God knows, I may find
+her in Calais. So mark well&mdash;&mdash;' He had been sent to Paris to rid
+France of the Cardinal Pole; for the Cardinal Pole, being a succubus
+of the fiend, had a magical tongue and had been inducing the French
+King to levy arms, in the name of that arch-devil, the Bishop of Rome,
+against their goodly King Henry, upon whom God shed His peace.
+Culpepper raised his bonnet at the Deity's name, stuck it far back on
+his red head, and continued: Therefore the mouth of Cardinal Pole was
+to be stayed in Paris town.</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper smote his breast ferociously and with a black pride.</p>
+
+<p>'And I have stayed it!' he peacocked. 'I and no other. I&mdash;T.
+Culpepper&mdash;a made man!'</p>
+
+<p>'Not so,' Poins answered stubbornly. 'Thou wast sent to Paris to slay,
+and thou hast not slain!'</p>
+
+<p>'Thou liest!' Culpepper asseverated. 'I was sent to purge Paris town,
+and I ha' purged un. No pothicary had done it better nor Hercules that
+was a stall groom and cleaned stables in antick days.' For, at the
+first breath of news that Culpepper was in the town, at the first
+rumour that the king's assassin was in Paris, Cardinal Pole had
+gathered his purple skirts about his knees; at the second sound he had
+cast them off altogether and, arrayed as a woman or a barber's leech,
+had fled hot foot to Brescia and thence to Rome.</p>
+
+<p>'That was a nothing!' Culpepper asseverated. 'Though I ha' heard said
+that Hercules was made a god for cleaning stables that he found no
+easy task. But I will grant that it was no task for me to cleanse a
+whole town. For I needed no besoms, nor even no dagger, but the mere
+shadow of my beard upon the cobbly stones of Paris sufficed. I say
+nothing of that which befel in the day's journey; but mark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> this! mark
+what follows!' He had set out from Paris upon a high horse, with a
+high heart; he had frighted off all robbers and all sturdy rogues upon
+the road; he had slept at good inns as became a made man, and had
+bought himself a goodly pair of embroidered gloves which he could well
+pay for out of his superfluity. Being in haste to reach England, where
+he had that that called for him, he had ridden through the town of
+Ardres at nightfall, being minded to ride his horse dead, reach Calais
+gates in the hour, and beat down the gate if the warder would not
+suffer him to enter, it being dark. But outside the town of Ardres
+upon a make of no man's ground, being neither French nor English, he
+had espied a hut, and in the dark hut a lighted window hole that
+sparkled bravely, and, within, a big, fair woman drinking wine between
+candles with the light in her hair and a white tablecloth. And,
+feeling goodly, and Calais gate being shut, whether he broke it down
+one hour or three hours later was all one to him. He had gone into the
+hut to take by force or for payment a glass of wine from the black
+jacks, a kiss from the woman's mouth, and what else of ease the place
+afforded.</p>
+
+<p>'Now I will have you mark, cub,' he said&mdash;'cub that shall have to
+learn many wiles if thy throat be not cut by me within the next two
+hours. Mark this, cub: these were no Egyptians!' They were not
+Bohemians, not swearers, not subtle cozeners, not even black a-vised,
+or he would have been on his guard against them; but they were plain,
+fair folks of Normandy. So he had drunk his wine, and cast a main or
+two at dice with the woman and two men, losing no more and no less
+than was decent. And he had drunk more wine and had taken his
+kisses&mdash;since it was all one whether he came three hours or four hours
+later to Calais gate. And there had been candles on the table and
+stuffs upon the wall, and a crock on the fire for mulling the wine,
+and a sheet upon the feather bed. But when he awoke in the morning he
+had lain upon the hard earth, between the bare walls. And all that was
+his was gone that was worth the taking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Now mark, cub,' he said. 'It was a simple thing this flitting with
+the hangings and the clothes and the pot rolled in bales and hung upon
+my horse. Upon my horse! But what is not simple is that simple folk of
+Normandy should have learned the arts of subtlety and drugging of
+wines. Mark that!' He pointed a finger at Poins.</p>
+
+<p>'Had God been good to you you might have been as good a warring boy as
+Thomas Culpepper, who with the shadow of his hand held back the
+galleons of France and France's knights from the goodly realm of
+England. For this I have done by frighting from Paris, Cardinal Pole
+that was moving the French King to war on us. Had God been good to you
+you might have been as brave. But marvel and consider and humble you
+in the dust to think that a man with my brain pan and all it holds
+could have been so cozened. For sure, a dolt like you would have been
+stripped more clean till you had neither nails to your toes nor hair
+to your eyebrows.'</p>
+
+<p>Hal Poins snarled that Culpepper would have been shaved too but that
+red hair stunk in the nostrils even of cozeners and thieves.</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper wagged his head from side to side.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a main soft stone,' he said; 'I am main weary. When the stone
+grows hard, which is a sign that I shall no longer be minded to rest,
+I will break thy back with a cudgel.'</p>
+
+<p>Poins stamped his foot with rage and tears filled his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'An thou had a sword!' he said. 'An only thou had a sword!'</p>
+
+<p>'A year-old carrot to baste thee with!' Culpepper answered. 'Swords
+are for men!' He turned to Hogben, who was sitting on the ground
+furbishing his pikehead. 'Heard you the like of my tale?' he asked
+lazily.</p>
+
+<p>'Oh aye!' the Lincolnshire man answered. 'The simple folk of Normandy
+are simple only because they have no suitors. But they ha' learned
+that marlock from the sailors of Rye town. For in Rye town, which is
+the sinkhole of Sussex, you will meet every morning ten travellers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>
+travelling to France in the livery of Father Adam. Normans can learn,'
+he added sententiously, 'as the beasts of the field can learn from a
+man. My father had a ewe lamb that danced a pavane to my pipe on the
+farm of Sallowford that you sold to buy a woman the third part of a
+gown.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why! Art Nick Hogben?' Culpepper said.</p>
+
+<p>'Hast that question answered,' Hogben said. 'Now answer me one. Liedst
+thou when saidst what thou saidst of that wurman?'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper on the stone swung his legs vaingloriously:</p>
+
+<p>'I sold three farms to buy her a gown,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye!' Nick Hogben answered. 'So thou saidst in Stamford town three
+years gone by. And thou saidst more and the manner of it. But betwixt
+the buying the gowns and the more of it lie many things. As this: Did
+she take the gown of thee? Or as this: Having taken the gown of thee,
+did she pay thee in the kind payment should be made in?'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper looked up at him with a sharp snarl.</p>
+
+<p>'For&mdash;' and Nick Hogben shook his head sagaciously, 'Stamford town
+believed the more and the manner of it, and Kat Howard's name is up in
+the town of Stamford. But I have not yet chiselled out the great piece
+that shall come from my pike when certain sure I am that Kat Howard is
+down under a man's foot.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.</p>
+
+<p>'Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!' he said. 'Therefore I will say I
+lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her
+alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned
+in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper
+person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent
+purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord
+Edmund's, house and I had pies and gowns for her. Consider these
+things and make a hole or no hole as thou wilt&mdash;&mdash;'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Nicholas Hogben considered with his eyes on the ground; he scratched
+his head with a black finger.</p>
+
+<p>'I can make nowt out,' he said. 'But I will curse thee for a
+lily-livered hoggit an thou marry Kat Howard.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I am minded to marry her,' Culpepper answered, 'over here in
+France,' and he stretched a hand towards the long white road where in
+the distance the French peasants were driving lean beasts for a true
+Englishman's provender in Calais. 'Over here in France. Body of
+God!&mdash;Body of God!&mdash;&mdash;' He wavered, being still fevered. 'In England
+it had been otherwise. But here, shivering across plains and
+seas&mdash;why, I will wed with her.'</p>
+
+<p>'Talkest like a Blind God Boy,' Hogben said sarcastically. 'How
+knowest she be thine to take?' He pointed at the young Poins. 'Here be
+another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well
+discern if she be thine or whose.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But
+Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was
+from its scabbard and warring in the air.</p>
+
+<p>'Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee&mdash;Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!'
+he cried.</p>
+
+<p>'Ass!' Culpepper answered. 'In God's time I will break thy back across
+my knee. But God's time is not yet.'</p>
+
+<p>He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had
+seen.</p>
+
+<p>'Squahre Thomas,' Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, 'that
+young man of Kent saith e'ennow: "Kat Howard is like to&mdash;&mdash;" and then
+he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat
+Howard is like to do or be done by?'</p>
+
+<p>With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think
+rapidly&mdash;nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could
+think rapidly always.</p>
+
+<p>'Goodman Thomas Culpepper,' he said in a high voice, 'the mistress
+Katharine Howard I spoke of is thin and dark<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> and small, and married
+to Edward Howard of Biggleswade. She is like to die of a quinsy.'</p>
+
+<p>For well he knew that his advancement depended on his keeping Thomas
+Culpepper on the hither side of the water; and if it muddled his brain
+to have been so usefully mishandled for carrying letters betwixt the
+King's Grace and the Lady Katharine Howard, he knew enough of a
+jealous man to know that that was no news to keep Thomas Culpepper in
+Calais.</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper's animation dropped like the light of a torch that is
+dowsed.</p>
+
+<p>'Put up thy pot skewer,' he said; 'my Kat is tall and fairish and
+unwed. Ha' ye not seen her with the Lady Mary of England's women?'</p>
+
+<p>The young Poins, zealous to be rid of the matter, answered fervently:</p>
+
+<p>'Never. She is not talked of in the Court.'</p>
+
+<p>'That is the best hearing,' Thomas Culpepper said. 'I do absolve thee
+of five kicks for being the messenger of that.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>They were a-walking in the little garden below the windows of the late
+Cardinal's house at Hampton; the April sun shone, for May came on
+apace, and in that sheltered spot the light lay warm and no breezes
+came. They took great pleasure there beneath the windows. One girl
+kept three golden balls flying in the air, whilst three others and two
+lords sought to distract her by inducing her little hound to bark
+shrilly below her hands up at the flying balls that caught in them the
+light of the sun, the blue of the sky, and the red and grey of the
+warm palace walls. Down the nut walk, where the trees that the dead
+Cardinal had set were already fifteen years old and dark with young
+green leaves as bright as little flowers, they had set up archery
+targets. Cicely Elliott, in black and white, flashing like a magpie in
+the alleys, ran races with the Earl of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> Surrey beneath the blinking
+eyes of her old knight; the Lady Mary, herself habited all in black,
+moved like a dark shadow upon a dial between the little beds upon
+paths of red brick between box hedges as high as your ankles. She
+spoke to none save once when she asked the name of a flower. But
+laughter went up, and it seemed as if, in this first day out of doors,
+all the Court opened its lungs to drink the new air; and they were
+making plans for May Day already.</p>
+
+<p>They asked, too, a riddle: 'An a nutshell from Candlemas loved a merry
+bud in March, how should it come to pleasure and content?' and men who
+had the answer looked wise and shook their sides at guessing faces.</p>
+
+<p>In a bower at the south end of the small garden Katharine Howard sat
+to play cat's-cradle with the old lady of Rochford. This foolish game
+and this foolish old woman, with her unceasing tales of the Queen Anne
+Boleyn&mdash;who had been her cousin&mdash;gave to Katharine a great feeling of
+ease. With her troubled eyes and weary expression, her occasional
+groans as the rheumatism gnawed at her joints, the old lady minded her
+of the mother she had so seldom seen. She had always been somewhere
+away, all through Katharine's young years, planning and helping her
+father to advancement that never came, and hopeless to control her
+wild children. Thus Katharine had come to love this poor old woman and
+consorted much with her, for she was utterly bewildered to control the
+Lady Mary's maids that were beneath her care.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine held out her hands, parallel, as if she were praying, with
+the strand of blue wool and silver cord criss-cross and diagonal
+betwixt her fingers. The old lady bent above them, silent and puzzled,
+to get the key to the strings. Twice she protruded her gouty fingers,
+with swollen ends; and twice she drew them back to stroke her brows.</p>
+
+<p>'I mind,' she said suddenly, 'that I played cat's-cradle with my
+cousin Anne, that was a sinful queen.' She bent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> again and puzzled
+about the strings. 'In those days I had a great skill, I mind. We
+revised it to the eleventh change many times before her death.' Again
+she leant forward and again back. 'I did come near my death, too,' she
+added.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine's eyes had been gazing past her; suddenly she asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Was Anne Boleyn loved after she grew to be Queen?'</p>
+
+<p>The old woman's face took on a palsied and haunted look.</p>
+
+<p>'God help you!' she said; 'do you ask that?' and she glanced round her
+furtively in an agony of apprehension. Something had drawn all the gay
+gowns and embroidered stomachers towards the higher terrace. They were
+all alone in the arbour.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' Katharine said, 'so many innocent creatures have been done to
+death since Cromwell came, that, though she was lewd before and a
+heretic all her days, I think doubts may be.'</p>
+
+<p>The old lady pressed her hand upon her bosom where her heart beat.</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' she said, 'for my life I know not the truth of the
+matter. There was much trickery; God knoweth the truth.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine mused for a moment above the cat's-cradle on her fingers.
+Near the joint at the end of the little one there was a small mole.</p>
+
+<p>'Take you the fifth and third strings,' she said. 'The king string
+holds your wrist,' and whilst the old face was still intent upon the
+problem she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I think that if a woman come to be Queen it is odds that she will
+live chastely, how lewd soever she ha' been aforetime.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Rochford set her fingers in between Katharine's, but when she
+drew them back with the strings upon them, they wavered, lost their
+straightness, knotted and then resolved themselves into a single loop
+as in a swift wind a cloud dies away beneath the eyes of the beholder.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, 'tis pity,' Katharine said.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All the lords and all the ladies were now upon the terrace above. The
+old lady had the string in her broad lap. Suddenly she bent forward,
+her eyes opened.</p>
+
+<p>'She was the enemy of your Church,' she said. 'But this I will tell
+you: upon occasions when men swore she had been with other men o'
+nights, the Queen was in my bed with me!'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine nodded silently.</p>
+
+<p>'Who was I that I dare speak?' the old woman sobbed; and Katharine
+nodded again.</p>
+
+<p>Lady Rochford rubbed together her fat hands as she were ringing them.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God,' she moaned, 'and by the blessed blood of Hailes that
+cured ever my pains, if a soul know a soul I knew Anne. If she was a
+woman like other women before she wedded the King, she was minded to
+be chaste after. Madam Howard,'&mdash;and she rocked her fat body to and
+fro upon the seat&mdash;'they came to me from both sides, your Papists and
+her heretics; they threatened me to keep silence of what I knew. I was
+to keep silence. I name no names. But they came o' both sides, Papists
+and heretics; though she was middling true to the heretics they could
+not be true to her.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine answered her own thoughts with:</p>
+
+<p>'Ay; but my cause is the good cause. Men shall be true to it.'</p>
+
+<p>The old lady leaned forward and stroked her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Dearie,' she said, 'dandling piece, sweet bit, there are no true
+men.' She had an entreaty in her tone, and her large blue eyes gazed
+fixedly. 'Say that my cousin Anne was a heretic. I know naught of it
+save that my bones have ached always since the holy blood of Hailes
+was done away with that was wont to cure me. But the Queen Anne was
+hard driven because of a plotting; and no man stood her friend.' With
+her large and tear-filled eyes she gazed at the palace, where the pear
+trees upon the walls shewed new, pale leaves in the sunlight. 'The
+great Cardinal was hard driven because of a plot, and no man was true
+to him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> There is no true man. Hope not for one. Hope not for any one.
+The great Cardinal builded those walls and that palace&mdash;and where is
+he?'</p>
+
+<p>'Yet,' Katharine said, 'Privy Seal that is was true to him and
+profited exceedingly.'</p>
+
+<p>Lady Rochford shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>'For a little while truth may help you,' she said; 'but your name in
+the end shall be but a stink.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ay,' Katharine answered her; 'but ye shall gain at the end of all.
+For I hold it for certain that because, to the uttermost dregs of his
+cup, Cromwell was true to his master Wolsey, before the throne of God
+much shall be pardoned him.'</p>
+
+<p>The old woman answered bitterly:</p>
+
+<p>'The throne of God is a long way from here.'</p>
+
+<p>'Please it Mary and the saints,' Katharine said, 'the ten years to
+come shall bring Heaven a thousand leagues nearer to this land.' But
+her words died away because the Lady Rochford's mouth fell open.</p>
+
+<p>From the terrace a great square man led down a tiny, small man, giving
+the child his finger to help him down the steps. It clung to him, the
+little, squared replica of himself, sturdily and with a blonde, small
+face laughing up into his father's that laughed down past a huge
+shoulder. Henry was dressed all in black, and his son too; the boy's
+callow head shone in the sunshine, and they came dallying down the
+little path, many faces and shoulders peering over the terrace wall at
+them. Once the child stumbled, loosed his hold of his father's finger
+and came down upon all fours. He crawled to the pathside, filled his
+little hands with leaves, and held them up towards his sire; and they
+could hear the King say:</p>
+
+<p>'Who-hoop, Ned! Princes walk not like quadrumanes,' as he bent to take
+the leaves. The child twisted himself, gripping his little fingers
+into Henry's garter, and, catching again at his finger, pulled his
+father towards their bower.</p>
+
+<p>The Lady Rochford rose, but Katharine sat where she was to smile upon
+the child and brush his head with a pink<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> tassel of her sleeve. The
+little prince hid his face in the voluminous velvet of his father's
+vast thighs. The King, diffusing a great and embracing pride, laughed
+to Lady Rochford.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye played cat's-cradle,' he said. 'I warrant ye brought it not beyond
+seven changes. Time was when I have done fourteen with a lady if her
+hands were white enough.'</p>
+
+<p>He threw away the green leaves of the clove pinks that his son had
+given him, and took the blue and silver loop from the old woman's
+hands. He sat himself heavily on the bench facing Katharine, and
+crying, 'See you, silly Ned,' held his son's hands apart and fitted
+the cord over the little wrists.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he bent clumsily forward and picked up again the carnation
+leaves that lay in green strands upon the floor of the arbour,
+grunting a little with the effort.</p>
+
+<p>'This is the first offering my son ever made me,' he said, and he drew
+a pocket purse from his breast to lay them in. 'Please God he shall
+yet lay at my feet a province or two of our heritage of France.' He
+touched his cap at the Deity's name, and called gruffly at his son:
+'See you, forget not ever that we be Kings of France too, you and I,'
+and the little boy with his cropped head uttered:</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Rex Angliae, Galliae, Franciae et Hiberniae!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, I ha' learned ye that,' the King said, and roared with laughter.
+Of a sudden he turned his head, without moving his body, towards
+Katharine.</p>
+
+<p>'I ha' news from Norfolk in France,' he said, and, as the Lady
+Rochford made to move, he uttered good-naturedly: 'Aye, avoid. But ye
+may buss my son.'</p>
+
+<p>He stretched back his head, laid an arm along the back of his seat,
+put out his feet and pushed at the child, who played with his
+shoe-tags.</p>
+
+<p>'The boy grows,' he said, and motioned for Katharine to sit beside
+him. Then his face shewed a quick dissatisfaction. 'A brave boy, but a
+should be braver,' and looking down, 'see you not blue lines about 's
+gills?' He caught at her hand with a masterful grip.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Here we're a picture,' he said: 'a lusty husbandman, his lusty son,
+his lusty wife, resting all beneath his goodly vine.' His face clouded
+again. 'I&mdash;I am not lusty; my son, he is not lusty.' He touched her
+cheek. 'Thou art lusty enow&mdash;hast such pink cheeks.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, we were always lusty at home when we had enow to eat,' Katharine
+said. She took the child upon her knee and blew lightly in his face.
+'I will wager you I will guess his weight within a pound,' she added,
+and began to play a game with the tiny fingers. 'Wherefore do ye habit
+little children in black?'</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' the King answered, 'I know not if I myself appear less
+monstrous in black or red, and my son shall be habited as I be. 'Tis
+to make the trial.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' Katharine said, 'ye think first of yourself. But dress the
+child in white and go in white yourself. And set up a chantry of
+priests to pray the child grow sturdy. It was thus my cousin Surrey's
+life was saved that was erst a weakling.'</p>
+
+<p>'Be Queen,' he said suddenly. 'Marry me. I came here to ask it.'</p>
+
+<p>Her lips parted; she left her hand in his. The expected words had
+come.</p>
+
+<p>'I have thought on it,' she said. 'I knew ye could not long hold to
+child and sire as ye sware ye would.'</p>
+
+<p>'Kat,' he said, 'ye shall do my will. I ha' news from France. Ye gave
+me good rede. I ha' news from Cleves: the Cleves woman shall no more
+be queen of mine. Thee I will have.'</p>
+
+<p>She raised herself from the bench and turned in the entrance of the
+arbour to look at him.</p>
+
+<p>'Give me leave to walk on the path,' she said. 'I have thought on
+this&mdash;for I was sure I gave you good advice, and well I knew Cleves
+would sever from ye.' She faltered: 'I ha' thought on it. But 'tis
+different to think on it and to ha' the thing in your face.'</p>
+
+<p>He uttered, 'Make haste,' and she walked down the path. He saw her,
+tall, fair, swaying a little in the wind, raise her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> face to the
+skies; her long fingers made the sign of the cross, her hood fell
+back. Her lips moved; the fringes of her lashes came down over her
+blue eyes, and she seemed to wrestle with her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' he muttered to himself half earnest, half sardonic, 'prayer is
+better than thoughts. God strike with palsy them that made me afraid
+to pray.... Aye, pray on, pray on,' he said again. 'But by God and His
+wounds! ye shall be my queen.'</p>
+
+<p>By the time she came back he laughed at her tempestuously, and pushing
+the little prince tenderly with his huge foot, watched him roll on the
+floor catching at the air.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he said to her, 'what's the whimsy now? Shalt be the queen.
+'Tis the sole way. 'Tis the way to the light.' He leant forward.
+'Cleves has gone to the bastard called Charles to sue for mercy. Ye
+led me so well to set Francis against Charles that I may snap my
+fingers against both. None but thee could ha' forged that bolt. Child,
+I will make a league with the Pope against Charles or Francis, with
+Francis or Charles. Anne may go hang herself.' He rose to his feet and
+stretched out both his hands, his eyes glowing beneath his deep brows.
+'Body o' God! thou art a very fair woman; and now I will be such a
+king as never was, and take France for mine own and set up Holy Church
+again, and say good prayers and sleep in a warm bed. Body o' God! Body
+o' God!'</p>
+
+<p>'God and the saints save the issue!' she said. 'I am thy servant and
+slave.'</p>
+
+<p>But her tone made him recoil.</p>
+
+<p>'What whimsy's here?' he muttered heavily, and his eyes became
+suffused with red. 'Speak, wench!' He pulled at the stuff round his
+throat. 'I will have peace,' he said. 'I will at last have peace.'</p>
+
+<p>'God send you have it,' she said, and trembled a little, half in fear,
+half in sheer pity at the thought of thwarting him.</p>
+
+<p>'Speak thy fool whimsy,' he muttered huskily. 'Speak!'</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she said, 'where is the Queen that is?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He flared suddenly at her as if she had reproved him.</p>
+
+<p>'At Windsor. 'Tis a better palace than this of mine here.' He shook
+his finger heavily and uttered with a boastful defiance: 'Shalt not
+say I shower no gifts on her. Shalt not say she has no state. I ha'
+sent her seven jennets this day. I shall go bring her golden apples on
+the morrow. Scents she has had o' me; French gowns, Southern fruits.
+No man nor wench shall say I be not princely&mdash;&mdash;' His boasting bluster
+died away before her silence. To please a mute desire in her, he had
+showered more gifts on Anne of Cleves than on any other woman he had
+ever seen; and thinking that she used him ill not to praise him for
+this, he could not hold his tongue: 'What is't to thee what she hath?
+What she hath thou losest. 'Tis a folly.'</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she said, 'I will myself to see the Queen that is.'</p>
+
+<p>'And whysomever?' he voiced his astonishment.</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she said, 'I have a tickly conscience in divorces. I will
+ask her mine own self.'</p>
+
+<p>He roared out suddenly indistinguishable words, stamped his feet,
+waved his hands at the skies, and lost his voice altogether.</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' she said, catching at some of his speech, 'I ha' read your
+Highness' depositions. I ha' read depositions of the Archbishop's. But
+I will be satisfied of her own mouth that she be not your wife.'</p>
+
+<p>And when he swore that Anne would lie:</p>
+
+<p>'Nay,' she answered; 'if she will lie to keep her queenship, keep it
+she shall. I am upon the point of honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!'&mdash;and his voice had a sneering haughtiness&mdash;'ye will not
+be long of this world if ye steer by the point of honour.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she cried out and stretched forth her hands; 'for the love of
+Mary who guides the starry counsels and of the saints who sit in
+conclave, speak not in that wise.'</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders and said, with a touch of angry shame:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'God send the world were another world; I would it were other. But I
+am a prince in this one.'</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she said; 'if the world so is, kings and princes are here
+to be above the world. In your greatness ye shall change it; with your
+justice ye shall purify it; with your clemencies ye should it chasten
+and amerce. Ye ask me to be a queen. Shall I be a queen and not such a
+queen? No, I tell you; if a woman may swear a great oath, I swear by
+Leonidas that saved Sparta and by Christ Jesus that saved this world,
+so will I come by my queenship and so act in it that, if God give me
+strength the whole world never shall find speck upon mine honour&mdash;or
+upon thine if I may sway thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he said, 'thy voice is like little flutes.'</p>
+
+<p>He considered, patting his square, soft-shod feet upon the bricks of
+the arbour floor.</p>
+
+<p>'By Guy! I will have thee,' he said; 'though ye twist my senses as
+never woman twisted them&mdash;and it is not good for a man to be swayed by
+his women.'</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she said, 'in naught would I sway a man save in where my
+conscience pricks and impels me.' She rubbed her hand across her eyes.
+'It is difficult to see the right in these matters. The only way is to
+be firm for God and for the cause of the saints.' She looked down at
+her feet. 'I will be ceaseless in my entreaties to you for them,' she
+uttered. Suddenly again she stretched forth both her hands that had
+sunk to her sides:</p>
+
+<p>'Dear lord,' and her voice was full of pity for herself and for
+entreaty; 'let me go to a convent to pray unceasing for thee.'</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear lord,' she repeated; 'use me as thou wilt and I will stay beside
+thee and urge thee to the cause of God.'</p>
+
+<p>Again he shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>'The saints would pardon me it,' she whispered; 'or if I even be
+damned to save England, it were a good burnt-offering.'</p>
+
+<p>'Wench,' he said; 'I was never a man to go a-whoring.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> I ha' done it,
+but had no savour with it.' His boastfulness returned to the heavy
+voice. 'I am a king that will give. I will give a crown, a realm,
+jewels, honours, monies. All I have I will give; but thou shalt wed
+me.' He threw out his chest and gazed down at her. 'I was ever thus,'
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>'And I ever thus,' she answered him swiftly. 'Mary hath put this thing
+in my mind; and though ye scourge me, ye shall not have it otherwise.'</p>
+
+<p>'Even how?' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' she answered; 'if the Queen, so it be true, will say she be
+no wife of thine, I will wed thee. If the Queen, seeing that it is for
+the good of this suffering realm, will give to me her crown, I will
+wed with thee. I wot ye may get for yourself another woman with
+another gear of conscience to bear t'ee children. All the ills of this
+realm came with a divorce of a queen. I do hate the word as I hate
+Judas, and will have no truck with the deed.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye speak me hard,' he said; 'but no man shall say I could not bear
+with the truth at odd moments.'</p>
+
+<p>A great and hasty eagerness came into her voice.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye say that it is truth?' she cried. 'God hath softened thy heart.'</p>
+
+<p>'God or thee,' he said, and muttered, 'I do not make this avowal to
+the world.' Suddenly he smote his thigh. 'Body o' God!' he called out;
+'the day shall soon come. Cleves falls away, France and Spain are
+sundering. I will sue for peace with the Pope, and set up a chapel to
+Kat's memory.' He breathed as if a weight had fallen from his chest,
+and suddenly laughed: 'But ye must wed me to keep me in the right
+way.'</p>
+
+<p>He changed his tone again.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, go to Anne,' he said; 'she is such a fool she will not lie to
+thee; and, before God, she is no wife of mine.'</p>
+
+<p>'God send ye speak the truth,' she answered; 'but I think few men be
+found that will speak truth in these matters.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span></p>
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>But it was with Throckmorton that the real pull of the rope came.
+Henry was by then so full of love for her that, save when she crossed
+his purpose, he would have given her her way to the bitter end of
+things. But Throckmorton bewailed her lack of loyalty. He came to her
+on the morning of the next day, having heard that, if the rain held
+off, a cavalcade of seventeen lords, twelve ladies and their
+bodyguards were commanded to ride with her in one train to Windsor,
+where the Queen was.</p>
+
+<p>'I am main sure 'tis for Madam Howard that this cavalcade is ordered,'
+he said; 'for there is none other person in Court to whom his Highness
+would work this honour. And I am main sure that if Madam Howard goeth,
+she goeth with some mad maggot of a purpose.'</p>
+
+<p>His foxy, laughing eyes surveyed her, and he stroked his great beard
+deliberately.</p>
+
+<p>'I ha' not been near ye this two month,' he said, 'but God knows that
+I ha' worked for ye.'</p>
+
+<p>Save to take her to Privy Seal the day before, when Privy Seal had
+sent him, he had in truth not spoken with her for many weeks. He had
+deemed it wise to keep from her.</p>
+
+<p>'Nevertheless,' he said earnestly, 'I know well that thy cause is my
+cause, and that thou wilt spread upon me the mantle of thy favour and
+protection.'</p>
+
+<p>They were in her old room with the green hangings, the high fireplace,
+and before the door the red curtain worked with gold that the King had
+sent her, and Cromwell had given orders that the spy outside should be
+removed, for he was useless. Thus Throckmorton could speak with a
+measure of freedom.</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' he said; 'ye use me not well in this. Ye are not so
+stable nor so safe in your place as that ye may, without counsel or
+guidance, risk all our necks with these mad pranks.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Goodman,' she said, 'I asked ye not to come into my barque. If ye
+hang to the gunwale, is it my fault an ye be drowned in my foundering
+if I founder?'</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me why ye go to Windsor,' he urged.</p>
+
+<p>'Goodman,' she answered, 'to ask the Queen if she be the King's wife.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, folly!' he cried out, and added softly, 'Madam Howard, ye be
+monstrous fair. I do think ye be the fairest woman in the world. I
+cannot sleep for thinking on thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'Poor soul!' she mocked him.</p>
+
+<p>'But, bethink you,' he said; 'the Queen is a woman, not a man. All
+your fairness shall not help you with her. Neither yet your sweet
+tongue nor your specious reasons. Nor yet your faith, for she is half
+a Protestant.'</p>
+
+<p>'If she be the King's wife,' Katharine said, 'I will not be Queen. If
+she care enow for her queenship to lie over it, I will not be Queen
+either. For I will not be in any quarrel where lies are&mdash;either of my
+side or of another's.'</p>
+
+<p>'God help us all!' Throckmorton mocked her. 'Here is my neck engaged
+on your quarrel&mdash;and by now a dozen others. Udal hath lied for you in
+the Cleves matter; so have I. If ye be not Queen to save us ere
+Cromwell's teeth be drawn, our days are over and past.'</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with so much earnestness that Katharine was moved to consider
+her speaking.</p>
+
+<p>'Knight,' she said at last, 'I never asked ye to lie to Cromwell over
+the Cleves matter. I never asked Udal. God knows, I had the rather be
+dead than ye had done it. I flush and grow hot each time I think this
+was done for me. I never asked ye to be of my quarrel&mdash;nay, I take
+shame that I have not ere this sent to Privy Seal to say that ye have
+lied, and Cleves is false to him.' She pointed an accusing finger at
+him: 'I take shame; ye have shamed me.'</p>
+
+<p>He laughed a little, but he bent a leg to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Some man must save thee from thy folly's fruits,' he said. 'For some
+men love thee. And I love thee so my head aches.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled upon him faintly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'For that, I believe, I have saved thy neck,' she said. 'My conscience
+cried: "Tell Privy Seal the truth"; my heart uttered: "Hast few men
+that love thee and do not pursue thee."'</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he knelt at her feet and clutched at her hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Leave all this,' he said. 'Ye know not how dangerous a place this
+is.' He began to whisper softly and passionately. 'Come away from
+here. Well ye know that I love 'ee better than any man in land. Well
+ye know. Well ye know. And well ye know no man could so well fend for
+ye or jump nimbly to thy thoughts. The men here be boars and bulls.
+Leave all these dangers; here is a straight issue. Ye shall not sway
+the wild boar king for ever. Come with me.'</p>
+
+<p>As she did not at once find words to stop his speech, he whispered on:</p>
+
+<p>'I have gold enow to buy me a baron's fee in Almain. I have been
+there: in castles in the thick woods, silken bowers may be built&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>But suddenly again he rose to his feet and laughed:</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he said, 'I hunger for thee: at times 'tis a madness. But 'tis
+past.'</p>
+
+<p>His eyes twinkled again and he waved a hand.</p>
+
+<p>'Mayhap 'tis well that ye go to the Queen,' he said drily. 'If the
+Queen say, "Yea," ye ha' gained all; if "Nay" ye ha' lost naught, for
+ye may alway change your mind. And a true and steadfast cause, a large
+and godly innocence is a thing that gaineth men's hearts and voices.'
+He paused for a moment. 'Ye ha' need o' man's good words,' he said
+drily; then he laughed again. 'Aye: <i>Nolo episcopari</i> was always a
+good cry,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine looked at him tenderly.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye know my aims are other,' she said, 'or else you would not love me.
+I think ye love me better than any man ever did&mdash;though I ha' had a
+store of lovers.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' he nodded at her gravely, 'it is pleasant to be loved.'</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting by her table and leant her hand upon her cheek; she
+had been sewing a white band with pearls and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> silken roses in red and
+leaves in green, and it fell now to her feet from her lap. Suddenly he
+said:</p>
+
+<p>'Answer me one question of three?'</p>
+
+<p>She did not move, for a feeling of languor that often overcame her in
+Throckmorton's presence made her feel lazy and apt to listen. She
+itched to be Queen&mdash;on the morrow or next day; she desired to have the
+King for her own, to wear fair gowns and a crown; to be beloved of the
+poor people and beloved of the saints. But her fate lay upon the knees
+of the gods then: on the morrow the Queen would speak&mdash;betwixt then
+and now there was naught for it but to rest. And to hearken to
+Throckmorton was to be surprised as if she listened at a comedy.</p>
+
+<p>'One question of three may be answered,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'On the forfeit of a kiss,' he added. 'I pray God ye answer none.'</p>
+
+<p>He pondered for a moment, and leaning back against the chimney-piece
+crossed one silk-stockinged, thin, red leg. He spoke very swiftly, so
+that his words were like lightning.</p>
+
+<p>'And the first is: An ye had never come here but elsewhere seen me,
+had ye it in you to ha' loved me? And the second: How ye love the
+King's person? And the third: Were ye your cousin's leman?'</p>
+
+<p>Leaning against the table she seemed slowly to grow stiff in her pose;
+her eyes dilated; the colour left her cheeks. She spoke no word.</p>
+
+<p>'Privy Seal hath sent a man to hasten thy cousin back to here,' he
+said at last, after his eyes had steadily surveyed her face. She sat
+back in her chair, and the strip of sewing fell to wreathe, white and
+red and green, round her skirts on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'I have sent a botcher to stay his coming,' he said slowly. 'Thy maid
+Margot's brother.'</p>
+
+<p>'I had forgotten Tom,' she said with long pauses between her words.
+She had forgotten her cousin and playmate. She had given no single
+thought to him since a day that she no longer remembered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Reading the expression of her face and interpreting her slow words,
+Throckmorton was satisfied in his mind that she had been her cousin's.</p>
+
+<p>'He hath passed from Calais to Dover, but I swear to you that he shall
+never come to you,' he said. 'I have others here.' He had none, but he
+was set to comfort her.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Tom!' she uttered again almost in a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>'Thus,' he uttered slowly, 'you have a great danger.'</p>
+
+<p>She was silent, thinking of her Lincolnshire past, and he began again:</p>
+
+<p>'Therefore ye have need of help from me as I from thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' he said, 'you shall advise with me. For at least, if I may not
+have the pleasure of thy body, I will have the enjoyment of thy
+converse.' His voice became husky for a moment. 'Mayhap it is a
+madness in me to cling to thee; I do set in jeopardy my earthly riches
+and my hope of profit. But it is Macchiavelli who says: "<i>If ye hoard
+gold and at the end have not pleasure in what gold may pay, ye had
+better have loitered in pleasing meadows and hearkened to the
+madrigals of sweet singing fowls.</i>"' He waved his hand: 'Ye see I be
+still somewhat of a philosopher, though at times madness takes me.'</p>
+
+<p>She was still silent&mdash;shaken into thinking of the past she had had
+with her cousin when she had been very poor in Lincolnshire; she had
+had leisure to read good letters there, and the time to think of them.
+Now she had not held a book for four days on end.</p>
+
+<p>'You are in a very great danger of your cousin,' Throckmorton was
+repeating. 'Yet I will stay his coming.'</p>
+
+<p>'Knight,' she said, 'this is a folly. If guards be needed to keep me
+from his knife, the King shall give me guards.'</p>
+
+<p>'His knife!' Throckmorton raised his hands in mock surprise. 'His
+knife is a very little thing.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye would not say it an ye had come anear him when he was crossed,'
+she said. 'I, who am passing brave, fear his knife more than aught
+else in this world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, incorrigible woman,' he cried, 'thinking ever of straight things
+and clear doings. It is not the knife of your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> cousin, but the devious
+policy of Privy Seal that calleth for fear.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, or ever Privy Seal bind Tom to his policy he shall bind iron
+bars to make a coil.'</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with lifted eyebrows, and then scratched with his
+finger nail a tiny speck of mud from his shoe-point, balancing himself
+back against the chimney piece and crossing his red legs above the
+knees.</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' he said, 'Privy Seal is minded to use thy cousin for a
+battering-ram.' She was hardly minded to listen to him, and he uttered
+stealthily, as if he were sure of moving her: 'Thy cousin shall breach
+a way to the ears of the King&mdash;for thy ill fame to enter in.'</p>
+
+<p>She leaned forward a little.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me of my ill fame,' she said; and at that moment Margot Poins,
+her handmaid, placid still, large, fair and florid, came in to bring
+her mistress an embroidery frame of oak wood painted with red stripes.
+At Throckmorton's glance askance at the cow-like girl, Katharine said:
+'Ye may speak afore Margot Poins. I ha' heard tales of her bringing.'</p>
+
+<p>Margot kneeled at Katharine's feet to stretch a white linen cloth over
+the frame on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'Privy Seal planneth thus,' Throckmorton answered Katharine's
+challenge. He spoke low and level, hoping to see her twinge at every
+new phrase. 'The King hath put from him every tale of thee; it is not
+easy to bring him tales of those he loves, but very dangerous. But
+Cromwell planneth to bring hither thy cousin and to keep him privily
+till one day cometh the King to be alone with thee in thy bower or
+his. Then, having removed all lets, shall Cromwell gird this cousin to
+spring in upon thee and the King, screaming out and with his sword
+drawn.' Still Katharine did not move, but leaned along her table of
+yellow wood. 'It is not the sword ye shall fear,' he said slowly, 'but
+what cometh after. For, for sure, Privy Seal holdeth, then shall be
+the time to bring witnesses against thee to the hearing of the King.
+And Privy Seal hath witnesses.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'He would have witnesses,' Katharine answered.</p>
+
+<p>'There be those that will swear&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' she caught him up, speaking very calmly. 'There be those that
+will swear they ha' seen me with a dozen men. With my cousin, with
+Nick Ardham, with one and another of the hinds. Why, he will bring a
+hind to swear I ha' loved him. And he will bring a bastard child or
+twain&mdash;&mdash;' She paused, and he paused too.</p>
+
+<p>At last he said: 'Anan?'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye might do it against Godiva of Coventry, against the blessed
+Katharine or against Caesar's helpmeet in those days,' Katharine said.
+'Margot here can match all thy witnesses from the city of London&mdash;men
+that never were in Lincolnshire.'</p>
+
+<p>Margot's face flushed with a tide of exasperation, and, sitting
+motionless, she uttered deeply:</p>
+
+<p>'My uncle the printer hath a man will swear he saw ye walk with a
+fiend having horns and a tail.' And indeed these things were believed
+among the Lutherans that flocked still to Margot's uncle's printing
+room. 'My uncle hath printed this,' she muttered, and fumbled hotly in
+her bosom. She drew out a sheet with coarse black letters upon it and
+cast it across the floor with a flushed disdain at Throckmorton's
+feet. It bore the heading: '<i>Newes from Lincoln</i>,' Throckmorton kicked
+with his toe the white scroll and scrutinised Katharine's face
+dispassionately with his foxy eyes that jumped between his lids like
+little beetles of blue. He thrust his cap back upon his head and
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!' he said; 'ye are the joyfullest play that ever I heard.
+And how will Madam Howard act when the King heareth these things?'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine opened her lips with surprise.</p>
+
+<p>'For a subtile man ye are strangely blinded,' she said; 'there is one
+plain way.'</p>
+
+<p>'To deny it and call the saints to witness!' he laughed.</p>
+
+<p>'Even that,' she answered. 'I pray the saints to give me the place and
+time.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ha' ye seen the King in a jealous rage?' he asked.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Subtile man,' she answered, 'the King knows his world.'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' he answered, 'knoweth that women be never chaste.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine bent to pick up her sewing.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'if the King will not have faith in me I will wed no
+King.'</p>
+
+<p>His jaw fell. 'Ye have so much madness?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>She stretched towards him the hand that held her sewing now.</p>
+
+<p>'I swear to you,' she said&mdash;'and ye know me well&mdash;I seek a way to
+bring these rumours to the King's ears.'</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing, revolving these things in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>'Goodly servant,' she began, and he knew from the round and silvery
+sound she drew from her throat that she was minded to make one of the
+long speeches that appalled and delighted him with their childish
+logic and wild honour. 'If it were not that my cousin would run his
+head into danger I would will that he came to the King. Sir, ye are a
+wise man, can ye not see this wisdom? There is no good walking but
+upon sure ground, and I will not walk where the walking is not good.
+Shall I wed this King and have these lies to fear all my life? Shall I
+wed this King and do him this wrong? Neither wisdom nor honour counsel
+me to it. Since I have heard these lies were abroad I have at frequent
+moments thought how I shall bring them before the King.'</p>
+
+<p>He thrust his hands into his pockets, stretched his legs out, and
+leaned back as though he were supporting the chimney-piece with his
+back.</p>
+
+<p>'The King knoweth how men will lie about a woman,' she began again.
+'The King knoweth how ye may buy false witness as ye may buy herrings
+in the market-place at so much a score. An the King were such a man as
+not to know these things, I would not wed with him. An the King were
+such a man as not to trust in me, I would not wed with him. I could
+have no peace. I could have no rest. I am not one that ask little, but
+much.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Why, you ask much of them that do support your cause,' he laughed
+from his private thinking.</p>
+
+<p>'I do ask this oath of you,' she answered: 'that neither with sword
+nor stiletto, nor with provoked quarrel, nor staves, nor clubs, nor
+assassins, ye do seek to stay my cousin's coming.'</p>
+
+<p>He cut across her purpose with asking again: 'Ha' ye seen the King
+rage jealously?'</p>
+
+<p>'Knight,' she said, 'I will have your oath.' And, as he paused in
+thought, she said: 'Before God! if ye swear it not, I will make the
+King to send for him hither guarded and set around with an hundred
+men.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye will not have him harmed?' he asked craftily. 'Ye do love him
+better than another?'</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet, her lips parted. 'Swear!' she cried.</p>
+
+<p>His fingers felt around his waist, then he raised his hand and
+uttered:</p>
+
+<p>'I do swear that ne with sword ne stiletto, ne with staves nor with
+clubs, ne with any quarrels nor violence so never will I seek thy
+goodly cousin's life.'</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head slowly at her.</p>
+
+<p>'All the men ye have known have prayed ye to be rid of him,' he said;
+'ye will live to rue.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she answered him, 'I had rather live to rue the injury my
+cousin should do me than live to rue the having injured him.' She
+paused to think for a moment. 'When I am Queen,' she said, 'I will
+have the King set him in a command of ships to sail westward over the
+seas. He shall have the seeking for the Hesperides or the city of
+Atalanta, where still the golden age remains to be a model and
+ensample for us.' Her eyes looked past Throckmorton. 'My cousin hath a
+steadfast nature to be gone on such pilgrimages. And I would the
+discovery were made, this King being King and I his Queen; rather that
+than the regaining of France; more good should come to Christendom.'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam Howard,' Throckmorton grinned at her, 'if men of our day and
+kin do come upon any city where yet remaineth the golden age, very
+soon shall be shewn the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> miracle of the corruptibility of gold. The
+rod of our corruption no golden state shall defy.'</p>
+
+<p>She smiled friendlily at him.</p>
+
+<p>'There we part company,' she said. 'For I do believe God made this
+world to be bettered. I think, and answer your question, I could never
+ha' loved you. For you be a child of the new Italians and I a disciple
+of the older holders of that land, who wrote, Cato voicing it for
+them, "Virtue spreadeth even as leaven leaveneth bread; a little lump
+in your flour in the end shall redeem all the loaf of the Republic."'</p>
+
+<p>He smiled for a moment noiselessly, his mouth open but no sound coming
+out. Then he coaxed her:</p>
+
+<p>'Answer my two other questions.'</p>
+
+<p>'Knight,' she answered; 'for the truth of the last, ask, with
+thumbscrews, the witnesses ye found in Lincolnshire, and believe them
+as ye list. Or ask at the mouth of a draw-well if fishes be below in
+the water before ye ask a woman if she be chaste. For the other,
+consider of my actions hereafter if I do love the King's person.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, then, I shall never have kiss from mouth of thine,' he said, and
+pulled his cap down over his eyes to depart.</p>
+
+<p>'When the sun shall set in the east,' she retorted, and gave him her
+hand to kiss.</p>
+
+<p>Margot Poins raised her large, fair head from her stitching after he
+was gone, and asked:</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me truly how ye love the King's person. Often I ha' thought of
+it; for I could love only a man more thin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Child,' Katharine answered, 'his Highness distilleth from his person
+a make of majesty; there is no other such a man in Christendom. His
+Highness culleth from one's heart a make of pity&mdash;for, for sure, there
+is not in Christendom a man more tried or more calling to be led
+Godwards. The Greek writers had a myth, that the two wings of Love
+were made of Awe and Pity. Flaws I may find in him; but hot anger
+rises in my heart if I hear him miscalled. I will not perjure myself
+at his bidding; but being with him, I will kneel to him unbidden. I
+will not,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> to be his queen, have word in a divorce, for I have no
+truck with divorces; but I will humble myself to his Queen that is to
+pray her give me ease and him if the marriage be not consummated. For,
+so I love him that I will humble mine own self in the dust; but so I
+love love and its nobleness that, though I must live and die a
+cookmaid, I will not stoop in evil ways.'</p>
+
+<p>'There is no man worth that guise of love,' Margot answered, her voice
+coming gruff and heavy, 'not the magister himself. I ha' smote one
+kitchenmaid i' the face this noon for making eyes at him.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>'My mad nephew,' Master Printer Badge said to Throckmorton, 'shall
+travel down from his chamber anon. When ye shall see the pickle he is
+in ye shall understand wherefore it needeth ten minutes to his
+downcoming.' To Throckmorton's query he shook his dark, bearded head
+and muttered: 'Nay; ye used him for your own purposes. Ye should know
+better than I what is like to have befallen him.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton swallowed his haste and leant back against the edge of a
+press that was not at work. Of these presses there were four there in
+the middle of the room: tall, black, compounded of iron and wood, the
+square inwards of each rose and fell rhythmically above the flutter of
+the printed leaves that the journeymen withdrew as they rose, and
+replaced, white, unsullied and damp as they came together again. Along
+the walls the apprentice setters stood before the black formes and
+with abstruse, deliberate or hesitating expressions, made swift
+snatches at the little leaden dice. The sifting sound of the leads
+going home and the creak of the presses with the heavy wheeze of one
+printer, huge and grizzled like a walrus, pulling the press-lever back
+and bending forward to run his eyes across<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> the type&mdash;wheeze, creak
+and click&mdash;made a level and monotonous sound.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye drill well your men,' Throckmorton said lazily, and smoothed his
+white fingers, holding them up against the light, as if they of all
+things most concerned him.</p>
+
+<p>He had received that day at Hampton a letter from the printer here in
+Austin Friars, sent hastening by the hands of the pressman whose idle
+machine he now leant against. 'Sir,' the letter said, 'my nephew saith
+urgently that T.C. is landed at Greenwich. He might not stay him. What
+this importeth best is yknown to your worshipful self. By the swaying
+of the sea which late he overpassed, being tempestive, and by other
+things, my nephew is rendered incoherent. That God may save you and
+guide your counsels and those of your master to the more advantaging
+of the Protestant religion that now, praised be God! standeth higher
+in the realm than ever it did, is the prayer of Jno. Badge the
+Younger.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton had hastened there to the hedges of Austin Friars at the
+fastest of his bargemen's oars. The printer had told him that, but
+that the business was the Lord Privy Seal's and, as he understood,
+went to the advantaging of Protestantism and the casting down of
+Popery, never would he ha' sent with the letter his own printer
+journeyman, busied as they were with printing of his great Bible in
+English.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is an idle press,' he said, pointing at the mute and lugubrious
+instrument of black, 'and I doubt I ha' done wrong.' His moody brow
+beneath the black, dishevelled hair became overcast so that it
+wrinkled into great furrows like crowns. 'I doubt whether I have done
+wrong,' and he folded his immense bare arms, on which the hair was
+like a black boar's, and pondered. 'If I thought I had done wrong, I
+might not sleep seven nights.'</p>
+
+<p>A printer yawned at his loom, and the great dark man shouted at him:</p>
+
+<p>'Foul knave, ye show indolence! Wot ye that ye be printing the Word of
+God to send abroad in this land?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> Wot ye that for this ye shall stand
+with the elect in Heaven?' He turned upon Throckmorton. 'Sir,' he
+said, 'your master Cromwell advanceth the cause, therefore I ha'
+served him in this matter of the letter. But, sir, I am doubtful that,
+by losing one moment from the printing of the pure Word of God, I have
+not lost more time than a year's work of thy master.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton rubbed gently the long hand that he still held against
+the light.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye fall away from Privy Seal?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The printer gazed at him with glowering and suffused eyes, choking in
+his throat. He raised an enormous hand before Throckmorton's face.</p>
+
+<p>'Courtier,' he cried, 'with this hand I ha' stopped an ox, smiting it
+between the eyes. Wo befal the man, traitor to Privy Seal, that I do
+meet and betwixt whose eyes this hand doth fall.' The hand quivered in
+the air with fury. 'I can raise a thousand 'prentices and a thousand
+journeymen to save Privy Seal from any peril; I can raise ten thousand
+citizens, and ten thousand to-morrow again from the shires by
+pamphlets of my printing; I can raise a mighty army thus to shield him
+from Papists and the devil's foul contrivances. An I were a Papist, I
+would pray to him, were he dead, as he were a saint.' Throckmorton
+moved his face a line or two backwards from the gesticulating ham of a
+hand, and blinked his eyes. 'My gold were Privy Seal's an he needed
+it; my blood were his and my prayers. Nevertheless,' and his voice
+took a more exalted note, 'one letter of the Word of God, God aiding
+it, is of more avail than Privy Seal, or I, and all those I can love,
+or he. With his laws and his nose for treason he hath smitten the
+Amalekites above the belt; but a letter of the Word of God can smite
+them hip and thigh, God helping.' He seemed again to choke in his
+throat, and said more quietly: 'But ye shall not think a man in land
+better loveth this godly flail of the monks.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I do think ye would stand up against the King's self,'
+Throckmorton said, 'and I am glad to hear it.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Against all printers and temporal powers,' the printer answered.
+Amongst the apprentices and journeymen a murmur arose of acclamation
+or of denial, some being of opinion that the King was divine in origin
+and inspiration, but for the most part they supported their master,
+and Throckmorton's blue eyes travelled from one to the other.</p>
+
+<p>But the printer heaved a sigh of satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>'God be thanked,' he said, 'that keepeth the hearts of princes and
+guideth with His breath all temporal occurrences.' Throckmorton was
+about to touch his cap at the name of Omnipotence, but remembering
+that he was among Protestants changed the direction of his hand and
+scratched his cheek among the little hairs of his beard; 'the signs
+are favourable that our good King's Highness shall still incline to
+our cause and Privy Seal's.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton said: 'Anan?'</p>
+
+<p>'Aye,' the printer said heavily, 'good news is come of Cleves.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye ha' news from Cleves?' Throckmorton asked swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>'From Cleves not,' the printer answered; 'but from the Court by way of
+Paris and thence from Cleves.' And to the interested spy he related,
+accurately enough, that a make of mouthing, mowing, magister of the
+Latin tongues had come from Paris, having stolen copies of the Cleves
+envoy's letters in that town, and that these letters said that Cleves
+was fast inclined to the true Schmalkaldner league of Lutherans and
+would pay tribute truly, but no more than that do fealty to the
+accursed leaguer of the Pope called Charles the Emperor.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton inclined his cap at an angle to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>'How had ye that news that was so secret?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>The printer shook his dark beard with an air of heavy pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye have a great organisation of spies,' he said, 'but better is the
+whisper of God among the faithful.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'the magister Udal hath to his
+sweetheart thy niece Margot Poins.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>At her name the printer's eyes filled with a sudden and violent heat.</p>
+
+<p>'Seek another channel,' he cried, and waved his arms at the low
+ceiling. 'Before the face of Almighty God I swear that I ha' no truck
+with Margot my niece. Since she has been sib with the whore of the
+devil called Kat Howard, never hath she told me a secret through her
+paramour or elsewise. A shut head the heavy logget keepeth&mdash;let her
+not come within reach of my hand.' He swayed back upon his feet. 'Let
+her not come,' he said. He bent his brows upon Throckmorton. 'I
+marvel,' he uttered, 'that ye who are so faithful a servant o' Privy
+Seal's can have truck with the brother of my niece Margot.'</p>
+
+<p>'Printer,' Throckmorton answered him, 'ye know well that when the
+leaven of Protestantism hath entered in there, houses are divided
+against themselves. A wench may be a foul Papist and serve, if ye
+will, Kat Howard; but her brother shall yet be an indifferent good
+servant for me.'</p>
+
+<p>The printer, who had tolerated that his men should hear his panegyric
+of the Bible and Privy Seal, scowled at them now so that again the
+arms swung to and fro with the levers, the leads clicked. He put his
+great head nearer Throckmorton's and muttered:</p>
+
+<p>'Are ye certain my nephew serveth ye well? He was never wont to favour
+our cause, and, before ye sent him on this errand, he was wont to cry
+out in his cups that he was disgraced for having carried letters
+betwixt Kat Howard and the King. If this were true he was no friend of
+ours.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it was true,' Throckmorton uttered negligently.</p>
+
+<p>The printer caught at the spy's wrist, and the measure of his
+earnestness showed the extent of his passion for Privy Seal's cause.</p>
+
+<p>'Use him no more,' he said. 'Both children of my sister were ever
+indifferents. They shall not serve thee well.'</p>
+
+<p>'It was ever Privy Seal's motto and habit to use for his servitors
+those that had their necks in his noose. Such men serve him ever the
+best.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The printer shook his head gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>'I wager my nephew will yet play the traitor to Privy Seal.'</p>
+
+<p>'I will do it myself ere that,' and Throckmorton yawned, throwing his
+head back.</p>
+
+<p>'The scaldhead is there,' the printer said; and in the doorway there
+stood, supporting himself by the lintel, the young Poins. His face was
+greenish white; a plaster was upon his shaven head; he held up one
+foot as if it pained him to set it to the floor. Through the
+house-place where sat the aged grandfather with his cap pulled over
+his brows, pallid, ironical and seeming indescribably ancient, the
+printer led the spy. The boy hobbled after them, neglecting the old
+man's words:</p>
+
+<p>'Ha' no truck with men of Privy Seal's. Privy Seal hath stolen my
+ground.' In the long shed where they ate all, printer, grandfather,
+apprentices and journeymen, the printer thrust open the door with a
+heavy gesture, entering first and surveying the long trestles.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye can speak here,' he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She
+bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a
+hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey
+woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her
+crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had
+work like other folk, and had been with the printer's mother eight
+years before he was born. His voice, raised to its height, was useless
+to drown her words. She could not hear him; and shrugging his
+shoulders, he said to Throckmorton that she heard less than the walls,
+and that was the best place he had for them to talk in. He slammed the
+door behind him.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton set his foot upon the bench that ran between table and
+wall. He scowled fell-ly at the boy, so that his brows came down below
+his nose-top. 'Ye ha' not stayed him,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>The boy burst forth in a torrent of rage and despair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> He cursed
+Throckmorton to his face for having sent him upon this errand.</p>
+
+<p>'I ha' been beaten by a gatewarden! by a knave! by a ploughman's son
+from Lincolnshire!' he cried. 'A' cracked my skull with a pikestave
+and kicked me about the ribs when I lay on the ship's floor, sick like
+a pig. God curse the day you sent me to Calais, a gentleman's son, to
+be beat by a boor!' He broke off and began again. 'God curse you and
+the day I saw you! God curse Kat Howard and the day I carried her
+letter! God curse my sister Margot and the day she gar'd me carry the
+letters! And may a swift death of the pox take off Kat Howard's
+cousin&mdash;may he rot and stink through the earth above his grave. He
+would not fight with me, but aboard a ship when I was sick set a
+Lincolnshire logget to beat me, a gentleman's son!'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, thy gentility shall survive it,' Throckmorton said. 'But an it
+will not have more beating to its back, ye shall tell me where ye left
+T. Culpepper.'</p>
+
+<p>'At Greenwich,' said the young Poins, and vomited forth curses. The
+old woman came from her pots to peer at the plasters on his skull, and
+then returned to the fire gibbering and wailing that she was not in
+that house plasters for to make.</p>
+
+<p>'Knave,' Throckmorton said, 'an ye will not tell me your tale swiftly
+ye shall right now to the Tower. It is life and death to a leaden
+counter an I find not Culpepper ere nightfall.'</p>
+
+<p>The young Poins stretched forth his arm and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>'Part is bruises and part is sickness of the waves,' he muttered; 'but
+if I make not shift to slit his weazand ere nightfall, pox take all my
+advancement for ever. I will tell my weary tale.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton paused, held his head down, fingered his beard, and said:</p>
+
+<p>'When left ye him at Greenwich?'</p>
+
+<p>'This day at dawn,' Poins answered, and cursed again.</p>
+
+<p>'Drunk or sober?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Drunk as a channel codfish.'</p>
+
+<p>The old woman came, a sheaf of jack-knives in her arms, muttering
+along the table.</p>
+
+<p>'Get you to bed,' she croaked. 'I will not ha' warmed new sheets for
+thee, and thee not use them. Get thee to bed.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton pushed her back, and caught the boy by the jacket near
+the throat.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye shall tell me the tale as we go,' he said, and punctuated his
+words by shakes. 'But, oaf that I trusted to do a man's work, ye swing
+beneath a tree this night an we find not the man ye failed to stay.'</p>
+
+<p>The young Poins&mdash;he panted out the story as he trotted, wofully
+keeping pace to Throckmorton's great strides between the hedges&mdash;had
+stuck to Culpepper as to his shadow, in Calais town. At each turn he
+had showed the warrant to be master of the lighters; he had handed
+over the gold that Throckmorton had given him. But Culpepper had
+turned a deaf ear to him, and, setting up a violent friendship with
+the Lincolnshire gatewarden over pots of beer in a brewhouse, had
+insisted on buying Hogben out of his company and taking him over the
+sea to be witness of his wedding with Katharine Howard. Dogged, and
+thrusting his word and his papers in at every turn, the young Poins
+had pursued them aboard a ship bound for the Thames.</p>
+
+<p>This story came out in jerks and with divagations, but it was evident
+to Throckmorton that the young man had stuck to his task with a dogged
+obtuseness enough to have given offence to a dozen Culpeppers. He had
+begged him, in the inn, to take the lieutenancy of the Calais
+lighters; he had trotted at Culpepper's elbow in the winding streets;
+he had stood in his very path on the gangway to the ship that was to
+take them to Greenwich. At every step he had pulled out of his poke
+the commission for the lieutenancy&mdash;so that Throckmorton had in his
+mind, by the time they sat in the stern of the swift barge, the image
+of Culpepper as a savage bulldog pursued along streets and up
+ship-sides<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> by a gambolling bear cub that pulled at his ears and
+danced before him. And he could credit Culpepper only with a saturnine
+and drunken good humour at having very successfully driven Cardinal
+Pole out of Paris. That was the only way in which he could account for
+the fact that Culpepper had not spitted the boy at the first
+onslaught. But for the sheer ill-luck of his sword's having been
+stolen, he might have done it, and been laid by the heels for six
+months in Calais. For Calais being a frontier town of the English
+realm, it was an offence very serious there for English to draw sword
+upon English, however molested.</p>
+
+<p>It was that upon which Throckmorton had counted; and he cursed the day
+when Culpepper had entered the thieves' hut outside Ardres. But for
+that Culpepper must have drawn upon the boy; he must have been lying
+then in irons in Calais holdfast. As it was, there was this long
+chase. God knew whether they would find him in Greenwich; God knew
+where they would find him. He had gone to Greenwich, doubtless,
+because when he had left England the Court had been in Greenwich, and
+he expected there to find his cousin Kat. He would fly to Hampton as
+soon as he knew she was at Hampton; but how soon would he know it? By
+Poins' account, he was too drunk to stand, and had been carried ashore
+on the back of his Lincolnshire henchman. Therefore he might be lying
+in the streets of Greenwich&mdash;and Greenwich was a small place. But
+different men carried their liquor so differently, and Culpepper might
+go ashore too drunk to stand and yet reach Hampton sober enow to be
+like a raging bear by eventide.</p>
+
+<p>That above all things Throckmorton dreaded. For that evening Katharine
+would be come back from the interview with Anne of Cleves at Windsor;
+and whether she had succeeded or not with her quest, the King was
+certain to be with her in her room&mdash;to rejoice on the one hand, or
+violently to plead his cause on the other. And Throckmorton knew his
+King well enough&mdash;he knew, that is to say, his private image of his
+King well enough&mdash;to be assured that a meeting between the King then
+and Cul<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>pepper there, must lead Katharine to her death. He considered
+the blind, immense body of jealousy that the King was. And, at
+Hampton, Privy Seal would have all avenues open for Culpepper to come
+to his cousin. Privy Seal had detailed Viridus, who had had the matter
+all the while in hand, to inflame Culpepper's mind with jealousy so
+that he should run shouting through the Court with a monstrous outcry.</p>
+
+<p>It was because of this that Throckmorton dreaded to await Culpepper at
+Hampton; there he was sure enow to find him, sooner or later, but
+there would be the many spies of Privy Seal's around all the avenues
+to the palace. He might himself send away the spies, but it was too
+dangerous; for, say what he would, if he held Culpepper from Katharine
+Howard, Cromwell would visit it mercilessly upon him.</p>
+
+<p>He turned the nose of his barge down the broadening, shining grey
+stream towards Greenwich. The wind blew freshly up from the sea; the
+tide ran down, and Throckmorton pulled his bonnet over his eyes to
+shade them from sea and breeze, and the wind that the rowers made. For
+it was the swiftest barge of the kingdom: long, black, and narrow,
+with eight watermen rowing, eight to relieve them, and always eight
+held in reserve at all landing stages for that barge's crew. So well
+Privy Seal had organised even the mutinous men of the river that his
+service might be swift and sudden. Throckmorton had set down the bower
+at the stern, that the wind might have less hold.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless it blew cold, and he borrowed a cloak and a pottle of
+sack to warm the young Poins, who had run with him capless and without
+a coat. For, listening to the boy's disjointed tale out in the broad
+reaches below London, Throckmorton recognised that if the young man
+were incredibly a fool he was incredibly steadfast too, and a
+steadfast fool is a good tool to retain for simple work. He had,
+too&mdash;the boy&mdash;a valuable hatred for Culpepper that he allowed to
+transfer itself to Katharine herself: a brooding hatred that hung in
+his blue eyes as he gazed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> downwards at the barge floor or spat at the
+planks of the side. Its ferocity was augmented by the patches of
+plaster that stretched over his skull and dropped over one blonde
+eyebrow.</p>
+
+<p>'Cod!' he ejaculated. 'Cod! Cod! Cod!' and waved a fist ferociously at
+the rushes that spiked the waters of the river in their new green.
+'They waited till I was too sick of the sickness of the sea, too sick
+to stand&mdash;more mortal sick than ever man was. I hung to a rope and
+might not let go. And Cod! Cod! Cod! Culpepper lay under the
+sterncastle in a hole and set his Lincolnshire beast to baste my
+ribs.'</p>
+
+<p>He spat again with gloomy quiescence into the bottom of the boat.</p>
+
+<p>'In the mid of the sea,' he said, 'where the ship pointed at heaven
+and then at the fiend his home, I hung to a rope and was basted! And
+that whore's son lay in his hole and laughed. For I was a cub, says
+he, and not fit for a man's converse or striking.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton's eyes glimmered a little.</p>
+
+<p>'You have been used as befits no gentleman's son,' he said. 'I will
+see to the righting of your wrongs.'</p>
+
+<p>Poins swore with an amazing obscenity.</p>
+
+<p>'Shall right 'em myself,' he said, 'so I meet T. Culpepper in this
+flesh as a man.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton leaned gently forward and touched his arm.</p>
+
+<p>'I will right thy wrongs,' he said, 'and see to thine advancement; for
+if in this service you ha' failed, yet ha' you been persistent and
+feal.' He dabbled one white hand in the water, 'Nevertheless,' he said
+slowly, 'I would have you consider that your service in this ends
+here.' He spoke still more slowly: 'I would have you to understand
+this. Aforetime I gave you certain instructions as to using your sword
+upon this Culpepper if you might not otherwise stay him.' He held up
+one finger. 'Now mark; your commission is ceased. You shall no longer
+for my service draw sword, knife or dagger, stave nor club, upon this
+man.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Poins looked at him with gloomy surprise that was changing swiftly to
+hot rage.</p>
+
+<p>'I am under oath to a certain one to use no violence upon this man,'
+Throckmorton said, 'and to encourage no other to do violence.'</p>
+
+<p>Poins thrust his round, brick-red brow out like a turkey cock's from
+the boat cloak into Throckmorton's face.</p>
+
+<p>'I am under no oath of yourn!' he shouted. Throckmorton shrugged his
+shoulders and wagged one finger at him. 'No oath o' yourn!' the boy
+repeated. 'God knows who ye be or why it is so. But I ha' heard ye ha'
+my neck in a noose; I ha' heard ye be dangerous. Yet, before God, I
+swear in your teeth that if I meet this man to his face, or come upon
+his filthy back, drunk, awake, asleep, I will run him through the
+belly and send his soul to hell. He had me, a gentleman's son, basted
+by a hind!'</p>
+
+<p>This long speech exhausted his breath, and he fell back panting.</p>
+
+<p>'I had as soon ye had my head as not,' he muttered desperately, 'since
+I have been basted.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'for your private troubles, I know
+naught of them. There may be some that will thank ye or advance ye for
+spitting of this gallant. But I am not one of them. Nevertheless will
+I be your friend, whom ye would have served better an ye could.'</p>
+
+<p>He smiled in his inward manner and went to polishing of his nails. A
+little later he felt the bruises on the boy's arms, and stayed the
+barge for a moment the stage where, swiftly, eight oarsmen took the
+places of the eight that had rowed two shifts out of three&mdash;stayed the
+barge for time enough to purchase for the boy a ham, a little ginger,
+some raw eggs and sack.</p>
+
+<p>The barge rushed forward, with the jar of oars and the sound, like
+satin tearing, of the water at the bows, across the ruffled reaches of
+the broad waters. The gilded roofs, the gabled fronts of the palace at
+Greenwich called Placentia, winked in the fresh sunlight. Throckmorton
+had a great fever of excitement, but having sworn to let his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> oarsmen
+be scourged with leathern thongs if they made no more efforts, he lay
+back upon the purple cushions and toyed with the strings of the yellow
+ensign that floated behind them. It was his purpose to put heart in
+the boy and to feed his rage, so that alternately he promised to give
+him the warding of the Queen's door&mdash;a notable advancement&mdash;or
+assented to the lad's gloom when he said that he was fit only for the
+stables, having been beaten by a groom. So that at the quay the boy
+sprang forth mightily, swaying the boat behind him. The trace of his
+sea-sickness had left him; he swore to tear Culpepper's throat apart
+as if it had been capon flesh.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton swiftly quartered the gardens, sending, in his passage
+beneath the tall palace arch, a dozen men to search all the paths for
+any drunkards that might there lie hidden. He sent the young Poins to
+search the three alehouses of the village where seamen new landed sat
+to drink. But, having found the sergeant of void palaces asleep in a
+small cell at the house end, he learned that two men, speaking
+Lincolnshire, had been there two hours agone, questing for Master
+Viridus and swearing that they had rid France of the devil and were to
+be made great lords for it. The sergeant, an old, corpulent Spaniard
+who had been in England forty years, having come with the dead Queen
+Katharine and been given this honourable post because the queen had
+loved him, folded his fat hands across his round stomach as he sat on
+the floor, his legs stretched out, his head against the hangings.</p>
+
+<p>'I might not make out if they were lords or what manner of cavaliers,'
+he said. 'They sought some woman whom they would not name, and ran
+through a score of empty rooms. God knows whither they went.'</p>
+
+<p>He pulled his nightcap further over his head, nodded at Throckmorton,
+and resumed his meditations.</p>
+
+<p>There was no finding them in the still and empty corridors of the
+palace; but at the gateway he heard that the two men had clamoured to
+know where they might purchase raw shinbone of beef, and had been
+directed to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> house of a widow Emden. There Throckmorton found
+their tracks, for the sacking that covered the window-holes was burst
+outwards, beef-bones lay on the road before the door, and, within, the
+widow, black, begrimed and very drunk, lay inverted on the clay of the
+floor, her head beneath the three legs of the chopping block, so that
+she was as if in a pillory, but too fuddled to do more than wave her
+legs. A prentice who crouched, with a broken head, in a corner of the
+filthy room, said that a man from Lincolnshire, all in Lincoln green,
+with a red beard, had wrought this ruin of beef-bones that he had cast
+through the windows, and had then comforted the screaming widow with
+much strong drink from a black bottle. They had wanted raw beef to
+make them valiant against some wedding, and they threw the beef-bones
+through the sacking because they said the place stunk villainously.
+They seemed, these two, to have visited every hovel in the damp and
+squalid village that lay before the palace gates. They had kicked beds
+of straw over the floors, thrown crocks at the pigs, melted pewter
+plates in the fires.</p>
+
+<p>For pure joy at being afoot and ashore in England again, they had cast
+coins into all the houses and hovels of mud; they had brought out cans
+and casks from the alehouses, and cast pies into the streets, and
+caused the dismal ward to cry out: 'God save free Englishmen!' 'Curse
+the sea!' and 'A plague of Frenchmen that be devils!'</p>
+
+<p>And the after effects of their carnival menaced Throckmorton, for from
+the miserable huts, where ragged women were rearranging the scattered
+straws and wiping egg-yolk from the broken benches, there issued a
+ragged crowd of men with tangled and muddy hair and boys unclothed
+save for sacks that whistled about their lean hips. The liquor that
+Culpepper and Hogben had distributed had rendered them curious or full
+of mutiny and discontent, and they surrounded Throckmorton's brilliant
+figure in its purple velvet, with the gold neck-chains and the
+jewelled hat, and some of them asked for money, and some called him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>
+'Frenchman,' and some knew him for a spy, and some caught up stones
+and jawbones furtively to cast at him.</p>
+
+<p>But, arrogant and with his head set high, he borrowed a whip from a
+packman that shouldered his way through the street, and lashed at
+their legs and ragged heads. The crowd slunk, one by one, back under
+the darkness that was beneath the roofs of reeds, and the idea of a
+good day that for a moment had risen in their minds at Culpepper's
+legendary approach, sank down and flickered out once more in their
+hungry bellies and fever-dimmed minds.</p>
+
+<p>'God!' he said, 'we will have hangmen here,' and pursued his search.
+He met the young Poins at the head of the village street, and learned
+from him that Culpepper and his supporter had hired horses to ride to
+Hampton and had galloped away three hours before, holding legs of
+mutton by the feet and using them for cudgels to beat their horses.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!' the boy said, 'an I had money to hire horses I would
+overtake them, if I overtook not the devil erstwhile.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton pulled out his purple purse that was embroidered with
+silk crosses. He extracted from it four crowns of gold.</p>
+
+<p>'Lad,' he said, 'I do not give thee gold to follow Kat Howard's cousin
+with. This is thy wage for the service thou hast done aforetime.' He
+reflected for a moment. 'If thou wilt have a horse&mdash;but I urge it
+not&mdash;to go to Hampton where thy fellows of the guard are&mdash;for, having
+served well ye may once more and without danger rejoin your mates&mdash;if
+ye will have such a horse, go to the horseward of the palace and say I
+sent you. Withouten doubt ye are mad to hasten back to your mates, a
+commendable desire. And the King's horses shall hasten faster than any
+hired horse&mdash;so that ye may easily overtake a man that hath but two
+hours' start towards Hampton.'</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Poins was already hastening towards the gateway, Throckmorton
+cried to him at a distance:</p>
+
+<p>'Ask at each cross-road guard-house and at all ferries and bridges if
+some have passed that way; and at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> landing-stage if perchance
+caballeros have altered their desires and had it in their minds to
+take to boats.'</p>
+
+<p>He sped through the wind to the riverside, set again his oars in
+motion and swept up the tide. It had turned and they made good
+progress.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Queen sat in her painted gallery at Richmond, and all around her
+her maids sewed and span. The gallery was long; along the panels that
+faced the windows were angels painted in red and blue and gold, and in
+the three centre squares St. George, whose face was the face of the
+King's Highness, in one issued from a yellow city upon a green plain;
+in one with a cherry-coloured lance slew a green dragon from whose
+mouth issued orange-coloured flames; and in one carried away, that he
+might wed her in a rose-coloured tower on a hillside, a princess in a
+black gown with hair painted of real gold.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst the maids sewed in silence the Queen sat still upon a stool.
+Light-skinned, not very stout, with a smooth oval face, she had laid
+her folded hands on the gold and pearl embroidery of her lap and gazed
+away into the distance, thinking. She sat so still that not even the
+lawn tips of her wide hood with its invisible, minute sewings of
+white, quivered. Her gown was of cloth of gold, but since her being in
+England she had learned to wear a train, and in its folds on the
+ground slept a small Italian greyhound. About her neck she had a
+partelet set with green jewels and with pearls. Her maids sewed; the
+spinning-wheels ate away the braided flax from the spindles, and the
+sunlight poured down through the high windows. She was a very fair
+woman then, and many that had seen her there sit had marvelled of the
+King's disfavour for her; but she was accounted wondrous still,
+sitting thus by the hour with the little hounds in the folds of her
+dress. Only her eyes with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span> their half-closed lids gave to her lost
+gaze the appearance of a humour and irony that she never was heard to
+voice.</p>
+
+<p>They turned to the opening door, a flush came into her face, spread
+slowly down her white neck and was lost in the white opening of her
+shoulder-pieces, and she greeted Katharine Howard, kneeling at her
+feet, with an inclination of the head so tiny that you could not see
+the motion. Her eyes remained motionlessly upon the girl's face; only
+the lids moved suddenly when Katharine spoke to her in German.</p>
+
+<p>'You speak my tongue?' the Queen asked, motionless still and speaking
+very low. Katharine remained upon her knees.</p>
+
+<p>'I learned to read books in German when I was a child,' Katharine
+said; 'and since you came I have spoken an hour a day with a German
+astronomer that I might give you pleasure if so be it chanced.'</p>
+
+<p>'So it is well,' the Queen said. 'Not many have so done.'</p>
+
+<p>'God has endowed me with an ease of tongues,' Katharine answered;
+'many others would have ventured it for your Grace's pleasure. But
+your tongue is a hard tongue.'</p>
+
+<p>'I have needed to learn hard sentences in yours,' the Queen said, 'and
+have had many masters many hours of the day. I will have you stand up
+upon your feet.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine remained upon her knees.</p>
+
+<p>'I will have you stand up upon your feet,' the Queen repeated.</p>
+
+<p>'I have a prayer to make,' Katharine answered.</p>
+
+<p>The Queen looked for a minute straight before her, then slowly turned
+her head to one side. When her gaze rested upon her women they rose
+and, with a clatter of their feet and a rustle of garments, carrying
+their white sewings and their spinning-wheels stilled, went away down
+the gallery. The German lord of Overstein, bearded and immense in the
+then German fashion, came from behind the retreating women to stand
+before the Queen signifying that he would offer his interpretership.
+She dismissed him without speak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>ing, letting her eyes rest upon him.
+She was the most silent woman in the world, but all people said that
+no queen had women and men servers that needed fewer words or so
+discreetly did their devoirs.</p>
+
+<p>The silence and the bright light of the sun swathed these two women's
+figures, so that Katharine seemed to hear the flutter against the
+window-glass of a brown butterfly that, having sheltered in the hall
+all winter, now sought to take a part in the new brightness of the
+world. Katharine kept her knees, her eyes upon the floor; the Queen,
+motionless and soft, let her eyes rest upon Katharine's hood. From
+time to time they travelled to her face, to the medallion that hung
+from her neck, and to her dark green skirt of velvet that lay around
+her upon the floor. The butterfly sought another window; the Queen
+spoke at last.</p>
+
+<p>'You seek my queenship'; and in her still voice there was neither
+passion, nor pity, nor question, nor resignation.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine raised her eyes: they saw the imprisoned butterfly, but she
+found no words.</p>
+
+<p>'You have more courage than I,' the Queen said.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she made a single gesture with her hands, as if she swept
+something from her lap: some invisible dust&mdash;and that was all. Still
+Katharine did not move nor speak; she had prepared speeches&mdash;speeches
+against the Queen's being disdainful, enraged, or dissolved in tears.
+She had read in books all night from Aulus Gellius to Cicero to get
+wisdom. But here there were no speeches called for; no speeches could
+be made. The significance of the Queen's gesture of sweeping dust from
+her lap slowly overwhelmed her.</p>
+
+<p>'You have more courage than I,' the Queen repeated, as though slowly
+she were making a catalogue of Katharine's qualities to set
+dispassionately against her own; and again her eyes moved over
+Katharine. With her first swift gesture she drew from the stool-top a
+pamphlet of writing, upon which she had sat. Her face grew slowly red.</p>
+
+<p>'It did not need this long writing against my person,' she said. 'I
+take it grievously.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Katharine moved upon her knees as if she had been stung by an
+intolerable accusation.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!&mdash;&mdash;' she began to say.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, I believe you had no part in the writing,' the Queen
+interrupted her. 'Yet the more I say you have courage: to wed a man
+that will write lies of another woman's body and powers.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine sat still; the Queen's slow anger faded slowly away.</p>
+
+<p>'I do not see why this King thinks you more fair than I be,' she said
+dispassionately; 'but what draweth the love of man to woman is not yet
+known.'</p>
+
+<p>Again she repeated:</p>
+
+<p>'There was no need of this writing against me. The King has never
+played the husband's part to me; I would have you tell him, if I go in
+danger from him, that, for me, he may go his ways. I have no mind to
+stay him, nor to be a queen in this country. Here, it is said, they
+slay queens.'</p>
+
+<p>'If I will be Queen, it is that God may bless this realm and King with
+the old faith again,' Katharine said. Anne's eyelids narrowed.</p>
+
+<p>'It is best known to yourself why you will be Queen,' she said. 'It is
+best known to God what faith he will have in this your realm. I know
+not what faith he liketh best, nor yet what side of a queen's
+functions most commendeth itself unto you.'</p>
+
+<p>She seemed to withdraw herself more and more from any struggle, as if
+she were a novice that took an invisible veil&mdash;and she uttered only
+requests as to the world into which she would withdraw from this one.</p>
+
+<p>'I am not minded to go back to Cleves,' she stipulated; for she had
+thought much and long in her stillnesses of what she would have; 'the
+Duke, my brother, is to blame for having brought me to this pass.
+Moreover, he is not able to defend his lands; so that if, with a
+proper establishing and revenue, I go back to Cleves, the Emperor
+Charles, who hath a tooth for gold, may too easily undo me. I would
+have a castle here in England; for England is an island, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> well
+defended in all its avenues, and its King a man of honour and his word
+to such as never cross him, as never will I.'</p>
+
+<p>She spoke slowly, as if in her mind she were ticking off little notes
+pencilled on her tablets; for since she could not read she had a
+memory that she could trust to. 'I will have a castle built me not
+strong enough to withstand the King's forces, since those I make no
+call to withstand, but strong enough to guard me against robber bands
+and the insurrections that are ordinary. Upon a slope that shall take
+the sun in winter, with trees about beneath which I may sit in the
+heat of summer-time. I will have a good show of servants, because I am
+a princess of noble lineage; I will have most of them Germans that I
+may speak easily with them, but some English, understanding German, so
+that the King may be advised I work no treasons against him. From time
+to time I will have the King to visit and to talk with me courteously
+and fairly as well he can: this in order to counterpart and destroy
+the report that I smell foul and am so ill to see that it makes a man
+ill&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes, resting upon Katharine, closed slightly again with a tiny
+malice.</p>
+
+<p>'I will have you not to fear that, upon such visits, I will use wiles
+to entrap the King. I do not favour him. I am not content to be queen
+of this country. It is as fair as my own country. In summer it is more
+cool, in the winter time more temperate. Meats here are good; cooks
+are better than with us. What a woman and a princess in this world
+would have is here all at the best, save only its men, and the most
+dangerous of all its men is the King.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine's ready anger rose at her words, though before the Queen's
+speeches had flowed above her head and left her speechless and
+ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>'The King is known throughout Christendom,' she said, 'for the
+royallest prince, the noblest speaker, the most princely horseman, the
+most munificent and the most learned in the law.'</p>
+
+<p>'That he may be,' the Queen smiled faintly, 'to them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> that have never
+crossed him. It has been my ill-destiny so to do.'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam,' Katharine cried out, 'never man was so crossed, ill-served,
+evilly-led, or betrayed. Ye may not mislike him if at times he be
+petulant. I do the more praise him for it.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you do love him,' the Queen said. 'I have no cause so to do.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine caught at one of her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Your Grace,' she said, 'Queen and high potentate, this realm calleth
+out that some one person do lead the King aright. Before God, I think
+I do not seek powers or temporal crowns. Maybe it is sweet to sit in a
+painted gallery and be a queen, but I have very little considered it;
+only, here is a King that crieth for the peace of God, a people that
+clamoureth aloud to be led back to the ways of God, a land parched for
+rain, swept by gales of wind and pestilences, bewailing the lost
+favour of God, and the Holy Church devastated that standeth between
+God and the realm.' The Queen listened to her as if, having made her
+stipulations, she had no more personal interest in the matter and were
+listening to the tale of a journey. 'Before God!' Katharine said, 'if
+you were not a virgin for the King, or if the King have coerced you to
+forswearing yourself in this matter, I would not be the King's wife,
+but his concubine. Only, sore is his need of me; he hath sworn it many
+times, and I do believe it, that I best, if anyone may, may give him
+rest with my converse and lead him to peace. He hath sworn that never
+woman save I made him so clearly to see his path to goodness; and
+never woman save I, at convenient seasons, have made him so forget his
+many cares.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, you have still more courage than I had thought,' the Queen said,
+'to take a man so dangerous upon so little assurance.' She moved the
+hand that Katharine touched in her lap neither forward nor away; but
+at last she said:</p>
+
+<p>'I am neither of your country nor for it; neither of your faith nor
+against it. But, being here, here I do sojourn. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> came not here of
+mine own will. Men have handled me as they would, as if I had been a
+doll. But, if I may have as much of the sun as shines, and as much of
+comfort as the realm affords its better sort, being a princess, and to
+be treated with some reverence, I care not if ye take King, crown, and
+commonalty, so ye leave me the ruling of my house and the freedom to
+wash my face how I will. I had as soon see England linked again with
+the Papists as the Schmalkaldners; I had as lief see the King married
+to you as another; I had as lief all men do what they will so they
+leave me to go my ways and feed me well.'</p>
+
+<p>She looked again upon Katharine, and for the first time spoke as if
+she were addressing her:</p>
+
+<p>'I make out that you are a woman with an itch to meddle at the
+righting of the world. There have been more men than women at the
+task, but such an one was I never. The King was never man of mine, nor
+should have been had I any say in the matter.' She half closed her
+eyes again. 'Doubtless had it been otherwise the King would have
+constrained me by threats and tortures to forswear myself. I am as I
+was when I came to Dover. As the King saw me so he left me. Yet do I
+maintain and avow it was rather because he feared alliance with my
+brother's party than for any foulness of my person.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine passed her hands over her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'I do feel myself a thief and a cozener,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye be none,' the Queen said; 'ye take no more than what I least prize
+of this world. Had it not been thee it might have been a worse; for
+assuredly I was not made to foot it with this King.'</p>
+
+<p>'Nevertheless&mdash;&mdash;' Katharine began. But the Queen was no more content
+to listen to her.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye are as some I have known,' she said; 'they scruple to take what
+they very much crave, though it hang ready to drop into their hands;
+because they much crave it, therefore they scruple.' She had a small
+golden bullet beneath her clasped hands, and she cast it into a basin
+of silver that stood on a tripod beside her skirts. At the silvery
+clash and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> roll of the ball's running sound on the metal, doors opened
+along the gallery, and servitors came in bearing Rhenish wine in glass
+flagons and, upon great salvers, cakes in the forms of hearts or
+twisted into true-love-knots of pastry.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine noted these things as being worthy of imitation.</p>
+
+<p>'It is no more to me,' the Queen said, 'to lose the other things to
+you than to lose to you the wine that you shall drink or a pile of
+cakes.' Nevertheless she left Katharine upon her knees till she had
+taken her cup, for it pleased her that her servitors should see her
+treated with due worship.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was noon of that day when Katharine Howard set out again from
+Richmond to ride back to Hampton Court; and at noon of that day
+Throckmorton's barge shot dangerously beneath London Bridge, hastening
+to Hampton Court. At noon Thomas Culpepper passed over London Bridge,
+because a great crowd pressed across it from the south going to see a
+burning at Smithfield; at noon, too, or five minutes later, the young
+Poins galloped furiously past the end of the bridge and did not cross
+over, but sped through Southwark towards Hampton Court. And at noon or
+thereabouts the King, dressed in green as a husbandman, sat on a log
+to await a gun-fire, in the forest that was near to Richmond river
+path opposite Isleworth. He had given to Katharine a paper that she
+was to deliver to the master gunner of Richmond Palace in case the
+Queen Anne did satisfy her that the marriage was no marriage. So that,
+when among the green glades where the great trees let down their
+branches near the sward and shewed little tips of tender green leaves,
+he heard three thuds come echoing, he sprang to his feet, and, smiting
+his great, green-clothed thigh, he cried out: 'Ha! I be young again!'
+He pulled to his lips the mouth of the English horn that was girdled
+across his shoulder and under his arm; he set his feet wide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> apart,
+filled his lungs with air, and blew a thin, clear call. At once there
+issued from brakes, thickets and glades the figures of men, dressed
+like the King in yeoman's green, bearing bows over their shoulders,
+horns at their elbows, or having straining dogs in their leashes.</p>
+
+<p>'Ho!' the King said to his chief verderer, a man of sixty with a grey
+beard, but so that all others could hear; 'be it well understood that
+I will have you shew some ladies what make of thing it is to rule over
+jolly Englishmen.' He directed them how he would have them drive the
+deer at the end of the glade; he saw to the setting up of white wands
+of peeled willows and, taking from his yeoman-companion, that was the
+Earl of Surrey, his great bow, he shot a mighty shaft along the glade,
+to shew how far away he would have the deer to pass like swift ghosts
+between the aisles of the trees.</p>
+
+<p>But the palace of Hampton lay deserted and given up to scullions, who
+lay in the sunlight and took their rare ease. For a great many lords
+that could shoot well with the bow were gone to play the yeoman with
+the King; and a great many that had sumptuous and gallant apparel were
+gone to join the ladies riding back from Richmond; and the King's
+whole council, together with many lords that were awful or reverend in
+their appearance, were gone to sit in the scaffold to see the burning
+of the friar that had denied the King's supremacy of the Church and
+the burnings of the six Protestants that had denied the presence of
+Christ's body in the Sacrament. Only Privy Seal, who had ordered these
+things, was still walking in his gallery where he so often had walked
+of late.</p>
+
+<p>He had with him Wriothesley, whose face was utterly downcast and
+abashed; he walked turning more swiftly than had been his wont ever
+before. Wriothesley hung down his great bearded, honest head and
+sighed three times.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said at last, 'I see before us nothing but that ye make to
+divorce the Queen Anne.' And the words seemed to come from him as if
+they cost him his heart's blood.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Cromwell paused before him, his hands behind his back, his feet apart.</p>
+
+<p>'The weighty question,' he said, 'is this: Who hath betrayed me: of
+Udal; of the alewife that he should have had the papers of; or
+Throckmorton?'</p>
+
+<p>He had that morning received from Cleves, in the letter of his agent
+there, the certain proof that the Duke had written to the Emperor
+Charles making an utter submission to save his land from ruin, and as
+utterly abjuring his alliance with the King his brother-in-law and
+with the Schmalkaldner league and its Protestant princes. Cromwell had
+immediately called to him Wriothesley that was that day ordering the
+horses to take him back to Paris town. He had given him this news,
+which, if it were secret then, must in a month be made known to all
+the world. To Wriothesley the Protestant this blow was the falling in
+of the world; here was Protestantism at an end and dead. There
+remained nothing but to save the necks of some to carry on the faith
+to distant days. Therefore he had brought out his reluctant words to
+urge Privy Seal to the divorce of Anne of Cleves. There was no other
+way; there was no other issue. Privy Seal must abjure Cleves' Queen,
+and the very savour of a desire for a Protestant league.</p>
+
+<p>But for Privy Seal the problem was not what to do, a thing he might
+settle in a minute's swift thought, but the discovery of who had
+betrayed him&mdash;for his whole life had been given to bringing together
+his machine of service. You might determine an alliance or a divorce
+between breath and breath; but the training of your instruments, the
+weeding out of them that had flaws in their fidelities; the exhibiting
+of a swift and awful vengeance upon mutineers&mdash;these were the things
+that called for thinking and long furrowing of brows. He considered of
+this point whilst Wriothesley spoke long and earnestly.</p>
+
+<p>It was expedient before all things that Privy Seal keep the helm of
+the State; it was very certain that the King should not long keep to
+his marriage with the lady from Cleves; lamentable it was that Cleves
+had fallen away from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> Protestantism and from the league that so goodly
+had promised for truth in religion. But so, alas that the day had
+come! so it was. The King was a man brave and royal in his degree, but
+unstable, so that to keep him to Protestantism and good government a
+firm man was earnestly needed. There was none other man than Privy
+Seal. Let him consider earnestly that if it tasted ill with his
+conscience to move this divorce, yet elsewise such great ills should
+strike the kingdom, that far better it were to deaden his conscience
+than to sacrifice for a queen of doubtful faith the best hope that
+they had then, all of them, in the world. He spoke for many minutes in
+this strain, for twice the clock struck the half-hour from the tower
+above the gallery.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, long-bearded, solemn, and richly attired as he was,
+Wriothesley went down upon one knee, and, laying his bonnet on the
+ground, stretched out a long hand.</p>
+
+<p>'My lord,' he said, 'I do beseech you that you stay with us and
+succour us. We are a small band, but zealous and well-caparisoned.
+Bethink you that you put this land in peril if by maintaining this
+Queen ye do endanger your precious neck. For I were loath to take arms
+against the King's Majesty, and we are loyal and faithful subjects
+all; yet sooner than ye should fall&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell stood over him, looking at him dispassionately, his hands
+still behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>'Well, it is a great matter,' he uttered elusively. He moved as if to
+walk off, then suddenly turned upon his heel again. 'Ye do me more ill
+by speaking in that guise than ever Cleves or Gardiner or all my
+enemies have done. For assuredly if rumours of your words should reach
+the King when he was ill-affected, it should go hardly with me.'</p>
+
+<p>He paused, and then spoke gently.</p>
+
+<p>'And assuredly ye do me more wrong than ill,' he said. 'For this I
+swear to you, ye have heard evil enow of me to have believed some. But
+there is no man dare call me traitor in his heart of them that do know
+me. And this I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> tell you: I had rather die a thousand deaths than that
+ye should prop me up against the majesty and awe of government. By so
+doing ye might, at a hazard, save my life, but for certain ye would
+imperil that for which I have given my life.'</p>
+
+<p>Again he paused and paced, and again came back in his traces to where
+Wriothesley knelt.</p>
+
+<p>'Some danger there is for me,' he said, 'but I think it a very little
+one. The King knoweth too well how good a servant and how profitable I
+have been to him. I do think he will not cast me away to please a
+woman. Yet this is a very notable woman&mdash;ye wot of whom I speak; but I
+hope very soon to have one to my hand that shall utterly cast down and
+soil her in the eyes of the King's Highness.'</p>
+
+<p>'Ye do think her unchaste?' Wriothesley asked. 'I have heard you
+say&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Knight,' Cromwell answered; 'what I think will not be revealed to-day
+nor to-morrow, but only at the Day of Judgment. Nevertheless, so do I
+love my master's cause that&mdash;if it peril mine own upon that awful
+occasion&mdash;I so will strive to tear this woman down.'</p>
+
+<p>Wriothesley rose, stiff and angular.</p>
+
+<p>'God keep the issue!' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, get you gone,' Cromwell said. 'But this I pray you gently: that
+ye restrain your fellows' tongues from speaking treason and heresy.
+Three of your friends, as you know, I must burn this day for such
+speakings; you, too&mdash;you yourself, too&mdash;I must burn if it come to that
+pass, or you shall die by the block. For I will have this land
+purged.' His cold eyes flamed dangerously for a minute. 'Fool!' he
+thundered, 'I will have this land purged of treasons and schisms. Get
+you gone before I advise further with myself of your haughty and
+stiff-necked speeches. For learn this: that before all creeds, and
+before all desires, and before all women, and before all men, standeth
+the good of this commonwealth, and state, and King, whose servant I
+be. Get you gone and report my words ere I come terribly among ye.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Making his desultory pacings from end to end of the gallery, Cromwell
+considered that in that speech he had done a good morning's work, for
+assuredly these men put him in peril. More than one of these dangerous
+proclaimings of loyalty to him rather than to the King had come to his
+ears. They must be put an end to.</p>
+
+<p>But this issue faded from his mind. Left to himself, he let his hands
+twitch as feverishly as they would. Cleves and its Duke had played him
+false! His sheet anchor was gone! There remained only, then, the
+device of proving to the King that Katharine Howard was a monster of
+unchastity. For so strong was the witness that he had gathered against
+her that he could not but try his Fate once more&mdash;to give the King, as
+so often he had done, proof of how diligently his minister fended for
+him and how requisite he was, as a man who had eyes in every corner of
+this realm.</p>
+
+<p>To do that it was necessary that he should find her cousin; he had all
+the others under lock and key already in that palace. But her
+cousin&mdash;he must come soon or he would come too late!</p>
+
+<p>Privy Seal was a man of immense labours, that carried him to burning
+his lamp into hours when all other men in land slept in their beds.
+And, at that date, he had a many letters to indite, because the
+choosing of burgesses for the Parliament was going forward, and he had
+ado in some burghs to make the citizens choose the men that he bade
+them have. He gave to each shire and burgh long thought and minute
+commands. He knew the mayor of each town, and had note-books telling
+him the opinions and deeds of every man that had freedom to elect all
+over England. And into each man he had instilled the terror of his
+vengeance. This needed anxious labours, and it was the measure of his
+concern that he stayed now from this work to meditate a full ten
+minutes upon this matter of bringing Thomas Culpepper before the King.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, when, after he had for many hours been busy with his papers,
+Lascelles, the gentleman informer of the Archbishop's, came to tell
+him that he had seen Thomas<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> Culpepper at Greenwich that dawn and had
+followed him to the burning at Smithfield, whence he had hastened to
+Hampton, the Lord Privy Seal took from his neck his own golden collar
+of knighthood and cast it over Lascelles' neck. In part this was
+because he had never before been so glad in his life, and in part
+because it was his policy to reward very richly them that did him a
+chance service.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'I grudge that ye be the Archbishop's man and not
+mine, so your judgment jumps with mine.'</p>
+
+<p>And indeed Lascelles' judgment had jumped with Privy Seal's. He was
+the Archbishop's confidential gentleman; he swayed in many things the
+Archbishop's judgments. Yet in this one thing Cranmer had been too
+afraid to jump with him.</p>
+
+<p>'To me,' Lascelles said, 'it appeared that the sole thing to be done
+was to strike at the esteem of the King for Kat Howard, and the sole
+method to strike at her was through her dealings with her cousin.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' Cromwell interrupted him, 'in this ye have hit upon mine own
+secret judgment that I had told to no man save my private servants.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles bent his knee to acknowledge this great praise.</p>
+
+<p>'Very gracious lord,' he said, 'his Grace of Canterbury opines rather
+that this woman must be propitiated. He hath sent her books to please
+her tickle fancy of erudition; he hath sent her Latin chronicles and
+Saxon to prove to her, if he may, that the English priesthood is older
+than that of Rome. He is minded to convince her if he may, or, if he
+may not, he plans to make submission to her, to commend her learning
+and in all things to flatter her&mdash;for she is very approachable by
+these channels, more than by any other.'</p>
+
+<p>In short, as Lascelles made it appear to Cromwell's attentive brain,
+the Archbishop was, as always, anxious to run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds. He was a schismatic bishop, appointed by the King and
+the King's creature, not the Bishop of Rome's. So that if with his
+high pen and his great gift of penning weighty sentences, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> might
+bring Kat Howard to acknowledging him bishop and archbishop, he was
+ready so to do. If he must make submission to her judgment, he was
+ready so to do.</p>
+
+<p>'Yet,' Lascelles concluded, 'I have urged him against these courses;
+or yet not against these courses, but to this other end in any case.'
+For it was certain that Kat Howard would have no truck with Cranmer.
+She would make him go on his knees to Rome and then she would burn
+him; or if she did not burn him she would make him end his days with a
+hair shirt in the cell of an anchorite. 'I hold it manifested,'
+Lascelles said, 'that this lady is such an one as will listen to no
+reason nor policy, neither will she palter, for whatever device, with
+them that have not lifelong paid lip-service to the arch-devil whose
+seat is in Rome.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell nodded his head once more to commend the Archbishop's
+gentleman with a perfect acquiescence.</p>
+
+<p>It had chanced that that morning Lascelles had gone to Greenwich to
+fetch for the Archbishop some books and tractates. The Archbishop was
+minded to lend them to the Bishop Hugh Latimer of Worcester; that day
+he was to dispute publicly with the friar Forest that was cast to be
+burned. And, coming to Greenwich, still thinking much upon Katharine
+Howard and her cousin, at the dawn, Lascelles had seen the tall,
+drunken, red-bearded man in green, with his squat, broad gossip in
+grey, come staggering up from the ship at the public quay.</p>
+
+<p>'I did leave my burthen of books,' he said; 'for what be Bishop Hugh
+Latimer's arguments from a pulpit to a burning priest to the pulling
+down of this woman?' He had dogged Thomas Culpepper and his crony; he
+had seen him burst open windows, cast meat about in the mud and feed
+the populace of the Greenwich hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>'And for sure,' he said, 'if the King's Highness should see this man's
+filthiness and foul demeanour, he will not be fain to feed after such
+a make of hound.'</p>
+
+<p>Coming to Smithfield, where Culpepper stayed to cheer on the business,
+Lascelles had very swiftly begged the Archbishop, where, behind Hugh
+Larimer's pulpit, he sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> to see Friar Forest corrected&mdash;had very
+swiftly begged the Archbishop to give him leave to come to Hampton.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' Lascelles said, 'with a great sigh he gave me leave; for much
+he fears to have a hand in this matter.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, he shall have no hand,' Cromwell said. He clapped his hands, and
+told the blonde page-boy that appeared to send him very quickly
+Viridus, that had had this matter in his care.</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles recounted shortly how he had set four men to watch Thomas
+Culpepper till he came to Hampton, and very swiftly to send word of
+when he came. Then the spy dropped his voice and pulled out a
+parchment from his bosom.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'whilst Culpepper was in the palace of Greenwich I
+made haste to go on board the ship that had brought him from Calais,
+being minded if I could to discover what was discoverable concerning
+his coming.'</p>
+
+<p>He dropped his voice still further.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he began again, 'there be those in this realm, and maybe very
+close to your own person, that would have stayed his coming. For upon
+that ship lay a boy, sore sick of the sea and very beaten, by name
+Harry Poins. Wherefore, or at whose commands, he had done this I had
+no occasion to discover, since he lay like a sick dog and might not
+see nor hear nor speak; but this it was told me he had done: in every
+way he sought to let and hinder T. Culpepper's coming to England with
+so marked an importunity that at last Culpepper did set his crony to
+beat this boy.' He paused again. 'And this too I discovered, taking it
+from the boy's person, for in my avocations and service to his Grace,
+whom God preserve and honour! I have much practised these
+abstractions.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles held the parchment, from which fell a seal like a drop of
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'this agreement is sealed with your own seal; it is
+from one Throckmorton in your service. It maketh this T. Culpepper
+lieutenant of barges and lighters in the town and port of Calais. It
+enjoineth upon him to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> stay diligently there and zealously to
+persevere in these duties.'</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell neither started nor moved; he stood looking down at the floor
+for a minute space; then he held out his hand for the parchment,
+considered the seal and the subscription, let his eyes course over the
+lines of Throckmorton's handwriting that made a black patch on the
+surface soiled with sea-water and sweat, and uttered composedly:</p>
+
+<p>'Why, it is well; it is monstrous well that you have saved this
+parchment from coming to evil hands.'</p>
+
+<p>He rolled it neatly, placed it in his belt, and four times stamped his
+foot on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>There came in at this signal, Viridus, the one of his secretaries that
+had first instructed Katharine Howard as to her demeanour. Since then,
+he had had among his duties the watching over Thomas Culpepper. Calm,
+furtive, with his thin hands clasped before him, the Sieur Viridus
+answered the swift, hard questions of his master. He was more attached
+and did more services to the Chancellor of the Augmentations, whom he
+kept mostly mindful of such farms and fields as Privy Seal intended
+should be given to benefit his particular friends and servants; for he
+had a mind that would hold many details of figures and directions.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, he had sent two men to Calais and the road Paris-ward with
+injunctions to meet Thomas Culpepper and tell him tales of Katharine
+Howard's lewdness in the King's Court; to tell him, too, that the
+farms in Kent, promised him as a guerdon for ridding Paris of the
+Cardinal Pole, were deeded and signed to him, but that evil men sought
+to have them away.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye sent no boy to stay him at Calais with lieutenancy of barges?'
+Cromwell asked, swiftly and hard in voice.</p>
+
+<p>'No boy ne no man,' Viridus answered.</p>
+
+<p>He had acted by the card of Privy Seal's injunctions; men were posted
+at Calais, at Dover, at Ashford, at Maidstone, at Sandwich, at
+Rochester, at Greenwich, at all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> landing places of London. Each
+several one was instructed to tell Thomas Culpepper some new story
+that, if Culpepper were not already hastening to Hampton, should make
+him mend his paces. If he were hastening to Hampton they were to leave
+him be. All these things were done as Privy Seal had directed.</p>
+
+<p>'What witnesses have ye here from Lincolnshire?' Cromwell asked.</p>
+
+<p>In his monotonous sing-song Viridus named these people: Under lock and
+key in the King's cellary house, five from Stamford that had heard
+Culpepper swear Kat Howard was his leman&mdash;these had really heard this
+thing, and called for no priming; under instruction in the Well Ward
+gate chamber, four that should swear a certain boy was her
+child&mdash;these needed to have their tales evened as to the night the
+child was born, and how it had been brought from the Lord Edmund's
+house wrapped in a napkin. In his own pantry, Viridus had three under
+guard and admonition of his own&mdash;these should swear that whenas they
+served the Lord Edmund they had seen at several times Culpepper with
+her in thickets, or climbing to her window in the night, or at dawn
+coming away from her chamber door. These needed to be instructed as to
+all these things.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell listened with little nods, marking each item of these
+instructions.</p>
+
+<p>'Listen now to me,' he said; 'give attentive ear.' Viridus dropped his
+eyes to the floor, as one who lends all his faculties to be
+subservient to his hearing. 'At six or thereabouts T. Culpepper shall
+reach this Court. Ye shall have men ready to bring him straightway to
+thee. At seven or thereabouts shall come the Lady Katharine to her
+room; with her shall come the King's Highness, habited as a yeoman. Be
+attentive. Next Katharine Howard's door is the door of the Lady
+Deedes. Her I have this day sent to other quarters. Having T.
+Culpepper with you, you shall go to this room of the Lady Deedes. You
+shall sit at the table with the door a little opened, so that ye may
+see when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> the King's Highness cometh. But you shall sit opposite T.
+Culpepper that he may not see.' Viridus remained like a statue carved
+of wood, motionless, his head inclined to the ground. Lascelles had
+his head forward, his mouth a little open. 'Whilst you wait you shall
+have with you the deeds giving to T. Culpepper his farms in Kent.
+These ye shall display to him. Ye shall dilate upon the goodness of
+the fields, upon the commodity in barns and oasthouses, upon the
+sweetness of the water wells, upon the goodliness of the air. But when
+the King shall be entered into the Lady Katharine's room you shall
+give T. Culpepper to drink of a certain flagon of wine that I shall
+give to you. When he hath drunk you shall begin to hint that all is
+ill with the lady he would wed; as thus you shall say: "Aye, your nest
+is well lined, but how of the bird?" And you shall talk of her having
+consorted much with a large yeoman. And when you shall observe him to
+be much heated with the subtle drug and your hintings, you shall say
+to him, "Lo, next this door is the door of the Lady Katharine. Go see
+if perchance she have not even now this yeoman with her."'</p>
+
+<p>Viridus nodded his head once up and down; Lascelles clapped his hands
+twice for joy at this contrivance. Cromwell added further injunctions:
+that Viridus should have in the corner of the gallery a man that
+should come hastening to him, the Lord Privy Seal, where he walked in
+the gallery; another who, at his own signal, should hastily bring the
+witnesses prepared against Kat Howard; another who should bring the
+engrossment of a command to behead T. Culpepper that night in the
+King's Tower House, and yet another who should bring up guards and
+captains. All these, in their separate companies, should be set in the
+great room abovestairs next the King's chapel, so that they might
+swiftly and without hindrance or accident come down the little stair
+to the Lady Katharine's room. Again Viridus once bowed his head,
+moving his lips the while repeating these commands in words as they
+were uttered.</p>
+
+<p>Cromwell paused again to think, then he added:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I will set this gentleman, Lascelles, to bring T. Culpepper to you.
+And because I will make very certain that this man shall not touch the
+person of the King, I will have this gentleman to stay with you in the
+room where you be, to follow with you T. Culpepper into the Lady
+Katharine's room. He shall run with you betwixt T. Culpepper and the
+King; but if T. Culpepper be minded to fall upon the Lady Katharine,
+ye shall not either of you stay him. It were best if he might stab her
+dead. Doubtless he shall.'</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!' Lascelles cried out, 'would I were a king to have so
+masterful and devising a minister as Privy Seal!'</p>
+
+<p>'Get you gone,' Privy Seal said to Viridus. 'I ha' no need to tell you
+that if ye do faithfully and to a good issue carry out this play, you
+shall be greatly rewarded so that few shall hold their heads higher
+than you in the land. Ye know how I befriend my friends. But know too
+this: that if this scheme miscarry, either of your fault or another's,
+either through inattention or ill chance, either through treason or
+dullness of the brain of man, down to the least pin of it, ye shall
+not this night sleep in your bed, nor ever more shall you be seen in
+daylight above the earth.' He pointed suddenly from the window to the
+low sun. 'Have a care that ye so act as ye shall see that disc again!'</p>
+
+<p>Viridus spoke no word, but having waited a minute to hear if Privy
+Seal had more to enjoin, noiselessly and with his hands folded before
+him as they had been when he came, moved away over the shining floor.
+He went to tell the old, shivering Chancellor of the Augmentations
+that he must absent himself upon their common master's errands. 'I
+misdoubt some heads will fall to-night,' he added as he went; 'our
+lord's nose for treasons is sharpened again.' And that creature of
+Privy Seal's shook beneath the furs that he wore, though it was
+already April; for the Chancellor had his private reasons to dread
+Privy Seal's outbursts of suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>In the gallery, Privy Seal still spoke earnestly with Lascelles.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'I give this part of honour and privilege to thee,' he said; 'for
+though I was well prepared in all things, I trow I may trust thee
+better than another person.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles was to watch for Culpepper, to hasten to Viridus, to attend
+upon the pair of them as the pilot-fish attendeth upon the ghostly and
+silent shark, not to leave them till the work was accomplished, or,
+upon the least sign of treason in Viridus or another, to come
+hastening as never man hastened, to Privy Seal.</p>
+
+<p>'For,' Cromwell ended, 'ye have felt like me how, if this realm is to
+be saved, saved it shall be by this thing alone.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles, who had had no opening to speak, opened now his lips. Great
+ferreter as he was, he had discovered former servants of the Duchess
+of Norfolk, that were ready, for consideration of threats, to swear
+that they had seen the Lady Katharine when a child in her
+grandmother's house to be over familiar with one Francis Dearham. He
+himself had these witnesses earmarked and attainable, and he was upon
+the point of offering them to Privy Seal. But he recollected that
+Privy Seal had witnesses enow of his own. To-morrow was also a day;
+and the King, if he would not now listen to tales against Kat Howard,
+might be brought to give ear to those and others added in a year's
+time, or when he began to tire of his woman as all men tire of women.
+Therefore he once more closed his lips. And Cromwell spoke as if his
+thoughts of a truth jumped together with Lascelles'.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he said, 'I would willingly bribe you from the service of his
+Grace of Canterbury to come into mine. But it may be that I shall not
+long outlive these days. Therefore I enjoin upon you these things:
+Serve well your master; guide him, for he needeth guidance, subtly as
+to-day ye would have guided him. I will not take you from him for this
+cause, that there is little need in one house of two that think alike.
+One sufficeth. For two houses with like minds are stronger than one
+that is bicephalous. Therefore serve you well Cranmer as in my day I
+served<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span> well the great Cardinal; so at his death, even as I at
+Wolsey's, ye may rise very high.'</p>
+
+<p>He went swiftly into his little cabinet, and returning, had in his
+hand a little book.</p>
+
+<p>'Read well in this,' he said, 'where much I have read. You shall see
+in it mine own annotations. This is "<i>Il Principe</i>" of Macchiavelli;
+there is none other book like it in the world. Study of it well: read
+it upon your walks. I am a simple man, yet hath it made me.'</p>
+
+<p>Shadows were falling into the gallery, for the descending sun had come
+behind the dark, tall elms beyond the river.</p>
+
+<p>'Upon my faith,' Cromwell said, 'and as I hope to enter into Paradise
+by the aid of Christ the King that commended faithful servants, I tell
+you I had great joy when you told me this woman's cousin had come into
+these parts. But greater joy than any were mine could I discern in
+this land a disciple that could carry on my work. As yet I have seen
+none; yet ponder well upon this book. God may work in thee, as in me,
+great changes by its study.... Get you gone.'</p>
+
+<p>He continued long to pace the gallery, his hands behind his back, his
+cap pulled over his narrow eyes; it grew dusk so that his figure could
+scarce be seen where it was at the further end. He looked from the
+casement up into the moon, small and tenuous in the pale western
+skies. He had been going over in his mind the details of how he had
+commanded Culpepper to be brought before the King. And at the last
+when he considered again that Culpepper might well strike his cousin
+dead at his feet, and that then she would have no tongue to stand
+against calumnies withal, he uttered the words:</p>
+
+<p>'I think I hold them.'</p>
+
+<p>And, pondering upon the wonderful destiny that had brought him up from
+a trooper in Italy to these high places, he saluted the moon with his
+crooked forefinger&mdash;for the moon was the president at his birth.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Why,' he uttered aloud, 'I have survived four queens' days.'</p>
+
+<p>For Katharine of Aragon he had seen die; and Anne Boleyn had died on
+the scaffold; and Jane Seymour was dead in childbed; and now, with the
+news from Cleves, Anne's reign was over and done with.</p>
+
+<p>'Four queens,' he repeated.</p>
+
+<p>And, turning swiftly to the door, he commanded that Throckmorton be
+sent him at once when he came to the archway.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_THREE" id="PART_THREE"></a>PART THREE</h2>
+
+<h2>THE SUNBURST</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>In the great place of Smithfield, towards noon, Thomas Culpepper sat
+his horse on the outskirts of the crowd. By his side Hogben, the
+gatewarden, had much ado to hold his pikestaff across his horse's
+crupper in the thick of the people.</p>
+
+<p>The pavement of heads filled the place&mdash;bare some of them, some of
+them covered, according as their owners had cast their caps on high
+for joy at the Bishop of Worcester's words against the Papist that was
+to be burned, or as they pressed their thumbs harder down in disfavour
+and waited to shew their joy at the hanging of the three Protestants
+that should follow. In the centre towered on high a great gallows from
+which depended a chain; and at the end of the chain, half-hidden by
+the people, but shewing his shoulders and his head, a man in a friar's
+cowl. And, towering as high as the gallows, painted green as to its
+coat and limbs, but gilt in the helmet and brandishing a great spear,
+was the image called David Darvel Gatheren that the Papist Welsh
+adored. This image had been brought there that, in its burning, it
+might consume the friar Forest. It gazed, red-cheeked and wooden,
+across the sunlight space at the pulpit of the Bishop of Worcester in
+his white cassock and black hat, waving his white arms and exhorting
+the man in the gallows to repent at the last moment. Some words of
+Latimer might now and again be heard; the chained friar stood upon the
+rungs of a ladder set against the gallows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> post; he hung down his head
+and shook it, but no word could be heard to come from his lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Damnable heretic and foul traitor!' Latimer's urgings came across the
+sea of heads. 'Here sitteth his Majesty's council&mdash;&mdash;' At these words
+went up a little buzz of question, but sufficient from all that great
+crowd to send as it were a wind that blew away the Bishop's words. For
+the style 'his Majesty' was so new to the land that people were
+questioning what new council this might be, or what lord's whose style
+they did not know. Latimer waved his arm behind him, half turning, to
+indicate the King's men. These ministers, bravely bonneted so that the
+jewels sparkled, habited in brown so that the red cloth covering their
+tiers of seats shewed between their arms and shoulders, sat, like a
+gay bank of flowers above the lake of heads, surrounded by many other
+lords and ladies in shining colours. They sat there ready to sign the
+pardon that was prepared if the friar would be moved by fear or by the
+Bishop's argument to hang his head and recant.</p>
+
+<p>The friar, truly, hung his head, clung to the rungs of the ladder,
+trembled so that all men might see, and once caught furiously at the
+iron chain and shook it; but no word came from his lips. Culpepper was
+bursting with pride and satisfaction because he was a made man and
+would have all the world to know it. He swung his green bonnet round
+his red head and called for huzzays when the friar shewed fear. Hogben
+called for huzzays for Squahre Tom of Lincoln, and many men cheered.
+But the silence dropped again, and the Bishop's words, raised now very
+high, dominated the sunlight and eddied around the tall faces of the
+house fronts behind.</p>
+
+<p>'Here have sat the nobles of the realm and the King's Majesty's most
+honourable council only to have granted pardon to you, wretched
+creature, if but some spark of repentance would have happened in ye.'
+Hanging his cowled poll beneath the beam that reached gigantic and
+black across the crowd, the friar shook his head slowly. 'Declared to
+you your errors I have,' cried Latimer.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> 'Openly and manifestly by the
+scriptures of God, with many and godly exhortations have I moved you
+to repentance. Yet will you neither hear nor speak&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>'Bones of St. Nairn!' Culpepper cried; 'here is too much speaking and
+no work. Huzzay! e caitiffs. Burn. Burn. Burn. For the honour of
+England.' And, starting from his figure at the verge of the crowd,
+cries went up of 'Huzzay!' of 'Burn!' and 'St George for London!' and
+unquiet rumours and struggles and waving in the crowd of heads, so
+that the Bishop's voice was not heard any more that day.</p>
+
+<p>But through the crowd a silence fell as the image slowly and
+totteringly moved forward, ankle deep only in the crowd. Ropes from
+the figure's neck ran out and tightened&mdash;some among the crowd began to
+sing the song against Welsh Papists that ran&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>'David Darvel Gatheren</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>As sayeth the Welshmen</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Fetched outlaws out of hell!</i>'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and the burden of it rose so loud that the image swayed over and fell
+unheard. At that too a silence fell, and presently there came the
+sound of axes chopping. The friar, swaying on his ladder, looked down
+and then made a great sign of the cross. The Bishop in his pulpit,
+raising his white arms in horror and imprecation, seemed to be giving
+the signal for new uproars.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he shouted with delight, Culpepper felt a man catch at his leg.
+He kicked his foot loose, but his hand on the bridle was clutched.
+There was a fair man at his horse's shoulder that bore Privy Seal's
+lion badge upon his chest. His face was upturned, and in the clamour
+he spoke indistinguishable words. Culpepper struck towards the mouth
+with his fist; the man shrank back, but stood, nevertheless, close
+still in the crowd. When the silence fell again, Culpepper could hear
+amongst the swift chopping of the axes the words<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>'I rede ye ride swiftly to Hampton. I am the Lord Cromwell's man.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper brought his excited mind from the thought of the burning and
+the joy of the day, with its crowd and its odour of men, and sunshine
+and tumult.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye say? Swine,' he shouted. 'Come aside!' He caught at the man's
+collar and kicked his horse and pulled at its jaws till it drew them
+out of the thin crowd to a street's opening.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' the man said&mdash;he had a goodly cloth suit of dark green that
+spoke to his being of weight in some house-hold&mdash;'ye are like to lose
+your farms at Bromley an ye hasten not to Master Viridus, who holdeth
+the deedings to you.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper uttered an inarticulate roar and smote his patient horse on
+the side of the head for two minutes of fierce blows, digging with his
+heels into the girthings.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' the man said again, 'some lord will have these lands an ye come
+not to Hampton ere six of the clock. I know not the way of it that be
+a servant. But Master Viridus sent me with this message.'</p>
+
+<p>Already a thin swirl of blue smoke was ascending past the friar's
+figure to the bright sky; it caressed the beam of the gallows and
+Culpepper's bloodshot eye pursued it upwards.</p>
+
+<p>'Before God!' he muttered, 'I was set to see this burning. Ye have
+seen many; I never a one.' A new spasm of rage caught him: he dragged
+at his horse's head, and shouting, 'Gallop! gallop!' set off into the
+dark streets, his crony behind his back.</p>
+
+<p>In the Poultry he knocked over a man in a red coat that had a gold
+chain about his neck; on the Chepe he jumped his horse across a
+pigman's booth&mdash;it brought down Hogben, horse and pike; three drunken
+men were fighting in Paternoster Street&mdash;Culpepper charged above their
+bodies; but very shortly he came through Temple Bar and was in the
+marshes and fields. Well out between the hedgerows he was aware that
+one galloped behind him. He drew a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> violent rein where the Cow Brook
+crossed the deep muddied road and looked back.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' he called, 'this night I will hold a mouse on a chain above a
+coal fire. So I will see a burning, and my cousin Kat shall see it
+with me.' He spurred on again.</p>
+
+<p>By the time he was come to Brentford four men, habited like the first,
+rode behind him. When he stayed to let his horse drink from the river
+opposite Richmond Hill, he was aware that across the stream a pageant
+with sweet music marched a little beyond the further bank. He could
+see the tops of pikes and pennons amid the tree trunks.</p>
+
+<p>He muttered that such a pageant he would very soon make for himself;
+for, filled with the elation of his new magnificence, since Privy Seal
+was his friend and Viridus was earnest to do him favour, he imagined
+that no captain nor lord in that land soon should overpass him. For
+that any lord should desire his new lands troubled him little; only he
+hastened to cut that lord's throat and to kiss his cousin Kat.</p>
+
+<p>It was a quarter before six when he drew rein in the green yard that
+lay before the King's arch in Hampton. There befel the strangest
+scuffle there; flaring for a moment and gone out like the gunpowder
+they sometimes lit in saucers for sport. A man called Lascelles came
+slowly from under the arch to meet him, and then, running over the
+green grass from the little side door, came the young Poins in red
+breeches, pulling off a red coat that he had had but half the time to
+don and tugging at his sword whose hilt was caught in the sleeve hole.
+Even as he issued, Lascelles, walking slowly, began to run and to
+call. Four other men of Privy Seal's ran from under the arch, and the
+four men that had followed behind him so far, closed their horses
+round his. The boy had his sword out and his coat gave as he ran.
+Lascelles closed near him on the grass, stretched out a foot to trip,
+and the boy lay sprawling, his hands stretched out, his sword three
+yards before him. The four men that had run from the arch had him up
+upon his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> feet and held his arms when Culpepper had ridden the hundred
+yards from the gate to them.</p>
+
+<p>'Why,' said Culpepper, gazing upon the boy's face, 'it was thee
+wouldst have my farms.' He spat in the boy's face and rode
+complacently under the archway where were many men of Privy Seal's in
+the side chambers and on the steps that ran steeply to the King's new
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>'I do conceive now,' Culpepper, in descending from his horse, spoke to
+Lascelles, 'wherefore that knave would have had me stay in Calais and
+be warder of barges. 'A would have my lands here.'</p>
+
+<p>Word was given him that he must without delay go to the Sieur Viridus,
+and in a high good humour he followed the lead of Lascelles through
+the rabbit warren of small and new passages of the palace. In them it
+was already nearly dark.</p>
+
+<p>It was in that way that, landing at the barge stage, a little stiff
+with the cold of his barge journey, Throckmorton came upon the young
+Poins in his scarlet breeches, his face cut and bleeding in his
+contact with the earth, his sword gone. Privy Seal's men that had
+fallen upon him had kicked him out of the palace gates. They had no
+warrant yet to take him; the quarrel was none of theirs. The boy was
+of the King's Guard, it was true, but his company lay then at the
+Tower.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton cursed at him when he heard his news; and when he heard
+that Culpepper was then in the palace where window lights already
+shone before him, he ran to the archway. He had no time for reflection
+save as he ran. Word was given him in the archway itself that Privy
+Seal would see him instantly and with great haste and urgency. He
+asked only for news where Thomas Culpepper was, and ran, upon the
+disastrous hearing that Viridus had taken him up the privy stairway.
+And, in that darkness, thoughts ran in his head. Disaster was here.
+But what? Privy Seal called for him. He had no time for Privy Seal.
+Culpepper was gone to Kat Howard's room. Viridus there had taken him.
+There was no other room up the winding staircase to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span> which he could
+go. Here was disaster! For whether he stayed Culpepper or no, Privy
+Seal must know that he had betrayed him. As he ran swiftly the
+desperate alternative coursed in his mind. Rich, the Chancellor of the
+Augmentations, and he had their tale pat, that Privy Seal was secretly
+raising the realm against the King. He himself had got good matter
+that morning listening to the treasonable talking of the printer
+Badge.</p>
+
+<p>Several men in the stair angle would have stopped him when at last he
+was at foot of the winding stairs. He whispered:</p>
+
+<p>'I be Throckmorton upon my master's business,' and was through and in
+the darkness of the stairway.</p>
+
+<p>Why was there no cresset? Why were there these men? It came into his
+mind that already the King had heard Culpepper. Already Katharine was
+arrested. He groaned as he mounted the stairs. For in that case, with
+those men behind him, he was in a gaol already. He paused to go back;
+then it came to him that, if he could win forward and find the King,
+who alone, by giving ear, could save him, he would yet not know first
+how Katharine had fared. He had a great stabbing at his heart with
+that thought, and once more mounted.</p>
+
+<p>From the door next hers there streamed a light. Hers was closed. He
+ran to it and knocked, leaning his head against the panels to listen.
+There was no sound, no sound at all when he knocked again. It was
+intolerable. He thrust the door open. No woman was there and no man.
+He went in. He thought: 'If the room be in disorder&mdash;&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>He made out in the twilight that the room stood as always; the chair
+loomed where it should; there was a spark on the hearth; the books
+were ordered on the table; no stool was overturned. He stood amid
+these things, his heart beating tumultuously, his ears pricked up,
+stilling his breathing to listen, in the blue twilight, like a wild
+beast.</p>
+
+<p>A voice said:</p>
+
+<p>'Body o' God! Throckmorton!' beneath its breath, the light of the next
+door grew large and smaller again; he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span> caught from there the words:
+'It is Throckmorton.' And at the sound Throckmorton loosened his
+dagger in its sheath. Some glimmering of the plan reached him; they
+were awaiting Katharine's coming, and a great load fell from his mind.
+She was not yet taken.</p>
+
+<p>He paused to stroke his beard for fear it was disordered, pulled from
+over his shoulder the medallion on the chain; it had flown there as he
+ran. He pushed ajar the next door a minute later, having thought many
+thoughts and appearing stately and calm.</p>
+
+<p>He replaced the door at its exact angle and gazed at the three silent
+men. Thomas Culpepper, his brows knotted, his lips moving, was holding
+his head askew to see the measurements upon a map of his farm at
+Bromley. That Lascelles had gone out and come back saying that one
+Throckmorton was in the next room was nothing to him. The next room
+was nothing to him; he was there to hear of his farms.</p>
+
+<p>Viridus, silent, dark and enigmatic, gazed at a spot upon the table;
+Lascelles, his mouth a little open, his eyes dilated, had his hands
+upon it.</p>
+
+<p>Without speaking, Throckmorton noted that the room was empty save for
+the table and benches; the hangings had been taken down; all the
+furnishings were gone. That morning the room had been well filled,
+warm, and in the occupancy of the Lady Deedes. Therefore Cromwell had
+worked this change. No other had this power. They waited, then, those
+three, for the coming of Katharine Howard or the King. Lascelles
+shewed fear and surprise at his being there; therefore Lascelles was
+deeply concerned in this matter. Lascelles was in the service of
+Cranmer that morning; now he sat there. Thus he, too, for certain, was
+in this plan; he was a new servant to Privy Seal&mdash;and new servants are
+zealous. With Viridus he had had some talk of events. Therefore
+Lascelles was the greatest danger.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton moved slowly behind Culpepper and sat down beside him; in
+his left hand he had his small dagger,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> its blue blade protruding from
+the ham; Culpepper beside him was at his right. He said very softly in
+Italian to Lascelles:</p>
+
+<p>'Both your hands are upon the table; if you move one my dagger pierces
+your eye to the brain. So also if you speak in the English language.'</p>
+
+<p>Lascelles muttered: 'Judas! <i>Traditore!</i>' Viridus sat motionless, and
+Culpepper moved his finger across the plan of the farm.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is the mixen,' he appealed to Viridus, who nodded.</p>
+
+<p>It was as if Throckmorton, with his slow manner and low voice, was a
+friend who had come in to speak to Lascelles about the weather or the
+burnings. He was no concern of Culpepper's, nor was Lascelles who had
+spoken no word at all.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton kept his head turned towards Lascelles as if he were
+still addressing him, and spoke in the same level voice, still in
+Italian.</p>
+
+<p>'Viridus, to thee I speak. This is a very great matter.' Unconsciously
+he used the set form of words of Privy Seal. 'Consider well these
+things. The day of our master is nigh at an end. Rich, Chancellor of
+the Augmentations, thy crony and master, and my ally, hath made a plan
+to go with me to the King this night with witnesses and papers
+accusing Privy Seal of raising the land against his Highness. Will you
+join with us, or will you be lost with Privy Seal?'</p>
+
+<p>Viridus kept his eyes upon the same spot of the table.</p>
+
+<p>'Tell me more,' he said. 'This matter is very weighty.' His tone was
+level, monotonous and still. He too might have been saying that the
+sunshine that day had been long.</p>
+
+<p>'A fad to talk Latin of ye courtiers,' Culpepper said with
+uninterested scorn. 'Ye will forget God's language of English.' He
+slapped Throckmorton on the sleeve. 'See, what a fine farm I have for
+my deserts,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye shall have better,' Throckmorton said. 'I have moved the King in
+your behalf.' But he kept his eyes on Lascelles.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Culpepper cast back his cap from his eyes and leant away the better to
+slap Throckmorton on the back.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye ha' heard o' my deeds,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'All England rings with them,' Throckmorton said. He interjected,
+'Still! hound!' to Lascelles in Italian, and went on to Culpepper: 'I
+ha' moved the King to come this night to thy cousin's room hard by for
+I knew ye would go to her. The King is hot to speak with thee. Comport
+thyself as I do bid thee and art a made man indeed.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper laughed with hysterical delight.</p>
+
+<p>'By Cock!' he shouted. 'Master Viridus, thou art naught to this. Three
+farms shall not content me nor yet ten.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton's eyes shot a glance at Viridus and back again to
+Lascelles' face.</p>
+
+<p>'If you speak I slay you,' he said. Lascelles' eyes started from his
+head, his mouth worked, and on the table his hands jerked
+convulsively. But Throckmorton had seen that Viridus still sat
+motionless.</p>
+
+<p>'By Cock!' Culpepper cried. 'By Guy and Cock! let me kiss thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' Throckmorton said, 'I pray you speak no more words, not at all
+till I bid you speak. I am a very great lord here; you shall observe
+gravity and decorum or never will I bring you to the King. You are not
+made for Courts.'</p>
+
+<p>'Oh, I kiss your hands,' Culpepper answered him. 'But wherefore have
+you a dagger?'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' Throckmorton said again, 'I will have you silent, for if the
+King should pass the door he will be offended by your babble.' He
+interjected to Viridus, speaking in Italian, 'Speak thou to this fool
+and engage him to think. I can give you no more grounds, but you must
+quickly decide either to go with Rich the Chancellor and myself or to
+remain the liege of the Privy Seal.'</p>
+
+<p>Never once did he take his eyes from Lascelles, and the sweat stood
+upon his forehead. Once when Lascelles moved he slid the dagger along
+the table with a sharp motion and a gasping of breath, as a pincer
+pressed to the death will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> make a faint. Yet his voice neither raised
+itself nor fell one shade.</p>
+
+<p>'And if I will aid you in this, what reward do I get?' Viridus asked.
+He too spoke low and unmovedly, keeping his eyes upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>'The one-half of my enrichments for five years, the one-half of those
+of the Chancellor, and my voice for you with the King and with the new
+Queen.'</p>
+
+<p>'And if I will not go with you?'</p>
+
+<p>'Then when the King passeth this door I do cry out "Treason! treason!"
+and you, I, and this man, and this shall to-night sleep in the King's
+prison, not in Privy Seal's. And I will have you think that I am sib
+and rib with Kat Howard who shall sway the King if her cousin be
+induced not to play the beast.'</p>
+
+<p>Viridus spoke no word; but when Culpepper, idle and gaping, reached
+out his hand to take the black flagon of wine that was between them
+under the candles on the table, Viridus stretched forth his hand and
+clasped the bottle.</p>
+
+<p>'It is not expedient that you drink,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Why somever then?' Culpepper asked.</p>
+
+<p>'That neither do you make a beast of yourself if you come before the
+King's great majesty this night,' Viridus said in his cold and
+minatory voice, 'not yet smell beastly of liquors when you kiss the
+King his hand.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper said:</p>
+
+<p>'By Cock! I had forgot the King's highness.'</p>
+
+<p>'See that you kneel before him and speak not; see that you raise your
+eyes not from the floor nor breathe loudly; see that when the King's
+high and awful majesty dismisses you you go quietly.' Throckmorton
+spoke. 'See that you speak not with nor of your cousin. For so
+dreadful is a king, and this King more than others; and so terrible
+his wrath and desire of worship&mdash;and this King's more than
+others&mdash;that if ye speak above a whisper's sound, if ye act other than
+as a babe before its preceptor's rod, you are cast<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> out utterly and
+undone. You shall never more have farms nor lands; you shall never
+more have joyance nor gladness; you shall rot forgotten in a hole as
+you had never done brave things for the King's grace.'</p>
+
+<p>'By Cock!' Culpepper said, 'it seems it is easier to talk of a king
+than with one.'</p>
+
+<p>'See that you remember it,' Throckmorton said, 'for with great trouble
+have I brought this King so far to talk with you!'</p>
+
+<p>He moved his dagger yet nearer to Lascelles' form and held his finger
+to his lip. Viridus had never once moved; he stayed now as still as
+ever. Culpepper crammed his hand over his lips.</p>
+
+<p>For from without there came the sound of voices and, in that dead
+silence, the rustle of a woman's gown, swishing and soft. A deep voice
+uttered heavily:</p>
+
+<p>'Aye, I know your feelings. I have had my sadness.' It paused for a
+moment, and mouthed on: 'I can cap your Lucretius too with "<i>Usque
+adeo res humanas vis abdita&mdash;&mdash;</i>"' It seemed that for a moment the
+speaker stayed before the door where all three held their breaths. 'I
+have read more of the Fathers, of late days, than of the writers
+profane.'</p>
+
+<p>They heard the breathing of a heavy man who had mounted stairs. The
+voice sounded more faintly:</p>
+
+<p>'Now you have naught further to think of than the goodly words of
+Ecclesiastes: "<i>Et cognovi quod non esset melius, nisi laetare
+et....</i>"' The voice died dead away with the closing of the door. And
+as a torch passed, Throckmorton knew that the King had waited there
+whilst light was being made in Katharine's room. He said softly to
+Viridus:</p>
+
+<p>'Whilst I go unto them you shall hold this dagger against this fool's
+throat. We gain as many hours as we may hold him from blabbing to
+Privy Seal. And consider that we must bring to the King Rich and Udal
+and many other witnesses this night.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Throckmorton,' Viridus said, 'before thou goest thou shalt satisfy me
+of many things. I have not yet given myself into thy hands.'</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>A weary sadness had beset Katharine Howard ever since she had knelt
+before Anne of Cleves at Richmond, and it was of this the King had
+spoken outside the door whilst they had waited for light to be made.</p>
+
+<p>All Anne's protesting that willingly she rendered up a distasteful
+crown could not make Katharine hugely glad with the manner of her own
+taking it. And, when a messenger, dressed as a yeoman in green, had
+come into the bright gallery to beg the Queen and that fair lady the
+Lady Katharine Howard to come a-riding side by side and witness the
+sports that certain poor yeomen made in the woods upon Thames-side,
+she felt a sinking in her heart that no Rhenish of the Queen's could
+relieve. She desired to be alone and to pray&mdash;or to be alone with
+Henry and speak out her heart and devise how they might atone to the
+Queen. But she must ride at the Queen's right hand with the Duke of
+Suffolk at her left. It was so between their captives that the C&aelig;sars
+had ridden into Rome after the taking of barbaric kings. But she had
+waged no war.</p>
+
+<p>She did not, in her heart, call shame upon the King; she knew him to
+be a heavy man with bitter sorrows who must in these violentnesses and
+brave shows find refuge and surcease; it was her province to endure
+and to find excuse for him. But to herself she quoted that phrase of
+Lucretius that the King again repeated: there was a hidden destiny
+that tamed the shows of the great; and she was the mutest of that
+throng that upon white horses, all with little flags flying and horns
+blowing, cantered to see the yeomen shoot. For the ladies and knights,
+avid of these things, loved above all good bowmanry and wagered with
+out-stretched hands for the marksmen that most they deemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> to have
+skill or that usually seemed to enjoy the fortunate favours of chance
+and the winds.</p>
+
+<p>But, being alone with the King&mdash;(for when the Queen rode back to
+Richmond the notable bowman in green walked, holding Katharine's
+stirrup, back to Hampton at her saddle-bow)&mdash;she could not stay
+herself from venting her griefs.</p>
+
+<p>'<i>Et cognovi quod non esset melius nisi laetari et facere bene in vita
+sua</i>'&mdash;Henry finished his quotation when they were within her room. He
+sat himself down in her chair and stretched his legs apart; being
+tired with his long walk at her saddle bow, the more boisterous part
+of his great pleasure had left him. He was no more minded to slap his
+thigh, but he felt, as it was his favourite image of blessedness to
+desire, like a husbandman who sat beneath his vine and knew his
+harvesting prosper.</p>
+
+<p>'Body of God!' he said, 'this is the best day of my life. There doth
+no cloud remain. Here is the sunburst. For Cleves hath cut himself
+adrift; I need have no more truck with Anne; you have no more cause
+nor power to bend yourself from me; to-morrow the Parliament meets,
+such a Parliament to do my will as never before met in a Republic;
+therefore I have no more need of Cromwell.' He snapped his thumb and
+finger as if he were throwing away a pinch of dust, and when she fell
+to her knees before his chair, placed his hand upon her head and,
+smiling, huge and indulgent, spoke on.</p>
+
+<p>'This is such a day as seldom I have known since I was a child.' He
+leaned forward to stroke her dusky and golden hair and laid his hand
+upon her shoulder, his fingers touching her flushed cheek.</p>
+
+<p>'On other days I have said with Horace, who is more to my taste than
+your Lucretius: "<i>That man is great and happy who at day's end may
+say: To-day I have lived, what of storms or black clouds on the morrow
+betide.</i>"'...</p>
+
+<p>He crossed his great legs encased in green, set his heavy head to one
+side and, though he could see she was minded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> to pray to him,
+continued to speak like a man uttering of his memories.</p>
+
+<p>'Such days as that of Horace I have known. But never yet such a day as
+to-day, which, good in itself, leadeth on to goodness and fair
+prospects for a certain morrow.' He smiled again. 'Why, I am no more
+an old man as I had thought to be. I have walked that far path beside
+thy horse.' It pleased him for two things: because he had walked with
+little fatigue and because he had been enabled to show her great and
+prodigal honour by so serving her for groom. 'This too I set to thy
+account as my good omen. And that thou art. No woman shall have such
+honours as thou in this land, save only the Mother of God.' And, after
+touching his green and jewelled bonnet, he cast it from his head on to
+the table.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she cried out, and clasping her hands uttered her words in
+anguish and haste. 'Great kings and lords upon their affiancing day
+have ever had the habit of granting their brides a boon or twain&mdash;as
+the conferring of the revenues of a province, or the pardoning of
+criminals.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, an thou come not to me to pardon Privy Seal&mdash;&mdash;' he began.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she cut in on his words, 'I crave no pardon for Privy Seal; but
+let me speak my mind.'</p>
+
+<p>He said tenderly:</p>
+
+<p>'Art in the mood to talk! Talk on! for I know no way to hinder thee.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'I ask thee no pardon for Privy Seal, neither his
+goods ne his life. I maintain this man hath well served thee and is no
+traitor; but since that he hath ground the faces of the poor, hath
+made thee to be hated by bringing of false witness, hath made the
+thirsty earth shrink from drinking of blood, hath cast down the
+Church&mdash;since that this man in this way hath brought peril upon the
+republic and upon the souls of poor and witless folk, this man hath
+wrought worse treasons than any that I wot of. If ye will adjudge him
+to die, I am no fool to say: No!'</p>
+
+<p>Henry wrinkled his brows and said:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Grinding the faces of the poor is in law no treason. Yet I may not
+slay him save upon the occasion of treason. I would a man would come
+to me that could prove him traitor.'</p>
+
+<p>Kneeling before the King she grasped each of his knees with one of her
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'this is your occasion, none of mine. I would ye
+would reconcile it to your conscience so to act to him as I would have
+you, for his injustice to the poor and for his cogged oaths. But yet
+grant me this: to cog oaths for the downfall of Privy Seal upon the
+occasion of treason ye must have many other innocents implicated with
+him; such men as have had no idea, no suspicion, no breath of treason
+in their hearts. Grant me their lives. Sir, let me tell you a tale
+that I read in Seneca.' She moved her body nearer to him upon the
+floor, set her hands upon his two arms and gazed, beseeching and
+piteous, up into his face.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'you may read it in Seneca for yourself that upon the
+occasion of Cinna's treachery being made known to the Emperor
+Augustus, the Emperor lay at night debating this matter in his mind.
+For on the one side, says he in words like this: "<i>Shall I pardon this
+man after that he hath assailed my life, my life that I have preserved
+in so many battles by sea and by land, after I have stablished one
+single peace throughout the globe into all the corners thereof? Shall
+he go free who has considered with himself not only to slay me but to
+slay me when I offered sacrifice, ere its consummation, so that I may
+be damned as well as slain? Shall I pardon this man?</i>" And, upon the
+other side, the Emperor Augustus, lying in the black of the night,
+being a prince, even as thou art, prone to leniency, said such words
+as these: "<i>Why dost thou, Augustus, live, if it is of import to so
+many people that thou diest? Shall there never be an end to thy
+vengeance and thy punishments? Is thy single life of such worth that
+so much ruin shall for ever be wrought to preserve it?</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I have had these thoughts,' Henry said. 'Speak on. What did this
+Emperor that thought like me?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' Katharine continued, and now she had her hands upon his
+shoulders, 'the Empress Livia his wife lay beside him and was aware of
+these his night sweats and his anguishes. "<i>And the counsels of a
+woman; shall these be listened to?</i>" she spoke to him. "<i>Do thou in
+this what the Physicians follow when their accustomed recipes are of
+no avail to cure. They do try the contrary drugs. By severity thou
+hast never, sire, profited from the beginning to this very hour that
+is; Lepidus has followed to death Savidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio
+followed Murena; Eynatius, Caepio. Commence to essay at this pass how
+clemency shall act in cure. Cinna is convicted: pardon him. Further to
+harm thee he hath no power, and it shall for ever redound to thy
+glory.</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>She leaned upon him with all her weight, having her arms about his
+neck.</p>
+
+<p>'Sir,' she said, 'the Emperor Augustus listened to his wife, and the
+days that followed are styled the Golden Age of Rome, he and the
+Empress having great glory.'</p>
+
+<p>Henry scratched his head, holding his beard back from her face that
+lay upon his chest; she drew herself from him and once more laid her
+hands upon his knees. Her fair face was piteous and afraid; her lips
+trembled.</p>
+
+<p>'Dear lord,' she began tremulously, 'I live in this world, and, great
+pity 'tis! I cannot but have seen how many have died by the block and
+faggots. Yet is there no end to this. Even to-day they have burnt upon
+the one part and the other. I do know thy occasions, thy trials, thy
+troubles. But think, sir, upon the Empress Livia. Cromwell being dead,
+find then a Cinna to pardon. Thou hast with thy great and princely
+endeavourings given a Roman peace to the world. Let now a Golden Age
+begin in this dear land.'</p>
+
+<p>She rose to her feet and stretched out both her hands.</p>
+
+<p>'These be the glories that I crave,' she said. 'I would have the glory
+of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy
+Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good
+counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But
+if you will have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I
+beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for
+my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me
+as of such a noble woman of Rome.'</p>
+
+<p>Henry leaned forward and stroked first one knee and then the other.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, I will pardon some,' he said. 'It had not need of so many words
+of thine. I am sick of slaughterings when you speak.' A haughty and
+challenging frown came into his face; his brows wrinkled furiously; he
+gazed at the opening door that moved half imperceptibly, slowly, in
+the half light, after the accustomed manner, so that one within might
+have time to cry out if a visitor was not welcome. For, for the most
+part, in those days, ladies set bolts across their doors.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton stood there, blinking his eyes in the candle-light, and,
+slowly, he fell upon his knees.</p>
+
+<p>'Majesty,' he said, 'I knew not.'</p>
+
+<p>The King maintained a forbidding silence, his green bulk inert and
+dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>'This lady's cousin,' Throckmorton pronounced his words slowly, 'is
+new come from France whence he hath driven out from Paris town the
+Cardinal Pole.'</p>
+
+<p>The King lifted one hand from his thigh, and, heavily, let it fall
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton felt his way still further.</p>
+
+<p>'This lady's cousin would speak with this lady in cousin-ship. He was
+set in my care by my lord Privy Seal. I have brought him thus far in
+safety. For some have made attacks upon him with swords.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine's hand went to her throat where she stood, tall and half
+turning from the King to Throckmorton. The word 'Wherefore?' came from
+her lips.</p>
+
+<p>'Wherefore, I know not,' Throckmorton answered her steadily. His eyes
+shifted for a moment from the King and rested upon her face. 'But this
+I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Belike,' the King said, 'these swordsmen were friends of Pole.'</p>
+
+<p>'Belike,' Throckmorton answered.</p>
+
+<p>He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.</p>
+
+<p>'For his sake,' he said, 'it were well if your Grace, having rewarded
+him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to
+Edinbro' in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and
+observe.'</p>
+
+<p>'Belike,' the King said. 'Get you gone.' But Throckmorton stayed there
+on his knees and the King uttered: 'Anan?'</p>
+
+<p>'Majesty,' Throckmorton said, 'I would ye would see this man who is a
+poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you
+reward him and send him from hence ere worse befall him.'</p>
+
+<p>The King raised his brows.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye love this man well,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>'Here is too much beating about the bush,' burst from Katharine's
+lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little
+and pale in the half light of the two candles. 'This cousin of mine
+loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of
+mine shall cause disorders&mdash;for indeed he is of disordered intervals.
+Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.'</p>
+
+<p>'Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,' Henry said. 'Let us see
+this yokel.' He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting,
+for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he
+must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St Thomas' shrine.</p>
+
+<p>Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin
+came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass
+the sill, and looking never at her but at the King's shoes, he knelt
+him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the
+midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:</p>
+
+<p>'Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> me food and
+dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.'</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:</p>
+
+<p>'Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe
+silence in the awful presence of kings.'</p>
+
+<p>Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a
+minute's space.</p>
+
+<p>'Silence!' he said. 'Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this
+lady's tongue?' He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.</p>
+
+<p>'Ye have done well,' he said. 'Give me your sword. I will knight you.
+I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight's fee farm of a hundred
+pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye
+were about my nephew's courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro'.' He
+waved his hand to Throckmorton. 'See him disposed,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in
+his seat and thundered:</p>
+
+<p>'Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I
+ha' heard ye ha' made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By God,
+I am Harry of Windsor!'</p>
+
+<p>He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green
+shoulders below him.</p>
+
+<p>'Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,' he said. 'Get you gone!'</p>
+
+<p>Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the
+door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>'Poor Tom,' she cried. 'Best it is for thee and me that thou goest.
+Here thou hast no place.' He shook his head like a man in a daze and
+was gone.</p>
+
+<p>'Art too patient with the springald,' the King said.</p>
+
+<p>He thundered 'Body of God!' again when he saw Throckmorton once more
+fall to his knees.</p>
+
+<p>'Sire,' he said&mdash;and for the first time he faltered in his level
+tones&mdash;'a very great treason has come to my ken this day!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>'Holy altar fires!' the King growled, 'let your treasons wait. Here
+hath this lady been talking to me very reasonably of a golden age.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to
+support him. 'This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain
+Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have
+seen it in thy town of London.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine cried out, 'Ah!'</p>
+
+<p>The King leapt to his feet.</p>
+
+<p>'Ho, I will arm,' he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his
+hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But,
+even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret
+rebellions.</p>
+
+<p>'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he
+challenged her:</p>
+
+<p>'This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will
+to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of
+the printer, John Badge&mdash;&mdash;' and he repeated the speech of the
+saturnine man&mdash;'that "<i>he would raise a thousand prentices and a
+thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could
+raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the
+shires!</i>"'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to
+sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to assure her
+that these words were true.</p>
+
+<p>But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.</p>
+
+<p>'Let us arm my guard,' he said. 'I will play Nero to London town.'</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.</p>
+
+<p>'Majesty,' he said, 'I have this man in my keeping.' And indeed, at
+his passing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and
+bring him to Hampton. 'I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your
+warrant, and Privy Seal's I dare not ask.'</p>
+
+<p>The King stayed in his pacing.</p>
+
+<p>'Thou art a jewel of a man,' he said. 'By Cock, I would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> I had many
+like thee.' And at the news that the head of this confederacy was
+taken his sudden fear fell. 'I will see this man. Bring him to me.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sire,' Katharine said, 'we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!'</p>
+
+<p>'Madam,' Throckmorton dared to speak. 'This is the man that hath
+printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath
+uttered more lewdnesses of your chastity.'</p>
+
+<p>'The more I will have him pardoned,' Katharine said, 'that his
+Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify
+that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.</p>
+
+<p>'God send you never rue it,' he said. 'Majesty,' he continued to the
+King, 'give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about
+this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal's. For Privy Seal hath a
+mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me
+half-an-hour's space and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion
+to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and
+to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal
+is a false and damnable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I
+swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.'</p>
+
+<p>He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his
+other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the
+Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge
+when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that
+he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves.
+And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his
+armoury, to the Ambassador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne
+Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great
+houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the
+Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> minded to lay
+before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For,
+with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had
+gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned,
+she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for
+his ears were pricked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of
+the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the
+point of his dagger.</p>
+
+<p>The King said:</p>
+
+<p>'Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say
+that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee
+if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak
+of.'</p>
+
+<p>Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a
+moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against
+the door-post and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and passionate
+glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in
+silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him
+harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain
+that ever was in his life.</p>
+
+<p>And gazing back at him, Katharine's eyes were filled with pity, so
+sick he appeared to be.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 45%;' />
+
+<p>'Body of God!' the King said in the silence that fell upon them. 'Now
+I hold Cromwell.'</p>
+
+<p>Katharine cried out, 'Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!'</p>
+
+<p>He caught her masterfully in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>'This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.</p>
+
+<p>'I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me
+go.'</p>
+
+<p>He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.</p>
+
+<p>'Listen to me,' she cried, 'listen to me! There have been broadsides
+printed against the truth of my body; there have<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> been witnesses
+prepared against me. I will have you swear that you will read of these
+broadsides, and consider of these witnesses.'</p>
+
+<p>'Before God,' he said, 'I will hang the printers, and slay the
+witnesses with my fist. I know how these things be made.' He shook his
+fist. 'I love thee so that were they true, and wert thou the woman of
+Sodom, I would have thee to my Queen!'</p>
+
+<p>She cried out 'Ah!'</p>
+
+<p>'Child,' he calmed himself, 'I will keep my hands from thee. But I
+would fain have the kisses of thy mouth.'</p>
+
+<p>She went to lean upon her table, for her knees trembled.</p>
+
+<p>'Let me speak,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, none hinders,' he answered her kindly.</p>
+
+<p>'I swear I do love thee, so that thy voice is as the blows of hammers
+upon iron to me,' she said. 'I may have little rest, save when I speak
+with thee, for that sustaineth thy servant. But I fear these days and
+ways. This is a very crooked riddle. So much I desire thee that I am
+tremulous to take thee. If it be a madness call it a madness, but
+grant me this!'</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him distractedly, brushing her hands across her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>'It feels within my heart that I must do a penance,' she said. 'I have
+been wishful to feel upon my brow the pressure of the great crown.
+Therefore, grant me this: that I may not feel it. And be this the
+penance!'</p>
+
+<p>'Child,' he said, 'how may you be a Queen, and not crowned with pomp
+and state?'</p>
+
+<p>'Majesty,' she faltered, 'to prepare myself against that high office I
+have been reading in chronicles of the lives of them that have been
+Queens of England. It was his Grace of Canterbury that sent me these
+books for another purpose. But there ye shall read&mdash;in Asser and the
+Saxon Chronicles&mdash;how that the old Queens of Saxondom, when that they
+were humble or were wives coming after the first, sat not upon the
+throne to be crowned and sacred, but&mdash;so it was with Judith that was
+stepmother to King Alfred,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span> and with some others whose names in this
+hurry I may not discover nor remember in my mind&mdash;they were, upon some
+holidays, shewn to the people as being the King's wife.'</p>
+
+<p>She hung her head.</p>
+
+<p>'For that I am humble in truth before the world and before my mother
+Mary in Heaven, and for that I am not thy first Queen, but even thy
+fifth; so I would be shewn and never crowned.'</p>
+
+<p>She leaned back against the table, supporting herself with her hands
+against its edges; her eyes piteously devoured his face.</p>
+
+<p>'Why, child,' he said, 'so thou wilt be that fifth Queen; whether thou
+wilt be a Queen crowned or a Queen shewn, what care I?'</p>
+
+<p>She no longer refused herself to his arms, for she had no more
+strength.</p>
+
+<p>'Mary be judge between me and them that speak against me,' she said,
+'I can no more hold out against my joy or longings.'</p>
+
+<p>'Sha't wear a hair shirt,' he said tenderly. 'Sha't go in sackcloth.
+Sha't have enow to do praying for me and thee. But hast no need of
+prayers.' He lulled her in his arms, swaying on his feet. 'Hast a
+great tongue. Speakest many words. But art a very child. God send thee
+all the joy I purpose thee. And, an thou hast sins, weight me further
+down in hell therewith.'</p>
+
+<p>The light of the candles threw their locked shadows along the wall and
+up the ceilings. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, so that she
+seemed to be dead and her listless hands were open in her skirts.</p>
+
+<hr style='width: 65%;' />
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
+
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+</body>
+</html>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Privy Seal
+       His Last Venture
+
+Author: Ford Madox Ford
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2008 [EBook #26698]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRIVY SEAL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Suzanne Shell, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                         Transcriber's Note.
+
+     This is the Second book of the trilogy, The Fifth Queen, by
+     Ford Madox Ford. The other books are The Fifth Queen and The
+     Fifth Queen Crowned.
+
+
+
+                              PRIVY SEAL
+
+                          _His Last Venture_
+
+
+
+
+
+    _"Ille potens ... et laetus cui licet in diem
+    Dixisse: Vixi!..."_
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+The Rising Sun,       1
+
+PART TWO
+The Distant Cloud,   75
+
+PART THREE
+The Sunburst,       153
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+Frau Laura Schmedding
+
+who has so often combated
+my prejudices and corrected
+my assertions
+this with affection
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+PART ONE
+
+THE RISING SUN
+
+I
+
+
+The Magister Udal sat in the room of his inn in Paris, where
+customarily the King of France lodged such envoys as came at his
+expense. He had been sent there to Latinise the letters that passed
+between Sir Thomas Wyatt and the King's Ministers of France, for he
+was esteemed the most learned man in these islands. He had groaned
+much at being sent there, for he must leave in England so many
+loves--the great, blonde Margot Poins, that was maid to Katharine
+Howard; the tall, swaying Katharine Howard herself; Judge Cantre's
+wife that had fed him well; and two other women, with all of whom he
+had succeeded easily or succeeded in no wise at all. But the mission
+was so well paid--with as many crowns the day as he had had groats for
+teaching the Lady Mary of England--that fain he had been to go.
+Moreover, it was by way of being a favour of Privy Seal's. The
+magister had written for him a play in English; the rich post was the
+reward--and it was an ill thing, a thing the magister dreaded, to
+refuse the favours of Privy Seal. He consoled himself with the thought
+that the writing of letters in Latin might wash from his mouth the
+savour of the play he had written in the vulgar tongue.
+
+But his work in Paris was ended--for with the flight of Cardinal Pole,
+who had left Paris precipitately upon news that the King of England
+had sent a drunken roisterer to assassinate him, it was imagined that
+soon now more concord between Francis and England might ensue, and the
+magister sat in his room planning his voyage back to Dover. The room
+was great in size, panelled mostly in wood, lit with lampwicks that
+floated in oil dishes and heated with a sea-coal fire, for though it
+was April the magister was of a cold disposition of the hands and
+shins. The inn--of the Golden Astrolabe--was kept by an Englishwoman,
+a masterful widow with a broad face and a great mouth that smiled. She
+stood beside him there. Forty-seven she might have been, and she
+called herself the Widow Annot.
+
+The magister sat over his fire with his gown parted from his legs to
+warm his shins, but his hands waved angrily and his face was
+crestfallen.
+
+'Oh, keeper of a tavern,' he said. 'It is set down in holy writ that
+it is not good for a man to be alone.'
+
+'That a hostess shall keep her tavern clean is writ in the books of
+the provost of Paris town,' the Widow Annot answered, and the shadow
+of her great white hood, which she wore in the older English fashion,
+danced over the brown wooden beams of the ceiling.
+
+'Nay, nay,' he answered, 'it is written there that it is the enjoined
+devoir of every hotelier to provide things fitting for the sojourners'
+ease, pleasure and recreation.'
+
+'The maid is locked in another house,' the hostess answered, 'and
+should have been this three week.' She swung her keys on a black
+riband and gazed at him masterfully. 'Will your magistership eat capon
+or young goat?'
+
+'Capon will have a savour like sawdust, and young goat like the dust
+of the road,' the magister moaned. 'Give me the girl to wait upon me
+again.'
+
+'No maid will wait upon thee,' she answered.
+
+'Even thou thyself?' he asked. He glanced across his shoulder and his
+eyes measured her, hers him. She had large shoulders, a high, full
+stomacher, and her cheeks were an apple-red. 'The maiden was a fair
+piece,' he tittered.
+
+'Therefore you must spoil the ring of the coin,' she answered.
+
+He sighed: 'Then eat you with me. "_Soli cantare periti Arcades._" But
+it is cold here alone of nights.'
+
+They ate goat and green leeks sweetened with honey, and wood thrushes
+pickled in wine, and salt fish from the mouth of the Beauce. And
+because this gave the magister a great thirst he drank much of a
+warmed wine from Burgundy that the hostess brought herself. They sat,
+byside, on cushions on a couch before the warm fire.
+
+'_Filia pulchra mater pulchrior!_' the magister muttered, and he cast
+his arms about her soft and plump waist. 'The maid was a fair skewer,
+the hostess is a plumper roasting bit.' She took his kisses on her
+fire-warmed cheeks, but in the end she thrust him mightily from her
+with a large elbow.
+
+He gasped with the strength of her thrust, and she said:
+
+'Greedy dogs getten them hard cuffs,' and rearranged her neckercher.
+When he tried to come nearer her she laughed and thrust him aback.
+
+'You have tried and tasted,' she said. 'A fuller meal you must pay
+for.'
+
+He stood before her, lean and lank, his gown flapping about his
+calves, his eyes smiling humorously, his lips twitching.
+
+'Oh soft and warm woman,' he cried, 'payment shall be yours'; and
+whilst he fumbled furiously in his clothes-press, he quoted from
+Tully: '_Haec civitas mulieri redimiculum praebuit._' He pulled out
+one small bag: '_Haec in collum._' She took another. '_Haec in
+crines!_' and he added a third, saying: 'Here is all I have,' and cast
+the three into her lap. Whilst she counted the coins composedly on the
+table before her he added: 'Leave me nevertheless the price to come to
+England with.'
+
+'Sir Magister,' she said, turning her large face to him. 'This is not
+one-tenth enough. You have tasted an ensample. Will you have the whole
+meal?'
+
+'Oh, unconscionable,' he cried. 'More I have not!' He began to wave
+his hands. 'Consider what you do do,' he uttered. 'Think of what a
+pest is love. How many have died of it. Pyramus, Thisbe, Dido, Medea,
+Croesus, Callirhoe, Theagines the philosopher ... Consider what writes
+Gordonius: "_Prognosticatio est talis: si non succuratur iis aut in
+maniam cadunt: aut moriuntur._" Unless lovers be succoured either they
+fall into a madness, either they die or grow mad. And Fabian
+Montaltus: "If this passion be not assuaged, the inflammation cometh
+to the brain. It drieth up the blood. Then followeth madness or men
+make themselves away." I would have you ponder of what saith
+Parthenium and what Plutarch in his tales of lovers.'
+
+Her face appeared comely and smooth in his eyes, but she shook her
+head at him.
+
+'These be woeful and pretty stories,' she said. 'I would have you to
+tell me many of them.'
+
+'All through the night,' he said eagerly, and made to clasp her in his
+arms. But she pushed him back again with her hand on his chest.
+
+'All through the night an you will,' she said. 'But first you shall
+tell a prettier tale before a man in a frock.'
+
+He sprang full four feet back at one spring.
+
+'I have wedded no woman, yet,' he said.
+
+'Then it is time you wed one now,' she answered.
+
+'Oh widow, bethink you,' he pleaded. 'Would you spoil so pretty a
+tale? Would you humble so goodly a man's pride?'
+
+'Why, it were a pity,' she said. 'But I am minded to take a husband.'
+
+'You have done well this ten years without one,' he cried out.
+
+Her face seemed to set like adamant as she turned her cheek to him.
+
+'Call it a woman's mad freak,' she said.
+
+'Six and twenty pupils in the fair game of love I have had,' he said.
+'You shall be the seven and twentieth. Twenty and seven are seven and
+two. Seven and two are nine. Now nine is the luckiest of numbers. Be
+you that one.'
+
+'Nay,' she answered. 'It is time you learned husbandry who have taught
+so many and earned so little.'
+
+He slipped himself softly into the cushions beside her.
+
+'Would you spoil so fair a tale?' he said. 'Would you have me to break
+so many vows? I have promised a mort of women marriage, and so long as
+I be not wed I may keep faith with any one of them.'
+
+She held her face away from him and laughed.
+
+'That is as it may be,' she said. 'But when you wed with me to-night
+you will keep faith with one woman.'
+
+'Woman,' he pleaded. 'I am a great scholar.'
+
+'Ay,' she answered, 'and great scholars have climbed to great
+estates.'
+
+She continued to count the coins that came from his little money-bags;
+the shadow of her hood upon the great beams grew more portentous.
+
+'It is thought that your magistership may rise to be Chancellor of the
+Realm of England,' she added.
+
+He clutched his forehead.
+
+'Eheu!' he said. 'If you have heard men say that, you know that wedded
+to thee I could never climb.'
+
+'Then I shall very comfortably keep my inn here in Paris town,' she
+answered. 'You have here fourteen pounds and eleven shillings.'
+
+He stretched forth his lean hands:
+
+'Why, I will marry thee in the morning,' he said, and he moistened his
+lips with the tip of his tongue. Outside the door there was a
+shuffling of several feet.
+
+'I knew not other guests were in the house,' he uttered, and fell
+again to kissing her.
+
+'Knew you not an envoy was come from Cleves?' she whispered.
+
+Her head fell back and he supported it with one trembling hand. He
+shook like a leaf when her voice rang out:
+
+'_Au secours! Au secours!_'
+
+There was a great jangle, light fell into the dusky room through the
+doorhole, and he found himself beneath the eyes of many scullions with
+spits, cooks with carving forks, and kitchenmaids with sharpened
+distaffs of steel.
+
+'Now I will be wed this night,' she laughed.
+
+He moved to the end of the couch and blinked at her in the strong
+light.
+
+'I will be wed this night,' she said again, and rearranged her
+head-dress, revealing, as her sleeves fell open, her white, plump
+arms.
+
+'Why, no!' he answered irresolutely.
+
+She said in French to her aids:
+
+'Come near him with the spits!'
+
+They moved towards him, a white-clad body with their pointed things
+glittering in the light of torches. He sprang behind the great table
+against the window and seized the heavy-leaden sandarach. The French
+scullions knew, tho' he had no French, that he would cleave one of
+their skulls, and they stood, a knot of seven--four men and three
+maids--in blue hoods, in the centre of the room.
+
+'By Mars and by Apollo!' he said, 'I was minded to wed with thee if I
+could no other way. But now, like Phaeton, I will cast myself from the
+window and die, or like the wretches thrown from the rock, called
+Tarpeian. I was minded to a folly: now I am minded rather for death.'
+
+'How nobly thy tongue doth wag, husband,' she said, and cried in
+French for the rogues to be gone. When the door closed upon the lights
+she said in the comfortable gloom: 'I dote upon thy words. My first
+was tongue-tied.' She beckoned him to her and folded her arms. 'Let us
+discourse upon this matter,' she said comfortably. 'Thus I will put
+it: you wed with me or spring from the window.'
+
+'I am even trapped?' he asked.
+
+'So it comes to all foxes that too long seek for capons,' she
+answered.
+
+'But consider,' he said. He sat himself by the fireside upon a stool,
+being minded to avoid temptation.
+
+'I would have your magistership forget the rogues that be without,'
+she said.
+
+'They were a nightmare's tale,' he said.
+
+'Yet forget them not too utterly,' she answered. 'For I am of some
+birth. My father had seven horses and never followed the plough.'
+
+'Oh buxom one!' he answered. 'Of a comfortable birth and girth thou
+art. Yet with thee around my neck I might not easily climb.'
+
+'Magister,' she said, 'whilst thou climbest in London town thy wife
+will bide in Paris.'
+
+'Consider!' he said. 'There is in London town a fair, large maid
+called Margot Poins.'
+
+'Is she more fair than I?' she asked. 'I will swear she is.'
+
+He tilted his stool forward.
+
+'No; no, I swear it,' he said eagerly.
+
+'Then I will swear she is more large.'
+
+'No; not one half so bounteous is her form,' he answered, and moved
+across to the couch.
+
+'Then if you can bear her weight up you can bear mine,' she said, and
+moved away from him.
+
+'Nay,' he answered. 'She would help me on,' and he fumbled in the
+shadows for her hand. She drew herself together into a small space.
+
+'You affect her more than me,' she said, with a swift motion
+simulating jealousy.
+
+'By the breasts of Venus, no!' he answered.
+
+'Oh, once more use such words,' she murmured, and surrendered to him
+her soft hand. He rubbed it between both of his cold ones and uttered:
+
+'By the Paphian Queen: by her teams of doves and sparrows! By the
+bower of Phyllis and the girdle of Egypt's self! I love thee!'
+
+She gurgled 'oh's' of pleasure.
+
+'But this Margot Poins is tirewoman to the Lady Katharine Howard.'
+
+'I am tirewoman to mine own self alone,' she said. 'Therefore you love
+her better.'
+
+'Nay, oh nay,' he said gently. 'But this Lady Katharine Howard is
+mistress to the King's self.'
+
+'And I have been mistress to no married man save my husbands,' she
+answered. 'Therefore you love this Margot Poins better.'
+
+He fingered her soft palm and rubbed it across his own neck.
+
+'Nay, nay,' he said. 'But I must wed with Margot Poins.'
+
+'Why with her more than with me or any other of your score and seven?'
+she said softly.
+
+'Since the Lady Katharine will be Queen,' he answered, and once again
+he was close against her side. She sighed softly.
+
+'Thus if you wed with me you will never be Chancellor,' she said.
+
+'I would not anger the Queen,' he answered. She nestled bountifully
+and warmly against him.
+
+'Swear even again that you like me more than the fair, large wench in
+London town,' she whispered against his ear.
+
+'Even as Jove prized Danae above the Queen of Heaven, even as
+Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules
+placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of the
+Jews Bathsheba above....'
+
+She murmured 'Oh, oh,' and placed her arms around his shoulders.
+
+'How I love thy brave words!'
+
+'And being Chancellor,' he swore, 'I will come back to thee, oh woman
+of the sweet smiles, honey of Hymettus, Cypriote wine....'
+
+She moved herself a little from him in the darkness.
+
+'And if you do not wed with Margot Poins....'
+
+'I pray a plague may fall upon her, but I must wed with her,' he
+answered. 'Come now; come now!'
+
+'Else the Lady Katharine shall be displeased with your magistership?'
+
+He sought to draw her to him, but she stiffened herself a little.
+
+'And this Lady Katharine is mistress to the King of England's realm?'
+
+His hands moved tremblingly towards her in the darkness.
+
+'And this Lady Katharine shall be Queen?'
+
+A hiss of exasperation came upon his lips, for she had slipped from
+beneath his hands into the darkness.
+
+'Why, then, I will not stay your climbing,' she said. 'Good-night,'
+and in the darkness he heard her sob.
+
+The couch fell backwards as he swore and sprang towards her voice.
+
+'Magister!' she said. 'Hands off! Unwed thou shalt not have me, for I
+have sworn it.'
+
+'I have sworn to wed seven and twenty women,' he said, 'and have
+wedded with none.'
+
+'Nay, nay,' she sobbed. 'Hands off. Henceforth I will make no
+vows--but no one but thee shall wed me.'
+
+'Then wed me, in God's name!' he cried, and, screaming:
+
+'_Ho la! Apportez le prestre!_' she softened herself in his arms.
+
+The magister confronted the lights, the leering scullions and the
+grinning maids with their great mantles; his brown, woodpecker-like
+face was alike crestfallen and thirsty with desire. A lean Dominican,
+with his brown cowl back and spectacles of horn, gabbled over his
+missal and took a crown's fee--then asked another by way of penitence
+for the sin with the maid locked up in another house. When they
+brought the bride favours of pink to pin into her gorget she said:
+
+'I long had loved thee for thy great words, husband. Therefore all
+these I had in readiness.'
+
+With that knot fast upon him, the magister, clasping his gown upon his
+shins, looked askance at the floor. Whilst they made ready the bride,
+with great lights and laughter, she said:
+
+'I was minded to have a comfortable husband. And a comfortable husband
+is a husband much absent. What more comfortable than me in Paris town
+and thee in London city? I keep my inn here, thou mindest thy book
+there. Thou shalt here find a goodly capon upon occasion, and when
+thou hast a better house in London I will come share it.'
+
+'Trapped! Trapped!' the magister muttered to himself. 'Even as was Sir
+Launcelot!'
+
+He considered of the fair and resentful Margot Poins whom it was
+incumbent indeed that he should wed: that Katharine Howard loved her
+well and was in these matters strait-laced. When his eyes measured his
+wife he licked his lips; when his eyes were on the floor his jaw fell.
+At best the new Mistress Udal would be in Paris. He looked at the rope
+tied round the thin middle of the brown priest, and suddenly he leered
+and cast off his cloak.
+
+'Let me remember to keep an equal mind in these hard matters,' he
+quoted, and fell to laughing.
+
+For he remembered that in England no marriage by a friar or monk held
+good in those years. Therefore he was the winner. And the long, square
+room, with the cave bed behind its shutter in the hollow of the wall,
+the light-coloured, square beams, and the foaming basin of bride-ale
+that a fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion
+after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting
+bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the
+blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his
+bassoon that he played before the open door; the two saucy maids
+striving to wrest the bride's stockings one from the other--all these
+things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes. So that, when one of
+the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped
+her in his arms and kissed her till she struggled from him to drink a
+mug of bride-ale.
+
+'_Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras!_' he said. For it was in his mind a
+goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was three days later, in the morning, that his captress said to the
+Magister Udal:
+
+'Husband, it is time that I gave thee the bridal gift.'
+
+The magister, happy with a bellyful of carp, bread and breakfast ale,
+muttered 'Anan?' from above his copy of Lucretius. He sat in the
+window-seat of the great stone kitchen. Upon one long iron spit before
+the fire fourteen trussed capons turned in unison; the wooden shoes of
+the basting-maid clattered industriously; and from the chimney came
+the clank of the invisible smoke-vanes and the be-sooted chains. The
+magister, who loved above all things warmth, a full stomach, a
+comfortable woman and a good book, had all these things; he was well
+minded to stay in Paris town for fourteen days, when they were to slay
+a brown pig from the Ardennes, against whose death he had written an
+elegy in Sapphics.
+
+'For,' said his better half, standing before him with a great loaf
+clasped to her bosom, 'if you turn a horse from the stable between
+full and half full, like as not he will return of fair will to the
+crib.'
+
+'Oh Venus and Hebe in one body,' the magister said, 'I am minded to
+end here my scholarly days.'
+
+'I am minded that ye shall travel far erstwhile,' she answered.
+
+He laid down his book upon a clean chopping-board.
+
+'I know a good harbourage,' he said.
+
+She sat down beside him in the window and fingered the fur on his long
+gown, saying that, in this light, it showed ill-favouredly worm-eaten;
+and he answered that he never had wishes nor money for gowning
+himself, who cultivated the muses upon short commons. She turned
+rightway to the front the medal upon his chest, and folded her arms.
+
+'Whilst ye have no better house to harbour us,' she said, 'this shall
+serve. Let us talk of the to-come.'
+
+He groaned a little.
+
+'Let us love to-day that's here,' he said. 'I will read thee a verse
+from Lucretius, and you shall tell me the history of that fourth
+capon'--he pointed to a browned carcase that, upon the spit, whirled
+its elbows a full third longer than any of the line.
+
+'That is the master roasting-piece,' she said, 'so he browns there not
+too far, nor too close, for the envoy's own eating.'
+
+He considered the chicken with his head to one side.
+
+'It is the place of a wife to be subject to her lord,' he said.
+
+'It is the place of a husband that he fendeth for 's wife,' she
+answered him. She tapped her fingers determinedly upon her elbows.
+
+'So it is,' she continued. 'To-morrow you shall set out for London
+city to make road towards becoming Sir Chancellor.' Whilst he groaned
+she laid down for him her law. He was to go to England, he was to
+strive for great posts: if he gained, she would come share them; if he
+failed, he might at odd moments come back to her fireside. 'Have done
+with groaning now,' she said, stilling his lamentations.' 'Keep them
+even for the next wench that you shall sue to--of me you have had all
+you asked.'
+
+He considered for five seconds, his elbow upon his crossed knees and
+his wrist supporting his lean brown face.
+
+'It is in the essence of it a good bargain,' he said. 'You put against
+the chance of being, you a chancellor's madam, mine of having for
+certain a capon in Paris town.'
+
+He tapped his long nose. 'Nevertheless, for your stake you have cast
+down a very little: three nights of bed and board against the chaining
+me up.'
+
+'Husband,' she answered. 'More than that you shall have.'
+
+He wriggled a little beneath his furs.
+
+'Husband is an ill name,'he commented. 'It smarts.'
+
+'But it fills the belly.'
+
+'Aye,'he said. 'Therefore I am minded to bide here and take with the
+sourness the sweet of it.'
+
+She laughed a little, and, with a great knife, cut a large manchet
+from the loaf between them.
+
+'Nay,' she said, 'to-morrow my army with their spits and forks shall
+drive thee from the door.'
+
+He grinned with his lips. She was fair and fat beneath her hood, but
+she was resolute. 'I have it in me greatly to advance you,' she said.
+
+A boy brought her a trencher filled with chopped things, and a man in
+a blue jerkin came to her side bearing a middling pig, seared to a
+pale clear pinkness. The boy held the slit stomach carefully apart,
+and she lined it with slices of bread, dropping into the hollow
+chives, nutmegs, lumps of salt, the buds of bergamot, and marigold
+seeds with their acrid perfume, and balls of honied suet. She bound
+round it a fair linen cloth that she stitched with a great bone
+needle.
+
+'Oh ingenuous countenance,' the magister mused above the pig's mild
+face. 'Is it not even the spit of the Cleves envoy's? And the Cleves
+envoy shall eat this adorable monster. Oh, cruel anthropophagist!'
+
+She resigned her burden to the spit and gave the loaf to the boy,
+wiped her fingers upon her apron, and said:
+
+'That pig shall help thee far upon thy road.'
+
+'Goes it into my wallet?' he asked joyfully.
+
+She answered: 'Nay; into the Cleves envoy's weam.'
+
+'You speak in hard riddles,' he uttered.
+
+'Nay,' she laughed, 'a baby could unriddle it.' She looked at him for
+a moment to enjoy her triumph of mystery. 'Husband mine, a pig thus
+stuffed is good eating for Cleves men. I have not kept a hostel for
+twelve years for envoys and secretaries without learning what each
+eats with pleasure. And long have I thought that if I wed a man it
+should be such a man as could thrive by learning of envoys' secrets.'
+
+He leaned towards her earnestly.
+
+'You know wherefore the man from Cleves is come?'
+
+'You are, even as I have heard it said, a spy of Thomas Cromwell?' she
+asked in return.
+
+He looked suddenly abashed, but she held to her question.
+
+'I pass for Privy Seal's man,' he answered at last.
+
+'But you have played him false,' she said. He grew pale, glanced over
+his shoulder, and put his finger on his lips.
+
+'I'll wager it was for a woman,' she accused him. She wiped her lips
+with her apron and dropped her hands upon her lap.
+
+'Why, keep troth to Cromwell if you can,' she said.
+
+'I do think his sun sets,' he whispered.
+
+'Why, I am sorry for it,' she answered. 'I have always loved him for a
+brewer's son. My father was a brewer.'
+
+'Cromwell was begotten even by the devil,' Udal answered. 'He made me
+write a comedy in the vulgar tongue.'
+
+'Be it as you will,' she answered. 'You shall know on which side to
+bite your cake better than I.'
+
+He was still a little shaken at the thought of Privy Seal.
+
+'If you know wherefore cometh Cleves' envoy, much it shall help me to
+share the knowledge,' he said at last, 'for by that I may know whether
+Cromwell or we do rise or fall.'
+
+'If you have made a pact with a woman, have very great cares,' she
+answered dispassionately. 'Doubtless you know how the dog wags its
+tail; but you are always a fool with a woman.'
+
+'This woman shall be Queen if Cromwell fall,' the magister said, 'and
+I shall rise with her.'
+
+'But is no woman from Cleves' Queen there now?' she asked.
+
+'Cicely,' he answered highly, 'you know much of capons and beeves, but
+there are queens that are none and do not queen it, and queans that
+are no queens and queen it.'
+
+'And so 'twill be whilst men are men,' she retorted. 'But neither my
+first nor my second had his doxies ruling within my house, do what
+they might beyond the door.'
+
+He tried to impart to her some of the adoration he had for Katharine
+Howard--her learning, her faith, her tallness, her wit, and the
+deserved empiry that she had over King Henry VIII; but she only
+answered:
+
+'Why, kiss the wench all you will, but do not come to tell me how she
+smells!'--and to his new protests: 'Aye, you may well be right and she
+may well be Queen--for I know you will sacrifice your ease for no
+wench that shall not help you somewhere forwards.'
+
+The magister held his hands above his head in shocked negation of this
+injustice--but there came from the street the thin wail of a trumpet;
+another joined it, and a third; the three sounds executed a triple
+convolution and died away one by one. Holding his thin hand out for
+silence and better hearing, he muttered:
+
+'Norfolk's tucket! Then it is true that Norfolk comes to Paris.'
+
+His wife slipped down from her seat.
+
+'Gave I you not the ostler's gossip from Calais three days since?' she
+said, and went towards her roastings.
+
+'But wherefore comes the yellow dog to Paris?' Udal persisted.
+
+'That you may go seek,' she answered. 'But believe always what an
+innkeeper says of who are on the road.'
+
+Udal too slipped down from the window-seat; he buttoned his gown down
+to his shins, pulled his hat over his ears and hurried through the
+galleried courtyard into the comfortless shadows of the street. There
+was no doubt that Norfolk was coming; round the tiny crack that, two
+houses away, served for all the space that the road had between the
+towering housefronts, two men in scarlet and yellow, with leopards and
+lions and fleurs-de-lis on their chests, walked between two in white,
+tabarded with the great lilies of France. They crushed round the
+corner, for there was scarce space for four men abreast; behind them
+squeezed men in purple with the Howard knot, bearing pikes, and men in
+mustard yellow with the eagle's wing and ship badge of the Provost of
+Paris. In the broader space before the arch of Udal's courtyard they
+stayed to wait for the horsemen to disentangle themselves from the
+alley; the Englishmen looked glumly at the tall housefronts; the
+French loosened the mouthplates of their helmets to breathe the air
+for a minute. Hostlers, packmen and pedlars began to fill the space
+behind Udal, and he heard his wife's voice calling shrilly to a cook
+who had run across the yard.
+
+The crowd a little shielded him from the draught which came through
+the arch, and he waited with more contentment. Undoubtedly there was
+Norfolk upon a great yellow horse, so high that it made his bonnet
+almost touch the overhanging storey of the third house; behind him the
+white and gold litter of the provost, who, having three weeks before
+broken his leg at tennis-play, was still unable to sit in a saddle.
+The duke rode as if implacably rigid, his yellow, long face set,
+listening as if with a sour deafness to something that the provost
+from below called to him with a great, laughing voice.
+
+The provost's litter, too, came up alongside the duke's horse in the
+open space, then they all moved forward at the slow processional:
+three steps and a halt for the trumpets to blow a tucket; three more
+and another tucket; the great yellow horse stepping high and casting
+up his head, from which flew many flakes of white foam. With its slow,
+regularly interrupted gait, dominated by the impassive yellow face of
+Norfolk, the whole band had an air of performing a solemn dance, and
+Udal shivered for a long time, till amidst the train of mules bearing
+leathern sacks, cupboards, chests and commodes, he saw come riding a
+familiar figure in a scholar's gown--the young pedagogue and companion
+of the Earl of Surrey. He was a fair, bearded youth with blue eyes,
+riding a restless colt that embroiled itself and plunged amongst the
+mules' legs. The young man leaned forward in the saddle and craned to
+avoid a clothes chest.
+
+The magister called to him:
+
+'Ho, Longstaffe!' and having caught his pleased eyes: _'Ecce quis sto
+in arce plenitatis. Veni atque bibe! Magister sum. Udal sum.
+Longstaffe ave.'_
+
+Longstaffe slipped from his horse, which he left to be rescued by whom
+it might from amongst the hard-angled cases.
+
+'Assuredly,' he said, 'there is no love between that beast and me as
+there was betwixt his lord and Bucephalus,' and he followed Udal into
+the galleried courtyard, where their two gowned figures alone sought
+shelter from the March showers.
+
+'News from overseas there is none,' he said. 'Privy Seal ruleth still
+about the King; the German astronomers have put forth a tract _De
+Quadratura Circuli_; the lost continent of Atlantis is a lost
+continent still--and my bones ache.'
+
+'But your mission?' Udal asked.
+
+The doctor, his hard blue eyes spinning with sardonic humour beneath
+his black beretta, said that his mission, even as Udal's had been, was
+to gain some crowns by setting into the learned language letters that
+should pass between his ambassador and the King's men of France. Udal
+grinned disconcertedly.
+
+'Be certified in your mind,' he said, 'that I am not here a spy or
+informer of Privy Seal's.'
+
+'Forbid it, God,' Doctor Longstaffe answered good-humouredly. None the
+less his jaw hardened beneath his fair beard and he answered, 'I have
+as yet written no letters--_litteras nullas scripsi: argal nihil
+scio_.'
+
+'Why, ye shall drink a warmed draught and eat a drippinged soppet,'
+Udal said, 'and you shall tell me what in England is said of this
+mission.'
+
+He led the fair doctor into the great kitchen, and felt a great stab
+of dislike when the young man set his arm round the hostess's waist
+and kissed her on the red cheeks. The young man laughed:
+
+'Aye indeed; I am _mancipium paucae lectionis_ set beside so learned a
+man as the magister.'
+
+The hostess received him with a bridling favour, rubbing her cheek
+pleasantly, whilst Udal was seeking to persuade himself that, since
+the woman was in law no wife of his, he had no need to fear.
+Nevertheless rage tore him when the doctor, leaning his back against
+the window-side, talked to the woman. She stood between them holding a
+pewter flagon of mulled hypocras upon a salver of burnished pewter.
+
+'Who I be,' he said, gazing complacently at her, 'is a poor student of
+good letters; how I be here is as one of the amanuenses of the Duke of
+Norfolk. Origen, Eusebius telleth, had seven, given him by Ambrosius
+to do his behest. The duke hath but two, given him by the grace of God
+and of the King's high mercy.'
+
+'I make no doubt,' she answered, 'ye be as learned as the seven were.'
+
+'I be twice as hungry,' he laughed; 'but with me it has always been
+"_Quid scribam non quemadmodum_," wherein I follow Seneca.'
+
+'Doctor,' the magister uttered, quivering, 'you shall tell me why this
+mission--which is a very special embassy--at this time cometh to this
+town of Paris.'
+
+'Magister,' the doctor answered, wagging his beard upon his poor
+collar to signify that he desired to keep his neck where it was, 'I
+know not.'
+
+'Injurious man,' Udal fulminated, 'I be no spy.'
+
+The doctor surveyed his perturbation with cross-legged calmness.
+
+'An ye were,' he said--'and it is renowned that ye are--ye could get
+no knowledge from where none is.'
+
+'Why, tell me of a woman,' the hostess said. 'Who is Kat Howard?'
+
+The doctor's blue eyes shot a hard glance at her, and he let his head
+sink down.
+
+'I have copied to her eyes a sonnet or twain,' he said, 'and they were
+writ by my master, Surrey, the Duke o' Norfolk's son.'
+
+'Then these rave upon her as doth the magister?' she asked.
+
+'Why, an ye be jealous of the magister here,' the doctor clipped his
+words precisely, 'cast him away and take me who am a proper
+sweetheart.'
+
+'I be wed,' she answered pleasantly.
+
+'What matters that,' he said, 'when husbands are not near?'
+
+The magister, torn between his unaccustomed gust of jealousy and the
+desire to hide his marriage from a disastrous discovery in England,
+clutched with straining fingers at his gown.
+
+'Tell wherefore cometh your mission,' he said.
+
+'We spoke of a fair woman,' the doctor answered. 'Shame it were before
+Apollo and Priapus that men's missions should come before kings'
+mistresses.'
+
+'It is true, then, that she shall be queen?' Udal's wife asked.
+
+The fall of a great dish in the rear of the tall kitchen gave the
+scholar time to collect his suspicions--for he took it for an easy
+thing that this woman, if she were Udal's leman, might be, she too, a
+spy in the service of Privy Seal.
+
+'Forbid it, God,' he said, 'that ye take my words as other than
+allegorical. The lady Katharine may be spoken of as a king's mistress
+since in truth she were a fit mistress for a king, being fair, devout,
+learned, courteous, tall and sweet-voiced. But that she hath been kind
+to the King, God forbid that I should say it.'
+
+'Aye,' Udal said, 'but if she hath sent this mission?'
+
+Panic rose in the heart of the doctor; he beheld himself there, in
+what seemed a spy's kitchen, asked disastrous questions by a man and
+woman and pinned into a window-seat. For there was no doubt that the
+rumour ran in England that this mission had been sent by the King
+because Katharine Howard so wished it sent. In that age of spies and
+treacheries no man's head was safe on his shoulders--and here were
+Cromwell's spies asking news of Cromwell's chief enemy.
+
+He stretched out a calm hand and spoke slowly:
+
+'Madam hostess,' he said, 'if ye be jealous of the magister ye may
+well be jealous, for great beauty and worship hath this lady.' Yet she
+need be little jealous, for this lady was nowadays prized so high that
+she might marry any man in the land--and learned men were little
+prized. Any man in the land of England she might wed--saving only such
+as were wed, amongst whom was their lord the King, who was happily
+wed to the gracious lady whom my Lord Privy Seal did bring from Cleves
+to be their very virtuous Queen.
+
+Here, it seemed to him, he had cleared himself very handsomely of
+suspicion of ill will to Privy Seal or of wishing ill to Anne of
+Cleves.
+
+'For the rest,' he said, sighing with relief to be away from dangerous
+grounds, 'your magister is safe from the toils of marriage with the
+Lady Katharine.' Still it might be held that jealousy is aroused by
+the loving and not by the returning of that love; for it was very
+certain that the magister much had loved this lady. Many did hold it a
+treachery in him, till now, to the Privy Seal whom he served. But now
+he might love her duteously, since our lord the King had commanded the
+Lady Katharine to join hands with Privy Seal, and Privy Seal to cement
+a friendly edifice in his heart towards the lady. Thus it was no
+treason to Privy Seal in him to love her. But to her it was a treason
+great and not to be comprehended.
+
+He ogled Udal's wife in the gallant manner and prayed her to prepare a
+bed for him in that hostelry. He had been minded to lodge with a
+Frenchman named Clement; but having seen her ...
+
+'Learned sir,' she answered, 'a good bed I have for you.' But if he
+sought to go beyond her lips she had a body-guard of spitmen that the
+magister's self had seen.
+
+The doctor kissed her agreeably and, with a great sigh of relief,
+hurried from the door.
+
+'May Bacchus who maketh mad, and the Furies that pursued Orestes,
+defile the day when I cross this step again,' he muttered as he swung
+under the arch and ran to follow the mule train.
+
+For the magister, by playing with his reputation of being Cromwell's
+spy, had so effectually caused terror of himself to pervade those who
+supported the old faith that he had much ado at times to find company
+even amongst the lovers of good letters.
+
+
+III
+
+
+In the kitchen the spits had ceased turning, the dishes had been borne
+upstairs to the envoy from Cleves, the scullions were wiping knives,
+the maids were rubbing pieces of bread in the dripping pans and
+licking their fingers after the succulent morsels. The magister stood,
+a long crimson blot in the window-way; the hostess was setting flagons
+carefully into the great armoury.
+
+'Madam wife,' the magister said to her at last, when she came near,
+'ye see how weighty it is that I bide here.'
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'I see how weighty it is that ye hasten to
+London.'
+
+His rage broke--he whirled his arms above his head.
+
+'Naughty woman!' he screamed harshly. 'Shalt be beaten.' He strode
+across to the basting range and gripped a great ladle, his brown eyes
+glinting, and stood caressing his thin chin passionately.
+
+She folded her arms complacently.
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'it is well that wives be beaten when they have
+merited it. But, till I have, I have seven cooks and five knaves to
+bear my part.'
+
+Udal's hand fell suddenly and dispiritedly to his side. What indeed
+could he do? He could not beat this woman unless she would be
+beaten--and she stood there, square, buxom, solid and composed. He had
+indeed that sense that all scholars must have in presence of assured
+wives, that she was the better man. Moreover, the rage that had filled
+him in presence of Doctor Longstaffe had cooled down to nothing in
+Longstaffe's absence.
+
+He folded his arms and tried impatiently to think where, in this
+pickle, his feet had landed him. His wife turned once more to place
+flagons in the armoury.
+
+'Woman,' he said at last, in a tone half of majesty, half of appeal,
+'see ye not how weighty it is that I bide here?'
+
+'Husband,' she answered with her tranquil nonchalance, 'see ye not
+how weighty it is that ye waste here no more days?'
+
+'But very well you know,' and he stretched out to her a thin hand,
+'that here be two embassies of mystery: you have had, these three
+days, the Cleves envoy in the house. You have seen that the Duke of
+Norfolk comes here as ambassador.'
+
+She took a stool and sat near his feet to listen to him.
+
+'Now,' he began again, 'if I be in truth a spy for Thomas Cromwell,
+Lord Privy Seal, where can I spy better for him than here? For the
+Cleves people are befriended with Privy Seal; then why come they to
+France, where bide only Privy Seal's enemies? Now Norfolk is the
+chiefest enemy of Privy Seal; then wherefore cometh Norfolk to this
+land, where abide only these foes of Privy Seal?'
+
+She set her elbows on her knees and her knuckles below her chin, and
+gazed up at him like a child.
+
+'Tell me, husband,' she said; 'be ye a true spy for Thomas Cromwell?'
+
+He glanced round him with terror--but no man stood nearer than the
+meat boards across the kitchen, so far out of earshot that they could
+not hear feet upon the bricks.
+
+'Nay, ye may tell me the very truth of the very truth,' she said.
+'These be false days--but my kitchen gear is thine, and nothing doth
+so bind folks together.'
+
+'But other listeners--' he said.
+
+'Hosts and hostesses are listeners,' she answered. ''Tis their trade.
+And their trade it is, too, to fend from them all other listeners.
+Here you may speak. Tell me then, if I may serve you, very truly
+whether ye be a true spy for Thomas Cromwell or against him.'
+
+Her round face, beneath the great white hood, had a childish
+earnestness.
+
+'Why, you are a fair doxy,' he said. He hung his head for some more
+minutes, then he spoke again.
+
+'It is a folly to speak of me as Privy Seal's spy, though I have so
+spoken of myself. For why? It gaineth me worship, maketh men to fear
+me and women to be dazzled by my power. But in truth, I have little
+power.'
+
+'That is the very truth?' she asked.
+
+He nodded nonchalantly and waited again to find very clear words for
+her understanding.
+
+'But, though it be true that I am no spy of Cromwell's, true it is
+also that I am a very poor man who craves very much for money. For I
+love good books that cost much gold; comely women that cost far more;
+succulent meats, sweet wines, high piled fires and warm furs.'
+
+He smacked his lips thinking of these same things.
+
+'I am, in short, no stoic,' he said, 'the stoics being ancient
+curmudgeons that were low-stomached.' Now, he continued, the Old Faith
+he loved well, but not over well; the Protestants he called busy
+knaves, but the New Learning he loved beyond life. Cromwell thwacked
+the Old Faith; he loved him not for that. Cromwell upheld in a sort
+the Protestants; he little loved him for that. 'But the New Learning
+he loveth, and, oh fair sharer of my dreams o' nights, Cromwell
+holdeth the strings of the money-bags.'
+
+She scratched her cheek meditatively, and then unfolded her arms.
+
+'How then ha' ye come by his broad pieces?'
+
+'It is three years since,' he answered, 'that Privy Seal sent for me.
+I had been cast out of my mastership at Eton College, for they
+said--foul liars said--that I had stolen the silver salt-cellars.' He
+had been teaching, for his sins, in the house of the Lord Edmund
+Howard, where he had had his best pupil, but no more salary than what
+his belly could hold of poor mutton. 'So Privy Seal did send for
+me----'
+
+'Kat Howard was thy best pupil?' his wife asked meditatively.
+
+'By the shrine of Saint Eloi--' he commenced to swear.
+
+'Nay, lie not,' she cut him short. 'You love Kat Howard and six other
+wenches. I know it well. What said Privy Seal?'
+
+He meditated again to protest that he loved not Katharine, but her
+quiet stolidity set him to change his mind.
+
+'It was that the Lady Mary of England needed a preceptor, an
+amanuensis, an aid for her studies in the learned language.' For the
+King's Highness' daughter had a great learning and was agate of
+writing a commentary of Plautus his plays. But the Lady Mary hated
+also virulently--and with what cause all men know--the King her
+father. And for years long, since the death of the Queen her
+mother--whom God preserve in Paradise!--for years long the Lady Mary
+had maintained a treasonable correspondence with the King's enemies,
+with the Emperor, with the Bishop of Rome----
+
+'Our Holy Father the Pope,' his wife said, and crossed herself.
+
+'And with this King here of France,' Udal continued, whilst he too
+crossed himself with graceful waves of his brown hand. He continued to
+report that the way in which the Lady Mary sent her letters abroad had
+never been found; that Cromwell had appointed three tutors in
+succession to be aid to the Lady Mary in her studies. Each of these
+three she had broken and cast out from her doors, she being by far the
+more learned, so that, though Privy Seal in his might had seven
+thousand spies throughout the realm of England, he had among them no
+man learned enough to take this place and to spy out the things that
+he would learn.
+
+'Therefore Privy Seal did send for thee, who art accounted the most
+learned doctor in Christendom.' His wife's eyes glowed and her face
+became ruddy with pride in her husband's fame.
+
+The magister waved his hand pleasantly.
+
+'Therefore he did send for me.' Privy Seal had promised him seven
+hundred pounds, farms with sixty pounds by the year, or the headship
+of New College if the magister could discover how the Lady Mary wrote
+her letters abroad.
+
+'So I have stayed three years with the Lady Mary,' Udal said. 'But
+before God,' he asseverated, 'though I have known these twenty-nine
+months that she sent away her letters in the crusts of pudding pies,
+never hath cur Crummock had word of it.'
+
+'A fool he, to set thee to spy upon a petticoat,' she answered
+pleasantly.
+
+'Woman,' he answered hotly, 'crowns I have made by making reports to
+Privy Seal. I have set his men to watch doors and windows where none
+came in or entered; I have reported treasons of men whose heads had
+already fallen by the axe; I have told him of words uttered by maids
+of honour whom he knew full well already miscalled him. Sometimes I
+have had a crown or two from him, sometimes more; but no good man hath
+been hurt by my spying.'
+
+'Husband,' she uttered, with her face set expressionlessly, 'knew ye
+that the Frenchman's cook that made the pudding pies had been taken
+and cast into the Tower gaol?'
+
+Udal's arms flew above his head; his eyes started from their sockets;
+his tongue came forth from his pale mouth to lick his dry lips, and
+his legs failed him so that he sat himself down, wavering from side to
+side in the window-seat.
+
+'Then the commentary of Plautus shall never be written,' he wailed. He
+wrung his hands. 'Whom have they taken else?' he said. 'How knew ye
+these things when I nothing knew? What make of house is this where
+such things be known?'
+
+'Husband,' she answered, 'this house is even an inn. Where many
+travellers pass through, many secrets are known. I know of this cook's
+fate since the fate of cooks is much spoken of in kitchens, and this
+was the cook of a Frenchman, and this is France.'
+
+'Save us, oh pitiful saints!' the magister whispered. 'Who else is
+taken? What more do ye know? Many others have aided. I too. And there
+be friends I love.'
+
+'Husband,' she answered, 'I know no more than this: three days ago the
+cook stood where now you stand----'
+
+He clasped his hair so that his cap fell to the ground.
+
+'Here!' he said. 'But he was in the Tower!'
+
+'He was in the Tower, but stood here free,' she answered. Udal
+groaned.
+
+'Then he hath blabbed. We are lost.'
+
+She answered:
+
+'That may be the truth. But I think it is not. For so the matter is
+that the cook told me.' He was taken and set in the Tower by the men
+of Privy Seal. Yet within ten hours came the men of the King; these
+took him aboard a cogger, the cogger took them to Calais, and at the
+gate of Calais town the King's men kicked him into the country of
+France, he having sworn on oath never more to tread on English soil.
+
+Udal groaned.
+
+'Aye! But what others were taken? What others shall be?'
+
+She shook her head.
+
+The report ran: a boy called Poins, a lady called Elliott, and a lady
+called Howard. Yet all three drank the free air before that day at
+nightfall.
+
+Udal, huddled against the wall, took these blows of fate with a quiver
+for each. In the back of the kitchen the servers, come down from the
+meal of the Cleves envoy, made a great clatter with their dishes of
+pewter and alloy. The hostess, working with her comfortable sway of
+the hips, drove them gently through the door to let a silence fall;
+but gradually Udal's jaw closed, his eyes grew smaller, he started
+suddenly and the muscles of his knees regained their tension. The
+hostess, swishing her many petticoats beneath her, sat down again on
+the stool.
+
+'_Insipiens et infacetus quin sum!_' the magister mused. 'Fool that I
+am! Wherefore see I no clue?' He hung his head; frowned; then started
+anew with his hand on his side.
+
+'Wherefore shall I not read pure joy in this?' he said, 'save that
+Austin waileth: "_Inter delicias semper aliquid saevi nos
+strangulat_." I would be joyful--but that I fear.' Norfolk had come
+upon an embassy here; then assuredly Cromwell's power waned, or never
+had this foe of his been sent in this office of honour. The cook was
+cast in the Tower, but set free by the King's men; young Poins was
+cast too, but set free--the Lady Elliott--and the Lady Howard. What
+then? What then?
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'have you naught forgotten?'
+
+Udal, musing with his hand upon his chin, shook his head negligently.
+
+'I keep more track of the King's leman than thou, then,' she said.
+'What was it Longstaffe said of her?'
+
+'Nay,' Udal answered, 'so turned my bowels were with jealousy that
+little I noted.'
+
+'Why, you are a fine spy,' she said. And she repeated to him that
+Longstaffe had reported the King's commanding Katharine and Privy Seal
+to join hands and be friends. Udal shook his head gloomily.
+
+'I would not have my best pupil friends with Cromwell,' he said.
+
+'Oh, magister,' she retorted, with a first touch of scorn in her
+voice; 'have you, who have had so much truck with women, yet to learn
+that you may command a woman to be friends with a man, yet no power on
+earth shall make her love him. Nevertheless, well might Cromwell seek
+to win her love, and thence these pardons.'
+
+Udal started forward upon his tiptoes.
+
+'I must to London!' he cried. She smiled at him as at a child.
+
+'You are come to be of my advice,' she said.
+
+Udal gazed at her with a wondering patronage.
+
+'Why, what a wench it is,' he said, and he crooked his arm around her
+ample waist. His face shone with pleasure. 'Angel!' he uttered; 'for
+Angelos is the Greek for messenger, and signifieth more especially one
+that bringeth good tidings.' Out of all this holus bolus of envoys,
+ambassadors, cooks and prisoners one thing appeared plain to view:
+that, for the first time, _a solis ortus cardine_, Cromwell had
+loosened his grip of some that he held. 'And if Crummock looseneth
+grip, Crummock's power in the land waneth.'
+
+She looked up at him with a coy pleasure.
+
+'Hatest Cromwell then full fell-ly?' she asked.
+
+He put his hands upon her shoulders and solemnly regarded her.
+
+'Woman,' he said; 'this man rideth England with seven thousand spies;
+these three years I have lived in terror of my life. I have had no
+bliss that fear hath not entered into--in very truth _inter delicias
+semper aliquid saevi nos strangulavit_.' His lugubrious tones grew
+higher with hatred; he raised one hand above his head and one gripped
+tight her fat shoulder. 'Terror hath bestridden our realm of England;
+no man dares to whisper his hate even to the rushes. Me! Me! Me!' he
+reached a pitch of high-voiced fury. 'Me! _Virum doctissimum!_ Me, the
+first learned man in Britain, he did force to write a play in the
+vulgar tongue. Me, a master of Latin, to write in English! I had
+pardoned him my terror. I had pardoned him the heads of the good men
+he hath struck off. For that princes should inspire terror is just,
+and that the great ones of the earth should prey one upon the other is
+a thing all history giveth precedent for since the days when Sylla
+hunted to death Marius that sat amidst the ruins of Carthage. But that
+the learned should be put to shame! that good letters should be cast
+into the mire! History showeth no ensample of a man so vile since the
+Emperor Alexander removed his shadow from before the tub of Diogenes.'
+
+'In truth,' she said, blenching a little before his fury, 'I was ever
+one that loved the rolling sound of your Greek and your Roman.'
+
+'Give me my journey money,' he said, 'let me begone to England. For,
+if indeed the Lady Katharine hath the King's ear, much may I aid her
+with my counsels.'
+
+She began to fumble in beneath her apron, and then, as if she
+suddenly remembered herself, she placed her finger upon her lips.
+
+'Husband,' she said, 'I have for you a gift. How it shall value itself
+to you I little know, but I have before been much besought and offered
+high payment for that which now I offer thee. Come.'
+
+The finger still upon her plump lips, she led him to a small door
+behind the chimney stack. They climbed up through cobwebs, ham,
+flitches of smoked beef, and darkness, and the reek of wood-smoke,
+until they came, high up, to a store-room in the slope of a mansard
+roof. Light filtered dimly between the tiles, and many bales and sacks
+lay upon the raftered floor like huge monsters in a huge, dim cave.
+
+'Hearken! make no sound,' she whispered, and in the intense gloom they
+heard a sullen, stertorous, intermittent rumble.
+
+'The envoy sleeps,' she said. She set her eye to a knot-hole in the
+planked wall. ''A sleeps!' she whispered. 'My pigling made a great
+thirst in him. Much wine he drank. Set your eye to the knot-hole.'
+
+With his face glued against the rough wood, the magister could see in
+the large room a great fair man, in a great blue chair behind a
+littered table. His head hung forward, shewed only a pink bald spot in
+the thin hair, and brilliant red ears. A slow rumble of snoring came
+for a long minute, then ceased for as long.
+
+From behind Udal's back came a crash, and he started back to see the
+large woman, who had overturned a chest.
+
+'That is to test how he sleeps,' she said. 'See if he have moved.' The
+man, plain to see through the knot-hole, had stirred no muscle; again
+the heavy rumble of the snore came to them. She spoke quite loudly
+now. 'Why, naught shall wake him these five hours. 'A hath bolted the
+door; thus his secretaries shall not come to him. See now.'
+
+She slid back a board in the wall, and Udal could see into what
+appeared to be a cupboard filled with a litter of papers and of
+parchments. Udal's heart began to beat so that he noted it there; his
+eyes searched hers with a glittering excitement--nevertheless a half
+fear of awakening the envoy kept him from speaking.
+
+'Take them! Take them!' she nudged him with her elbow. 'Six hours ye
+have to read and to copy.'
+
+'What papers are these?' he muttered, his voice thick betwixt
+incredulous joy and fear.
+
+'They be the envoy's papers,' she said; 'doubtless these be his
+letters to the king of this land.... What there may be I know not
+else.'
+
+Udal's hands were in at the hole with the swift clutch of a miser
+visiting his treasure-chest. The woman surveyed him with pleasure and
+with pride in her achievement, and with the calmness of routine she
+fitted a bar across the door of the cupboard where it opened into the
+envoy's room. Udal was fumbling already with the strings of a packet,
+his eyes searching the superscription in the gloom.
+
+'Six hours ye have to read and to copy,' she said happily, 'for, for
+six hours the poppy seed in his wine that he drank shall surely keep
+him snoring.' And, whilst they went again down the stairway, the
+papers secreted beneath the magister's gown, she explained with her
+pride and happiness. The aumbry was so contrived that any envoy or
+secretary sleeping in her best room must needs put his papers therein,
+since there was in the room no other chest that locked. And the King
+of France's chancellors allotted to all envoys her hostelry for a
+lodging; and once there, she made them heavy with wine and poppy seed
+after a receipt she had from an Egyptian, and at the appointed time
+the King of France's men came to read through the papers and to pay
+her much money and many kisses.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was six hours later that the magister stood in his own room
+crushing a fillet of papers into the breast of his brown jerkin. The
+hostess, walking always calmly as if disorder of the mind were a thing
+she were a stranger to, had reclimbed the narrow stairway, replaced
+the papers in the envoy's cupboard and returned to her husband. She
+sought, mutely, for commendations, and he gave her them.
+
+'Y'have made me the man that holds the secret of England's future,' he
+said. 'All England that groans beneath Cromwell awaiteth to hear how
+the cat jumps in Cleves. Now I know how the cat jumps in Cleves.'
+
+She wiped the dust from her hands upon her apron.
+
+'See that ye make good use of the knowledge,' she said. She considered
+for a moment whilst he ferreted amongst his clothes in the great black
+press beside the great white bed. 'I have long thought,' she said,
+'that greatly might I be of service to a man of laws and of policies.
+But I have long known that to serve a man is to have little reward
+unless a woman tie him up in fast bonds----' He made one of his broad
+gestures of negation, but she cut in upon his words: 'Aye, so it is. A
+gossip may serve a man how she will, but once his occasion is past he
+shall leave her in the ditch for the first fairer face. So I made
+resolve to make such a man my husband, that his being advanced might
+advance me. For, for sure this shall not be the last spying service I
+shall do thee. Many envoys more shall be lodged in this house and many
+more secrets ye shall learn.'
+
+'Oh beloved Pandora!' he cried; 'opener of all secret places, caskets,
+aumbries, caves of the winds, thrice blessed Sibyl of the keyhole!'
+She nodded her head with grave contentment.
+
+'I chose thee for thy resounding speeches,' she said. Her tranquillity
+and her buxom pleasantness overcame him with sudden affection. He was
+minded to tell her--because indeed she had made his fortunes for
+him--that her marriage to him did not hold good since a friar had read
+the rites.
+
+'I chose thee for thy resounding speeches,' she said, 'and because art
+so ill-clothed i' the ribs. Give me a thin man of policies to move my
+bowels of compassion, say I.' For with her secret closets she might
+make him stand well among the princes, and with her goodly capons set
+grease upon his ribs, poor soul!
+
+'Oh Guenevere!' he said; 'for was it not the queen of Arthur that made
+bag-puddings for his starving knights?'
+
+'Aye,' she said; 'great learning you possess.' A little moisture
+bedewed her blue eyes. 'It grieves me that you must begone. I love to
+hear thy broad o's and a's!'
+
+'Then by all that is fattest in the land hight Cokaigne I will stay
+here, thy dutiful goodman,' he said, and tears filled his own eyes.
+
+'Oh nay,' she answered; 'you shall get yourself into the Chancellery,
+and merry will we feast and devise beneath the gilded roofs.' Her eyes
+sought the brown beams that ceiled the long room. 'I have heard that
+chancellors have always gilded roofs.'
+
+Again the tenderness overcame him for the touch of simple pride in her
+voice. And the confession slipped from his lips:
+
+'Poor befooled soul! Shalt never be a chancellor's dame.'
+
+She was sobbing a little.
+
+'Oh aye,' she said; 'thou shalt yet be chancellor, and I will baste
+thy cooks' ribs an they baste not thy meat full well.' Such a man as
+he would find favour with princes for his glosing tongue--aye, and
+with queens too. At that she covered her face with her apron, and from
+beneath it her voice came forth:
+
+'If this Kat Howard come to be queen, shall not the old faith be
+restored?'
+
+The recollection of this particular certainty affected the magister
+like a stab, for, if the old faith came back, then assuredly marriages
+by friars should again be acknowledged. He cursed himself beneath his
+breath: he was loath to leave the woman in the ditch, her trusting
+face and pleasing ways stirred the strings of his heart. But he was
+more than loath that the wedding should hold a wedding. He shook his
+perplexity from him with starting towards the door.
+
+'Time to be gone!' he said, and added, 'Be certain and take care that
+no Englishman heareth of wedding betwixt thee and me.' It must in
+England work his sure undoing.
+
+She removed her apron and nodded gravely.
+
+'Aye,' she said, 'that is certain enow with Court ladies, such as they
+be to-day.' But she asked that when he went among women she should
+hear nothing of it. For she had had three husbands and several
+courtiers to prove it upon, that it is better to be lied to than to
+know truth.
+
+'There is in the world no woman like to thee!' he said with a great
+sincerity. Once more she nodded.
+
+'Aye, that is the lie that I would hear,' she said. On his part, he
+started suddenly with pain.
+
+'But thee!' he uttered.
+
+'Aye,' she cried again, 'that too is needed. But be very certain of
+this, that not easily will I plant upon thy brow that which most
+husbands wear!' She paused, and once more rubbed her hands. Courteous
+she must be, since her calling called therefor. But assuredly, having
+had three husbands, she had had embraces enow to crave little for men.
+And, if she did that which few good women have a need to--save very
+piteous women in ballads--she would suffer him to belabour her;--she
+nodded again--'And that to a man is a great solace.'
+
+He fled with precipitancy from the thought of this solace, brushing
+through the narrow passages, stalking across the great guest-chamber
+and the greater kitchen where, in the falling dusk, the fires glowed
+red upon the maids' faces and the cooks' aprons, the smoke rose
+unctuously upward tended with rich smells of meat, and the windjacks
+clanked in the chimneys. She trotted behind him, weeping in the
+gloaming.
+
+'If you come to be chancellor in five years,' she whimpered, 'I shall
+come across the seas to ye. If ye fail, this shall be your plenteous
+house.'
+
+Whilst she hung round his neck in the shadowy courtyard and he had
+already one foot in the stirrup, she begged for one more great speech.
+
+'Before Jupiter!' he said, 'I can think of none for crying!'
+
+The big black horse, with its bags before and behind the saddle,
+stirred, so that, standing upon one foot, he fell away from her. But
+he swung astride the saddle, his cloak flying, his long legs clasping
+round the belly. It reared and pawed the twilight mists, but he smote
+it over one ear with his palm, and it stood trembling.
+
+'This is a fine beast y'have given me,' he said, pleasure thrilling
+his limbs.
+
+'I have given it a fine rider!' she cried. He wheeled it near her and
+stooped right down to kiss her face. He was very sure in his saddle,
+having learned the trick of the stirrup from old Rowfant, that had
+taught the King.
+
+'Wife,' he said, 'I have bethought me of this: _Post equitem
+sedet_----' He faltered--'_sedet--Behind the rider sitteth_--But for
+the life of me I know not whether it be _atra cura_ or no.'
+
+And, as he left Paris gates behind him and speeded towards the black
+hills, bending low to face the cold wind of night, for the life of him
+he knew not whether black care sat behind him or no. Only, as night
+came down and he sped forward, he knew that he was speeding for
+England with the great news that the Duke of Cleves was seeking to
+make his peace with the Emperor and the Pope through the mediancy of
+the king of that land and, on the soft road, the hoofs of the horse
+seemed to beat out the rhythm of the words:
+
+'Crummock is down: Cromwell is down. Crummock is down: Cromwell is
+down.'
+
+He rode all through the night thinking of these things, for, because
+he carried letters from the English ambassador to the King of England,
+the gates of no small town could stay his passing through.
+
+
+IV
+
+
+Five men talked in the long gallery overlooking the River Thames. It
+was in the Lord Cromwell's house, upon which the April showers fell
+like handsful of peas, with a sifting sound, between showers of
+sunshine that fell themselves like rain, so that at times all the long
+empty gallery was gilded with light and at times it was all saddened
+and frosty. They were talking all, and all with earnestness and
+concern, as all the Court and the city were talking now, of Katharine
+Howard whom the King loved.
+
+The Archbishop leant against one side of a window, close beside him
+his spy Lascelles; the Archbishop's face was round but worn, his large
+eyes bore the trace of sleeplessness, his plump hands were a little
+tremulous within his lawn sleeves.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'we must bow to the breeze. In time to come we may
+stand straight enow.' His eyes seemed to plead with Privy Seal, who
+paced the gallery in short, pursy strides, his plump hands hidden in
+the furs behind his back. Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy, nodded his
+head sagaciously; his yellow hair came from high on his crown and was
+brushed forward towards his brows. He did not speak, being in such
+high company, but looking at him, the Archbishop gained confidence
+from the support of his nod.
+
+'If we needs must go with the Lady Katharine towards Rome,' he pleaded
+again, 'consider that it is but for a short time.' Cromwell passed him
+in his pacing and, unsure of having caught his ear, Cranmer addressed
+himself to Throckmorton and Wriothesley, the two men of forty who
+stood gravely, side by side, fingering their long beards. 'For sure,'
+Cranmer appealed to the three silent men, 'what we must avoid is
+crossing the King's Highness. For his Highness, crossed, hath a swift
+and sudden habit of action.' Wriothesley nodded, and: 'Very sudden,'
+Lascelles allowed himself utterance, in a low voice. Throckmorton's
+eyes alone danced and span; he neither nodded nor spoke, and, because
+he was thought to have a great say in the councils of Privy Seal, it
+was to him that Cranmer once more addressed himself urgently:
+
+'Full-bodied men who are come upon failing years are very prone to
+women. 'Tis a condition of the body, a humour, a malady that passeth.
+But, while it lasteth, it must be bowed to.'
+
+Cromwell, with his deaf face, passed once more before them. He
+addressed himself in brief, sharp tones to Wriothesley:
+
+'You say, in Paris an envoy from Cleves was come a week agone?' and
+passed on.
+
+'It must be bowed to,' Cranmer continued his speech. 'I do maintain
+it. There is no way but to divorce the Queen.' Again Lascelles nodded;
+it was Wriothesley this time who spoke.
+
+'It is a lamentable thing!' and there was a heavy sincerity in his
+utterance, his pose, with his foot weightily upon the ground, being
+that of an honest man. 'But I do think you have the right of it. We,
+and the new faith with us, are between Scylla and Charybdis. For
+certain, our two paths do lie between divorcing the Queen and seeing
+you, great lords, who so well defend us, cast down.'
+
+Coming up behind him, Cromwell placed a hand upon his shoulder.
+
+'Goodly knight,' he said, 'let us hear thy thoughts. His Grace's of
+Canterbury we do know very well. He is for keeping a whole skin!'
+
+Cranmer threw up his hands, and Lascelles looked at the ground.
+Throckmorton's eyes were filled with admiration of this master of his
+that he was betraying now. He muttered in his long, golden beard.
+
+'Pity we must have thy head.'
+
+Wriothesley cleared his throat, and having considered, spoke
+earnestly.
+
+'It is before all things expedient and necessary,' he said, 'that we
+do keep you, my Lord Privy Seal, and you, my Lord of Canterbury, at
+the head of the State.' That was above all necessary. For assuredly
+this land, though these two had brought it to a great pitch of wealth,
+clean living, true faith and prosperity, this land needed my Lord
+Privy Seal before all men to shield it from the treason of the old
+faith. There were many lands now, bringing wealth and commodity to
+the republic, that should soon again revert towards and pay all their
+fruits to Rome; there were many cleaned and whitened churches that
+should again hear the old nasty songs and again be tricked with
+gewgaws of the idolaters. Therefore, before all things, my Lord Privy
+Seal must retain the love of the King's Highness---- Cromwell, who had
+resumed his pacing, stayed for a moment to listen.
+
+'Wherefore brought ye not news of why Cleves' envoy came to Paris
+town?' he said pleasantly. 'All the door turneth upon that hinge.'
+
+Wriothesley stuttered and reddened.
+
+'What gold could purchase, I purchased of news,' he said. 'But this
+envoy would not speak; his knaves took my gold and had no news. The
+King of France's men----'
+
+'Oh aye,' Cromwell continued; 'speak on about the other matter.'
+
+Wriothesley turned his slow mind from his vexation in Paris, whence he
+had come a special journey to report of the envoy from Cleves. He
+spoke again swiftly, turning right round to Cromwell.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'study above all to please the King. For unless you
+guide us we are lost indeed.'
+
+Cromwell worked his lips one upon another and moved a hand.
+
+'Aye,' Wriothesley continued; 'it can be done only by bringing the
+King's Highness and the Lady Katharine to a marriage.'
+
+'Only by that?' Cromwell asked enigmatically.
+
+Throckmorton spoke at last:
+
+'Your lordship jests,' he said; 'since the King is not a man, but a
+high and beneficent prince with a noble stomach.'
+
+Cromwell tapped him upon the cheek.
+
+'That you do see through a millstone I know,' he said. 'But I was
+minded to hear how these men do think. You and I do think alike.'
+
+'Aye, my lord,' Throckmorton answered boldly. 'But in ten minutes I
+must be with the Lady Katharine, and I am minded to hear the upshot of
+this conference.'
+
+Cromwell laughed at him sunnily:
+
+'Go and do your message with the lady. An you hasten, you may return
+ere ever this conference ends, since slow wits like ours need a store
+of words to speak their minds with.'
+
+Lascelles, the silent spy of the archbishop, devoured with envious
+eyes Throckmorton's great back and golden beard. For his life he dared
+not speak three words unbidden in this company. But Throckmorton being
+gone the discussion renewed itself, Wriothesley speaking again.
+
+He voiced always the same ideas, for the same motives: Cromwell must
+maintain his place at the cost of all things, for the sake of all
+these men who leaned upon him. And it was certain that the King loved
+this lady. If he had sent her few gifts and given her no titles nor
+farms, it was because--either of nature or to enhance the King's
+appetite--she shewed a prudish disposition. But day by day and week in
+week out the King went with his little son in his times of ease to the
+rooms of the Lady Mary. And there he went, assuredly, not to see the
+glum face of the daughter that hated him, but to converse in Latin
+with his daughter's waiting-maid of honour. All the Court knew this.
+Who there had not seen how the King smiled when he came new from the
+Lady Mary's rooms? He was heavy enow at all other times. This fair
+woman that hated alike the new faith and all its ways had utterly
+bewitched and enslaved the King's eyes, ears and understanding. If the
+King would have Katharine Howard his wife the King must have her. Anne
+of Cleves must be sent back to Germany; Cromwell must sue for peace
+with the Howard wench; a way must be found to bribe her till the King
+tired of her; then Katharine must go in her turn, once more Cromwell
+would have his own, and the Protestants be reinstated. Cromwell
+retained his silence; at the last he uttered his unfailing words with
+which he closed all these discussions:
+
+'Well, it is a great matter.'
+
+The gusts of rain and showers of sun pursued each other down the
+river; the lights and shadows succeeded upon the cloaked and capped
+shapes of the men who huddled their figures together in the tall
+window. At last the Archbishop lost his patience and cried out:
+
+'What will you _do_? What will you _do_?'
+
+Cromwell swung his figure round before him.
+
+'I will discover what Cleves will do in this matter,' he said. 'All
+dependeth therefrom.'
+
+'Nay; make a peace with Rome,' Cranmer uttered suddenly. 'I am weary
+of these strivings.'
+
+But Wriothesley clenched his fist.
+
+'Before ye shall do that I will die, and twenty thousand others!'
+
+Cranmer quailed.
+
+'Sir,' he temporised. 'We will give back to the Bishop of Rome nothing
+that we have taken of property. But the Bishop of Rome may have
+Peter's Pence and the deciding of doctrines.'
+
+'Canterbury,' Wriothesley said, 'I had rather Antichrist had his old
+goods and gear in this realm than the handling of our faith.'
+
+Cromwell drew in the air through his nostrils, and still smiled.
+
+'Be sure the Bishop of Rome shall have no more gear and no more
+guidance of this realm than his Highness and I need give,' he said.
+'No stranger shall have any say in the councils of this realm.' He
+smiled noiselessly again. 'Still and still, all turneth upon Cleves.'
+
+For the first time Lascelles spoke:
+
+'All turneth upon Cleves,' he said.
+
+Cromwell surveyed him, narrowing his eyes.
+
+'Speak you now of your wisdom,' he uttered with neither friendliness
+nor contempt. Lascelles caressed his shaven chin and spoke:
+
+'The King's Highness I have observed to be a man for women--a man who
+will give all his goods and all his gear to a woman. Assuredly he will
+not take this woman to his leman; his princely stomach revolteth
+against an easy won mastership. He will pay dear, he will pay his
+crown to win her. Yet the King would not give his policies. Neither
+would he retrace his steps for a woman's sake unless Fate too cried
+out that he must.'
+
+Cromwell nodded his head. It pleased him that this young man set a
+virtue sufficiently high upon his prince.
+
+'Sirs,' he said, 'daily have I seen this King in ten years, and I do
+tell ye no man knoweth how the King loves kingcraft as I know.' He
+nodded again to Lascelles, whose small stature seemed to gain bulk,
+whose thin voice seemed to gain volume from this approval and from his
+'Speak on. About Cleves.'
+
+'Sirs,' Lascelles spoke again, 'whiles there remains the shade of a
+chance that Cleves' Duke shall lead the princes of Germany against the
+Emperor and France, assuredly the King shall stay his longing for the
+Lady Katharine. He shall stay firm in his marriage with the Queen.'
+Again Cromwell nodded. 'Till then it booteth little to move towards a
+divorce; but if that day should come, then our Lord Privy Seal must
+bethink himself. That is in our lord's mind.'
+
+'By Bacchus!' Cromwell said, 'your Grace of Canterbury hath a jewel in
+your crony and helper. And again I say, we must wait upon Cleves.' He
+seemed to pursue the sunbeams along the gallery, then returned to say:
+
+'I know ye know I love little to speak my mind. What I think or how I
+will act I keep to myself. But this I will tell you:' Cleves might
+have two minds in sending to France an envoy. On the one hand, he
+might be minded to abandon Henry and make submission to the Emperor
+and to Rome. For, in the end, was not the Duke of Cleves a vassal of
+the Emperor? It might be that. Or it might be that he was sending
+merely to ask the King of France to intercede betwixt him and his
+offended lord. The Emperor was preparing to wage war upon Cleves. That
+was known. And doubtless Cleves, desiring to retain his friendship
+with Henry, might have it in mind to keep friends with both. There
+the matter hinged, Cromwell repeated. For, if Cleves remained loyal to
+the King of England, Henry would hear nothing of divorcing Cleves'
+sister, and would master his desire for Katharine.
+
+'Believe me when I speak,' Cromwell added earnestly. 'Ye do wrong to
+think of this King as a lecher after the common report. He is a man
+very continent for a king. His kingcraft cometh before all women. If
+the Duke of Cleves be firm friend to him, firm friend he will be to
+the Duke's sister. The Lady Howard will be his friend, but the Lady
+Howard will be neither his leman nor his guide to Rome. He will please
+her if he may. But his kingcraft. Never!' He broke off and laughed
+noiselessly at the Archbishop's face of dismay. 'Your Grace would make
+a pact with Rome?' he asked.
+
+'Why, these are very evil times,' Cranmer answered. 'And if the Bishop
+of Rome will give way to us, why may we not give pence to the Bishop
+of Rome?'
+
+'Goodman,' Cromwell answered, 'these are evil times because we men are
+evil.' He pulled a paper from his belt. 'Sirs,' he said, 'will ye know
+what manner of woman this Katharine Howard is?' and to their murmurs
+of assent: 'This lady hath asked to speak with me. Will ye hear her
+speak? Then bide ye here. Throckmorton is gone to seek her.'
+
+
+V
+
+
+Katharine Howard sat in her own room; it had in it little of
+sumptuousness, for all the King so much affected her. It was the room
+she had first had at Hampton after coming to be maid to the King's
+daughter, and it had the old, green hangings that had always been
+round the walls, the long oak table, the box-bed set in the wall, the
+high chair and the three stools round the fire. The only thing she had
+taken of the King was a curtain in red cloth to hang on a rod before
+the door where was a great draught, the leading of the windows being
+rotted. She had lived so poor a life, her father having been a very
+poor lord with many children--she was so attuned to flaws of the wind,
+ill-feeding and harsh clothes, that such a tall room as she there had
+seemed goodly enough for her. Barely three months ago she had come to
+the palace of Greenwich riding upon a mule. Now accident, or maybe the
+design of the dear saints, had set her so high in the King's esteem
+that she might well try a fall with Privy Seal.
+
+She sat there dressed, awaiting the summons to go to him. She wore a
+long dress of red velvet, worked around the breast-lines with little
+silver anchors and hearts, and her hood was of black lawn and fell
+near to her hips behind. And she had read and learned by heart
+passages from Plutarch, from Tacitus, from Diodorus Siculus, from
+Seneca and from Tully, each one inculcating how salutary a thing in a
+man was the love of justice. Therefore she felt herself well prepared
+to try a fall with the chief enemy of her faith, and awaited with
+impatience his summons to speak with him. For she was anxious, now at
+last, to speak out her mind, and Privy Seal's agents had worked upon
+the religious of a poor little convent near her father's house a wrong
+so baleful that she could no longer contain herself. Either Privy Seal
+must redress or she must go to the King for justice to these poor
+women that had taught her the very elements of virtue and lay now in
+gaol.
+
+So she spoke to her two chief friends, her that had been Cicely
+Elliott and her old husband Rochford, the knight of Bosworth Hedge.
+They happened in upon her just after she was attired and had sent her
+maid to fetch her dinner from the buttery.
+
+'Three months agone,' she said, 'the King's Highness did bid me cease
+from crying out upon Privy Seal; and not the King's Highness' self can
+say that in that time I have spoken word against the Lord Cromwell.'
+
+Cicely Elliott, who dressed, in spite of her new wedding, all in black
+for the sake of some dead men, laughed round at her from her little
+stool by the fire.
+
+'God help you! that must have been hard, to keep thy tongue from the
+flail of all Papists.'
+
+The old knight, who was habited like Katharine, all in red, because at
+that season the King favoured that colour, pulled nervously at his
+little goat's beard, for all conversations that savoured of politics
+and religion were to him very fearful. He stood back against the green
+hangings and fidgeted with his feet.
+
+But Katharine, who for the love of the King had been silent, was now
+set to speak her mind.
+
+'It is Seneca,' she said, 'who tells us to have a check upon our
+tongues, but only till the moment approaches to speak.'
+
+'Aye, goodman Seneca!' Cicely laughed round at her. Katharine smoothed
+her hair, but her eyes gleamed deeply.
+
+'The moment approaches,' she said; 'I do like my King, but better I
+like my Church.' She swallowed in her throat. 'I had thought,' she
+said, 'that Privy Seal would stay his harryings of the goodly nuns in
+this land.' But now she had a petition, come that day from Lincoln
+gaol. Cromwell's servants were more bitter still than ever against the
+religious. Here was a false accusation of treason against her
+foster-mother's self. 'I will soon end it or mend it, or lose mine own
+head,' Katharine ended.
+
+'Aye, pull down Cur Crummock,' Cicely said. 'I think the King shall
+not long stay away from thy desires.'
+
+The old knight burst in:
+
+'I take it ill that ye speak of these things. I take it ill. I will
+not have 'ee lose thy head in these quarrels.'
+
+'Husband,' Cicely laughed round at him, 'three years ago Cur Crummock
+had the heads of all my menfolk, having sworn they were traitors.'
+
+'The more reason that he have not mine and thine now,' the old knight
+answered grimly. 'I am not for these meddlings in things that concern
+neither me nor thee.'
+
+Cicely Elliott set her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her
+knuckles. She gazed into the fire and grew moody, as was her wont
+when she had chanced to think of her menfolk that Cromwell had
+executed.
+
+'He might have had my head any day this four years,' she said. 'And
+had you lost my head and me you might have had any other maid any day
+that se'nnight.'
+
+'Nay, I grow too old,' the knight answered. 'A week ago I dropped my
+lance.'
+
+Cicely continued to gaze at nothings in the fire.
+
+'For thee,' she said scornfully to Katharine, 'it were better thou
+hadst never been born than have meddled between kings and ministers
+and faiths and nuns. You are not made for this world. You talk too
+much. Get you across the seas to a nunnery.'
+
+Katharine looked at her pitifully.
+
+'Child,' she said, 'it was not I that spoke of thy menfolk.'
+
+'Get thyself mewed up,' Cicely repeated more hotly; 'thou wilt set all
+this world by the ears. This is no place for virtues learned from
+learned books. This is an ill world where only evil men flourish.'
+
+The old knight still fidgeted to be gone.
+
+'Nay,' Katharine said seriously, 'ye think I will work mine own
+advantage with the King. But I do swear to thee I have it not in my
+mind.'
+
+'Oh, swear not,' Cicely mumbled, 'all the world knoweth thee to be
+that make of fool.'
+
+'I would well to get me made a nun--but first I will bring nunneries
+back from across the seas to this dear land.'
+
+Cicely laughed again--for a long and strident while.
+
+'You will come to no nunnery if you wait till then,' she said. 'Nuns
+without their heads have no vocation.'
+
+'When Cromwell is down, no woman again shall lose her head,' Katharine
+answered hotly.
+
+Cicely only laughed.
+
+'No woman again!' Katharine repeated.
+
+'Blood was tasted when first a queen fell on Tower Hill.' Cicely
+pointed her little finger at her. 'And the taste of blood, even as the
+taste of wine, ensureth a certain oblivion.'
+
+'You miscall your King,' Katharine said.
+
+Cicely laughed and answered: 'I speak of my world.'
+
+Katharine's blood came hot to her cheeks.
+
+'It is a new world from now on,' she answered proudly.
+
+'Till a new queen's blood seal it an old one,' Cicely mocked her
+earnestness. 'Hadst best get thee to a nunnery across the seas.'
+
+'The King did bid me bide here.' Katharine faltered in the least.
+
+'You have spoken of it with him?' Cicely said. 'Why, God help you!'
+
+Katharine sat quietly, her fair hair gilded by the pale light of the
+gusty day, her lips parted a little, her eyelids drooping. It behoved
+her to move little, for her scarlet dress was very nice in its
+equipoise, and fain she was to seem fine in Privy Seal's eyes.
+
+'This King hath a wife to his tail,' Cicely mocked her.
+
+The old knight had recovered his quiet; he had his hand upon his
+haunch, and spoke with his air of wisdom:
+
+'I would have you to cease these talkings of dangerous things,' he
+said. 'I am Rochford of Bosworth Hedge. I have kept my head and my
+lands, and my legs from chains--and how but by leaving to talk of
+dangerous things?'
+
+Katharine moved suddenly in her chair. This speech, though she had
+heard it a hundred times before, struck her now as so craven that she
+forgot alike her desire to keep fine and her friendship for the old
+man's new wife.
+
+'Aye, you have been a coward all your life,' she said: for were not
+her dear nuns in Lincoln gaol, and this was a knight that should have
+redressed wrongs!
+
+Old Rochford smiled with his air of tranquil wisdom and corpulent age.
+
+'I have struck good blows,' he said. 'There have been thirteen ballads
+writ of me.'
+
+'You have kept so close a tongue,' Katharine said to him hotly, 'that
+I know not what you love. Be you for the old faith, or for this Church
+of devils that Cromwell hath set up in the land? Did you love Queen
+Katharine or Queen Anne Boleyn? Were you glad when More died, or did
+you weep? Are you for the Statute of Users, or would you end it? Are
+you for having the Lady Mary called bastard--God pardon me the
+word!--or would you defend her with your life?--I do not know. I have
+spoken with you many times--but I do not know.'
+
+Old Rochford smiled contentedly.
+
+'I have saved my head and my lands in these perilous times by letting
+no man know,' he said.
+
+'Aye,' Katharine met his words with scorn and appeal. 'You have kept
+your head on your shoulders and the rent from your lands in your poke.
+But oh, sir, it is certain that, being a man, you love either the new
+ways or the old; it is certain that, being a spurred knight, you
+should love the old ways. Sir, bethink you and take heed of this: that
+the angels of God weep above England, that the Mother of God weeps
+above England; that the saints of God do weep--and you, a spurred
+knight, do wield a good sword. Sir, when you stand before the gates of
+Heaven, what shall you answer the warders thereof?'
+
+'Please God,' the old knight answered, 'that I have struck some good
+blows.'
+
+'Aye; you have struck blows against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But
+the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their
+kind--the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against
+the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province
+of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but--and how
+much the more?--against the foes of his God.'
+
+In the full flow of her speaking there came in the great, blonde
+Margot Poins, her body-maid. She led by the hand the Magister Udal,
+and behind them followed, with his foxy eyes and long, smooth beard,
+the spy Throckmorton, vivid in his coat of green and scarlet
+stockings. And, at the antipathy of his approach, Katharine's emotions
+grew the more harrowing--as if she were determined to shew this evil
+supporter of her cause how a pure fight should be waged. They moved
+on tiptoe and stood against the hangings at the back.
+
+She stretched out her hands to the old knight.
+
+'Here you be in a pitiful and afflicted land from which the saints
+have been driven out; have you struck one blow for the saints of God?
+Nay, you have held your peace. Here you be where good men have been
+sent to the block: have you decried their fates? You have seen noble
+and beloved women, holy priests, blessed nuns defiled and martyred;
+you have seen the poor despoiled; you have seen that knaves ruled by
+aid of the devil about a goodly king. Have you struck one blow? Have
+you whispered one word?'
+
+The colour rushed into Margot Poins' huge cheeks. She kept her mouth
+open to drink in her mistress's words, and Throckmorton waved his
+hands in applause. Only Udal shuffled in his broken-toed shoes, and
+old Rochford smiled benignly and tapped his chest above the chains.
+
+'I have struck good blows in the quarrels that were mine,' he
+answered.
+
+Katharine wrung her hands.
+
+'Sir, I have read it in books of chivalry, the province of a knight is
+to succour the Church of God, to defend the body of God, to set his
+lance in rest for the Mother of God; to defend noble men cast down,
+and noble women; to aid holy priests and blessed nuns; to succour the
+despoiled poor.'
+
+'Nay, I have read no books of chivalry,' the old man answered; 'I
+cannot read.'
+
+'Ah, there be pitiful things in this world,' Katharine said, and her
+chest was troubled.
+
+'You should quote Hesiodus,' Cicely mocked her suddenly from her
+stool. 'I marked this text when all my menfolk were slain: [Greek:
+pleie men gar gaia, pleie de thalassa] so I have laughed ever since.'
+
+Upon her, too, Katharine turned.
+
+'You also,' she said; 'you also.'
+
+'No, before God, I am no coward,' Cicely Elliott said. 'When all my
+menfolk were slain by the headsman something broke in my head, and
+ever since I have laughed. But before God, in my way I have tried to
+plague Cromwell. If he would have had my head he might have.'
+
+'Yet what hast thou done for the Church of God?' Katharine said.
+
+Cicely Elliott sprang to the floor and raised her hands with such
+violence that Throckmorton moved swiftly forward.
+
+'What did the Church of God for me?' she cried. 'Guard your face from
+my nails ere you ask me that again. I had a father; I had two
+brothers; I had two men I loved passing well. They all died upon one
+day upon the one block. Did the saints of God save them? Go see their
+heads upon the gates of York?'
+
+'But if they died for God His pitiful sake,' Katharine said--'if they
+did die in the quarrel of God's wounds----'
+
+Cicely Elliott screamed, with her hands above her head.
+
+'Is that not enow? Is that not enow?'
+
+'Then it is I, not thou, that love them,' Katharine said; 'for I, not
+thou, shall carry on the work for which they died.'
+
+'Oh gaping, pink-faced fool!' Cicely Elliott sneered at her.
+
+She began to laugh, holding her black sides in, her face thrown back.
+Then she closed her mouth and stood smiling.
+
+'You were made for a preacher, coney,' she said. 'Fine to hear thee
+belabouring my old, good knight with doughty words.'
+
+'Gibe as thou wilt; scream as thou wilt----' Katharine began. Cicely
+Elliott tossed in on her words:
+
+'My head ached so. I had the right of it to scream. I cannot be minded
+of my menfolk but my head will ache. But I love thy fine preaching.
+Preach on.'
+
+Katharine raised herself from her chair.
+
+'Words there must be that will move thee,' she said, 'if God will give
+them to me.'
+
+'God hath withdrawn Himself from this world,' Cicely answered. 'All
+mankind goeth a-mumming.'
+
+'It was another thing that Polycrates said.' Katharine, in spite of
+her emotion, was quick to catch the misquotation.
+
+'Coney,' Cicely Elliott answered, 'all men wear masks; all men lie;
+all men desire the goods of all men and seek how they may get them.'
+
+'But Cromwell being down, these things shall change,' Katharine
+answered. '_Res, aetas, usus, semper aliquid apportent novi._'
+
+Cicely Elliott fell back into her chair and laughed.
+
+'What are we amongst that multitude?' she said. 'Listen to me: When my
+menfolk were cast to die, I flew to Gardiner to save them. Gardiner
+would not speak. Now is he Bishop of Winchester--for he had goods of
+my father's, and greased with them the way to his bishop's throne.
+Fanshawe is a goodly Papist; but Cromwell hath let him have goods of
+the Abbey of Bright. Will Fanshawe help thee to bring back the Church?
+Then he must give up his lands. Will Cranmer help thee? Will Miners?
+Coney, I loved Federan, a true man: Miners hath his land to-day, and
+Federan's mother starves. Will Miners help thee to gar the King do
+right? Then the mother of my love Federan must have Miners' land and
+the rents for seven years. Will Cranmer serve thee to bring back the
+Bishop of Rome? Why, Cranmer would burn.'
+
+'But the poorer sort----' Katharine said.
+
+'There is no man will help thee whose help will avail,' Cicely mocked
+at her. 'For hear me: No man now is up in the land that hath not goods
+of the Church; fields of the abbeys; spoons made of the parcel gilt
+from the shrines. There is no rich man now but is rich with stolen
+riches; there is no man now up that was not so set up. And the men
+that be down have lost their heads. Go dig in graves to find men that
+shall help thee.'
+
+'Cromwell shall fall ere May goeth out,' Katharine said.
+
+'Well, the King dotes upon thy sweet face. But Cromwell being down,
+there will remain the men he hath set up. Be they lovers of the old
+faith, or thee? Now, thy pranks will ruin all alike.'
+
+'The King is minded to right these wrongs,' Katharine protested hotly.
+
+'The King! The King!' Cicely laughed. 'Thou lovest the King.... Nay an
+thou lovest the King.... But to be enamoured of the King.... And the
+King enamoured of thee ... why, this pair of lovers cast adrift upon
+the land----'
+
+Katharine said:
+
+'Belike I am enamoured of the King: belike the King of me, I do not
+know. But this I know: he and I are minded to right the wrongs of
+God.'
+
+Cicely Elliott opened her eyes wide.
+
+'Why, thou art a very infectious fanatic!' she said. 'You may well do
+these things. But you must shed much blood. You must widow many men's
+wives. Body of God! I believe thou wouldst.'
+
+'God forbid it!' Katharine said. 'But if He so willeth it, _fiat
+voluntas_.'
+
+'Why, spare no man,' Cicely answered. 'Thou shalt not very easily
+escape.'
+
+It was at this point that the magister was moved to keep no longer
+silence.
+
+'Now, by all the gods of high Olympus!' he cried out, 'such things
+shall not be alleged against me. For I do swear, before Venus and all
+the saints, that I am your man.'
+
+Nevertheless, it was Margot Poins, wavering between her love for her
+magister and her love for her mistress, that most truly was carried
+away by Katharine's eloquence.
+
+'Mistress,' she said, and she indicated both the magister and his tall
+and bearded companion, 'these two have made up a pretty plot upon the
+stairs. There are in it papers from Cleves and a matter of deceiving
+Privy Seal and thou shouldst be kept in ignorance asking to--to----'
+
+Her gruff voice failed and her blushes overcame her, so that she
+wanted for a word. But upon the mention of papers and Privy Seal the
+old knight fidgeted and faltered:
+
+'Why, let us begone.' Cicely Elliott glanced from one to the other of
+them with a malicious glee, and Throckmorton's eyes blinked
+sardonically above his beard.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It had been actually upon the stairs that he had come upon the
+magister, newly down from his horse, and both stiff and bruised, with
+Margot Poins hanging about his neck and begging him to spare her a
+moment. Throckmorton crept up the dark stairway with his shoes soled
+with velvet. The magister was seeking to disengage himself from the
+girl with the words that he had a treaty form of the Duke of Cleves in
+his bosom and must hasten on the minute to give it to her mistress.
+
+'Before God!' Throckmorton had said behind his back, 'ye will do no
+such thing,' and Udal had shrieked out like a rabbit caught by a
+ferret in its bury. For here he had seemed to find himself caught by
+the chief spy of Privy Seal upon a direct treason against Privy Seal's
+self.
+
+But, dragging alike the terrified magister and the heavy, blonde girl
+who clung to him out from the dark stairhead into the corridor, where,
+since no one could come upon them unseen or unheard, it was the safest
+place in the palace to speak, Throckmorton had whispered into his ear
+a long, swift speech in which he minced no matters at all.
+
+The time, he said, was ripe to bring down Privy Seal. He
+himself--Throckmorton himself--loved Kat Howard with a love compared
+to which the magister's was a rushlight such as you bought fifty for a
+halfpenny. Privy Seal was ravening for a report of that treaty. They
+must, before all things, bring him a report that was false. For, for
+sure, upon that report Privy Seal would act, and, if they brought him
+a false report, Privy Seal would act falsely.
+
+Udal stood perfectly still, looking at nothing, his thin brown hand
+clasped round his thin brown chin.
+
+'But, above all,' Throckmorton had concluded, 'show ye no papers to
+Kat Howard. For it is very certain that she will have no falsehoods
+employed to bring down Privy Seal, though she hate him as the
+Assyrian cockatrice hateth the symbol of the Cross.'
+
+'Sir Throckmorton,' Margot Poins had uttered, 'though ye be a paid
+spy, ye speak true words there.'
+
+He pulled his beard and blinked at her.
+
+'I am minded to reform,' he said. 'Your mistress hath worked a miracle
+of conversion in me.'
+
+She shrugged her great fair shoulders at this, and spoke to the
+magister:
+
+'It is very true,' she said, 'that this spying knight affects my
+mistress. But whether it be for the love of virtue, or for the love of
+her body, or because the cat jumps that way and there he observeth
+fortune to rise, I leave to God who reads all hearts.'
+
+'There speaks a wench brought up and taught by Protestants,'
+Throckmorton gibed pleasantly at her; 'or ye have caught the trick of
+Kat Howard, who, though she be a Papist as good as I, yet prates
+virtue like a Lutheran.'
+
+'Ye lie!' Margot said; 'my mistress getteth her virtue from good
+letters.'
+
+Throckmorton smiled at her again.
+
+'Wench,' he said, 'in all save doctrine, this Kat Howard and her
+learning are nearer Lutheran than of the old faith.'
+
+With his malice he set himself to bewilder Margot. They made a little,
+shadowy knot in the long corridor. For he wished to give Udal, who in
+his long gown stood deaf-faced, like a statue of contemplation, the
+time to come to a conclusion.
+
+'Why, you are a very mean wag,' Margot said. 'I have heard my
+uncle--who is, as ye wot, a Protestant and a printer--I have heard him
+speak of Luther and of Bucer and of the word of God and suchlike
+canting books, but never once of Seneca and Tully, that my mistress
+loves.'
+
+'Why, ye are learning the trick of tongues,' Throckmorton mocked.
+'Please God, when your mistress cometh to be Queen--may He send it
+soon!--there shall be such a fashion and contagion of talking----'
+
+Having his eyes on Udal, he broke off suddenly, and said with a harsh
+sharpness:
+
+'I have given you time to make a resolution. Speak quickly. Will you
+come into our boat with us that will bring down Privy Seal?'
+
+Udal winced, but Throckmorton held him by the wrist.
+
+'Then unpouch quickly thy Cleves papers,' he said; 'we have but a
+little time to turn them round.'
+
+Udal's thin hand sought nervously the opening of his jerkin beneath
+his gown: he drew it back, moved it forward again, and stood quivering
+with doubt.
+
+Throckmorton stood vaingloriously back upon his feet and combed his
+great beard with his white fingers.
+
+'Magister,' he uttered triumphantly, 'well you wot that such a man as
+you cannot plot for himself alone; you will make naught of your
+treasure trove save a cleft neck!'
+
+And, furtively, cringing back into the dark hangings, a bent, broken
+figure like a miser unpouching his gold, Udal undid his breast
+lacings.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was hot from this colloquy that Margot Poins had led the two men in
+upon her mistress in her large dim room. Because she hated the great
+spy, since he loved Kat Howard and had undone many good men with false
+tales, she had not been able to keep her tongue from seeking to wound
+him.
+
+'Ye are too true to mix in plots,' she brought out gruffly.
+
+Cicely Rochford came close to Katharine and measured her neck with the
+span of her small hand.
+
+'There is room!' she said. 'Hast a long and a straight neck.'
+
+Her husband muttered that he liked not these talkings. By diligent
+avoidance of such, he had kept his own hair and neck uncut in
+troublesome times.
+
+'I will take thee to another place,' Cicely threw at him over her
+shoulder. 'Shalt kiss me in a dark room. It is very certain maids'
+talk is no fit hearing for thy jolly old ears.'
+
+She took him delicately at the end of his short white beard between
+her long finger and thumb, and, with her high and mincing step, led
+him through the door.
+
+'God save this room, where all the virtues bide!' she cried out, and
+drew her overskirt closer to her as she passed near the great, bearded
+spy.
+
+Katharine turned and faced Throckmorton.
+
+It is even as the maid saith,' she uttered. 'I am too true to mix in
+plots.'
+
+'Neither will ye give us to death!' Throckmorton faced her back so
+that she paused for breath, and the pause lasted a full minute.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I do give you a fair and a full warning that, if you
+do plot against Privy Seal, and if knowledge of your plotting cometh
+to mine ears--though I ask not to know of them--I will tell of your
+plottings----'
+
+'Oh, before God!' Udal cried out, 'I have suckled you with learned
+writers; I have carried letters for you; will you give me to die?' and
+Margot wailed from a deep chest: 'The magister so well hath loved
+thee. Give him not into die hands of Cur Crummock!--would I had never
+told thee that they plotted!'
+
+'Fool!' Throckmorton said; 'it is to the King she will go with her
+tales.' He sat down upon her yellow-wood table and swung one crimson
+leg before the other, laughing gleefully at Katharine's astonished
+face.
+
+'Sir,' she said at last; 'it is true that I will go, not to my lord
+Privy Seal, but to the King.'
+
+Throckmorton held up one of his white hands to the light and, with the
+other, smoothed down its little finger.
+
+'See you?' he gibed softly at Margot. 'How better I guess this thing,
+mistress, than thou. For I do know her better.'
+
+Katharine looked at him with a soft glance and said pitifully:
+
+'Nevertheless, what shall it profit thee if I take a tale of thy
+treasons to the King's Highness?'
+
+Throckmorton sprang from the table and clapped his heels together on
+the floor.
+
+'It shall get me made an earl,' he said. 'The King will do that much
+for the man that shall rid him of his minister.' He reflected foxily
+and for a quick moment. 'Before God!' he said,'take this tale to the
+King, for it is the true tale: That the Duke of Cleves seeks, in
+France, to have done with his alliance. He will no more cleave to his
+brother-in-law, but will make submission to the Emperor and to Rome!'
+
+He paused, and then finished:
+
+'For that news the King shall love you much more than before. But God
+help me! it takes thee the more out of my reach!'
+
+As they left the room to go to the audience with Cromwell, Katharine,
+squaring the frills of her hood behind her back, could hear Margot
+Poins grumbling to the magister:
+
+'After these long days ye ha' time for five minutes to hold my hand,'
+and the magister, perturbed and fumbling in his bosom, muttered:
+
+'Nay, I have no minutes now. I must write much in Latin ere thy
+mistress return.'
+
+
+VI
+
+
+'By God,' Wriothesley said when she entered the long gallery where the
+men were. 'This is a fair woman!'
+
+She had command of her features, and her eyes were upon the ground; it
+was a part of a woman's upbringing to walk well, and her masters had
+so taught her when she had lived with her grandmother, the old
+duchess. Not the tips of her shoes shewed beneath the zigzag folds of
+her russet-brown underskirt; the tips of her scarlet sleeves netted
+with gold touched the waxed wood of the floor; her hood fell behind to
+the ground, and her fair hair was golden where the sunlight fell on it
+with a last, watery ray.
+
+Upon Privy Seal she raised her eyes; she bent her knees so that her
+gown spread out all around her when she curtsied, and, having arranged
+it with a slow hand, she came to her height again, rustling as if she
+rose from a wave.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I come to pray you to right a great wrong done by
+your servants.'
+
+'By God!' Wriothesley said, 'she speaks high words.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' Cromwell answered--and his eyes graciously dwelt upon
+her tall form. She had clasped her hands before her lap and looked
+into his face. 'Madam Howard, you are more learned in the better
+letters than I; but I would have you call to memory one Pancrates, of
+whom telleth Lucian. Being in a desert or elsewhere, this magician
+could turn sticks, stocks and stakes into servants that did his will.
+Mark you, they did his will--no more and no less.'
+
+'Sir,' Katharine said, 'ye have better servants than ever had
+Pancrates. They do more than your behests.'
+
+Cromwell bent his back, stretched aside his white hand and smiled
+still.
+
+'Ye trow truth,' he said. 'Yet ye do me wrong; for had I the servants
+of Pancrates, assuredly he should hear no groans of injustice from men
+of good will.'
+
+'It is too good hearing,' Katharine said gravely. 'This is my
+tale----'
+
+Once before she had trembled in this man's presence, and still she had
+a catching in the throat as her eyes measured his face. She was mad to
+do right and to right wrongs, yet in his presence the doing of the
+right, the righting of wrongs, seemed less easy than when she stood
+before any other man. 'Sir,' she uttered, 'I have thought ye have done
+ill afore now. I am nowise certain that ye thought your ill-doing an
+evil. I beseech you for a patient hearing.'
+
+But, though she told her story well--and it was an old story that she
+had learned by heart--she could not be rid of the feeling that this
+was a less easy matter than it had seemed to her, to call Cromwell
+accursed. She had a moving tale of wrongs done by Cromwell's servant,
+Dr Barnes, a visitor of a church in Lincolnshire near where her home
+had been. For the lands had been taken from a little priory upon an
+excuse that the nuns lived a lewd life; and so well had she known the
+nuns, going in and out of the convent every week-day, that well she
+knew the falseness of Cromwell's servant's tale.
+
+'Sir,' she said to Cromwell, 'mine own foster-sister had the veil
+there; mine own mother's sister was there the abbess.' She stretched
+out a hand. 'Sir, they dwelled there simply and godly, withdrawn from
+the world; succouring the poor; weaving of fine linens, for much flax
+grew upon those lands by there; and praying God and the saints that
+blessings fall upon this land.'
+
+Wriothesley spoke to her slowly and heavily:
+
+'Such little abbeys ate up the substance of this land in the old days.
+Well have we prospered since they were done away who ate up the
+fatness of this realm. Now husbandmen till their idle soil and cattle
+are in their buildings.'
+
+'Gentleman whose name I know not,' she turned upon him, 'more wealth
+and prosperity God granted us in answer to their prayers than could be
+won by all the husbandmen of Arcadia and all the kine of Cacus. God
+standeth above all men's labours.' But Cromwell's servants had sworn
+away the lands of the small abbey, and now the abbess and her nuns lay
+in gaol accused--and falsely--of having secreted an image of Saint
+Hugh to pray against the King's fortunes.
+
+'Before God,' she said, 'and as Christ is my Saviour, I saw and make
+deposition that these poor simple women did no such thing but loved
+the King as he had been their good father. I have seen them at their
+prayers. Before God, I say to you that they were as folk astonished
+and dismayed; knowing so little of the world that ne one ne other knew
+whence came the word that had bared them to the skies. I have seen
+them--I.'
+
+'Where went they?' Wriothesley said; 'what worked they?'
+
+'Gentleman,' she answered; 'being cast out of their houses and their
+veils, they knew nowhither to go; homes they had none; they lived with
+their own hinds in hovels, like frightened lambs, the saints their
+pastors being driven from their folds.'
+
+'Aye,' Wriothesley said grimly, 'they cumbered the ground; they did
+meet in knots for mutinies.'
+
+'God had appointed them the duty of prayer,' Katharine answered him.
+'They met and prayed in sheds and lodges of the house that had been
+theirs, poor ghosts revisiting and bewailing their earthly homes. I
+have prayed with them.'
+
+'Ye have done a treason in that day,' Wriothesley answered.
+
+'I have done the best that ever I did for this land,' she met him
+fully. 'I prayed naught against the King and the republic. I have
+prayed you and your like might be cast down. So do I still. I stand
+here to avow it. But they never did, and they do lie in gaol.' She
+turned again upon Cromwell and spoke piteously from her full throat.
+'My lord,' she cried. 'Soften your heart and let the wax in your ears
+melt so that ye hear. Your servants swore falsely when they said these
+women lived lewdly; your men swore falsely when they said that these
+women prayed treasonably. For the one count they took their lands and
+houses; for the other they lay them in the gaols. Sir, my lord, your
+servants go up and down this land; sir, my lord, they ride rich men
+with boots of steel and do strangle the poor with gloves of iron. I do
+think ye know they do it; I do pray ye know not. But, sir, if ye will
+right this wrong I will kiss your hands; if you will set up again
+these homes of prayer I will take a veil, and in one of them spend my
+days praying that good befall you and yours.' She paused in her
+speaking and then began again: 'Before I came here I had made me a
+fair speech. I have forgot it, and words come haltingly to me. Sirs,
+ye think I seek mine own aggrandisement; ye think I do wish ye cast
+down. Before God, I wish ye were cast down if ye continue in these
+ways; but I have prayed to God who sent the Pentecostal fires, to
+give me the gift of tongues that shall soften your hearts----'
+
+Cromwell interrupted her, smiling that Venus, who made her so fair,
+gave her no need of a gift of tongues, and Minerva, who made her so
+learned, gave her no need of fairness. For the sake of the one and the
+other, he would very diligently enquire into these women's courses. If
+they ha been guiltless, they should be richly repaid; if they ha been
+guilty, they should be pardoned.
+
+Katharine flushed with a hot anger.
+
+'Ye are a very craven lord,' she said. 'If you may find them guilty,
+you shall have my head. But if you do find them innocent and shield
+them not, I swear I will strive to have thine.' Anger made her blue
+eyes dilate. 'Have you no bowels of compassion for the right? Ye treat
+me as a fair woman--but I speak as a messenger of the King's, that is
+God's, to men who too long have hardened their hearts.'
+
+Throckmorton laid back his head and laughed suddenly at the ceiling;
+Cranmer crossed himself; Wriothesley beat his heel upon the floor and
+shrugged his shoulders bitterly--but Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy,
+kept his eyes upon Throckmorton's face with a puzzled scrutiny.
+
+'Why now does that man laugh?' he asked himself. For it seemed to him
+that by laughing Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. And indeed,
+Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. As policy her speech was
+neither here nor there, but as voicing a spirit, infectious and
+winning to men's hearts, he saw that such speaking should carry her
+very far. And, if it should embroil her more than ever with Cromwell,
+it would the further serve his adventures. He was already conspiring
+to betray Cromwell, and he knew that, very soon now, Cromwell must
+pierce his mask of loyalty; and the more Katharine should have cast
+down her glove to Cromwell, the more he could shelter behind her; and
+the more men she could have made her friends with her beauty and her
+fine speeches, the more friends he too should have to his back when
+the day of discovery came. In the meantime he had in his sleeve a
+trick that he would speedily play upon Cromwell, the most dangerous of
+any that he had played. For below the stairs he had Udal, with his
+news of the envoy from Cleves to France, and with his copies of the
+envoy's letters. But, in her turn, Katharine played him, unwittingly
+enough, a trick that puzzled him.
+
+'Bones of St Nairn!' he said; 'she has him to herself. What mad prank
+will she play now?'
+
+Katharine had drawn Cromwell to the very end of the gallery.
+
+'As I pray that Christ will listen to my pleas when at the last I come
+to Him for pardon and comfort,' she said, 'I swear that I will speak
+true words to you.'
+
+He surveyed her, plump, alert, his lips moving one upon the other. He
+brought one white soft hand from behind his back to play with the furs
+upon his chest.
+
+'Why, I believe you are a very earnest woman,' he said.
+
+'Then, sir,' she said, 'understand that your sun is near its setting.
+We rise, we wane; our little days do run their course. But I do
+believe you love your King his cause more than most men.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said, 'you have been my foremost foe.'
+
+'Till five minutes agone I was,' she said.
+
+He wondered for a moment if she were minded to beg him to aid her in
+growing to be Queen; and he wondered too how that might serve his
+turn. But she spoke again:
+
+'You have very well served the King,' she said. 'You have made him
+rich and potent. I believe ye have none other desire so great as that
+desire to make him potent and high in this world's gear.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said calmly, 'I desire that--and next to found for
+myself a great house that always shall serve the throne as well as I.'
+
+She gave him the right to that with a lowering of her eyebrows.
+
+'I too would see him a most high prince,' she said. 'I would see him
+shed lustre upon his friends, terror upon his foes, and a great light
+upon this realm and age.'
+
+She paused to touch him earnestly with one long hand, and to brush
+back a strand of her hair. Down the gallery she saw Lascelles moving
+to speak with Throckmorton and Wriothesley holding the Archbishop
+earnestly by the sleeve.
+
+'See,' she said, 'you are surrounded now by traitors that will bring
+you down. In foreign lands your cause wavers. I tell you, five minutes
+agone I wished you swept away.'
+
+Cromwell raised his eyebrows.
+
+'Why, I knew that this was difficult fighting,' he said. 'But I know
+not what giveth me your good wishes.'
+
+'My lord,' she answered, 'it came to me in my mind: What man is there
+in the land save Privy Seal that so loveth his master's cause?'
+
+Cromwell laughed.
+
+'How well do you love this King,' he said.
+
+'I love this King; I love this land,' she said, 'as Cato loved Rome or
+Leonidas his realm of Sparta.'
+
+Cromwell pondered, looking down at his foot; his lips moved furtively,
+he folded his hand inside his sleeves; and he shook his head when
+again she made to speak. He desired another minute for thought.
+
+'This I perceive to be the pact you have it in your mind to make,' he
+said at last, 'that if you come to sway the King towards Rome I shall
+still stay his man and yours?'
+
+She looked at him, her lips parted with a slight surprise that he
+should so well have voiced thoughts that she had hardly put into
+words. Then her faith rose in her again and moved her to pitiful
+earnestness.
+
+'My lord,' she uttered, and stretched out one hand. 'Come over to us.
+'Tis such great pity else--'tis such pity else.'
+
+She looked again at Throckmorton, who, in the distance, was surveying
+the Archbishop's spy with a sardonic amusement, and a great
+mournfulness went through her. For there was the traitor and here
+before her was the betrayed. Throckmorton had told her enough to know
+that he was conspiring against his master, and Cromwell trusted
+Throckmorton before any man in the land; and it was as if she saw one
+man with a dagger hovering behind another. With her woman's instinct
+she felt that the man about to die was the better man, though he were
+her foe. She was minded--she was filled with a great desire to say:
+'Believe no word that Throckmorton shall tell you. The Duke of Cleves
+is now abandoning your cause.' That much she had learnt from Udal five
+minutes before. But she could not bring herself to betray
+Throckmorton, who was a traitor for the sake of her cause. ''Tis such
+pity,' she repeated again.
+
+'Good wench,' Cromwell said, 'you are indifferent honest; but never
+while I am the King's man shall the Bishop of Rome take toll again in
+the King's land.'
+
+She threw up her hands.
+
+'Alack!' she said, 'shall not God and His Son our Saviour have their
+part of the King's glory?'
+
+'God is above us all,' he answered. 'But there is no room for two
+heads of a State, and in a State is room but for one army. I will have
+my King so strong that ne Pope ne priest ne noble ne people shall here
+have speech or power. So it is now; I have so made it, the King
+helping me. Before I came this was a distracted State; the King's writ
+ran not in the east, not in the west, not in the north, and hardly in
+the south parts. Now no lord nor no bishop nor no Pope raises head
+against him here. And, God willing, in all the world no prince shall
+stand but by grace of this King's Highness. This land shall have the
+wealth of all the world; this King shall guide this land. There shall
+be rich husbandmen paying no toll to priests, but to the King alone;
+there shall be wealthy merchants paying no tax to any prince nor
+emperor, but only to this King. The King's court shall redress all
+wrongs; the King's voice shall be omnipotent in the council of the
+princes.'
+
+'Ye speak no word of God,' she said pitifully.
+
+'God is very far away,' he answered.
+
+'Sir, my lord,' she cried, and brushed again the tress from her
+forehead. 'Ye have made this King rich with gear of the Church: if ye
+will be friends with me ye shall make this King a pauper to repay; ye
+have made this King stiffen his neck against God's Vicegerent: if you
+and I shall work together ye shall make him re-humble himself. Christ
+the King of all the world was a pauper; Christ the Saviour of all
+mankind humbled Himself before God that was His Saviour.'
+
+Cromwell said 'Amen.'
+
+'Sir,' she said again; 'ye have made this King rich, but I will give
+to him again his power to sleep at night; ye have made this realm
+subject to this King, but, by the help of God, I will make it subject
+again to God. You have set up here a great State, but oh, the children
+of God do weep since ye came. Where is a town where lamentation is not
+heard? Where is a town where no orphan or widow bewails the day that
+saw your birth?' She had sobs in her voice and she wrung her hands.
+'Sir,' she cried, 'I say you are as a dead man already--your day of
+pride is past, whether ye aid us or no. Set yourself then to redress
+as heartily as ye have set yourself in the past to make sad. That land
+is blest whose people are happy; that State is aggrandised whence
+there arise songs praising God for His blessings. You have built up a
+great city of groans; set yourself now to build a kingdom where
+"Praise God" shall be sung. It is a contented people that makes a
+State great; it is the love of God that maketh a people rich.'
+
+Cromwell laughed mirthlessly:
+
+'There are forty thousand men like Wriothesley in England,' he said.
+'God help you if you come against them; there are forty times forty
+thousand and forty times that that pray you not again to set disorder
+loose in this land. I have broken all stiff necks in this realm. See
+you that you come not against some yet.' He stopped, and added: 'Your
+greatest foes should be your own friends if I be a dead man as you
+say.' And he smiled at her bewilderment when he had added: 'I am your
+bulwark and your safeguard.'
+
+... 'For, listen to me,' he took up again his parable. 'Whilst I be
+here I bear the rancour of your friends' hatred. When I am gone you
+shall inherit it.'
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I am not here to hear riddles, but here I am to pray
+you seek the right.'
+
+'Wench,' he said pleasantly, 'there are in this world many rights--you
+have yours; I mine. But mine can never be yours nor yours mine. I am
+not yet so dead as ye say; but if I be dead, I wish you so well that I
+will send you a phial of poison ere I send to take you to the stake.
+For it is certain that if you have not my head I shall have yours.'
+
+She looked at him seriously, though the tears ran down her cheeks.
+
+'Sir,' she uttered, 'I do take you to be a man of your word. Swear to
+me, then, that if upon the fatal hill I do save you your life and your
+estates, you will nowise work the undoing of the Church in time to
+come.'
+
+'Madam Queen that shall be,' he said, 'an ye gave me my life this day,
+to-morrow I would work as I worked yesterday. If ye have faith of your
+cause I have the like of mine.'
+
+She hung her head, and said at last:
+
+'Sir, an ye have a little door here at the gallery end I will go out
+by it'; for she would not again face the men who made the little knot
+before the window. He moved the hangings aside and stood before the
+aperture smiling.
+
+'Ye came to ask a boon of me,' he said. 'Is it your will still that I
+grant it?'
+
+'Sir,' she answered, 'I asked a boon of you that I thought you would
+not grant, so that I might go to the King and shew him your evil
+dealings with his lieges.'
+
+'I knew it well,' he said. 'But the King will not cast me down till
+the King hath had full use of me.'
+
+'You have a very great sight into men's minds,' she uttered, and he
+laughed noiselessly once again.
+
+'I am as God made me,' he said. Then he spoke once more. 'I will read
+your mind if you will. Ye came to me in this crisis, thinking with
+yourself: _Liars go unto the King saying, "This Cromwell is a traitor;
+cast him down, for he seeks your ill." I will go unto the King saying,
+"This Cromwell grindeth the faces of the poor and beareth false
+witness. Cast him down, though he serve you well, since he maketh your
+name to stink to heaven."_ So I read my fellow-men.'
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'it is very true that I will not be linked with
+liars. And it is very true that men do so speak of you to the King's
+Highness.'
+
+'Why,' he answered her debonairly, 'the King shall listen neither to
+them nor to you till the day be come. Then he will act in his own good
+way--upon the pretext that I be a traitor, or upon the pretext that I
+have borne false witness, or upon no pretext at all.'
+
+'Nevertheless will I speak for the truth that shall prevail,' she
+answered.
+
+'Why, God help you!' was his rejoinder.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Going back to his friends in the window Cromwell meditated that it was
+possible to imagine a woman that thought so simply; yet it was
+impossible to imagine one that should be able to act with so great a
+simplicity. On the one hand, if she stayed about the King she should
+be his safeguard, for it was very certain that she should not tell the
+King that he was a traitor. And that above all was what Cromwell had
+to fear. He had, for his own purposes, so filled the King with the
+belief that treachery overran his land, that the King saw treachery in
+every man. And Cromwell was aware, well enough, that such of his
+adherents as were Protestant--such men as Wriothesley--had indeed
+boasted that they were twenty thousand swords ready to fall upon even
+the King if he set against the re-forming religion in England. This
+was the greatest danger that he had--that an enemy of his should tell
+the King that Privy Seal had behind his back twenty thousand swords.
+For that side of the matter Katharine Howard was even a safeguard,
+since with her love of truth she would assuredly combat these liars
+with the King.
+
+But, on the other hand, the King had his superstitious fears; only
+that night, pale, red-eyed and heavy, and being unable to sleep, he
+had sent to rouse Cromwell and had furiously rated him, calling him
+knave and shaking him by the shoulder, telling him for the twentieth
+time to find a way to make a peace with the Bishop of Rome. These were
+only night-fears--but, if Cleves should desert Henry and
+Protestantism, if all Europe should stand solid for the Pope, Henry's
+night-fears might eat up his day as well. Then indeed Katharine would
+be dangerous. So that she was indeed half foe, half friend.
+
+It hinged all upon Cleves; for if Cleves stood friend to Protestantism
+the King would fear no treason; if Cleves sued for pardon to the
+Emperor and Rome, Henry must swing towards Katharine. Therefore, if
+Cleves stood firm to Protestantism and defied the Emperor, it would be
+safe to work at destroying Katharine; if not, he must leave her by the
+King to defend his very loyalty.
+
+The Archbishop challenged him with uplifted questioning eyebrows, and
+he answered his gaze with:
+
+'God help ye, goodman Bishop; it were easier for thee to deal with
+this maid than for me. She would take thee to her friend if thou
+wouldst curry with Rome.'
+
+'Aye,' Cranmer answered. 'But would Rome have truck with me?' and he
+shook his head bitterly. He had been made Archbishop with no sanction
+from Rome.
+
+Cromwell turned upon Wriothesley; the debonair smile was gone from his
+face; the friendly contempt that he had for the Archbishop was gone
+too; his eyes were hard, cruel and red, his lips hardened.
+
+'Ye have done me a very evil turn,' he said. 'Ye spoke stiff-necked
+folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I
+be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from
+heaven upon Lutherans that cross the King.'
+
+The hard malice of his glance made Wriothesley quail and flush
+heavily.
+
+'I thought ye had been our friend,' he said.
+
+'Wriothesley,' Cromwell answered, 'I tell thee, silly knave, that I be
+friend only to them that love the order and peace I have made, under
+the King's Highness, in this realm. If it be the King's will to
+stablish again the old faith, a hammer of iron will I be upon such as
+do raise their heads against it. It were better ye had never been
+born, it were better ye were dead and asleep, than that ye raised your
+heads against me.' He turned, then he swung back with the sharpness of
+a viper's spring.
+
+'What help have I had of thee and thy friends? I have bolstered up
+Cleves and his Lutherans for ye. What have he and ye done for me and
+my King? Your friend the Duke of Cleves has an envoy in Paris. Have ye
+found for why he comes there? Ye could not. Ye have botched your
+errand to Paris; ye have spoken naughtily in my house to a friend of
+the King's that came friendlily to me.' He shook a fat finger an inch
+from Wriothesley's eyes. 'Have a care! I did send my visitors to smell
+out treason among the convents and abbeys. Wait ye till I send them to
+your conventicles! Ye shall not scape. Body of God! ye shall not
+scape.'
+
+He placed a heavy hand upon Throckmorton's shoulder.
+
+'I would I had sent thee to Paris,' he said. 'No envoy had come there
+whose papers ye had not seen. I warrant thou wouldst have ferreted
+them through.'
+
+Throckmorton's eyes never moved; his mouth opened and he spoke with
+neither triumph nor malice:
+
+'In very truth, Privy Seal,' he said, 'I have ferreted through enow of
+them to know why the envoy came to Paris.'
+
+Cromwell kept his hands still firm upon his spy's shoulder whilst the
+swift thoughts ran through his mind. He scowled still upon
+Wriothesley.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'ye see how I be served. What ye could not find in
+Paris my man found for me in London town.' He moved his face round
+towards the great golden beard of his spy. 'Ye shall have the farms ye
+asked me for in Suffolk,' he said. 'Tell me now wherefore came the
+Cleves envoy to France. Will Cleves stay our ally, or will he send
+like a coward to his Emperor?'
+
+'Privy Seal,' Throckmorton answered expressionlessly--he fingered his
+beard for a moment and felt at the medal depending upon his
+chest--'Cleves will stay your friend and the King's ally.'
+
+A great sigh went up from his three hearers at Throckmorton's lie; and
+impassive as he was, Throckmorton sighed too, imperceptibly beneath
+the mantle of his beard. He had burned his boats. But for the others
+the sigh was of a great contentment. With Cleves to lead the German
+Protestant confederation, the King felt himself strong enough to make
+headway against the Pope, the Emperor and France. So long as the Duke
+of Cleves remained a rebel against his lord the Emperor, the King
+would hold over Protestantism the mantle of his protection.
+
+Cromwell broke in upon their thoughts with his swift speech.
+
+'Sirs,' he uttered, 'then what ye will shall come to pass.
+Wriothesley, I pardon thee; get thee back to Paris to thy mission.
+Archbishop, I trow thou shalt have the head of that wench. Her cousin
+shall be brought here again from France.'
+
+Lascelles, the Archbishop's spy, who kept his gaze upon
+Throckmorton's, saw the large man's eyes shift suddenly from one board
+of the floor to another.
+
+'That man is not true,' he said to himself, and fell into a train of
+musing. But from the others Cromwell had secured the meed of wonder
+that he desired. He had closed the interview with a dramatic speech;
+he had given them something to talk of.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+He held Throckmorton in the small room that contained upon its high
+stand the Privy Seal of England in an embroidered purse. All red and
+gold, this symbol of power held the eye away from the dark-green
+tapestry and from the pigeon-holes filled with parchment scrolls
+wherefrom there depended so many seals each like a gout of blood. The
+room was so high that it appeared small, but there was room for
+Cromwell to pace about, and here, walking from wall to wall, he
+evolved those schemes that so fast held down the realm. He paced
+always, his hands behind his back, his lips moving one upon the other
+as if he ruminated--(His foes said that he talked thus with his
+familiar fiend that had the form of a bee.)--and his black cap with
+ear-flaps always upon his head, for he suffered much with the earache.
+
+He walked now, up and down and up and down, saying nothing, whilst
+from time to time Throckmorton spoke a word or two. Throckmorton
+himself had his doubts--doubts as to how the time when it would be
+safe to let it be known that he had betrayed his master might be found
+to fit in with the time when his master must find that he had betrayed
+him. He had, as he saw it, to gain time for Katharine Howard so she
+might finally enslave the King's desires. That there was one weak spot
+in her armour he thought he knew, and that was her cousin that was
+said to be her lover. That Cromwell knew of her weak spot he knew too;
+that Cromwell through that would strike at her he knew too. All
+depended upon whether he could gain time so that Cromwell should be
+down before he could use his knowledge.
+
+For that reason he had devised the scheme of making Cromwell feel a
+safety about the affairs of Cleves. Udal fortunately wrote a very
+swift Latin. Thus, when going to fetch Katharine to her interview with
+Privy Seal he had found Udal bursting with news of the Cleves embassy
+and with the letters of the Duke of Cleves actually copied on papers
+in his poke, Throckmorton had very swiftly advised with himself how to
+act. He had set Udal very earnestly to writing a false letter from
+Cleves to France--such a letter as Cleves might have written--and this
+false letter, in the magister's Latin, he had placed now in his
+master's hands, and, pacing up and down, Cromwell read from time to
+time from the scrap of paper.
+
+What Cleves had written was that he was fain to make submission to the
+Emperor, and leave the King's alliance. What Cromwell read was this:
+That the high and mighty Prince, the Duke of Cleves, was firmly minded
+to adhere in his allegiance with the King of England: that he feared
+the wrath of the Emperor Charles, who was his very good suzerain and
+over-lord: that if by taxes and tributes he might keep away from his
+territory the armies of the Emperor he would be well content to pay a
+store of gold: that he begged his friend and uncle, King of France, to
+intercede betwixt himself and the Emperor to the end that the Emperor
+might take these taxes and tributes; for that, if the Emperor would
+none of this, come peace, come war, he, the high and mighty Prince,
+Duke of Cleves, Elector of the Empire, was minded to protect in
+Germany the Protestant confession and to raise against the Emperor the
+Princes and Electors of Almain, being Protestants. With the aid of his
+brother-in-law the King of England he would drive the Emperor Charles
+from the German lands together with the heresies of the Romish Bishop
+and all things that pertained to the Emperor Charles and his religion.
+
+Cromwell had listened to the reading of this letter in silence; in
+silence he re-perused it himself, pacing up and down, and in between
+phrases of his thoughts he read passages from it and nodded his head.
+
+That this was a very dangerous enterprise Throckmorton was assured; it
+was the first overt act of his that Privy Seal could discover in him
+as a treachery. In a month or six weeks he must know the truth; but in
+a month or six weeks Katharine must have so enslaved the King that
+all danger from Cromwell would be past. And he trusted that the
+security that Cromwell must feel would gar him delay striking at
+Katharine by means of her cousin.
+
+Cromwell said suddenly:
+
+'How got the magister these papers?' and Throckmorton answered that it
+was through the widow that kept the tavern. Cromwell said negligently:
+
+'Let the magister be rewarded with ten crowns a quarter to his fees.
+Set it down in my tables'; and then like lightning came the query:
+
+'Do ye believe of her cousin and the Lady Katharine?'
+
+Craving a respite for thought and daring to take none for fear
+Cromwell should read him, Throckmorton answered:
+
+'Ye know I think yes.'
+
+'I have said I think no,' Cromwell answered in turn, but
+dispassionately as though it were a matter of the courses of stars;
+'though it is very certain that her cousin is so mad with love for her
+that we had much ado to send him from her to Paris.' He paced three
+times from wall to wall and then spoke again:
+
+'Men enow have said she was too fond with her cousin?'
+
+With despair in his heart Throckmorton answered:
+
+'It is the common talk in Lincolnshire where her home is. I have seen
+a cub in a cowherd's that was said to be her child by him.'
+
+It was useless to speak otherwise to Privy Seal; if he did not report
+these things, twenty others would. But, beneath his impassive face and
+his great beard, despair filled him. He might swear treason against
+Cromwell to the King; but the King would not hear him alone, and
+without the King and Katharine he was a sparrow in Cromwell's hawk's
+talons.
+
+'Why,' Cromwell said, 'since Cleves is true to us we will have this
+woman down. An he had played us false I would have kept her near the
+King.'
+
+This saying, that ran so counter to Throckmorton's schemes, caused him
+such dismay that he cried out:
+
+'God forgive us, why?'
+
+Cromwell smiled at him as one who smiles from a great height, and
+pointed a finger.
+
+'This is a hard fight,' he said; 'we are in some straits. I trow ye
+would have voiced it otherwise.' And then he voiced his own idea--that
+so long as Cleves was friends with him Katharine was an enemy; if
+Cleves fell away she was none the less an enemy, but she would, from
+her love of justice, bear witness to the King that Cromwell was no
+traitor. 'And ye shall be very certain,' he added pleasantly, 'that
+once men see the King so inclined, they will go to the King saying I
+be a traitor, with Protestants like Wriothesley ready to rise and aid
+me. In that pass the Lady Katharine should stay by me, in the King's
+ear.'
+
+A deep and intolerable dejection overcame Throckmorton and forced from
+his lips the words:
+
+'Ye reason most justly.' And again he cursed himself, for he had
+forced Cromwell to this reasoning and action. Yet he dared not say
+that his news of the Cleves embassy was false, that Cleves indeed was
+minded to turn traitor, and that it most would serve Privy Seal's turn
+to stay Katharine Howard up. He dared not say the words, yet he saw
+his safety crumbling, and he saw Privy Seal set to ruin both himself
+and Katharine Howard. For in his heart he could not believe that the
+woman was virtuous, since he believed that no woman was virtuous who
+had been given the opportunity for joyment. As a spy, he had gone
+nosing about in Lincolnshire where Katharine's home had been near her
+cousin's. He had heard many tales against her such as rustics will
+tell against the daughters of poor lords like Katharine's father. And
+these tales, before ever he had come to love her, he had set down in
+Privy Seal's private registers. Now they were like to undo him and
+her. And in truth, according to his premonitions, Cromwell spoke:
+
+'We shall bring very quickly Thomas Culpepper, her cousin, back from
+France. We shall inflame his mind with jealousy of the King. We shall
+find a place where he shall burst upon the King and her together. We
+shall bring witnesses enow from Lincolnshire to swear against her.'
+
+He crossed his hands behind his back.
+
+'This work of fetching her cousin from Paris I will put into the hands
+of Viridus,' he said. 'I believe her to be virtuous, therefore do you
+bring many witnesses, and some that shall swear to have seen her in
+the act. That shall be your employment. For I tell you she hath so
+great a power of pleading that, being innocent, she will with
+difficulty be proved unchaste.'
+
+Throckmorton's head hung upon his shoulders.
+
+'Remember,' Privy Seal said again, 'you and Viridus shall send to find
+her cousin in France. Fill him with tales that his cousin plays the
+leman with the King. He shall burst here like a bolt from heaven. You
+will find him betwixt Calais and Paris town, dallying in evil places
+without a doubt. We sent him thither to frighten Cardinal Pole.'
+
+'Aye,' Throckmorton said, his mind filled with other and bitter
+thoughts. 'He hath frightened the Cardinal from Paris by the mere
+renown of his violence.'
+
+'Then let him do some frighting in our goodly town of London,'
+Cromwell said.
+
+
+
+
+PART TWO
+
+THE DISTANT CLOUD
+
+I
+
+
+The young Poins, once an ensign of the King's guard, habited now in
+grey, stood awaiting Thomas Culpepper, Katharine Howard's cousin,
+beneath the new gateway towards the east of Calais. Four days he had
+waited already and never had he dared to stir, save when the gates
+were closed for the night. But it had chanced that one of the
+gatewardens was a man from Lincolnshire--a man, once a follower of the
+plough, whose father had held a farm in the having of Culpepper
+himself.
+
+'----But he sold 'un,' Nicholas Hogben said, 'sold 'un clear away.' He
+made a wry face, winked one eye, and drawing up the right corner of
+his mouth, displayed square, huge teeth. The young Poins making no
+question, he repeated twice: 'Clear away. Right clear away.'
+
+Poins, however, could hold but one thing of a time in his head. And,
+by that striving, dangerous servant of Lord Privy Seal, Throckmorton,
+it had been firmly enjoined upon him that he must not fail to meet
+Thomas Culpepper and stay him upon his road to England. Throckmorton,
+with his great beard and cruel snake's eyes, had said: 'I hold thy
+head in fee. If ye would save it, meet Thomas Culpepper in Calais and
+give him this letter.' The letter he had in his poke. It carried with
+it a deed making Culpepper lieutenant of the stone barges in Calais.
+But he had it too, by word of mouth, that if Thomas Culpepper would
+not be stayed by the letter, he, Hal Poins, must stay him--with the
+sword, with a stab in the back, or by being stabbed himself and
+calling in the guard to lay Thomas Culpepper's self by the heels.
+
+'You will enjoin upon him,' Throckmorton had said, 'how goodly a thing
+is the lieutenancy of stone lighters that in this letter is proffered
+him. You will tell him that, if a barge of stone go astray, it is yet
+a fair way to London, and stone fetches good money from townsmen
+building in Calais. If he will gainsay this you will pick a quarrel
+with him, as by saying he gives you the lie. In short,' Throckmorton
+had finished, earnestly and with a sinuous grace of gesture in his
+long and narrow hands, 'you will stay him.'
+
+It was a desperate measure, yet it was the best he could compass. If
+Culpepper came to London, if he came to the King, Katharine's fortunes
+were not worth a rushlight such as were sold at twenty for a farthing.
+He knew, too, that Viridus had Cromwell's earnest injunctions to send
+a messenger that should hasten Culpepper's return; and, though he had
+seven hundred of Cromwell's spies that he could trust to do Privy
+Seal's errand, he had not one that he could trust to do his own. There
+was no one of them that he could trust. If he took a spy and said: 'At
+all costs stay Culpepper, but observe very strict secrecy from Privy
+Seal's men all,' the spy would very certainly let the news come to
+Privy Seal.
+
+It was in this pass that the thought of the young Poins had come to
+him. Here was a fellow absolutely stupid. He was a brother of
+Katharine Howard's tiring maid who had already come near to losing his
+head in a former intrigue in the Court. He had, at the instigation of
+his sister, carried two Papist letters of Katharine Howard. And, if it
+was the King who pardoned him, it was Throckmorton who first had taken
+him prisoner; it was Throckmorton who had advised him to lie hidden in
+his grandfather's house for a month or two. At the time Throckmorton
+had had no immediate reason to give the boy this counsel. Poins had
+been so small a tool in the past embroilment of Katharine's letter
+that, had he gone straight back to his post in the yeomanry of the
+King's guard, no man would have noticed him. But it had always been
+part of the devious and great bearded man's policy--it had been part
+of his very nature--to play upon people's fears, to trouble them with
+apprehensions. It was part of the tradition that Cromwell had given
+all his men. He ruled England by such fears.
+
+Thus Throckmorton had sent Poins trembling to hide in the old
+printer's his grandfather's house in the wilds of Austin Friars. And
+Throckmorton had impressed upon him that he alone had really saved
+him. It was in his grandfather's mean house that Poins had remained
+for a brace of months, grumbled at by his Protestant uncle and sneered
+at by his malicious Papist grandfather. And it was here that
+Throckmorton had found him, dressed in grey, humbled from his pride
+and raging for things to do.
+
+The boy would be of little service--yet he was all that Throckmorton
+had. If he could hardly be expected to trick Culpepper with his
+tongue, he might wound him with his sword; if he could not kill him he
+might at least scotch him, cause a brawl in Calais town, where,
+because the place was an outpost, brawling was treason, and Culpepper
+might be had by the heels for long enough to let Cromwell fall.
+Therefore, in the low room with the black presses, in the very shadow
+of Cromwell's own walls, Throckmorton--who was given the privacy of
+the place by the Lutheran printer because he was Cromwell's
+man--large, golden-bearded and speaking in meaning whispers, with
+lifting of his eyebrows, had held a long conference with the lad.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+His dangerous and terrifying presence seemed to dominate, for the
+young Poins, even the dusty archway of the Calais gate--and, even
+though he saw the flat, green and sunny levels of the French
+marshland, with the town of Ardres rising grey and turreted six miles
+away, the young Poins felt that he was still beneath the eyes of
+Throckmorton, the spy who had sought him out in his grandfather's
+house in Austin Friars to send him here across the seas to Calais. Up
+above in the archway the stonemasons who came from Lydd sang their
+Kentish songs as hammers clinked on chisels and the fine dust filtered
+through the scaffold boards. But the young Poins kept his eyes upon
+the dusty and winding road that threaded the dykes from Ardres, and
+thought only that when Thomas Culpepper came he must be stayed. He had
+oiled his sword that had been his father's so that it would slip
+smoothly from the scabbard; he had filed his dagger so that it would
+pierce through thin coat of mail. It was well to be armed, though he
+could not see why Thomas Culpepper should not stay willingly at Calais
+to be lieutenant of the stone lighters and steal stone to fill his
+pockets, since such were the privileges of the post that Throckmorton
+offered him.
+
+'Mayhap, if I stay him, it will get me advancement,' he grumbled
+between his teeth. He was enraged in his slow, fierce way. For
+Throckmorton had promised him only to save his neck if he succeeded.
+There had been no hint of further rewards. He did not speculate upon
+why Thomas Culpepper was to be held in Calais; he did not speculate
+upon why he should wish to come to England; but again and again he
+muttered between his teeth, 'A curst business! a curst business!'
+
+In the mysterious embroilment in which formerly he had taken part, his
+sister had told him that he was carrying letters between the King and
+Kat Howard. Yes; his large, slow sister had promised him great
+advancement for carrying certain letters. And still, in spite of the
+fact that he had been told it was a treason, he believed that the
+letters he had carried for Kat Howard were love letters to the King.
+Nevertheless, for his services he had received no advancement; he had,
+on the contrary, been bidden to leave his comrades of the guard and to
+hide himself. Throckmorton had bidden him do this. And instead of
+advancement, he had received kicks, curses, cords on his wrists, an
+interview with the Lord Privy Seal that still in the remembrance set
+him shivering, and this chance, offered him by Throckmorton, that if
+he stayed Thomas Culpepper he might save his neck.
+
+'Why, then,' he grumbled to himself, 'is it treason to carry the
+King's letters to a wench? Helping the King is no treason. I should be
+advanced, not threatened with a halter. Letters between the King and
+Kat Howard!' He even attempted to himself a clumsy joke, polishing it
+and repolishing it till it came out: 'A King may write to a Kat. A Kat
+may write to a King. But my neck's in danger!'
+
+Beside him, whitened by the dust that fell from above, the gatewarden
+wandered in speech round _his_ grievance.
+
+'You ask me, young lad, if I know Tom Culpepper. Well I know Tom
+Culpepper. Y' ask me if he have passed this way going for England.
+Well I know he have not. For if Tom Culpepper, squire that was of
+Durford and Maintree and Sallowford that was my father's farm--if so
+be Tom Culpepper had passed this way, I had spat in the dust behind
+him as he passed.'
+
+He made his wry face, winked his eye and showed his teeth once more.
+'Spat in the dust--I should ha' spat in the dust,' he remarked again.
+'Or maybe I'd have cast my hat on high wi' "Huzzay, Squahre Tom!"
+according as the mood I was in,' he said. He winked again and waited.
+
+'For sure,' he affirmed after a pause, 'that will move 'ee to ask why
+I du spit in the dust or for why--the thing being contrary--I'd ha'
+cast up my cap.'
+
+The young Poins pulled an onion from his poke.
+
+'If you are so main sure he have not passed the gate,' he said, 'I may
+take my ease.' He sat him down against the gate wall where the April
+sun fell warm through the arch of shadows. He stripped the outer peel
+from the onion and bit into it. 'Good, warming eating,' he said, 'when
+your stomach's astir from the sea.'
+
+'Young lad,' the gatewarden said, 'I'm as fain to swear my mother bore
+me--though God forbid I should swear who my father was, woman being
+woman--as that Thomas Culpepper have not passed this way. For why: I'd
+have cast my hat on high or spat on the ground. And such things done
+mark other things that have passed in the mind of a man. And I have
+done no such thing.'
+
+But because the young Poins sat always silent with his eyes on the
+road to Ardres and slept--being privileged because he was yeoman of
+the King's guard--always in the little stone guard cell of the gateway
+at nights; because, in fact, the young man's whole faculties were set
+upon seeing that Thomas Culpepper did not pass unseen through the
+gate, it was four days before the gatewarden contrived to get himself
+asked why he would have spat in the dust or cast his hat on high. It
+was, as it were, a point of honour that he should be asked for all the
+information that he gave; and he thirsted to tell his tale.
+
+His tale had it that he had been ruined by a wench who had thrown her
+shoe over the mill and married a horse-smith, after having many times
+tickled the rough chin of Nicholas Hogben. Therefore, he had it that
+all women were to be humbled and held down--for all women were
+traitors, praters, liars, worms and vermin. (He made a great play of
+words between wermen, meaning worms, and wermin and wummin.) He had
+been ruined by this woman who had tickled him under the chin--that
+being an ingratiating act, fit to bewitch and muddle a man, like as if
+she had promised him marriage. And then she had married a horse-smith!
+So he was ready and willing, and prayed every night that God would
+send him the chance, to ruin and hold down every woman who walked the
+earth or lay in a bed.
+
+But he had been ruined, too, by Thomas Culpepper, who had sold Durford
+and Maintree and Sallowford--which last was Hogben's father's farm.
+For why? Selling the farm had let in a Lincoln lawyer, and the Lincoln
+lawyer had set the farm to sheep, which last had turned old Hogben,
+the father, out from his furrows to die in a ditch--there being no
+room for farmers and for sheep upon one land. It had sent old Hogben,
+the father, to die in a ditch; it had sent his daughters to the stews
+and his sons to the road for sturdy beggars. So that, but for
+Wallop's band passing that way when Hogben was grinning through the
+rope beneath Lincoln town tree--but for the fact that men were needed
+for Wallop's work in Calais, by the holy blood of Hailes! Hogben would
+have been rating the angel's head in Paradise.
+
+But there had been great call for men to man the walls there in
+Calais, so Wallop's ancient had written his name down on the list,
+beneath the gallows tree, and had taken him away from the Sheriff of
+Lincoln's man.
+
+'So here a be,' he drawled, 'cutting little holes in my pikehead.'
+
+''Tis a folly,' the young Poins said.
+
+'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered, 'you say 'tis a folly to make
+small holes in a pikehead. But for me 'tis the greatest of ornaments.
+Give you, it weakens the pikehead; but 'tis a gradely ornament.'
+
+'Ornaments be folly,' the young Poins reiterated.
+
+'Sir,' the Lincolnshire man answered again, 'there is the goodliest
+folly that ever was. For if I weaken my eyes and tire my wrists with
+small tappers and little files, and if I weaken the steel with small
+holes, each hole represents a woman I have known undone and cast down
+in her pride by a man. Here be sixty-and-four holes round and firm in
+a pattern. Sixty-and-four women I have known undone.'
+
+He paused and surveyed, winking and moving the scroll that the little
+holes made in the tough steel of his axehead. Where a perforation was
+not quite round, he touched it with his file.
+
+'Hum! ha!' he gloated. 'In the centre of the head is the master hole
+of all, planned out for being cut. But not yet cut! Mark you, 'tis not
+yet cut. That is for the woman I hate most of all women. She is not
+yet cast down that I have heard tell on, though some have said "Aye,"
+some "Nay." Tell me, have you heard yet of a Kat Howard in the stews?'
+
+'There is a Kat Howard is like to be----' the young Poins began. But
+his slow cunning was aroused before he had the sentence out. Who could
+tell what trick was this?
+
+'Like to be what?' the Lincolnshire man badgered him. 'Like to be
+what? To be what?'
+
+'Nay, I know not,' Poins answered.
+
+'Like to be what?' Hogben persisted.
+
+'I know no Kat Howard,' Poins muttered sulkily. For he knew well that
+the Lady Katharine's name was up in the taverns along of Thomas
+Culpepper. And this Lincolnshire cow-dog was a knave too of Thomas's;
+therefore the one Kat Howard who was like to be the King's wench and
+the other Kat Howard known to Hogben might well be one and the same.
+
+'Nay; if you will not, neither even will I,' Hogben said. 'You shall
+have no more of my tale.'
+
+Poins kept his blue eyes along the road. Far away, with an odd leap,
+waving its arms abroad and coming by fits and starts, as a hare
+gambols along a path--a figure was tiny to see, coming from Ardres way
+towards Calais. It passed a load of hay on an ox-cart, and Poins could
+see the peasants beside it scatter, leap the dyke and fly to stand
+panting in the fields. The figure was clenching its fists; then it
+fell to kicking the oxen; when they had overset the cart into the
+dyke, it came dancing along with the same hare's gait.
+
+'That is too like the repute of Thomas Culpepper to be other than
+Thomas Culpepper,' the young Poins said. 'I will go meet him.'
+
+He started to his feet, loosed the sword in its scabbard; but the
+Lincolnshire man had his halberd across the gateway.
+
+'Pass! Shew thy pass!' he said vindictively.
+
+'I go but to meet him,' Poins snarled.
+
+'A good lie; thou goest not,' Hogben answered. 'No Englishman goes
+into the French lands without a pass from the lord controller. An thou
+keepest a shut head I can e'en keep a shut gate.'
+
+None the less he must needs talk or stifle.
+
+'Thee, with thy Kat Howard,' he snarled. 'Would 'ee have me think thy
+Kat was my kitten whose name stunk in our nostrils?'
+
+He shook his finger in Poins' face.
+
+'Here be three of us know Kat Howard,' he said. 'For I know her, since
+for her I must leave home and take the road. And _he_ knoweth her over
+well or over ill, since, to buy her a gown, he sold the three farms,
+Maintree, Durford and Sallowford--which last was my father's farm. And
+_thee_ knowest her. Thee knowest her. To no good, I'se awarned. For
+thou stoppedst in thy speech like a colt before a wood snake. God
+bring down all women, I pray!'
+
+He went on to tell, as if it had been a rosary, the names of the
+ruined women that the holes in his pikehead represented. There was one
+left by the wayside with her child; there was one hung for stealing
+cloth to cover her; there was one whipped for her naughty ways. He
+reached the square mark in the centre as the figure on the road
+reached the gateway.
+
+'Huzzay, Squahre Tom! Here bay three kennath Kat Howard. Let us three
+tak part to kick her down.'
+
+Thomas Culpepper like a green cat flew at his throat, clutched him
+above the steel breastplate, and shook three times, the gatewarden's
+uncovered, dun-coloured head swaying back and forward as if it were a
+loose bundle of clouts on a mop. When they parted company, because he
+could no longer keep his fingers clenched, Hogben fell back; he fell
+back, and they lay with their heels touching each other and their arms
+stretched out in the dust.
+
+
+II
+
+
+Nicholas Hogben was the first to rise. He felt at his neck, swallowed
+as though a piece of apple were stuck in his throat, brushed his
+leather breeches, and picked up his pike.
+
+'Why,' he said, 'you may hold it for main and certain that he have not
+had Kat Howard down. For, having had her down, a would never have
+thrown a man by the throat for miscalling of her. Therefore Kat Howard
+is up for all of he, and I may loosen my feelings.'
+
+He spat gravely at Culpepper's feet. Culpepper lay in the dust, his
+arms stretched out to form a cross, his face dead white and his beard
+of brilliant red pointing at the keystone of the arch of Calais gate.
+Poins lifted his hand, but the pulse still beat, and he dropped it
+moodily in the dust.
+
+'Not dead,' he muttered.
+
+'Dead!' Hogben laughed at him. 'Hath been in a boosing ken. There they
+drug the wine with simples, and the women--may pox fall on all
+women--perfume themselves so that a man goeth stark raving. I warrant
+he had silver buttons to his Lincoln green, but they be torn off. I
+warrant he had gold buckles to his shoen, but they be gone. His sword
+is away, the leather hangers being cut.'
+
+'Wilt not stick him with thy pike, having, as he hath, so mishandled
+thee?'
+
+'O aye,' the Lincolnshire man shewed his strong teeth. 'Thee wouldst
+have Kat Howard from him. But he may live for me, being more like to
+bring her to dismay than ever thee wilt be!'
+
+He looked into the narrow street of the town that the dawn pierced
+into through the gateway. Two skinny men in jerkins drawn tight with
+belts were yawning in a hovel's low doorway. Under his eyes, still
+stretching their arms abroad, they made to slink between the mud walls
+of the next alley.
+
+'Oh, hi! _Arrestez. Vesnez!_' he hailed. '_Cestui a comforter!_' The
+thin men made to break away, halted, hesitated, and then with dragging
+feet made through the pools and filth to the gateway.
+
+'_Tombe! Voleurs! Secourez!_' Hogben pointed at the prostrate figure
+in green. They rubbed their shins on their thin calves and appeared
+bewildered and uncertain.
+
+'_Portez a lous maisons!_' Hogben commanded.
+
+They stood one on each side and bent down, extending skinny arms to
+lift him. Thomas Culpepper sat up and spat in their faces--they fled
+like scared wolves, noiselessly, gazing behind them in trepidation.
+
+'Stay them; thieves ho! Stay them!' Culpepper panted. He scrambled to
+his feet, and stood reeling, his face like death, when he tried to
+make after them.
+
+'God!' he said. 'Give me to drink.'
+
+The young Poins mused under his breath because the man had neither
+sword nor dagger. Therefore it would be impossible to have sword play
+with him. He had, the young man, no ferocity--but he was set there to
+stay Thomas Culpepper's going on to England; he was to stay him by
+word or by deed. Deeds came so much easier than words.
+
+'Squahre Tom!' the Lincolnshire man grunted. 'Reckon you have no
+money. Without groats and more ye shall get nowt to drink in Calais
+town, save water. Water you may have in plenty.'
+
+With a sigh the young Poins unbuckled his belt to get his papers.
+
+'Money I have for you,' he said. 'A main of money.' He was engaged now
+to pass words with this man--and he sighed again.
+
+But Thomas Culpepper disregarded his words and his sigh. He was more
+in the mood to talk Lincolnshire than Kent, for his fever had given
+him a touch of homesickness and the young Poins to him was a very
+foreigner. He shut his eyes to let the Lincolnshire gatewarden's words
+go down to his brain; then with sudden violence he spat out:
+
+'Give me water! What do ah ask but water! Pig! brood of a sow! gi'e me
+water and choke!'
+
+Nicholas Hogben fetched a leather bottle as long as his leg, dusty and
+dinted, but nevertheless bedight with the arms of England, from the
+stone recess where the guard sheltered at nights. He fitted it on to
+the crook of his pike by the handle, and, craning over the drawbridge,
+first smoothed away the leaf-green duck-weed on the moat and then sank
+the bottle in the black water.
+
+'I have money: a main of money for ye,' the young Poins said to Thomas
+Culpepper; but the man, with his red beard and white face, swayed on
+his legs and had ears only for the gurgling and gulping of the water
+as it entered the bottle neck. The black jack swayed and jumped below
+the bridge like a glistening water-beast.
+
+He had little green spangles of duck-weed in his orange beard when he
+took the bottle away, empty, from his mouth. He drew deep gasps of
+breath, and suddenly sat down upon a squared block of stone that the
+masons above were waiting to hoist into place over the archway.
+
+'Good water!' he grunted to Hogben--grunting as all the Lincolnshire
+men did, in those days, like a two-year hog.
+
+'Bean't but that good in all Calais town!' Hogben grunted back to him.
+'Curses on the two wurmen that sent me here.' And indeed, to
+Lincolnshire men the water tasted good, since it reminded them of
+their dyke water, tasting of marshweed and smelling of eggs.
+
+'Tue wurmen!' Culpepper said lazily. 'Hast thou been jigging with _tue_
+puticotties to wunst? One is enow to undo seven men. Who be 'hee?'
+
+The young Poins, with a sulky sense of his importance, uttered:
+
+'I have money for thee--a main of money!'
+
+Culpepper looked at him with sleepy blue eyes.
+
+'Thrice y' ha' told me that,' he said. 'And money is a goodly thing in
+its place--but not to a man with a bellyful of water. Y' shall feel my
+fist when I be rested. Meanwhile wait and, being a cub, hear how _men_
+talk.' He slapped his chest and repeated to Hogben: 'Who be 'ee?'
+
+Hogben, delighted to be asked at last a question, shewed his
+formidable teeth and beneath his familiar contortion of the eyelids
+brought out the words that one of the women who had brought him down
+was her that had brought Squahre Culpepper to sit on a squared stone
+before Calais gate.
+
+'Why, I am a made man, for all you see me sit here,' Culpepper
+answered indolently. 'I ha' done a piece of work for which I am to be
+seised of seven farms in Kent land. See yo'--they send me messengers
+with money to Calais gate.' He pointed his thumb at the young Poins.
+
+The boy, to prove that he was no common messenger, drew his right leg
+up and said:
+
+'Nay, goodman Squire; an ye had slain the Cardinal the farms should
+have been yours. As it lies, ye are no more than lieutenant of Calais
+stone barges.'
+
+'Thou liest,' Culpepper answered negligently, not turning his gaze
+from the gatewarden to whom he addressed a friendly question of, Who
+was the woman that had brought the two of them down.
+
+'Now, Squahre!' the Lincolnshire man grinned delightedly; 'thu hast
+asked me tue questions. Answer me one: Did _thee_ lie upon her when
+thee put her name up in the township of Stamford?'
+
+'Stamford in Lincolnshire was thy townplace?' Culpepper asked. 'But
+who was thy woman? I ha' had so many women and lied about so many more
+that I never had!'
+
+The Lincolnshire man threw his leather cap to the keystone of the
+archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having
+the solemnity of one who performs his rituals.
+
+'Goodly squahre that thee art!' he said; 'thou has harmed a many
+wenches in truth and in lies.'
+
+Culpepper spied a down feather on his knee.
+
+'Curse the mattress that I lay upon this night,' he said amiably.
+
+He set his head back and blew the feather high into the air so that it
+floated out towards the tranquil and sunny pasture fields of France.
+
+'Cub!' he said to Hal Poins, 'take this as a lesson of the death that
+lies about the pilgrim's path. For why am I not a pilgrim? I was sent
+to rid Paris of a Cardinal Pole, who, being in league with the devil,
+hath a magic tongue. Mark this story well, cub, who art sent me with
+money and gifts from the King in his glory to me that sit upon a
+stone. Now mark--' He extended his white hand. 'This hand, o'
+yestereen, had a ring with a great green stone. Now no ring is here.
+It was given me by my seventeenth leman, who had two eyes that looked
+not together. No twelve robbers had taken it from me by force, since I
+had made a pact with the devil that these wall eyes should never look
+across my face whilst that ring was there. Now, God knows, I may find
+her in Calais. So mark well----' He had been sent to Paris to rid
+France of the Cardinal Pole; for the Cardinal Pole, being a succubus
+of the fiend, had a magical tongue and had been inducing the French
+King to levy arms, in the name of that arch-devil, the Bishop of Rome,
+against their goodly King Henry, upon whom God shed His peace.
+Culpepper raised his bonnet at the Deity's name, stuck it far back on
+his red head, and continued: Therefore the mouth of Cardinal Pole was
+to be stayed in Paris town.
+
+Culpepper smote his breast ferociously and with a black pride.
+
+'And I have stayed it!' he peacocked. 'I and no other. I--T.
+Culpepper--a made man!'
+
+'Not so,' Poins answered stubbornly. 'Thou wast sent to Paris to slay,
+and thou hast not slain!'
+
+'Thou liest!' Culpepper asseverated. 'I was sent to purge Paris town,
+and I ha' purged un. No pothicary had done it better nor Hercules that
+was a stall groom and cleaned stables in antick days.' For, at the
+first breath of news that Culpepper was in the town, at the first
+rumour that the king's assassin was in Paris, Cardinal Pole had
+gathered his purple skirts about his knees; at the second sound he had
+cast them off altogether and, arrayed as a woman or a barber's leech,
+had fled hot foot to Brescia and thence to Rome.
+
+'That was a nothing!' Culpepper asseverated. 'Though I ha' heard said
+that Hercules was made a god for cleaning stables that he found no
+easy task. But I will grant that it was no task for me to cleanse a
+whole town. For I needed no besoms, nor even no dagger, but the mere
+shadow of my beard upon the cobbly stones of Paris sufficed. I say
+nothing of that which befel in the day's journey; but mark this! mark
+what follows!' He had set out from Paris upon a high horse, with a
+high heart; he had frighted off all robbers and all sturdy rogues upon
+the road; he had slept at good inns as became a made man, and had
+bought himself a goodly pair of embroidered gloves which he could well
+pay for out of his superfluity. Being in haste to reach England, where
+he had that that called for him, he had ridden through the town of
+Ardres at nightfall, being minded to ride his horse dead, reach Calais
+gates in the hour, and beat down the gate if the warder would not
+suffer him to enter, it being dark. But outside the town of Ardres
+upon a make of no man's ground, being neither French nor English, he
+had espied a hut, and in the dark hut a lighted window hole that
+sparkled bravely, and, within, a big, fair woman drinking wine between
+candles with the light in her hair and a white tablecloth. And,
+feeling goodly, and Calais gate being shut, whether he broke it down
+one hour or three hours later was all one to him. He had gone into the
+hut to take by force or for payment a glass of wine from the black
+jacks, a kiss from the woman's mouth, and what else of ease the place
+afforded.
+
+'Now I will have you mark, cub,' he said--'cub that shall have to
+learn many wiles if thy throat be not cut by me within the next two
+hours. Mark this, cub: these were no Egyptians!' They were not
+Bohemians, not swearers, not subtle cozeners, not even black a-vised,
+or he would have been on his guard against them; but they were plain,
+fair folks of Normandy. So he had drunk his wine, and cast a main or
+two at dice with the woman and two men, losing no more and no less
+than was decent. And he had drunk more wine and had taken his
+kisses--since it was all one whether he came three hours or four hours
+later to Calais gate. And there had been candles on the table and
+stuffs upon the wall, and a crock on the fire for mulling the wine,
+and a sheet upon the feather bed. But when he awoke in the morning he
+had lain upon the hard earth, between the bare walls. And all that was
+his was gone that was worth the taking.
+
+'Now mark, cub,' he said. 'It was a simple thing this flitting with
+the hangings and the clothes and the pot rolled in bales and hung upon
+my horse. Upon my horse! But what is not simple is that simple folk of
+Normandy should have learned the arts of subtlety and drugging of
+wines. Mark that!' He pointed a finger at Poins.
+
+'Had God been good to you you might have been as good a warring boy as
+Thomas Culpepper, who with the shadow of his hand held back the
+galleons of France and France's knights from the goodly realm of
+England. For this I have done by frighting from Paris, Cardinal Pole
+that was moving the French King to war on us. Had God been good to you
+you might have been as brave. But marvel and consider and humble you
+in the dust to think that a man with my brain pan and all it holds
+could have been so cozened. For sure, a dolt like you would have been
+stripped more clean till you had neither nails to your toes nor hair
+to your eyebrows.'
+
+Hal Poins snarled that Culpepper would have been shaved too but that
+red hair stunk in the nostrils even of cozeners and thieves.
+
+Culpepper wagged his head from side to side.
+
+'This is a main soft stone,' he said; 'I am main weary. When the stone
+grows hard, which is a sign that I shall no longer be minded to rest,
+I will break thy back with a cudgel.'
+
+Poins stamped his foot with rage and tears filled his eyes.
+
+'An thou had a sword!' he said. 'An only thou had a sword!'
+
+'A year-old carrot to baste thee with!' Culpepper answered. 'Swords
+are for men!' He turned to Hogben, who was sitting on the ground
+furbishing his pikehead. 'Heard you the like of my tale?' he asked
+lazily.
+
+'Oh aye!' the Lincolnshire man answered. 'The simple folk of Normandy
+are simple only because they have no suitors. But they ha' learned
+that marlock from the sailors of Rye town. For in Rye town, which is
+the sinkhole of Sussex, you will meet every morning ten travellers
+travelling to France in the livery of Father Adam. Normans can learn,'
+he added sententiously, 'as the beasts of the field can learn from a
+man. My father had a ewe lamb that danced a pavane to my pipe on the
+farm of Sallowford that you sold to buy a woman the third part of a
+gown.'
+
+'Why! Art Nick Hogben?' Culpepper said.
+
+'Hast that question answered,' Hogben said. 'Now answer me one. Liedst
+thou when saidst what thou saidst of that wurman?'
+
+Culpepper on the stone swung his legs vaingloriously:
+
+'I sold three farms to buy her a gown,' he said.
+
+'Aye!' Nick Hogben answered. 'So thou saidst in Stamford town three
+years gone by. And thou saidst more and the manner of it. But betwixt
+the buying the gowns and the more of it lie many things. As this: Did
+she take the gown of thee? Or as this: Having taken the gown of thee,
+did she pay thee in the kind payment should be made in?'
+
+Culpepper looked up at him with a sharp snarl.
+
+'For--' and Nick Hogben shook his head sagaciously, 'Stamford town
+believed the more and the manner of it, and Kat Howard's name is up in
+the town of Stamford. But I have not yet chiselled out the great piece
+that shall come from my pike when certain sure I am that Kat Howard is
+down under a man's foot.'
+
+Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.
+
+'Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!' he said. 'Therefore I will say I
+lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her
+alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned
+in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper
+person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent
+purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord
+Edmund's, house and I had pies and gowns for her. Consider these
+things and make a hole or no hole as thou wilt----'
+
+Nicholas Hogben considered with his eyes on the ground; he scratched
+his head with a black finger.
+
+'I can make nowt out,' he said. 'But I will curse thee for a
+lily-livered hoggit an thou marry Kat Howard.'
+
+'Why, I am minded to marry her,' Culpepper answered, 'over here in
+France,' and he stretched a hand towards the long white road where in
+the distance the French peasants were driving lean beasts for a true
+Englishman's provender in Calais. 'Over here in France. Body of
+God!--Body of God!----' He wavered, being still fevered. 'In England
+it had been otherwise. But here, shivering across plains and
+seas--why, I will wed with her.'
+
+'Talkest like a Blind God Boy,' Hogben said sarcastically. 'How
+knowest she be thine to take?' He pointed at the young Poins. 'Here be
+another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well
+discern if she be thine or whose.'
+
+Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But
+Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was
+from its scabbard and warring in the air.
+
+'Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee--Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!'
+he cried.
+
+'Ass!' Culpepper answered. 'In God's time I will break thy back across
+my knee. But God's time is not yet.'
+
+He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had
+seen.
+
+'Squahre Thomas,' Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, 'that
+young man of Kent saith e'ennow: "Kat Howard is like to----" and then
+he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat
+Howard is like to do or be done by?'
+
+With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think
+rapidly--nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could
+think rapidly always.
+
+'Goodman Thomas Culpepper,' he said in a high voice, 'the mistress
+Katharine Howard I spoke of is thin and dark and small, and married
+to Edward Howard of Biggleswade. She is like to die of a quinsy.'
+
+For well he knew that his advancement depended on his keeping Thomas
+Culpepper on the hither side of the water; and if it muddled his brain
+to have been so usefully mishandled for carrying letters betwixt the
+King's Grace and the Lady Katharine Howard, he knew enough of a
+jealous man to know that that was no news to keep Thomas Culpepper in
+Calais.
+
+Culpepper's animation dropped like the light of a torch that is
+dowsed.
+
+'Put up thy pot skewer,' he said; 'my Kat is tall and fairish and
+unwed. Ha' ye not seen her with the Lady Mary of England's women?'
+
+The young Poins, zealous to be rid of the matter, answered fervently:
+
+'Never. She is not talked of in the Court.'
+
+'That is the best hearing,' Thomas Culpepper said. 'I do absolve thee
+of five kicks for being the messenger of that.'
+
+
+III
+
+
+They were a-walking in the little garden below the windows of the late
+Cardinal's house at Hampton; the April sun shone, for May came on
+apace, and in that sheltered spot the light lay warm and no breezes
+came. They took great pleasure there beneath the windows. One girl
+kept three golden balls flying in the air, whilst three others and two
+lords sought to distract her by inducing her little hound to bark
+shrilly below her hands up at the flying balls that caught in them the
+light of the sun, the blue of the sky, and the red and grey of the
+warm palace walls. Down the nut walk, where the trees that the dead
+Cardinal had set were already fifteen years old and dark with young
+green leaves as bright as little flowers, they had set up archery
+targets. Cicely Elliott, in black and white, flashing like a magpie in
+the alleys, ran races with the Earl of Surrey beneath the blinking
+eyes of her old knight; the Lady Mary, herself habited all in black,
+moved like a dark shadow upon a dial between the little beds upon
+paths of red brick between box hedges as high as your ankles. She
+spoke to none save once when she asked the name of a flower. But
+laughter went up, and it seemed as if, in this first day out of doors,
+all the Court opened its lungs to drink the new air; and they were
+making plans for May Day already.
+
+They asked, too, a riddle: 'An a nutshell from Candlemas loved a merry
+bud in March, how should it come to pleasure and content?' and men who
+had the answer looked wise and shook their sides at guessing faces.
+
+In a bower at the south end of the small garden Katharine Howard sat
+to play cat's-cradle with the old lady of Rochford. This foolish game
+and this foolish old woman, with her unceasing tales of the Queen Anne
+Boleyn--who had been her cousin--gave to Katharine a great feeling of
+ease. With her troubled eyes and weary expression, her occasional
+groans as the rheumatism gnawed at her joints, the old lady minded her
+of the mother she had so seldom seen. She had always been somewhere
+away, all through Katharine's young years, planning and helping her
+father to advancement that never came, and hopeless to control her
+wild children. Thus Katharine had come to love this poor old woman and
+consorted much with her, for she was utterly bewildered to control the
+Lady Mary's maids that were beneath her care.
+
+Katharine held out her hands, parallel, as if she were praying, with
+the strand of blue wool and silver cord criss-cross and diagonal
+betwixt her fingers. The old lady bent above them, silent and puzzled,
+to get the key to the strings. Twice she protruded her gouty fingers,
+with swollen ends; and twice she drew them back to stroke her brows.
+
+'I mind,' she said suddenly, 'that I played cat's-cradle with my
+cousin Anne, that was a sinful queen.' She bent again and puzzled
+about the strings. 'In those days I had a great skill, I mind. We
+revised it to the eleventh change many times before her death.' Again
+she leant forward and again back. 'I did come near my death, too,' she
+added.
+
+Katharine's eyes had been gazing past her; suddenly she asked:
+
+'Was Anne Boleyn loved after she grew to be Queen?'
+
+The old woman's face took on a palsied and haunted look.
+
+'God help you!' she said; 'do you ask that?' and she glanced round her
+furtively in an agony of apprehension. Something had drawn all the gay
+gowns and embroidered stomachers towards the higher terrace. They were
+all alone in the arbour.
+
+'Why,' Katharine said, 'so many innocent creatures have been done to
+death since Cromwell came, that, though she was lewd before and a
+heretic all her days, I think doubts may be.'
+
+The old lady pressed her hand upon her bosom where her heart beat.
+
+'Madam Howard,' she said, 'for my life I know not the truth of the
+matter. There was much trickery; God knoweth the truth.'
+
+Katharine mused for a moment above the cat's-cradle on her fingers.
+Near the joint at the end of the little one there was a small mole.
+
+'Take you the fifth and third strings,' she said. 'The king string
+holds your wrist,' and whilst the old face was still intent upon the
+problem she said:
+
+'I think that if a woman come to be Queen it is odds that she will
+live chastely, how lewd soever she ha' been aforetime.'
+
+Lady Rochford set her fingers in between Katharine's, but when she
+drew them back with the strings upon them, they wavered, lost their
+straightness, knotted and then resolved themselves into a single loop
+as in a swift wind a cloud dies away beneath the eyes of the beholder.
+
+'Why, 'tis pity,' Katharine said.
+
+All the lords and all the ladies were now upon the terrace above. The
+old lady had the string in her broad lap. Suddenly she bent forward,
+her eyes opened.
+
+'She was the enemy of your Church,' she said. 'But this I will tell
+you: upon occasions when men swore she had been with other men o'
+nights, the Queen was in my bed with me!'
+
+Katharine nodded silently.
+
+'Who was I that I dare speak?' the old woman sobbed; and Katharine
+nodded again.
+
+Lady Rochford rubbed together her fat hands as she were ringing them.
+
+'Before God,' she moaned, 'and by the blessed blood of Hailes that
+cured ever my pains, if a soul know a soul I knew Anne. If she was a
+woman like other women before she wedded the King, she was minded to
+be chaste after. Madam Howard,'--and she rocked her fat body to and
+fro upon the seat--'they came to me from both sides, your Papists and
+her heretics; they threatened me to keep silence of what I knew. I was
+to keep silence. I name no names. But they came o' both sides, Papists
+and heretics; though she was middling true to the heretics they could
+not be true to her.'
+
+Katharine answered her own thoughts with:
+
+'Ay; but my cause is the good cause. Men shall be true to it.'
+
+The old lady leaned forward and stroked her hands.
+
+'Dearie,' she said, 'dandling piece, sweet bit, there are no true
+men.' She had an entreaty in her tone, and her large blue eyes gazed
+fixedly. 'Say that my cousin Anne was a heretic. I know naught of it
+save that my bones have ached always since the holy blood of Hailes
+was done away with that was wont to cure me. But the Queen Anne was
+hard driven because of a plotting; and no man stood her friend.' With
+her large and tear-filled eyes she gazed at the palace, where the pear
+trees upon the walls shewed new, pale leaves in the sunlight. 'The
+great Cardinal was hard driven because of a plot, and no man was true
+to him. There is no true man. Hope not for one. Hope not for any one.
+The great Cardinal builded those walls and that palace--and where is
+he?'
+
+'Yet,' Katharine said, 'Privy Seal that is was true to him and
+profited exceedingly.'
+
+Lady Rochford shook her head.
+
+'For a little while truth may help you,' she said; 'but your name in
+the end shall be but a stink.'
+
+'Ay,' Katharine answered her; 'but ye shall gain at the end of all.
+For I hold it for certain that because, to the uttermost dregs of his
+cup, Cromwell was true to his master Wolsey, before the throne of God
+much shall be pardoned him.'
+
+The old woman answered bitterly:
+
+'The throne of God is a long way from here.'
+
+'Please it Mary and the saints,' Katharine said, 'the ten years to
+come shall bring Heaven a thousand leagues nearer to this land.' But
+her words died away because the Lady Rochford's mouth fell open.
+
+From the terrace a great square man led down a tiny, small man, giving
+the child his finger to help him down the steps. It clung to him, the
+little, squared replica of himself, sturdily and with a blonde, small
+face laughing up into his father's that laughed down past a huge
+shoulder. Henry was dressed all in black, and his son too; the boy's
+callow head shone in the sunshine, and they came dallying down the
+little path, many faces and shoulders peering over the terrace wall at
+them. Once the child stumbled, loosed his hold of his father's finger
+and came down upon all fours. He crawled to the pathside, filled his
+little hands with leaves, and held them up towards his sire; and they
+could hear the King say:
+
+'Who-hoop, Ned! Princes walk not like quadrumanes,' as he bent to take
+the leaves. The child twisted himself, gripping his little fingers
+into Henry's garter, and, catching again at his finger, pulled his
+father towards their bower.
+
+The Lady Rochford rose, but Katharine sat where she was to smile upon
+the child and brush his head with a pink tassel of her sleeve. The
+little prince hid his face in the voluminous velvet of his father's
+vast thighs. The King, diffusing a great and embracing pride, laughed
+to Lady Rochford.
+
+'Ye played cat's-cradle,' he said. 'I warrant ye brought it not beyond
+seven changes. Time was when I have done fourteen with a lady if her
+hands were white enough.'
+
+He threw away the green leaves of the clove pinks that his son had
+given him, and took the blue and silver loop from the old woman's
+hands. He sat himself heavily on the bench facing Katharine, and
+crying, 'See you, silly Ned,' held his son's hands apart and fitted
+the cord over the little wrists.
+
+Suddenly he bent clumsily forward and picked up again the carnation
+leaves that lay in green strands upon the floor of the arbour,
+grunting a little with the effort.
+
+'This is the first offering my son ever made me,' he said, and he drew
+a pocket purse from his breast to lay them in. 'Please God he shall
+yet lay at my feet a province or two of our heritage of France.' He
+touched his cap at the Deity's name, and called gruffly at his son:
+'See you, forget not ever that we be Kings of France too, you and I,'
+and the little boy with his cropped head uttered:
+
+'_Rex Angliae, Galliae, Franciae et Hiberniae!_'
+
+'Aye, I ha' learned ye that,' the King said, and roared with laughter.
+Of a sudden he turned his head, without moving his body, towards
+Katharine.
+
+'I ha' news from Norfolk in France,' he said, and, as the Lady
+Rochford made to move, he uttered good-naturedly: 'Aye, avoid. But ye
+may buss my son.'
+
+He stretched back his head, laid an arm along the back of his seat,
+put out his feet and pushed at the child, who played with his
+shoe-tags.
+
+'The boy grows,' he said, and motioned for Katharine to sit beside
+him. Then his face shewed a quick dissatisfaction. 'A brave boy, but a
+should be braver,' and looking down, 'see you not blue lines about 's
+gills?' He caught at her hand with a masterful grip.
+
+'Here we're a picture,' he said: 'a lusty husbandman, his lusty son,
+his lusty wife, resting all beneath his goodly vine.' His face clouded
+again. 'I--I am not lusty; my son, he is not lusty.' He touched her
+cheek. 'Thou art lusty enow--hast such pink cheeks.'
+
+'Aye, we were always lusty at home when we had enow to eat,' Katharine
+said. She took the child upon her knee and blew lightly in his face.
+'I will wager you I will guess his weight within a pound,' she added,
+and began to play a game with the tiny fingers. 'Wherefore do ye habit
+little children in black?'
+
+'Why,' the King answered, 'I know not if I myself appear less
+monstrous in black or red, and my son shall be habited as I be. 'Tis
+to make the trial.'
+
+'Aye,' Katharine said, 'ye think first of yourself. But dress the
+child in white and go in white yourself. And set up a chantry of
+priests to pray the child grow sturdy. It was thus my cousin Surrey's
+life was saved that was erst a weakling.'
+
+'Be Queen,' he said suddenly. 'Marry me. I came here to ask it.'
+
+Her lips parted; she left her hand in his. The expected words had
+come.
+
+'I have thought on it,' she said. 'I knew ye could not long hold to
+child and sire as ye sware ye would.'
+
+'Kat,' he said, 'ye shall do my will. I ha' news from France. Ye gave
+me good rede. I ha' news from Cleves: the Cleves woman shall no more
+be queen of mine. Thee I will have.'
+
+She raised herself from the bench and turned in the entrance of the
+arbour to look at him.
+
+'Give me leave to walk on the path,' she said. 'I have thought on
+this--for I was sure I gave you good advice, and well I knew Cleves
+would sever from ye.' She faltered: 'I ha' thought on it. But 'tis
+different to think on it and to ha' the thing in your face.'
+
+He uttered, 'Make haste,' and she walked down the path. He saw her,
+tall, fair, swaying a little in the wind, raise her face to the
+skies; her long fingers made the sign of the cross, her hood fell
+back. Her lips moved; the fringes of her lashes came down over her
+blue eyes, and she seemed to wrestle with her hands.
+
+'Aye,' he muttered to himself half earnest, half sardonic, 'prayer is
+better than thoughts. God strike with palsy them that made me afraid
+to pray.... Aye, pray on, pray on,' he said again. 'But by God and His
+wounds! ye shall be my queen.'
+
+By the time she came back he laughed at her tempestuously, and pushing
+the little prince tenderly with his huge foot, watched him roll on the
+floor catching at the air.
+
+'Why,' he said to her, 'what's the whimsy now? Shalt be the queen.
+'Tis the sole way. 'Tis the way to the light.' He leant forward.
+'Cleves has gone to the bastard called Charles to sue for mercy. Ye
+led me so well to set Francis against Charles that I may snap my
+fingers against both. None but thee could ha' forged that bolt. Child,
+I will make a league with the Pope against Charles or Francis, with
+Francis or Charles. Anne may go hang herself.' He rose to his feet and
+stretched out both his hands, his eyes glowing beneath his deep brows.
+'Body o' God! thou art a very fair woman; and now I will be such a
+king as never was, and take France for mine own and set up Holy Church
+again, and say good prayers and sleep in a warm bed. Body o' God! Body
+o' God!'
+
+'God and the saints save the issue!' she said. 'I am thy servant and
+slave.'
+
+But her tone made him recoil.
+
+'What whimsy's here?' he muttered heavily, and his eyes became
+suffused with red. 'Speak, wench!' He pulled at the stuff round his
+throat. 'I will have peace,' he said. 'I will at last have peace.'
+
+'God send you have it,' she said, and trembled a little, half in fear,
+half in sheer pity at the thought of thwarting him.
+
+'Speak thy fool whimsy,' he muttered huskily. 'Speak!'
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'where is the Queen that is?'
+
+He flared suddenly at her as if she had reproved him.
+
+'At Windsor. 'Tis a better palace than this of mine here.' He shook
+his finger heavily and uttered with a boastful defiance: 'Shalt not
+say I shower no gifts on her. Shalt not say she has no state. I ha'
+sent her seven jennets this day. I shall go bring her golden apples on
+the morrow. Scents she has had o' me; French gowns, Southern fruits.
+No man nor wench shall say I be not princely----' His boasting bluster
+died away before her silence. To please a mute desire in her, he had
+showered more gifts on Anne of Cleves than on any other woman he had
+ever seen; and thinking that she used him ill not to praise him for
+this, he could not hold his tongue: 'What is't to thee what she hath?
+What she hath thou losest. 'Tis a folly.'
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'I will myself to see the Queen that is.'
+
+'And whysomever?' he voiced his astonishment.
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'I have a tickly conscience in divorces. I will
+ask her mine own self.'
+
+He roared out suddenly indistinguishable words, stamped his feet,
+waved his hands at the skies, and lost his voice altogether.
+
+'Aye,' she said, catching at some of his speech, 'I ha' read your
+Highness' depositions. I ha' read depositions of the Archbishop's. But
+I will be satisfied of her own mouth that she be not your wife.'
+
+And when he swore that Anne would lie:
+
+'Nay,' she answered; 'if she will lie to keep her queenship, keep it
+she shall. I am upon the point of honour.'
+
+'Before God!'--and his voice had a sneering haughtiness--'ye will not
+be long of this world if ye steer by the point of honour.'
+
+'Sir,' she cried out and stretched forth her hands; 'for the love of
+Mary who guides the starry counsels and of the saints who sit in
+conclave, speak not in that wise.'
+
+He shrugged his shoulders and said, with a touch of angry shame:
+
+'God send the world were another world; I would it were other. But I
+am a prince in this one.'
+
+'My lord,' she said; 'if the world so is, kings and princes are here
+to be above the world. In your greatness ye shall change it; with your
+justice ye shall purify it; with your clemencies ye should it chasten
+and amerce. Ye ask me to be a queen. Shall I be a queen and not such a
+queen? No, I tell you; if a woman may swear a great oath, I swear by
+Leonidas that saved Sparta and by Christ Jesus that saved this world,
+so will I come by my queenship and so act in it that, if God give me
+strength the whole world never shall find speck upon mine honour--or
+upon thine if I may sway thee.'
+
+'Why,' he said, 'thy voice is like little flutes.'
+
+He considered, patting his square, soft-shod feet upon the bricks of
+the arbour floor.
+
+'By Guy! I will have thee,' he said; 'though ye twist my senses as
+never woman twisted them--and it is not good for a man to be swayed by
+his women.'
+
+'My lord,' she said, 'in naught would I sway a man save in where my
+conscience pricks and impels me.' She rubbed her hand across her eyes.
+'It is difficult to see the right in these matters. The only way is to
+be firm for God and for the cause of the saints.' She looked down at
+her feet. 'I will be ceaseless in my entreaties to you for them,' she
+uttered. Suddenly again she stretched forth both her hands that had
+sunk to her sides:
+
+'Dear lord,' and her voice was full of pity for herself and for
+entreaty; 'let me go to a convent to pray unceasing for thee.'
+
+He shook his head.
+
+'Dear lord,' she repeated; 'use me as thou wilt and I will stay beside
+thee and urge thee to the cause of God.'
+
+Again he shook his head.
+
+'The saints would pardon me it,' she whispered; 'or if I even be
+damned to save England, it were a good burnt-offering.'
+
+'Wench,' he said; 'I was never a man to go a-whoring. I ha' done it,
+but had no savour with it.' His boastfulness returned to the heavy
+voice. 'I am a king that will give. I will give a crown, a realm,
+jewels, honours, monies. All I have I will give; but thou shalt wed
+me.' He threw out his chest and gazed down at her. 'I was ever thus,'
+he said.
+
+'And I ever thus,' she answered him swiftly. 'Mary hath put this thing
+in my mind; and though ye scourge me, ye shall not have it otherwise.'
+
+'Even how?' he said.
+
+'My lord,' she answered; 'if the Queen, so it be true, will say she be
+no wife of thine, I will wed thee. If the Queen, seeing that it is for
+the good of this suffering realm, will give to me her crown, I will
+wed with thee. I wot ye may get for yourself another woman with
+another gear of conscience to bear t'ee children. All the ills of this
+realm came with a divorce of a queen. I do hate the word as I hate
+Judas, and will have no truck with the deed.'
+
+'Ye speak me hard,' he said; 'but no man shall say I could not bear
+with the truth at odd moments.'
+
+A great and hasty eagerness came into her voice.
+
+'Ye say that it is truth?' she cried. 'God hath softened thy heart.'
+
+'God or thee,' he said, and muttered, 'I do not make this avowal to
+the world.' Suddenly he smote his thigh. 'Body o' God!' he called out;
+'the day shall soon come. Cleves falls away, France and Spain are
+sundering. I will sue for peace with the Pope, and set up a chapel to
+Kat's memory.' He breathed as if a weight had fallen from his chest,
+and suddenly laughed: 'But ye must wed me to keep me in the right
+way.'
+
+He changed his tone again.
+
+'Why, go to Anne,' he said; 'she is such a fool she will not lie to
+thee; and, before God, she is no wife of mine.'
+
+'God send ye speak the truth,' she answered; 'but I think few men be
+found that will speak truth in these matters.'
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But it was with Throckmorton that the real pull of the rope came.
+Henry was by then so full of love for her that, save when she crossed
+his purpose, he would have given her her way to the bitter end of
+things. But Throckmorton bewailed her lack of loyalty. He came to her
+on the morning of the next day, having heard that, if the rain held
+off, a cavalcade of seventeen lords, twelve ladies and their
+bodyguards were commanded to ride with her in one train to Windsor,
+where the Queen was.
+
+'I am main sure 'tis for Madam Howard that this cavalcade is ordered,'
+he said; 'for there is none other person in Court to whom his Highness
+would work this honour. And I am main sure that if Madam Howard goeth,
+she goeth with some mad maggot of a purpose.'
+
+His foxy, laughing eyes surveyed her, and he stroked his great beard
+deliberately.
+
+'I ha' not been near ye this two month,' he said, 'but God knows that
+I ha' worked for ye.'
+
+Save to take her to Privy Seal the day before, when Privy Seal had
+sent him, he had in truth not spoken with her for many weeks. He had
+deemed it wise to keep from her.
+
+'Nevertheless,' he said earnestly, 'I know well that thy cause is my
+cause, and that thou wilt spread upon me the mantle of thy favour and
+protection.'
+
+They were in her old room with the green hangings, the high fireplace,
+and before the door the red curtain worked with gold that the King had
+sent her, and Cromwell had given orders that the spy outside should be
+removed, for he was useless. Thus Throckmorton could speak with a
+measure of freedom.
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said; 'ye use me not well in this. Ye are not so
+stable nor so safe in your place as that ye may, without counsel or
+guidance, risk all our necks with these mad pranks.'
+
+'Goodman,' she said, 'I asked ye not to come into my barque. If ye
+hang to the gunwale, is it my fault an ye be drowned in my foundering
+if I founder?'
+
+'Tell me why ye go to Windsor,' he urged.
+
+'Goodman,' she answered, 'to ask the Queen if she be the King's wife.'
+
+'Oh, folly!' he cried out, and added softly, 'Madam Howard, ye be
+monstrous fair. I do think ye be the fairest woman in the world. I
+cannot sleep for thinking on thee.'
+
+'Poor soul!' she mocked him.
+
+'But, bethink you,' he said; 'the Queen is a woman, not a man. All
+your fairness shall not help you with her. Neither yet your sweet
+tongue nor your specious reasons. Nor yet your faith, for she is half
+a Protestant.'
+
+'If she be the King's wife,' Katharine said, 'I will not be Queen. If
+she care enow for her queenship to lie over it, I will not be Queen
+either. For I will not be in any quarrel where lies are--either of my
+side or of another's.'
+
+'God help us all!' Throckmorton mocked her. 'Here is my neck engaged
+on your quarrel--and by now a dozen others. Udal hath lied for you in
+the Cleves matter; so have I. If ye be not Queen to save us ere
+Cromwell's teeth be drawn, our days are over and past.'
+
+He spoke with so much earnestness that Katharine was moved to consider
+her speaking.
+
+'Knight,' she said at last, 'I never asked ye to lie to Cromwell over
+the Cleves matter. I never asked Udal. God knows, I had the rather be
+dead than ye had done it. I flush and grow hot each time I think this
+was done for me. I never asked ye to be of my quarrel--nay, I take
+shame that I have not ere this sent to Privy Seal to say that ye have
+lied, and Cleves is false to him.' She pointed an accusing finger at
+him: 'I take shame; ye have shamed me.'
+
+He laughed a little, but he bent a leg to her.
+
+'Some man must save thee from thy folly's fruits,' he said. 'For some
+men love thee. And I love thee so my head aches.'
+
+She smiled upon him faintly.
+
+'For that, I believe, I have saved thy neck,' she said. 'My conscience
+cried: "Tell Privy Seal the truth"; my heart uttered: "Hast few men
+that love thee and do not pursue thee."'
+
+Suddenly he knelt at her feet and clutched at her hand.
+
+'Leave all this,' he said. 'Ye know not how dangerous a place this
+is.' He began to whisper softly and passionately. 'Come away from
+here. Well ye know that I love 'ee better than any man in land. Well
+ye know. Well ye know. And well ye know no man could so well fend for
+ye or jump nimbly to thy thoughts. The men here be boars and bulls.
+Leave all these dangers; here is a straight issue. Ye shall not sway
+the wild boar king for ever. Come with me.'
+
+As she did not at once find words to stop his speech, he whispered on:
+
+'I have gold enow to buy me a baron's fee in Almain. I have been
+there: in castles in the thick woods, silken bowers may be built----'
+
+But suddenly again he rose to his feet and laughed:
+
+'Why,' he said, 'I hunger for thee: at times 'tis a madness. But 'tis
+past.'
+
+His eyes twinkled again and he waved a hand.
+
+'Mayhap 'tis well that ye go to the Queen,' he said drily. 'If the
+Queen say, "Yea," ye ha' gained all; if "Nay" ye ha' lost naught, for
+ye may alway change your mind. And a true and steadfast cause, a large
+and godly innocence is a thing that gaineth men's hearts and voices.'
+He paused for a moment. 'Ye ha' need o' man's good words,' he said
+drily; then he laughed again. 'Aye: _Nolo episcopari_ was always a
+good cry,' he said.
+
+Katharine looked at him tenderly.
+
+'Ye know my aims are other,' she said, 'or else you would not love me.
+I think ye love me better than any man ever did--though I ha' had a
+store of lovers.'
+
+'Aye,' he nodded at her gravely, 'it is pleasant to be loved.'
+
+She was sitting by her table and leant her hand upon her cheek; she
+had been sewing a white band with pearls and silken roses in red and
+leaves in green, and it fell now to her feet from her lap. Suddenly he
+said:
+
+'Answer me one question of three?'
+
+She did not move, for a feeling of languor that often overcame her in
+Throckmorton's presence made her feel lazy and apt to listen. She
+itched to be Queen--on the morrow or next day; she desired to have the
+King for her own, to wear fair gowns and a crown; to be beloved of the
+poor people and beloved of the saints. But her fate lay upon the knees
+of the gods then: on the morrow the Queen would speak--betwixt then
+and now there was naught for it but to rest. And to hearken to
+Throckmorton was to be surprised as if she listened at a comedy.
+
+'One question of three may be answered,' she said.
+
+'On the forfeit of a kiss,' he added. 'I pray God ye answer none.'
+
+He pondered for a moment, and leaning back against the chimney-piece
+crossed one silk-stockinged, thin, red leg. He spoke very swiftly, so
+that his words were like lightning.
+
+'And the first is: An ye had never come here but elsewhere seen me,
+had ye it in you to ha' loved me? And the second: How ye love the
+King's person? And the third: Were ye your cousin's leman?'
+
+Leaning against the table she seemed slowly to grow stiff in her pose;
+her eyes dilated; the colour left her cheeks. She spoke no word.
+
+'Privy Seal hath sent a man to hasten thy cousin back to here,' he
+said at last, after his eyes had steadily surveyed her face. She sat
+back in her chair, and the strip of sewing fell to wreathe, white and
+red and green, round her skirts on the floor.
+
+'I have sent a botcher to stay his coming,' he said slowly. 'Thy maid
+Margot's brother.'
+
+'I had forgotten Tom,' she said with long pauses between her words.
+She had forgotten her cousin and playmate. She had given no single
+thought to him since a day that she no longer remembered.
+
+Reading the expression of her face and interpreting her slow words,
+Throckmorton was satisfied in his mind that she had been her cousin's.
+
+'He hath passed from Calais to Dover, but I swear to you that he shall
+never come to you,' he said. 'I have others here.' He had none, but he
+was set to comfort her.
+
+'Poor Tom!' she uttered again almost in a whisper.
+
+'Thus,' he uttered slowly, 'you have a great danger.'
+
+She was silent, thinking of her Lincolnshire past, and he began again:
+
+'Therefore ye have need of help from me as I from thee.'
+
+'Aye,' he said, 'you shall advise with me. For at least, if I may not
+have the pleasure of thy body, I will have the enjoyment of thy
+converse.' His voice became husky for a moment. 'Mayhap it is a
+madness in me to cling to thee; I do set in jeopardy my earthly riches
+and my hope of profit. But it is Macchiavelli who says: "_If ye hoard
+gold and at the end have not pleasure in what gold may pay, ye had
+better have loitered in pleasing meadows and hearkened to the
+madrigals of sweet singing fowls._"' He waved his hand: 'Ye see I be
+still somewhat of a philosopher, though at times madness takes me.'
+
+She was still silent--shaken into thinking of the past she had had
+with her cousin when she had been very poor in Lincolnshire; she had
+had leisure to read good letters there, and the time to think of them.
+Now she had not held a book for four days on end.
+
+'You are in a very great danger of your cousin,' Throckmorton was
+repeating. 'Yet I will stay his coming.'
+
+'Knight,' she said, 'this is a folly. If guards be needed to keep me
+from his knife, the King shall give me guards.'
+
+'His knife!' Throckmorton raised his hands in mock surprise. 'His
+knife is a very little thing.'
+
+'Ye would not say it an ye had come anear him when he was crossed,'
+she said. 'I, who am passing brave, fear his knife more than aught
+else in this world.'
+
+'Oh, incorrigible woman,' he cried, 'thinking ever of straight things
+and clear doings. It is not the knife of your cousin, but the devious
+policy of Privy Seal that calleth for fear.'
+
+'Why, or ever Privy Seal bind Tom to his policy he shall bind iron
+bars to make a coil.'
+
+He looked at her with lifted eyebrows, and then scratched with his
+finger nail a tiny speck of mud from his shoe-point, balancing himself
+back against the chimney piece and crossing his red legs above the
+knees.
+
+'Madam Howard,' he said, 'Privy Seal is minded to use thy cousin for a
+battering-ram.' She was hardly minded to listen to him, and he uttered
+stealthily, as if he were sure of moving her: 'Thy cousin shall breach
+a way to the ears of the King--for thy ill fame to enter in.'
+
+She leaned forward a little.
+
+'Tell me of my ill fame,' she said; and at that moment Margot Poins,
+her handmaid, placid still, large, fair and florid, came in to bring
+her mistress an embroidery frame of oak wood painted with red stripes.
+At Throckmorton's glance askance at the cow-like girl, Katharine said:
+'Ye may speak afore Margot Poins. I ha' heard tales of her bringing.'
+
+Margot kneeled at Katharine's feet to stretch a white linen cloth over
+the frame on the floor.
+
+'Privy Seal planneth thus,' Throckmorton answered Katharine's
+challenge. He spoke low and level, hoping to see her twinge at every
+new phrase. 'The King hath put from him every tale of thee; it is not
+easy to bring him tales of those he loves, but very dangerous. But
+Cromwell planneth to bring hither thy cousin and to keep him privily
+till one day cometh the King to be alone with thee in thy bower or
+his. Then, having removed all lets, shall Cromwell gird this cousin to
+spring in upon thee and the King, screaming out and with his sword
+drawn.' Still Katharine did not move, but leaned along her table of
+yellow wood. 'It is not the sword ye shall fear,' he said slowly, 'but
+what cometh after. For, for sure, Privy Seal holdeth, then shall be
+the time to bring witnesses against thee to the hearing of the King.
+And Privy Seal hath witnesses.'
+
+'He would have witnesses,' Katharine answered.
+
+'There be those that will swear----'
+
+'Aye,' she caught him up, speaking very calmly. 'There be those that
+will swear they ha' seen me with a dozen men. With my cousin, with
+Nick Ardham, with one and another of the hinds. Why, he will bring a
+hind to swear I ha' loved him. And he will bring a bastard child or
+twain----' She paused, and he paused too.
+
+At last he said: 'Anan?'
+
+'Ye might do it against Godiva of Coventry, against the blessed
+Katharine or against Caesar's helpmeet in those days,' Katharine said.
+'Margot here can match all thy witnesses from the city of London--men
+that never were in Lincolnshire.'
+
+Margot's face flushed with a tide of exasperation, and, sitting
+motionless, she uttered deeply:
+
+'My uncle the printer hath a man will swear he saw ye walk with a
+fiend having horns and a tail.' And indeed these things were believed
+among the Lutherans that flocked still to Margot's uncle's printing
+room. 'My uncle hath printed this,' she muttered, and fumbled hotly in
+her bosom. She drew out a sheet with coarse black letters upon it and
+cast it across the floor with a flushed disdain at Throckmorton's
+feet. It bore the heading: '_Newes from Lincoln_,' Throckmorton kicked
+with his toe the white scroll and scrutinised Katharine's face
+dispassionately with his foxy eyes that jumped between his lids like
+little beetles of blue. He thrust his cap back upon his head and
+laughed.
+
+'Before God!' he said; 'ye are the joyfullest play that ever I heard.
+And how will Madam Howard act when the King heareth these things?'
+
+Katharine opened her lips with surprise.
+
+'For a subtile man ye are strangely blinded,' she said; 'there is one
+plain way.'
+
+'To deny it and call the saints to witness!' he laughed.
+
+'Even that,' she answered. 'I pray the saints to give me the place and
+time.'
+
+'Ha' ye seen the King in a jealous rage?' he asked.
+
+'Subtile man,' she answered, 'the King knows his world.'
+
+'Aye,' he answered, 'knoweth that women be never chaste.'
+
+Katharine bent to pick up her sewing.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'if the King will not have faith in me I will wed no
+King.'
+
+His jaw fell. 'Ye have so much madness?' he asked.
+
+She stretched towards him the hand that held her sewing now.
+
+'I swear to you,' she said--'and ye know me well--I seek a way to
+bring these rumours to the King's ears.'
+
+He said nothing, revolving these things in his mind.
+
+'Goodly servant,' she began, and he knew from the round and silvery
+sound she drew from her throat that she was minded to make one of the
+long speeches that appalled and delighted him with their childish
+logic and wild honour. 'If it were not that my cousin would run his
+head into danger I would will that he came to the King. Sir, ye are a
+wise man, can ye not see this wisdom? There is no good walking but
+upon sure ground, and I will not walk where the walking is not good.
+Shall I wed this King and have these lies to fear all my life? Shall I
+wed this King and do him this wrong? Neither wisdom nor honour counsel
+me to it. Since I have heard these lies were abroad I have at frequent
+moments thought how I shall bring them before the King.'
+
+He thrust his hands into his pockets, stretched his legs out, and
+leaned back as though he were supporting the chimney-piece with his
+back.
+
+'The King knoweth how men will lie about a woman,' she began again.
+'The King knoweth how ye may buy false witness as ye may buy herrings
+in the market-place at so much a score. An the King were such a man as
+not to know these things, I would not wed with him. An the King were
+such a man as not to trust in me, I would not wed with him. I could
+have no peace. I could have no rest. I am not one that ask little, but
+much.'
+
+'Why, you ask much of them that do support your cause,' he laughed
+from his private thinking.
+
+'I do ask this oath of you,' she answered: 'that neither with sword
+nor stiletto, nor with provoked quarrel, nor staves, nor clubs, nor
+assassins, ye do seek to stay my cousin's coming.'
+
+He cut across her purpose with asking again: 'Ha' ye seen the King
+rage jealously?'
+
+'Knight,' she said, 'I will have your oath.' And, as he paused in
+thought, she said: 'Before God! if ye swear it not, I will make the
+King to send for him hither guarded and set around with an hundred
+men.'
+
+'Ye will not have him harmed?' he asked craftily. 'Ye do love him
+better than another?'
+
+She rose to her feet, her lips parted. 'Swear!' she cried.
+
+His fingers felt around his waist, then he raised his hand and
+uttered:
+
+'I do swear that ne with sword ne stiletto, ne with staves nor with
+clubs, ne with any quarrels nor violence so never will I seek thy
+goodly cousin's life.'
+
+He shook his head slowly at her.
+
+'All the men ye have known have prayed ye to be rid of him,' he said;
+'ye will live to rue.'
+
+'Sir,' she answered him, 'I had rather live to rue the injury my
+cousin should do me than live to rue the having injured him.' She
+paused to think for a moment. 'When I am Queen,' she said, 'I will
+have the King set him in a command of ships to sail westward over the
+seas. He shall have the seeking for the Hesperides or the city of
+Atalanta, where still the golden age remains to be a model and
+ensample for us.' Her eyes looked past Throckmorton. 'My cousin hath a
+steadfast nature to be gone on such pilgrimages. And I would the
+discovery were made, this King being King and I his Queen; rather that
+than the regaining of France; more good should come to Christendom.'
+
+'Madam Howard,' Throckmorton grinned at her, 'if men of our day and
+kin do come upon any city where yet remaineth the golden age, very
+soon shall be shewn the miracle of the corruptibility of gold. The
+rod of our corruption no golden state shall defy.'
+
+She smiled friendlily at him.
+
+'There we part company,' she said. 'For I do believe God made this
+world to be bettered. I think, and answer your question, I could never
+ha' loved you. For you be a child of the new Italians and I a disciple
+of the older holders of that land, who wrote, Cato voicing it for
+them, "Virtue spreadeth even as leaven leaveneth bread; a little lump
+in your flour in the end shall redeem all the loaf of the Republic."'
+
+He smiled for a moment noiselessly, his mouth open but no sound coming
+out. Then he coaxed her:
+
+'Answer my two other questions.'
+
+'Knight,' she answered; 'for the truth of the last, ask, with
+thumbscrews, the witnesses ye found in Lincolnshire, and believe them
+as ye list. Or ask at the mouth of a draw-well if fishes be below in
+the water before ye ask a woman if she be chaste. For the other,
+consider of my actions hereafter if I do love the King's person.'
+
+'Why, then, I shall never have kiss from mouth of thine,' he said, and
+pulled his cap down over his eyes to depart.
+
+'When the sun shall set in the east,' she retorted, and gave him her
+hand to kiss.
+
+Margot Poins raised her large, fair head from her stitching after he
+was gone, and asked:
+
+'Tell me truly how ye love the King's person. Often I ha' thought of
+it; for I could love only a man more thin.'
+
+'Child,' Katharine answered, 'his Highness distilleth from his person
+a make of majesty; there is no other such a man in Christendom. His
+Highness culleth from one's heart a make of pity--for, for sure, there
+is not in Christendom a man more tried or more calling to be led
+Godwards. The Greek writers had a myth, that the two wings of Love
+were made of Awe and Pity. Flaws I may find in him; but hot anger
+rises in my heart if I hear him miscalled. I will not perjure myself
+at his bidding; but being with him, I will kneel to him unbidden. I
+will not, to be his queen, have word in a divorce, for I have no
+truck with divorces; but I will humble myself to his Queen that is to
+pray her give me ease and him if the marriage be not consummated. For,
+so I love him that I will humble mine own self in the dust; but so I
+love love and its nobleness that, though I must live and die a
+cookmaid, I will not stoop in evil ways.'
+
+'There is no man worth that guise of love,' Margot answered, her voice
+coming gruff and heavy, 'not the magister himself. I ha' smote one
+kitchenmaid i' the face this noon for making eyes at him.'
+
+
+V
+
+
+'My mad nephew,' Master Printer Badge said to Throckmorton, 'shall
+travel down from his chamber anon. When ye shall see the pickle he is
+in ye shall understand wherefore it needeth ten minutes to his
+downcoming.' To Throckmorton's query he shook his dark, bearded head
+and muttered: 'Nay; ye used him for your own purposes. Ye should know
+better than I what is like to have befallen him.'
+
+Throckmorton swallowed his haste and leant back against the edge of a
+press that was not at work. Of these presses there were four there in
+the middle of the room: tall, black, compounded of iron and wood, the
+square inwards of each rose and fell rhythmically above the flutter of
+the printed leaves that the journeymen withdrew as they rose, and
+replaced, white, unsullied and damp as they came together again. Along
+the walls the apprentice setters stood before the black formes and
+with abstruse, deliberate or hesitating expressions, made swift
+snatches at the little leaden dice. The sifting sound of the leads
+going home and the creak of the presses with the heavy wheeze of one
+printer, huge and grizzled like a walrus, pulling the press-lever back
+and bending forward to run his eyes across the type--wheeze, creak
+and click--made a level and monotonous sound.
+
+'Ye drill well your men,' Throckmorton said lazily, and smoothed his
+white fingers, holding them up against the light, as if they of all
+things most concerned him.
+
+He had received that day at Hampton a letter from the printer here in
+Austin Friars, sent hastening by the hands of the pressman whose idle
+machine he now leant against. 'Sir,' the letter said, 'my nephew saith
+urgently that T.C. is landed at Greenwich. He might not stay him. What
+this importeth best is yknown to your worshipful self. By the swaying
+of the sea which late he overpassed, being tempestive, and by other
+things, my nephew is rendered incoherent. That God may save you and
+guide your counsels and those of your master to the more advantaging
+of the Protestant religion that now, praised be God! standeth higher
+in the realm than ever it did, is the prayer of Jno. Badge the
+Younger.'
+
+Throckmorton had hastened there to the hedges of Austin Friars at the
+fastest of his bargemen's oars. The printer had told him that, but
+that the business was the Lord Privy Seal's and, as he understood,
+went to the advantaging of Protestantism and the casting down of
+Popery, never would he ha' sent with the letter his own printer
+journeyman, busied as they were with printing of his great Bible in
+English.
+
+'Here is an idle press,' he said, pointing at the mute and lugubrious
+instrument of black, 'and I doubt I ha' done wrong.' His moody brow
+beneath the black, dishevelled hair became overcast so that it
+wrinkled into great furrows like crowns. 'I doubt whether I have done
+wrong,' and he folded his immense bare arms, on which the hair was
+like a black boar's, and pondered. 'If I thought I had done wrong, I
+might not sleep seven nights.'
+
+A printer yawned at his loom, and the great dark man shouted at him:
+
+'Foul knave, ye show indolence! Wot ye that ye be printing the Word of
+God to send abroad in this land? Wot ye that for this ye shall stand
+with the elect in Heaven?' He turned upon Throckmorton. 'Sir,' he
+said, 'your master Cromwell advanceth the cause, therefore I ha'
+served him in this matter of the letter. But, sir, I am doubtful that,
+by losing one moment from the printing of the pure Word of God, I have
+not lost more time than a year's work of thy master.'
+
+Throckmorton rubbed gently the long hand that he still held against
+the light.
+
+'Ye fall away from Privy Seal?' he asked.
+
+The printer gazed at him with glowering and suffused eyes, choking in
+his throat. He raised an enormous hand before Throckmorton's face.
+
+'Courtier,' he cried, 'with this hand I ha' stopped an ox, smiting it
+between the eyes. Wo befal the man, traitor to Privy Seal, that I do
+meet and betwixt whose eyes this hand doth fall.' The hand quivered in
+the air with fury. 'I can raise a thousand 'prentices and a thousand
+journeymen to save Privy Seal from any peril; I can raise ten thousand
+citizens, and ten thousand to-morrow again from the shires by
+pamphlets of my printing; I can raise a mighty army thus to shield him
+from Papists and the devil's foul contrivances. An I were a Papist, I
+would pray to him, were he dead, as he were a saint.' Throckmorton
+moved his face a line or two backwards from the gesticulating ham of a
+hand, and blinked his eyes. 'My gold were Privy Seal's an he needed
+it; my blood were his and my prayers. Nevertheless,' and his voice
+took a more exalted note, 'one letter of the Word of God, God aiding
+it, is of more avail than Privy Seal, or I, and all those I can love,
+or he. With his laws and his nose for treason he hath smitten the
+Amalekites above the belt; but a letter of the Word of God can smite
+them hip and thigh, God helping.' He seemed again to choke in his
+throat, and said more quietly: 'But ye shall not think a man in land
+better loveth this godly flail of the monks.'
+
+'Why, I do think ye would stand up against the King's self,'
+Throckmorton said, 'and I am glad to hear it.'
+
+'Against all printers and temporal powers,' the printer answered.
+Amongst the apprentices and journeymen a murmur arose of acclamation
+or of denial, some being of opinion that the King was divine in origin
+and inspiration, but for the most part they supported their master,
+and Throckmorton's blue eyes travelled from one to the other.
+
+But the printer heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
+
+'God be thanked,' he said, 'that keepeth the hearts of princes and
+guideth with His breath all temporal occurrences.' Throckmorton was
+about to touch his cap at the name of Omnipotence, but remembering
+that he was among Protestants changed the direction of his hand and
+scratched his cheek among the little hairs of his beard; 'the signs
+are favourable that our good King's Highness shall still incline to
+our cause and Privy Seal's.'
+
+Throckmorton said: 'Anan?'
+
+'Aye,' the printer said heavily, 'good news is come of Cleves.'
+
+'Ye ha' news from Cleves?' Throckmorton asked swiftly.
+
+'From Cleves not,' the printer answered; 'but from the Court by way of
+Paris and thence from Cleves.' And to the interested spy he related,
+accurately enough, that a make of mouthing, mowing, magister of the
+Latin tongues had come from Paris, having stolen copies of the Cleves
+envoy's letters in that town, and that these letters said that Cleves
+was fast inclined to the true Schmalkaldner league of Lutherans and
+would pay tribute truly, but no more than that do fealty to the
+accursed leaguer of the Pope called Charles the Emperor.
+
+Throckmorton inclined his cap at an angle to the floor.
+
+'How had ye that news that was so secret?' he asked.
+
+The printer shook his dark beard with an air of heavy pleasure.
+
+'Ye have a great organisation of spies,' he said, 'but better is the
+whisper of God among the faithful.'
+
+'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'the magister Udal hath to his
+sweetheart thy niece Margot Poins.'
+
+At her name the printer's eyes filled with a sudden and violent heat.
+
+'Seek another channel,' he cried, and waved his arms at the low
+ceiling. 'Before the face of Almighty God I swear that I ha' no truck
+with Margot my niece. Since she has been sib with the whore of the
+devil called Kat Howard, never hath she told me a secret through her
+paramour or elsewise. A shut head the heavy logget keepeth--let her
+not come within reach of my hand.' He swayed back upon his feet. 'Let
+her not come,' he said. He bent his brows upon Throckmorton. 'I
+marvel,' he uttered, 'that ye who are so faithful a servant o' Privy
+Seal's can have truck with the brother of my niece Margot.'
+
+'Printer,' Throckmorton answered him, 'ye know well that when the
+leaven of Protestantism hath entered in there, houses are divided
+against themselves. A wench may be a foul Papist and serve, if ye
+will, Kat Howard; but her brother shall yet be an indifferent good
+servant for me.'
+
+The printer, who had tolerated that his men should hear his panegyric
+of the Bible and Privy Seal, scowled at them now so that again the
+arms swung to and fro with the levers, the leads clicked. He put his
+great head nearer Throckmorton's and muttered:
+
+'Are ye certain my nephew serveth ye well? He was never wont to favour
+our cause, and, before ye sent him on this errand, he was wont to cry
+out in his cups that he was disgraced for having carried letters
+betwixt Kat Howard and the King. If this were true he was no friend of
+ours.'
+
+'Why, it was true,' Throckmorton uttered negligently.
+
+The printer caught at the spy's wrist, and the measure of his
+earnestness showed the extent of his passion for Privy Seal's cause.
+
+'Use him no more,' he said. 'Both children of my sister were ever
+indifferents. They shall not serve thee well.'
+
+'It was ever Privy Seal's motto and habit to use for his servitors
+those that had their necks in his noose. Such men serve him ever the
+best.'
+
+The printer shook his head gloomily.
+
+'I wager my nephew will yet play the traitor to Privy Seal.'
+
+'I will do it myself ere that,' and Throckmorton yawned, throwing his
+head back.
+
+'The scaldhead is there,' the printer said; and in the doorway there
+stood, supporting himself by the lintel, the young Poins. His face was
+greenish white; a plaster was upon his shaven head; he held up one
+foot as if it pained him to set it to the floor. Through the
+house-place where sat the aged grandfather with his cap pulled over
+his brows, pallid, ironical and seeming indescribably ancient, the
+printer led the spy. The boy hobbled after them, neglecting the old
+man's words:
+
+'Ha' no truck with men of Privy Seal's. Privy Seal hath stolen my
+ground.' In the long shed where they ate all, printer, grandfather,
+apprentices and journeymen, the printer thrust open the door with a
+heavy gesture, entering first and surveying the long trestles.
+
+'Ye can speak here,' he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She
+bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a
+hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey
+woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her
+crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had
+work like other folk, and had been with the printer's mother eight
+years before he was born. His voice, raised to its height, was useless
+to drown her words. She could not hear him; and shrugging his
+shoulders, he said to Throckmorton that she heard less than the walls,
+and that was the best place he had for them to talk in. He slammed the
+door behind him.
+
+Throckmorton set his foot upon the bench that ran between table and
+wall. He scowled fell-ly at the boy, so that his brows came down below
+his nose-top. 'Ye ha' not stayed him,' he said.
+
+The boy burst forth in a torrent of rage and despair. He cursed
+Throckmorton to his face for having sent him upon this errand.
+
+'I ha' been beaten by a gatewarden! by a knave! by a ploughman's son
+from Lincolnshire!' he cried. 'A' cracked my skull with a pikestave
+and kicked me about the ribs when I lay on the ship's floor, sick like
+a pig. God curse the day you sent me to Calais, a gentleman's son, to
+be beat by a boor!' He broke off and began again. 'God curse you and
+the day I saw you! God curse Kat Howard and the day I carried her
+letter! God curse my sister Margot and the day she gar'd me carry the
+letters! And may a swift death of the pox take off Kat Howard's
+cousin--may he rot and stink through the earth above his grave. He
+would not fight with me, but aboard a ship when I was sick set a
+Lincolnshire logget to beat me, a gentleman's son!'
+
+'Why, thy gentility shall survive it,' Throckmorton said. 'But an it
+will not have more beating to its back, ye shall tell me where ye left
+T. Culpepper.'
+
+'At Greenwich,' said the young Poins, and vomited forth curses. The
+old woman came from her pots to peer at the plasters on his skull, and
+then returned to the fire gibbering and wailing that she was not in
+that house plasters for to make.
+
+'Knave,' Throckmorton said, 'an ye will not tell me your tale swiftly
+ye shall right now to the Tower. It is life and death to a leaden
+counter an I find not Culpepper ere nightfall.'
+
+The young Poins stretched forth his arm and groaned.
+
+'Part is bruises and part is sickness of the waves,' he muttered; 'but
+if I make not shift to slit his weazand ere nightfall, pox take all my
+advancement for ever. I will tell my weary tale.'
+
+Throckmorton paused, held his head down, fingered his beard, and said:
+
+'When left ye him at Greenwich?'
+
+'This day at dawn,' Poins answered, and cursed again.
+
+'Drunk or sober?'
+
+'Drunk as a channel codfish.'
+
+The old woman came, a sheaf of jack-knives in her arms, muttering
+along the table.
+
+'Get you to bed,' she croaked. 'I will not ha' warmed new sheets for
+thee, and thee not use them. Get thee to bed.'
+
+Throckmorton pushed her back, and caught the boy by the jacket near
+the throat.
+
+'Ye shall tell me the tale as we go,' he said, and punctuated his
+words by shakes. 'But, oaf that I trusted to do a man's work, ye swing
+beneath a tree this night an we find not the man ye failed to stay.'
+
+The young Poins--he panted out the story as he trotted, wofully
+keeping pace to Throckmorton's great strides between the hedges--had
+stuck to Culpepper as to his shadow, in Calais town. At each turn he
+had showed the warrant to be master of the lighters; he had handed
+over the gold that Throckmorton had given him. But Culpepper had
+turned a deaf ear to him, and, setting up a violent friendship with
+the Lincolnshire gatewarden over pots of beer in a brewhouse, had
+insisted on buying Hogben out of his company and taking him over the
+sea to be witness of his wedding with Katharine Howard. Dogged, and
+thrusting his word and his papers in at every turn, the young Poins
+had pursued them aboard a ship bound for the Thames.
+
+This story came out in jerks and with divagations, but it was evident
+to Throckmorton that the young man had stuck to his task with a dogged
+obtuseness enough to have given offence to a dozen Culpeppers. He had
+begged him, in the inn, to take the lieutenancy of the Calais
+lighters; he had trotted at Culpepper's elbow in the winding streets;
+he had stood in his very path on the gangway to the ship that was to
+take them to Greenwich. At every step he had pulled out of his poke
+the commission for the lieutenancy--so that Throckmorton had in his
+mind, by the time they sat in the stern of the swift barge, the image
+of Culpepper as a savage bulldog pursued along streets and up
+ship-sides by a gambolling bear cub that pulled at his ears and
+danced before him. And he could credit Culpepper only with a saturnine
+and drunken good humour at having very successfully driven Cardinal
+Pole out of Paris. That was the only way in which he could account for
+the fact that Culpepper had not spitted the boy at the first
+onslaught. But for the sheer ill-luck of his sword's having been
+stolen, he might have done it, and been laid by the heels for six
+months in Calais. For Calais being a frontier town of the English
+realm, it was an offence very serious there for English to draw sword
+upon English, however molested.
+
+It was that upon which Throckmorton had counted; and he cursed the day
+when Culpepper had entered the thieves' hut outside Ardres. But for
+that Culpepper must have drawn upon the boy; he must have been lying
+then in irons in Calais holdfast. As it was, there was this long
+chase. God knew whether they would find him in Greenwich; God knew
+where they would find him. He had gone to Greenwich, doubtless,
+because when he had left England the Court had been in Greenwich, and
+he expected there to find his cousin Kat. He would fly to Hampton as
+soon as he knew she was at Hampton; but how soon would he know it? By
+Poins' account, he was too drunk to stand, and had been carried ashore
+on the back of his Lincolnshire henchman. Therefore he might be lying
+in the streets of Greenwich--and Greenwich was a small place. But
+different men carried their liquor so differently, and Culpepper might
+go ashore too drunk to stand and yet reach Hampton sober enow to be
+like a raging bear by eventide.
+
+That above all things Throckmorton dreaded. For that evening Katharine
+would be come back from the interview with Anne of Cleves at Windsor;
+and whether she had succeeded or not with her quest, the King was
+certain to be with her in her room--to rejoice on the one hand, or
+violently to plead his cause on the other. And Throckmorton knew his
+King well enough--he knew, that is to say, his private image of his
+King well enough--to be assured that a meeting between the King then
+and Culpepper there, must lead Katharine to her death. He considered
+the blind, immense body of jealousy that the King was. And, at
+Hampton, Privy Seal would have all avenues open for Culpepper to come
+to his cousin. Privy Seal had detailed Viridus, who had had the matter
+all the while in hand, to inflame Culpepper's mind with jealousy so
+that he should run shouting through the Court with a monstrous outcry.
+
+It was because of this that Throckmorton dreaded to await Culpepper at
+Hampton; there he was sure enow to find him, sooner or later, but
+there would be the many spies of Privy Seal's around all the avenues
+to the palace. He might himself send away the spies, but it was too
+dangerous; for, say what he would, if he held Culpepper from Katharine
+Howard, Cromwell would visit it mercilessly upon him.
+
+He turned the nose of his barge down the broadening, shining grey
+stream towards Greenwich. The wind blew freshly up from the sea; the
+tide ran down, and Throckmorton pulled his bonnet over his eyes to
+shade them from sea and breeze, and the wind that the rowers made. For
+it was the swiftest barge of the kingdom: long, black, and narrow,
+with eight watermen rowing, eight to relieve them, and always eight
+held in reserve at all landing stages for that barge's crew. So well
+Privy Seal had organised even the mutinous men of the river that his
+service might be swift and sudden. Throckmorton had set down the bower
+at the stern, that the wind might have less hold.
+
+Nevertheless it blew cold, and he borrowed a cloak and a pottle of
+sack to warm the young Poins, who had run with him capless and without
+a coat. For, listening to the boy's disjointed tale out in the broad
+reaches below London, Throckmorton recognised that if the young man
+were incredibly a fool he was incredibly steadfast too, and a
+steadfast fool is a good tool to retain for simple work. He had,
+too--the boy--a valuable hatred for Culpepper that he allowed to
+transfer itself to Katharine herself: a brooding hatred that hung in
+his blue eyes as he gazed downwards at the barge floor or spat at the
+planks of the side. Its ferocity was augmented by the patches of
+plaster that stretched over his skull and dropped over one blonde
+eyebrow.
+
+'Cod!' he ejaculated. 'Cod! Cod! Cod!' and waved a fist ferociously at
+the rushes that spiked the waters of the river in their new green.
+'They waited till I was too sick of the sickness of the sea, too sick
+to stand--more mortal sick than ever man was. I hung to a rope and
+might not let go. And Cod! Cod! Cod! Culpepper lay under the
+sterncastle in a hole and set his Lincolnshire beast to baste my
+ribs.'
+
+He spat again with gloomy quiescence into the bottom of the boat.
+
+'In the mid of the sea,' he said, 'where the ship pointed at heaven
+and then at the fiend his home, I hung to a rope and was basted! And
+that whore's son lay in his hole and laughed. For I was a cub, says
+he, and not fit for a man's converse or striking.'
+
+Throckmorton's eyes glimmered a little.
+
+'You have been used as befits no gentleman's son,' he said. 'I will
+see to the righting of your wrongs.'
+
+Poins swore with an amazing obscenity.
+
+'Shall right 'em myself,' he said, 'so I meet T. Culpepper in this
+flesh as a man.'
+
+Throckmorton leaned gently forward and touched his arm.
+
+'I will right thy wrongs,' he said, 'and see to thine advancement; for
+if in this service you ha' failed, yet ha' you been persistent and
+feal.' He dabbled one white hand in the water, 'Nevertheless,' he said
+slowly, 'I would have you consider that your service in this ends
+here.' He spoke still more slowly: 'I would have you to understand
+this. Aforetime I gave you certain instructions as to using your sword
+upon this Culpepper if you might not otherwise stay him.' He held up
+one finger. 'Now mark; your commission is ceased. You shall no longer
+for my service draw sword, knife or dagger, stave nor club, upon this
+man.'
+
+Poins looked at him with gloomy surprise that was changing swiftly to
+hot rage.
+
+'I am under oath to a certain one to use no violence upon this man,'
+Throckmorton said, 'and to encourage no other to do violence.'
+
+Poins thrust his round, brick-red brow out like a turkey cock's from
+the boat cloak into Throckmorton's face.
+
+'I am under no oath of yourn!' he shouted. Throckmorton shrugged his
+shoulders and wagged one finger at him. 'No oath o' yourn!' the boy
+repeated. 'God knows who ye be or why it is so. But I ha' heard ye ha'
+my neck in a noose; I ha' heard ye be dangerous. Yet, before God, I
+swear in your teeth that if I meet this man to his face, or come upon
+his filthy back, drunk, awake, asleep, I will run him through the
+belly and send his soul to hell. He had me, a gentleman's son, basted
+by a hind!'
+
+This long speech exhausted his breath, and he fell back panting.
+
+'I had as soon ye had my head as not,' he muttered desperately, 'since
+I have been basted.'
+
+'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'for your private troubles, I know
+naught of them. There may be some that will thank ye or advance ye for
+spitting of this gallant. But I am not one of them. Nevertheless will
+I be your friend, whom ye would have served better an ye could.'
+
+He smiled in his inward manner and went to polishing of his nails. A
+little later he felt the bruises on the boy's arms, and stayed the
+barge for a moment the stage where, swiftly, eight oarsmen took the
+places of the eight that had rowed two shifts out of three--stayed the
+barge for time enough to purchase for the boy a ham, a little ginger,
+some raw eggs and sack.
+
+The barge rushed forward, with the jar of oars and the sound, like
+satin tearing, of the water at the bows, across the ruffled reaches of
+the broad waters. The gilded roofs, the gabled fronts of the palace at
+Greenwich called Placentia, winked in the fresh sunlight. Throckmorton
+had a great fever of excitement, but having sworn to let his oarsmen
+be scourged with leathern thongs if they made no more efforts, he lay
+back upon the purple cushions and toyed with the strings of the yellow
+ensign that floated behind them. It was his purpose to put heart in
+the boy and to feed his rage, so that alternately he promised to give
+him the warding of the Queen's door--a notable advancement--or
+assented to the lad's gloom when he said that he was fit only for the
+stables, having been beaten by a groom. So that at the quay the boy
+sprang forth mightily, swaying the boat behind him. The trace of his
+sea-sickness had left him; he swore to tear Culpepper's throat apart
+as if it had been capon flesh.
+
+Throckmorton swiftly quartered the gardens, sending, in his passage
+beneath the tall palace arch, a dozen men to search all the paths for
+any drunkards that might there lie hidden. He sent the young Poins to
+search the three alehouses of the village where seamen new landed sat
+to drink. But, having found the sergeant of void palaces asleep in a
+small cell at the house end, he learned that two men, speaking
+Lincolnshire, had been there two hours agone, questing for Master
+Viridus and swearing that they had rid France of the devil and were to
+be made great lords for it. The sergeant, an old, corpulent Spaniard
+who had been in England forty years, having come with the dead Queen
+Katharine and been given this honourable post because the queen had
+loved him, folded his fat hands across his round stomach as he sat on
+the floor, his legs stretched out, his head against the hangings.
+
+'I might not make out if they were lords or what manner of cavaliers,'
+he said. 'They sought some woman whom they would not name, and ran
+through a score of empty rooms. God knows whither they went.'
+
+He pulled his nightcap further over his head, nodded at Throckmorton,
+and resumed his meditations.
+
+There was no finding them in the still and empty corridors of the
+palace; but at the gateway he heard that the two men had clamoured to
+know where they might purchase raw shinbone of beef, and had been
+directed to the house of a widow Emden. There Throckmorton found
+their tracks, for the sacking that covered the window-holes was burst
+outwards, beef-bones lay on the road before the door, and, within, the
+widow, black, begrimed and very drunk, lay inverted on the clay of the
+floor, her head beneath the three legs of the chopping block, so that
+she was as if in a pillory, but too fuddled to do more than wave her
+legs. A prentice who crouched, with a broken head, in a corner of the
+filthy room, said that a man from Lincolnshire, all in Lincoln green,
+with a red beard, had wrought this ruin of beef-bones that he had cast
+through the windows, and had then comforted the screaming widow with
+much strong drink from a black bottle. They had wanted raw beef to
+make them valiant against some wedding, and they threw the beef-bones
+through the sacking because they said the place stunk villainously.
+They seemed, these two, to have visited every hovel in the damp and
+squalid village that lay before the palace gates. They had kicked beds
+of straw over the floors, thrown crocks at the pigs, melted pewter
+plates in the fires.
+
+For pure joy at being afoot and ashore in England again, they had cast
+coins into all the houses and hovels of mud; they had brought out cans
+and casks from the alehouses, and cast pies into the streets, and
+caused the dismal ward to cry out: 'God save free Englishmen!' 'Curse
+the sea!' and 'A plague of Frenchmen that be devils!'
+
+And the after effects of their carnival menaced Throckmorton, for from
+the miserable huts, where ragged women were rearranging the scattered
+straws and wiping egg-yolk from the broken benches, there issued a
+ragged crowd of men with tangled and muddy hair and boys unclothed
+save for sacks that whistled about their lean hips. The liquor that
+Culpepper and Hogben had distributed had rendered them curious or full
+of mutiny and discontent, and they surrounded Throckmorton's brilliant
+figure in its purple velvet, with the gold neck-chains and the
+jewelled hat, and some of them asked for money, and some called him
+'Frenchman,' and some knew him for a spy, and some caught up stones
+and jawbones furtively to cast at him.
+
+But, arrogant and with his head set high, he borrowed a whip from a
+packman that shouldered his way through the street, and lashed at
+their legs and ragged heads. The crowd slunk, one by one, back under
+the darkness that was beneath the roofs of reeds, and the idea of a
+good day that for a moment had risen in their minds at Culpepper's
+legendary approach, sank down and flickered out once more in their
+hungry bellies and fever-dimmed minds.
+
+'God!' he said, 'we will have hangmen here,' and pursued his search.
+He met the young Poins at the head of the village street, and learned
+from him that Culpepper and his supporter had hired horses to ride to
+Hampton and had galloped away three hours before, holding legs of
+mutton by the feet and using them for cudgels to beat their horses.
+
+'Before God!' the boy said, 'an I had money to hire horses I would
+overtake them, if I overtook not the devil erstwhile.'
+
+Throckmorton pulled out his purple purse that was embroidered with
+silk crosses. He extracted from it four crowns of gold.
+
+'Lad,' he said, 'I do not give thee gold to follow Kat Howard's cousin
+with. This is thy wage for the service thou hast done aforetime.' He
+reflected for a moment. 'If thou wilt have a horse--but I urge it
+not--to go to Hampton where thy fellows of the guard are--for, having
+served well ye may once more and without danger rejoin your mates--if
+ye will have such a horse, go to the horseward of the palace and say I
+sent you. Withouten doubt ye are mad to hasten back to your mates, a
+commendable desire. And the King's horses shall hasten faster than any
+hired horse--so that ye may easily overtake a man that hath but two
+hours' start towards Hampton.'
+
+Whilst Poins was already hastening towards the gateway, Throckmorton
+cried to him at a distance:
+
+'Ask at each cross-road guard-house and at all ferries and bridges if
+some have passed that way; and at the landing-stage if perchance
+caballeros have altered their desires and had it in their minds to
+take to boats.'
+
+He sped through the wind to the riverside, set again his oars in
+motion and swept up the tide. It had turned and they made good
+progress.
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The Queen sat in her painted gallery at Richmond, and all around her
+her maids sewed and span. The gallery was long; along the panels that
+faced the windows were angels painted in red and blue and gold, and in
+the three centre squares St. George, whose face was the face of the
+King's Highness, in one issued from a yellow city upon a green plain;
+in one with a cherry-coloured lance slew a green dragon from whose
+mouth issued orange-coloured flames; and in one carried away, that he
+might wed her in a rose-coloured tower on a hillside, a princess in a
+black gown with hair painted of real gold.
+
+Whilst the maids sewed in silence the Queen sat still upon a stool.
+Light-skinned, not very stout, with a smooth oval face, she had laid
+her folded hands on the gold and pearl embroidery of her lap and gazed
+away into the distance, thinking. She sat so still that not even the
+lawn tips of her wide hood with its invisible, minute sewings of
+white, quivered. Her gown was of cloth of gold, but since her being in
+England she had learned to wear a train, and in its folds on the
+ground slept a small Italian greyhound. About her neck she had a
+partelet set with green jewels and with pearls. Her maids sewed; the
+spinning-wheels ate away the braided flax from the spindles, and the
+sunlight poured down through the high windows. She was a very fair
+woman then, and many that had seen her there sit had marvelled of the
+King's disfavour for her; but she was accounted wondrous still,
+sitting thus by the hour with the little hounds in the folds of her
+dress. Only her eyes with their half-closed lids gave to her lost
+gaze the appearance of a humour and irony that she never was heard to
+voice.
+
+They turned to the opening door, a flush came into her face, spread
+slowly down her white neck and was lost in the white opening of her
+shoulder-pieces, and she greeted Katharine Howard, kneeling at her
+feet, with an inclination of the head so tiny that you could not see
+the motion. Her eyes remained motionlessly upon the girl's face; only
+the lids moved suddenly when Katharine spoke to her in German.
+
+'You speak my tongue?' the Queen asked, motionless still and speaking
+very low. Katharine remained upon her knees.
+
+'I learned to read books in German when I was a child,' Katharine
+said; 'and since you came I have spoken an hour a day with a German
+astronomer that I might give you pleasure if so be it chanced.'
+
+'So it is well,' the Queen said. 'Not many have so done.'
+
+'God has endowed me with an ease of tongues,' Katharine answered;
+'many others would have ventured it for your Grace's pleasure. But
+your tongue is a hard tongue.'
+
+'I have needed to learn hard sentences in yours,' the Queen said, 'and
+have had many masters many hours of the day. I will have you stand up
+upon your feet.'
+
+Katharine remained upon her knees.
+
+'I will have you stand up upon your feet,' the Queen repeated.
+
+'I have a prayer to make,' Katharine answered.
+
+The Queen looked for a minute straight before her, then slowly turned
+her head to one side. When her gaze rested upon her women they rose
+and, with a clatter of their feet and a rustle of garments, carrying
+their white sewings and their spinning-wheels stilled, went away down
+the gallery. The German lord of Overstein, bearded and immense in the
+then German fashion, came from behind the retreating women to stand
+before the Queen signifying that he would offer his interpretership.
+She dismissed him without speaking, letting her eyes rest upon him.
+She was the most silent woman in the world, but all people said that
+no queen had women and men servers that needed fewer words or so
+discreetly did their devoirs.
+
+The silence and the bright light of the sun swathed these two women's
+figures, so that Katharine seemed to hear the flutter against the
+window-glass of a brown butterfly that, having sheltered in the hall
+all winter, now sought to take a part in the new brightness of the
+world. Katharine kept her knees, her eyes upon the floor; the Queen,
+motionless and soft, let her eyes rest upon Katharine's hood. From
+time to time they travelled to her face, to the medallion that hung
+from her neck, and to her dark green skirt of velvet that lay around
+her upon the floor. The butterfly sought another window; the Queen
+spoke at last.
+
+'You seek my queenship'; and in her still voice there was neither
+passion, nor pity, nor question, nor resignation.
+
+Katharine raised her eyes: they saw the imprisoned butterfly, but she
+found no words.
+
+'You have more courage than I,' the Queen said.
+
+Suddenly she made a single gesture with her hands, as if she swept
+something from her lap: some invisible dust--and that was all. Still
+Katharine did not move nor speak; she had prepared speeches--speeches
+against the Queen's being disdainful, enraged, or dissolved in tears.
+She had read in books all night from Aulus Gellius to Cicero to get
+wisdom. But here there were no speeches called for; no speeches could
+be made. The significance of the Queen's gesture of sweeping dust from
+her lap slowly overwhelmed her.
+
+'You have more courage than I,' the Queen repeated, as though slowly
+she were making a catalogue of Katharine's qualities to set
+dispassionately against her own; and again her eyes moved over
+Katharine. With her first swift gesture she drew from the stool-top a
+pamphlet of writing, upon which she had sat. Her face grew slowly red.
+
+'It did not need this long writing against my person,' she said. 'I
+take it grievously.'
+
+Katharine moved upon her knees as if she had been stung by an
+intolerable accusation.
+
+'Before God!----' she began to say.
+
+'Well, I believe you had no part in the writing,' the Queen
+interrupted her. 'Yet the more I say you have courage: to wed a man
+that will write lies of another woman's body and powers.'
+
+Katharine sat still; the Queen's slow anger faded slowly away.
+
+'I do not see why this King thinks you more fair than I be,' she said
+dispassionately; 'but what draweth the love of man to woman is not yet
+known.'
+
+Again she repeated:
+
+'There was no need of this writing against me. The King has never
+played the husband's part to me; I would have you tell him, if I go in
+danger from him, that, for me, he may go his ways. I have no mind to
+stay him, nor to be a queen in this country. Here, it is said, they
+slay queens.'
+
+'If I will be Queen, it is that God may bless this realm and King with
+the old faith again,' Katharine said. Anne's eyelids narrowed.
+
+'It is best known to yourself why you will be Queen,' she said. 'It is
+best known to God what faith he will have in this your realm. I know
+not what faith he liketh best, nor yet what side of a queen's
+functions most commendeth itself unto you.'
+
+She seemed to withdraw herself more and more from any struggle, as if
+she were a novice that took an invisible veil--and she uttered only
+requests as to the world into which she would withdraw from this one.
+
+'I am not minded to go back to Cleves,' she stipulated; for she had
+thought much and long in her stillnesses of what she would have; 'the
+Duke, my brother, is to blame for having brought me to this pass.
+Moreover, he is not able to defend his lands; so that if, with a
+proper establishing and revenue, I go back to Cleves, the Emperor
+Charles, who hath a tooth for gold, may too easily undo me. I would
+have a castle here in England; for England is an island, and well
+defended in all its avenues, and its King a man of honour and his word
+to such as never cross him, as never will I.'
+
+She spoke slowly, as if in her mind she were ticking off little notes
+pencilled on her tablets; for since she could not read she had a
+memory that she could trust to. 'I will have a castle built me not
+strong enough to withstand the King's forces, since those I make no
+call to withstand, but strong enough to guard me against robber bands
+and the insurrections that are ordinary. Upon a slope that shall take
+the sun in winter, with trees about beneath which I may sit in the
+heat of summer-time. I will have a good show of servants, because I am
+a princess of noble lineage; I will have most of them Germans that I
+may speak easily with them, but some English, understanding German, so
+that the King may be advised I work no treasons against him. From time
+to time I will have the King to visit and to talk with me courteously
+and fairly as well he can: this in order to counterpart and destroy
+the report that I smell foul and am so ill to see that it makes a man
+ill----'
+
+Her eyes, resting upon Katharine, closed slightly again with a tiny
+malice.
+
+'I will have you not to fear that, upon such visits, I will use wiles
+to entrap the King. I do not favour him. I am not content to be queen
+of this country. It is as fair as my own country. In summer it is more
+cool, in the winter time more temperate. Meats here are good; cooks
+are better than with us. What a woman and a princess in this world
+would have is here all at the best, save only its men, and the most
+dangerous of all its men is the King.'
+
+Katharine's ready anger rose at her words, though before the Queen's
+speeches had flowed above her head and left her speechless and
+ashamed.
+
+'The King is known throughout Christendom,' she said, 'for the
+royallest prince, the noblest speaker, the most princely horseman, the
+most munificent and the most learned in the law.'
+
+'That he may be,' the Queen smiled faintly, 'to them that have never
+crossed him. It has been my ill-destiny so to do.'
+
+'Madam,' Katharine cried out, 'never man was so crossed, ill-served,
+evilly-led, or betrayed. Ye may not mislike him if at times he be
+petulant. I do the more praise him for it.'
+
+'Why, you do love him,' the Queen said. 'I have no cause so to do.'
+
+Katharine caught at one of her hands.
+
+'Your Grace,' she said, 'Queen and high potentate, this realm calleth
+out that some one person do lead the King aright. Before God, I think
+I do not seek powers or temporal crowns. Maybe it is sweet to sit in a
+painted gallery and be a queen, but I have very little considered it;
+only, here is a King that crieth for the peace of God, a people that
+clamoureth aloud to be led back to the ways of God, a land parched for
+rain, swept by gales of wind and pestilences, bewailing the lost
+favour of God, and the Holy Church devastated that standeth between
+God and the realm.' The Queen listened to her as if, having made her
+stipulations, she had no more personal interest in the matter and were
+listening to the tale of a journey. 'Before God!' Katharine said, 'if
+you were not a virgin for the King, or if the King have coerced you to
+forswearing yourself in this matter, I would not be the King's wife,
+but his concubine. Only, sore is his need of me; he hath sworn it many
+times, and I do believe it, that I best, if anyone may, may give him
+rest with my converse and lead him to peace. He hath sworn that never
+woman save I made him so clearly to see his path to goodness; and
+never woman save I, at convenient seasons, have made him so forget his
+many cares.'
+
+'Why, you have still more courage than I had thought,' the Queen said,
+'to take a man so dangerous upon so little assurance.' She moved the
+hand that Katharine touched in her lap neither forward nor away; but
+at last she said:
+
+'I am neither of your country nor for it; neither of your faith nor
+against it. But, being here, here I do sojourn. I came not here of
+mine own will. Men have handled me as they would, as if I had been a
+doll. But, if I may have as much of the sun as shines, and as much of
+comfort as the realm affords its better sort, being a princess, and to
+be treated with some reverence, I care not if ye take King, crown, and
+commonalty, so ye leave me the ruling of my house and the freedom to
+wash my face how I will. I had as soon see England linked again with
+the Papists as the Schmalkaldners; I had as lief see the King married
+to you as another; I had as lief all men do what they will so they
+leave me to go my ways and feed me well.'
+
+She looked again upon Katharine, and for the first time spoke as if
+she were addressing her:
+
+'I make out that you are a woman with an itch to meddle at the
+righting of the world. There have been more men than women at the
+task, but such an one was I never. The King was never man of mine, nor
+should have been had I any say in the matter.' She half closed her
+eyes again. 'Doubtless had it been otherwise the King would have
+constrained me by threats and tortures to forswear myself. I am as I
+was when I came to Dover. As the King saw me so he left me. Yet do I
+maintain and avow it was rather because he feared alliance with my
+brother's party than for any foulness of my person.'
+
+Katharine passed her hands over her eyes.
+
+'I do feel myself a thief and a cozener,' she said.
+
+'Ye be none,' the Queen said; 'ye take no more than what I least prize
+of this world. Had it not been thee it might have been a worse; for
+assuredly I was not made to foot it with this King.'
+
+'Nevertheless----' Katharine began. But the Queen was no more content
+to listen to her.
+
+'Ye are as some I have known,' she said; 'they scruple to take what
+they very much crave, though it hang ready to drop into their hands;
+because they much crave it, therefore they scruple.' She had a small
+golden bullet beneath her clasped hands, and she cast it into a basin
+of silver that stood on a tripod beside her skirts. At the silvery
+clash and roll of the ball's running sound on the metal, doors opened
+along the gallery, and servitors came in bearing Rhenish wine in glass
+flagons and, upon great salvers, cakes in the forms of hearts or
+twisted into true-love-knots of pastry.
+
+Katharine noted these things as being worthy of imitation.
+
+'It is no more to me,' the Queen said, 'to lose the other things to
+you than to lose to you the wine that you shall drink or a pile of
+cakes.' Nevertheless she left Katharine upon her knees till she had
+taken her cup, for it pleased her that her servitors should see her
+treated with due worship.
+
+
+VII
+
+
+It was noon of that day when Katharine Howard set out again from
+Richmond to ride back to Hampton Court; and at noon of that day
+Throckmorton's barge shot dangerously beneath London Bridge, hastening
+to Hampton Court. At noon Thomas Culpepper passed over London Bridge,
+because a great crowd pressed across it from the south going to see a
+burning at Smithfield; at noon, too, or five minutes later, the young
+Poins galloped furiously past the end of the bridge and did not cross
+over, but sped through Southwark towards Hampton Court. And at noon or
+thereabouts the King, dressed in green as a husbandman, sat on a log
+to await a gun-fire, in the forest that was near to Richmond river
+path opposite Isleworth. He had given to Katharine a paper that she
+was to deliver to the master gunner of Richmond Palace in case the
+Queen Anne did satisfy her that the marriage was no marriage. So that,
+when among the green glades where the great trees let down their
+branches near the sward and shewed little tips of tender green leaves,
+he heard three thuds come echoing, he sprang to his feet, and, smiting
+his great, green-clothed thigh, he cried out: 'Ha! I be young again!'
+He pulled to his lips the mouth of the English horn that was girdled
+across his shoulder and under his arm; he set his feet wide apart,
+filled his lungs with air, and blew a thin, clear call. At once there
+issued from brakes, thickets and glades the figures of men, dressed
+like the King in yeoman's green, bearing bows over their shoulders,
+horns at their elbows, or having straining dogs in their leashes.
+
+'Ho!' the King said to his chief verderer, a man of sixty with a grey
+beard, but so that all others could hear; 'be it well understood that
+I will have you shew some ladies what make of thing it is to rule over
+jolly Englishmen.' He directed them how he would have them drive the
+deer at the end of the glade; he saw to the setting up of white wands
+of peeled willows and, taking from his yeoman-companion, that was the
+Earl of Surrey, his great bow, he shot a mighty shaft along the glade,
+to shew how far away he would have the deer to pass like swift ghosts
+between the aisles of the trees.
+
+But the palace of Hampton lay deserted and given up to scullions, who
+lay in the sunlight and took their rare ease. For a great many lords
+that could shoot well with the bow were gone to play the yeoman with
+the King; and a great many that had sumptuous and gallant apparel were
+gone to join the ladies riding back from Richmond; and the King's
+whole council, together with many lords that were awful or reverend in
+their appearance, were gone to sit in the scaffold to see the burning
+of the friar that had denied the King's supremacy of the Church and
+the burnings of the six Protestants that had denied the presence of
+Christ's body in the Sacrament. Only Privy Seal, who had ordered these
+things, was still walking in his gallery where he so often had walked
+of late.
+
+He had with him Wriothesley, whose face was utterly downcast and
+abashed; he walked turning more swiftly than had been his wont ever
+before. Wriothesley hung down his great bearded, honest head and
+sighed three times.
+
+'Sir,' he said at last, 'I see before us nothing but that ye make to
+divorce the Queen Anne.' And the words seemed to come from him as if
+they cost him his heart's blood.
+
+Cromwell paused before him, his hands behind his back, his feet apart.
+
+'The weighty question,' he said, 'is this: Who hath betrayed me: of
+Udal; of the alewife that he should have had the papers of; or
+Throckmorton?'
+
+He had that morning received from Cleves, in the letter of his agent
+there, the certain proof that the Duke had written to the Emperor
+Charles making an utter submission to save his land from ruin, and as
+utterly abjuring his alliance with the King his brother-in-law and
+with the Schmalkaldner league and its Protestant princes. Cromwell had
+immediately called to him Wriothesley that was that day ordering the
+horses to take him back to Paris town. He had given him this news,
+which, if it were secret then, must in a month be made known to all
+the world. To Wriothesley the Protestant this blow was the falling in
+of the world; here was Protestantism at an end and dead. There
+remained nothing but to save the necks of some to carry on the faith
+to distant days. Therefore he had brought out his reluctant words to
+urge Privy Seal to the divorce of Anne of Cleves. There was no other
+way; there was no other issue. Privy Seal must abjure Cleves' Queen,
+and the very savour of a desire for a Protestant league.
+
+But for Privy Seal the problem was not what to do, a thing he might
+settle in a minute's swift thought, but the discovery of who had
+betrayed him--for his whole life had been given to bringing together
+his machine of service. You might determine an alliance or a divorce
+between breath and breath; but the training of your instruments, the
+weeding out of them that had flaws in their fidelities; the exhibiting
+of a swift and awful vengeance upon mutineers--these were the things
+that called for thinking and long furrowing of brows. He considered of
+this point whilst Wriothesley spoke long and earnestly.
+
+It was expedient before all things that Privy Seal keep the helm of
+the State; it was very certain that the King should not long keep to
+his marriage with the lady from Cleves; lamentable it was that Cleves
+had fallen away from Protestantism and from the league that so goodly
+had promised for truth in religion. But so, alas that the day had
+come! so it was. The King was a man brave and royal in his degree, but
+unstable, so that to keep him to Protestantism and good government a
+firm man was earnestly needed. There was none other man than Privy
+Seal. Let him consider earnestly that if it tasted ill with his
+conscience to move this divorce, yet elsewise such great ills should
+strike the kingdom, that far better it were to deaden his conscience
+than to sacrifice for a queen of doubtful faith the best hope that
+they had then, all of them, in the world. He spoke for many minutes in
+this strain, for twice the clock struck the half-hour from the tower
+above the gallery.
+
+Finally, long-bearded, solemn, and richly attired as he was,
+Wriothesley went down upon one knee, and, laying his bonnet on the
+ground, stretched out a long hand.
+
+'My lord,' he said, 'I do beseech you that you stay with us and
+succour us. We are a small band, but zealous and well-caparisoned.
+Bethink you that you put this land in peril if by maintaining this
+Queen ye do endanger your precious neck. For I were loath to take arms
+against the King's Majesty, and we are loyal and faithful subjects
+all; yet sooner than ye should fall----'
+
+Cromwell stood over him, looking at him dispassionately, his hands
+still behind his back.
+
+'Well, it is a great matter,' he uttered elusively. He moved as if to
+walk off, then suddenly turned upon his heel again. 'Ye do me more ill
+by speaking in that guise than ever Cleves or Gardiner or all my
+enemies have done. For assuredly if rumours of your words should reach
+the King when he was ill-affected, it should go hardly with me.'
+
+He paused, and then spoke gently.
+
+'And assuredly ye do me more wrong than ill,' he said. 'For this I
+swear to you, ye have heard evil enow of me to have believed some. But
+there is no man dare call me traitor in his heart of them that do know
+me. And this I tell you: I had rather die a thousand deaths than that
+ye should prop me up against the majesty and awe of government. By so
+doing ye might, at a hazard, save my life, but for certain ye would
+imperil that for which I have given my life.'
+
+Again he paused and paced, and again came back in his traces to where
+Wriothesley knelt.
+
+'Some danger there is for me,' he said, 'but I think it a very little
+one. The King knoweth too well how good a servant and how profitable I
+have been to him. I do think he will not cast me away to please a
+woman. Yet this is a very notable woman--ye wot of whom I speak; but I
+hope very soon to have one to my hand that shall utterly cast down and
+soil her in the eyes of the King's Highness.'
+
+'Ye do think her unchaste?' Wriothesley asked. 'I have heard you
+say----'
+
+'Knight,' Cromwell answered; 'what I think will not be revealed to-day
+nor to-morrow, but only at the Day of Judgment. Nevertheless, so do I
+love my master's cause that--if it peril mine own upon that awful
+occasion--I so will strive to tear this woman down.'
+
+Wriothesley rose, stiff and angular.
+
+'God keep the issue!' he said.
+
+'Why, get you gone,' Cromwell said. 'But this I pray you gently: that
+ye restrain your fellows' tongues from speaking treason and heresy.
+Three of your friends, as you know, I must burn this day for such
+speakings; you, too--you yourself, too--I must burn if it come to that
+pass, or you shall die by the block. For I will have this land
+purged.' His cold eyes flamed dangerously for a minute. 'Fool!' he
+thundered, 'I will have this land purged of treasons and schisms. Get
+you gone before I advise further with myself of your haughty and
+stiff-necked speeches. For learn this: that before all creeds, and
+before all desires, and before all women, and before all men, standeth
+the good of this commonwealth, and state, and King, whose servant I
+be. Get you gone and report my words ere I come terribly among ye.'
+
+Making his desultory pacings from end to end of the gallery, Cromwell
+considered that in that speech he had done a good morning's work, for
+assuredly these men put him in peril. More than one of these dangerous
+proclaimings of loyalty to him rather than to the King had come to his
+ears. They must be put an end to.
+
+But this issue faded from his mind. Left to himself, he let his hands
+twitch as feverishly as they would. Cleves and its Duke had played him
+false! His sheet anchor was gone! There remained only, then, the
+device of proving to the King that Katharine Howard was a monster of
+unchastity. For so strong was the witness that he had gathered against
+her that he could not but try his Fate once more--to give the King, as
+so often he had done, proof of how diligently his minister fended for
+him and how requisite he was, as a man who had eyes in every corner of
+this realm.
+
+To do that it was necessary that he should find her cousin; he had all
+the others under lock and key already in that palace. But her
+cousin--he must come soon or he would come too late!
+
+Privy Seal was a man of immense labours, that carried him to burning
+his lamp into hours when all other men in land slept in their beds.
+And, at that date, he had a many letters to indite, because the
+choosing of burgesses for the Parliament was going forward, and he had
+ado in some burghs to make the citizens choose the men that he bade
+them have. He gave to each shire and burgh long thought and minute
+commands. He knew the mayor of each town, and had note-books telling
+him the opinions and deeds of every man that had freedom to elect all
+over England. And into each man he had instilled the terror of his
+vengeance. This needed anxious labours, and it was the measure of his
+concern that he stayed now from this work to meditate a full ten
+minutes upon this matter of bringing Thomas Culpepper before the King.
+
+Thus, when, after he had for many hours been busy with his papers,
+Lascelles, the gentleman informer of the Archbishop's, came to tell
+him that he had seen Thomas Culpepper at Greenwich that dawn and had
+followed him to the burning at Smithfield, whence he had hastened to
+Hampton, the Lord Privy Seal took from his neck his own golden collar
+of knighthood and cast it over Lascelles' neck. In part this was
+because he had never before been so glad in his life, and in part
+because it was his policy to reward very richly them that did him a
+chance service.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'I grudge that ye be the Archbishop's man and not
+mine, so your judgment jumps with mine.'
+
+And indeed Lascelles' judgment had jumped with Privy Seal's. He was
+the Archbishop's confidential gentleman; he swayed in many things the
+Archbishop's judgments. Yet in this one thing Cranmer had been too
+afraid to jump with him.
+
+'To me,' Lascelles said, 'it appeared that the sole thing to be done
+was to strike at the esteem of the King for Kat Howard, and the sole
+method to strike at her was through her dealings with her cousin.'
+
+'Sir,' Cromwell interrupted him, 'in this ye have hit upon mine own
+secret judgment that I had told to no man save my private servants.'
+
+Lascelles bent his knee to acknowledge this great praise.
+
+'Very gracious lord,' he said, 'his Grace of Canterbury opines rather
+that this woman must be propitiated. He hath sent her books to please
+her tickle fancy of erudition; he hath sent her Latin chronicles and
+Saxon to prove to her, if he may, that the English priesthood is older
+than that of Rome. He is minded to convince her if he may, or, if he
+may not, he plans to make submission to her, to commend her learning
+and in all things to flatter her--for she is very approachable by
+these channels, more than by any other.'
+
+In short, as Lascelles made it appear to Cromwell's attentive brain,
+the Archbishop was, as always, anxious to run with the hare and hunt
+with the hounds. He was a schismatic bishop, appointed by the King and
+the King's creature, not the Bishop of Rome's. So that if with his
+high pen and his great gift of penning weighty sentences, he might
+bring Kat Howard to acknowledging him bishop and archbishop, he was
+ready so to do. If he must make submission to her judgment, he was
+ready so to do.
+
+'Yet,' Lascelles concluded, 'I have urged him against these courses;
+or yet not against these courses, but to this other end in any case.'
+For it was certain that Kat Howard would have no truck with Cranmer.
+She would make him go on his knees to Rome and then she would burn
+him; or if she did not burn him she would make him end his days with a
+hair shirt in the cell of an anchorite. 'I hold it manifested,'
+Lascelles said, 'that this lady is such an one as will listen to no
+reason nor policy, neither will she palter, for whatever device, with
+them that have not lifelong paid lip-service to the arch-devil whose
+seat is in Rome.'
+
+Cromwell nodded his head once more to commend the Archbishop's
+gentleman with a perfect acquiescence.
+
+It had chanced that that morning Lascelles had gone to Greenwich to
+fetch for the Archbishop some books and tractates. The Archbishop was
+minded to lend them to the Bishop Hugh Latimer of Worcester; that day
+he was to dispute publicly with the friar Forest that was cast to be
+burned. And, coming to Greenwich, still thinking much upon Katharine
+Howard and her cousin, at the dawn, Lascelles had seen the tall,
+drunken, red-bearded man in green, with his squat, broad gossip in
+grey, come staggering up from the ship at the public quay.
+
+'I did leave my burthen of books,' he said; 'for what be Bishop Hugh
+Latimer's arguments from a pulpit to a burning priest to the pulling
+down of this woman?' He had dogged Thomas Culpepper and his crony; he
+had seen him burst open windows, cast meat about in the mud and feed
+the populace of the Greenwich hamlet.
+
+'And for sure,' he said, 'if the King's Highness should see this man's
+filthiness and foul demeanour, he will not be fain to feed after such
+a make of hound.'
+
+Coming to Smithfield, where Culpepper stayed to cheer on the business,
+Lascelles had very swiftly begged the Archbishop, where, behind Hugh
+Larimer's pulpit, he sat to see Friar Forest corrected--had very
+swiftly begged the Archbishop to give him leave to come to Hampton.
+
+'Sir,' Lascelles said, 'with a great sigh he gave me leave; for much
+he fears to have a hand in this matter.'
+
+'Why, he shall have no hand,' Cromwell said. He clapped his hands, and
+told the blonde page-boy that appeared to send him very quickly
+Viridus, that had had this matter in his care.
+
+Lascelles recounted shortly how he had set four men to watch Thomas
+Culpepper till he came to Hampton, and very swiftly to send word of
+when he came. Then the spy dropped his voice and pulled out a
+parchment from his bosom.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'whilst Culpepper was in the palace of Greenwich I
+made haste to go on board the ship that had brought him from Calais,
+being minded if I could to discover what was discoverable concerning
+his coming.'
+
+He dropped his voice still further.
+
+'Sir,' he began again, 'there be those in this realm, and maybe very
+close to your own person, that would have stayed his coming. For upon
+that ship lay a boy, sore sick of the sea and very beaten, by name
+Harry Poins. Wherefore, or at whose commands, he had done this I had
+no occasion to discover, since he lay like a sick dog and might not
+see nor hear nor speak; but this it was told me he had done: in every
+way he sought to let and hinder T. Culpepper's coming to England with
+so marked an importunity that at last Culpepper did set his crony to
+beat this boy.' He paused again. 'And this too I discovered, taking it
+from the boy's person, for in my avocations and service to his Grace,
+whom God preserve and honour! I have much practised these
+abstractions.'
+
+Lascelles held the parchment, from which fell a seal like a drop of
+blood.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'this agreement is sealed with your own seal; it is
+from one Throckmorton in your service. It maketh this T. Culpepper
+lieutenant of barges and lighters in the town and port of Calais. It
+enjoineth upon him to stay diligently there and zealously to
+persevere in these duties.'
+
+Cromwell neither started nor moved; he stood looking down at the floor
+for a minute space; then he held out his hand for the parchment,
+considered the seal and the subscription, let his eyes course over the
+lines of Throckmorton's handwriting that made a black patch on the
+surface soiled with sea-water and sweat, and uttered composedly:
+
+'Why, it is well; it is monstrous well that you have saved this
+parchment from coming to evil hands.'
+
+He rolled it neatly, placed it in his belt, and four times stamped his
+foot on the floor.
+
+There came in at this signal, Viridus, the one of his secretaries that
+had first instructed Katharine Howard as to her demeanour. Since then,
+he had had among his duties the watching over Thomas Culpepper. Calm,
+furtive, with his thin hands clasped before him, the Sieur Viridus
+answered the swift, hard questions of his master. He was more attached
+and did more services to the Chancellor of the Augmentations, whom he
+kept mostly mindful of such farms and fields as Privy Seal intended
+should be given to benefit his particular friends and servants; for he
+had a mind that would hold many details of figures and directions.
+
+Thus, he had sent two men to Calais and the road Paris-ward with
+injunctions to meet Thomas Culpepper and tell him tales of Katharine
+Howard's lewdness in the King's Court; to tell him, too, that the
+farms in Kent, promised him as a guerdon for ridding Paris of the
+Cardinal Pole, were deeded and signed to him, but that evil men sought
+to have them away.
+
+'Ye sent no boy to stay him at Calais with lieutenancy of barges?'
+Cromwell asked, swiftly and hard in voice.
+
+'No boy ne no man,' Viridus answered.
+
+He had acted by the card of Privy Seal's injunctions; men were posted
+at Calais, at Dover, at Ashford, at Maidstone, at Sandwich, at
+Rochester, at Greenwich, at all the landing places of London. Each
+several one was instructed to tell Thomas Culpepper some new story
+that, if Culpepper were not already hastening to Hampton, should make
+him mend his paces. If he were hastening to Hampton they were to leave
+him be. All these things were done as Privy Seal had directed.
+
+'What witnesses have ye here from Lincolnshire?' Cromwell asked.
+
+In his monotonous sing-song Viridus named these people: Under lock and
+key in the King's cellary house, five from Stamford that had heard
+Culpepper swear Kat Howard was his leman--these had really heard this
+thing, and called for no priming; under instruction in the Well Ward
+gate chamber, four that should swear a certain boy was her
+child--these needed to have their tales evened as to the night the
+child was born, and how it had been brought from the Lord Edmund's
+house wrapped in a napkin. In his own pantry, Viridus had three under
+guard and admonition of his own--these should swear that whenas they
+served the Lord Edmund they had seen at several times Culpepper with
+her in thickets, or climbing to her window in the night, or at dawn
+coming away from her chamber door. These needed to be instructed as to
+all these things.
+
+Cromwell listened with little nods, marking each item of these
+instructions.
+
+'Listen now to me,' he said; 'give attentive ear.' Viridus dropped his
+eyes to the floor, as one who lends all his faculties to be
+subservient to his hearing. 'At six or thereabouts T. Culpepper shall
+reach this Court. Ye shall have men ready to bring him straightway to
+thee. At seven or thereabouts shall come the Lady Katharine to her
+room; with her shall come the King's Highness, habited as a yeoman. Be
+attentive. Next Katharine Howard's door is the door of the Lady
+Deedes. Her I have this day sent to other quarters. Having T.
+Culpepper with you, you shall go to this room of the Lady Deedes. You
+shall sit at the table with the door a little opened, so that ye may
+see when the King's Highness cometh. But you shall sit opposite T.
+Culpepper that he may not see.' Viridus remained like a statue carved
+of wood, motionless, his head inclined to the ground. Lascelles had
+his head forward, his mouth a little open. 'Whilst you wait you shall
+have with you the deeds giving to T. Culpepper his farms in Kent.
+These ye shall display to him. Ye shall dilate upon the goodness of
+the fields, upon the commodity in barns and oasthouses, upon the
+sweetness of the water wells, upon the goodliness of the air. But when
+the King shall be entered into the Lady Katharine's room you shall
+give T. Culpepper to drink of a certain flagon of wine that I shall
+give to you. When he hath drunk you shall begin to hint that all is
+ill with the lady he would wed; as thus you shall say: "Aye, your nest
+is well lined, but how of the bird?" And you shall talk of her having
+consorted much with a large yeoman. And when you shall observe him to
+be much heated with the subtle drug and your hintings, you shall say
+to him, "Lo, next this door is the door of the Lady Katharine. Go see
+if perchance she have not even now this yeoman with her."'
+
+Viridus nodded his head once up and down; Lascelles clapped his hands
+twice for joy at this contrivance. Cromwell added further injunctions:
+that Viridus should have in the corner of the gallery a man that
+should come hastening to him, the Lord Privy Seal, where he walked in
+the gallery; another who, at his own signal, should hastily bring the
+witnesses prepared against Kat Howard; another who should bring the
+engrossment of a command to behead T. Culpepper that night in the
+King's Tower House, and yet another who should bring up guards and
+captains. All these, in their separate companies, should be set in the
+great room abovestairs next the King's chapel, so that they might
+swiftly and without hindrance or accident come down the little stair
+to the Lady Katharine's room. Again Viridus once bowed his head,
+moving his lips the while repeating these commands in words as they
+were uttered.
+
+Cromwell paused again to think, then he added:
+
+'I will set this gentleman, Lascelles, to bring T. Culpepper to you.
+And because I will make very certain that this man shall not touch the
+person of the King, I will have this gentleman to stay with you in the
+room where you be, to follow with you T. Culpepper into the Lady
+Katharine's room. He shall run with you betwixt T. Culpepper and the
+King; but if T. Culpepper be minded to fall upon the Lady Katharine,
+ye shall not either of you stay him. It were best if he might stab her
+dead. Doubtless he shall.'
+
+'Before God!' Lascelles cried out, 'would I were a king to have so
+masterful and devising a minister as Privy Seal!'
+
+'Get you gone,' Privy Seal said to Viridus. 'I ha' no need to tell you
+that if ye do faithfully and to a good issue carry out this play, you
+shall be greatly rewarded so that few shall hold their heads higher
+than you in the land. Ye know how I befriend my friends. But know too
+this: that if this scheme miscarry, either of your fault or another's,
+either through inattention or ill chance, either through treason or
+dullness of the brain of man, down to the least pin of it, ye shall
+not this night sleep in your bed, nor ever more shall you be seen in
+daylight above the earth.' He pointed suddenly from the window to the
+low sun. 'Have a care that ye so act as ye shall see that disc again!'
+
+Viridus spoke no word, but having waited a minute to hear if Privy
+Seal had more to enjoin, noiselessly and with his hands folded before
+him as they had been when he came, moved away over the shining floor.
+He went to tell the old, shivering Chancellor of the Augmentations
+that he must absent himself upon their common master's errands. 'I
+misdoubt some heads will fall to-night,' he added as he went; 'our
+lord's nose for treasons is sharpened again.' And that creature of
+Privy Seal's shook beneath the furs that he wore, though it was
+already April; for the Chancellor had his private reasons to dread
+Privy Seal's outbursts of suspicion.
+
+In the gallery, Privy Seal still spoke earnestly with Lascelles.
+
+'I give this part of honour and privilege to thee,' he said; 'for
+though I was well prepared in all things, I trow I may trust thee
+better than another person.'
+
+Lascelles was to watch for Culpepper, to hasten to Viridus, to attend
+upon the pair of them as the pilot-fish attendeth upon the ghostly and
+silent shark, not to leave them till the work was accomplished, or,
+upon the least sign of treason in Viridus or another, to come
+hastening as never man hastened, to Privy Seal.
+
+'For,' Cromwell ended, 'ye have felt like me how, if this realm is to
+be saved, saved it shall be by this thing alone.'
+
+Lascelles, who had had no opening to speak, opened now his lips. Great
+ferreter as he was, he had discovered former servants of the Duchess
+of Norfolk, that were ready, for consideration of threats, to swear
+that they had seen the Lady Katharine when a child in her
+grandmother's house to be over familiar with one Francis Dearham. He
+himself had these witnesses earmarked and attainable, and he was upon
+the point of offering them to Privy Seal. But he recollected that
+Privy Seal had witnesses enow of his own. To-morrow was also a day;
+and the King, if he would not now listen to tales against Kat Howard,
+might be brought to give ear to those and others added in a year's
+time, or when he began to tire of his woman as all men tire of women.
+Therefore he once more closed his lips. And Cromwell spoke as if his
+thoughts of a truth jumped together with Lascelles'.
+
+'Sir,' he said, 'I would willingly bribe you from the service of his
+Grace of Canterbury to come into mine. But it may be that I shall not
+long outlive these days. Therefore I enjoin upon you these things:
+Serve well your master; guide him, for he needeth guidance, subtly as
+to-day ye would have guided him. I will not take you from him for this
+cause, that there is little need in one house of two that think alike.
+One sufficeth. For two houses with like minds are stronger than one
+that is bicephalous. Therefore serve you well Cranmer as in my day I
+served well the great Cardinal; so at his death, even as I at
+Wolsey's, ye may rise very high.'
+
+He went swiftly into his little cabinet, and returning, had in his
+hand a little book.
+
+'Read well in this,' he said, 'where much I have read. You shall see
+in it mine own annotations. This is "_Il Principe_" of Macchiavelli;
+there is none other book like it in the world. Study of it well: read
+it upon your walks. I am a simple man, yet hath it made me.'
+
+Shadows were falling into the gallery, for the descending sun had come
+behind the dark, tall elms beyond the river.
+
+'Upon my faith,' Cromwell said, 'and as I hope to enter into Paradise
+by the aid of Christ the King that commended faithful servants, I tell
+you I had great joy when you told me this woman's cousin had come into
+these parts. But greater joy than any were mine could I discern in
+this land a disciple that could carry on my work. As yet I have seen
+none; yet ponder well upon this book. God may work in thee, as in me,
+great changes by its study.... Get you gone.'
+
+He continued long to pace the gallery, his hands behind his back, his
+cap pulled over his narrow eyes; it grew dusk so that his figure could
+scarce be seen where it was at the further end. He looked from the
+casement up into the moon, small and tenuous in the pale western
+skies. He had been going over in his mind the details of how he had
+commanded Culpepper to be brought before the King. And at the last
+when he considered again that Culpepper might well strike his cousin
+dead at his feet, and that then she would have no tongue to stand
+against calumnies withal, he uttered the words:
+
+'I think I hold them.'
+
+And, pondering upon the wonderful destiny that had brought him up from
+a trooper in Italy to these high places, he saluted the moon with his
+crooked forefinger--for the moon was the president at his birth.
+
+'Why,' he uttered aloud, 'I have survived four queens' days.'
+
+For Katharine of Aragon he had seen die; and Anne Boleyn had died on
+the scaffold; and Jane Seymour was dead in childbed; and now, with the
+news from Cleves, Anne's reign was over and done with.
+
+'Four queens,' he repeated.
+
+And, turning swiftly to the door, he commanded that Throckmorton be
+sent him at once when he came to the archway.
+
+
+
+
+PART THREE
+
+THE SUNBURST
+
+I
+
+
+In the great place of Smithfield, towards noon, Thomas Culpepper sat
+his horse on the outskirts of the crowd. By his side Hogben, the
+gatewarden, had much ado to hold his pikestaff across his horse's
+crupper in the thick of the people.
+
+The pavement of heads filled the place--bare some of them, some of
+them covered, according as their owners had cast their caps on high
+for joy at the Bishop of Worcester's words against the Papist that was
+to be burned, or as they pressed their thumbs harder down in disfavour
+and waited to shew their joy at the hanging of the three Protestants
+that should follow. In the centre towered on high a great gallows from
+which depended a chain; and at the end of the chain, half-hidden by
+the people, but shewing his shoulders and his head, a man in a friar's
+cowl. And, towering as high as the gallows, painted green as to its
+coat and limbs, but gilt in the helmet and brandishing a great spear,
+was the image called David Darvel Gatheren that the Papist Welsh
+adored. This image had been brought there that, in its burning, it
+might consume the friar Forest. It gazed, red-cheeked and wooden,
+across the sunlight space at the pulpit of the Bishop of Worcester in
+his white cassock and black hat, waving his white arms and exhorting
+the man in the gallows to repent at the last moment. Some words of
+Latimer might now and again be heard; the chained friar stood upon the
+rungs of a ladder set against the gallows post; he hung down his head
+and shook it, but no word could be heard to come from his lips.
+
+'Damnable heretic and foul traitor!' Latimer's urgings came across the
+sea of heads. 'Here sitteth his Majesty's council----' At these words
+went up a little buzz of question, but sufficient from all that great
+crowd to send as it were a wind that blew away the Bishop's words. For
+the style 'his Majesty' was so new to the land that people were
+questioning what new council this might be, or what lord's whose style
+they did not know. Latimer waved his arm behind him, half turning, to
+indicate the King's men. These ministers, bravely bonneted so that the
+jewels sparkled, habited in brown so that the red cloth covering their
+tiers of seats shewed between their arms and shoulders, sat, like a
+gay bank of flowers above the lake of heads, surrounded by many other
+lords and ladies in shining colours. They sat there ready to sign the
+pardon that was prepared if the friar would be moved by fear or by the
+Bishop's argument to hang his head and recant.
+
+The friar, truly, hung his head, clung to the rungs of the ladder,
+trembled so that all men might see, and once caught furiously at the
+iron chain and shook it; but no word came from his lips. Culpepper was
+bursting with pride and satisfaction because he was a made man and
+would have all the world to know it. He swung his green bonnet round
+his red head and called for huzzays when the friar shewed fear. Hogben
+called for huzzays for Squahre Tom of Lincoln, and many men cheered.
+But the silence dropped again, and the Bishop's words, raised now very
+high, dominated the sunlight and eddied around the tall faces of the
+house fronts behind.
+
+'Here have sat the nobles of the realm and the King's Majesty's most
+honourable council only to have granted pardon to you, wretched
+creature, if but some spark of repentance would have happened in ye.'
+Hanging his cowled poll beneath the beam that reached gigantic and
+black across the crowd, the friar shook his head slowly. 'Declared to
+you your errors I have,' cried Latimer. 'Openly and manifestly by the
+scriptures of God, with many and godly exhortations have I moved you
+to repentance. Yet will you neither hear nor speak----'
+
+'Bones of St. Nairn!' Culpepper cried; 'here is too much speaking and
+no work. Huzzay! e caitiffs. Burn. Burn. Burn. For the honour of
+England.' And, starting from his figure at the verge of the crowd,
+cries went up of 'Huzzay!' of 'Burn!' and 'St George for London!' and
+unquiet rumours and struggles and waving in the crowd of heads, so
+that the Bishop's voice was not heard any more that day.
+
+But through the crowd a silence fell as the image slowly and
+totteringly moved forward, ankle deep only in the crowd. Ropes from
+the figure's neck ran out and tightened--some among the crowd began to
+sing the song against Welsh Papists that ran--
+
+    _'David Darvel Gatheren_
+    _As sayeth the Welshmen_
+    _Fetched outlaws out of hell!_'
+
+and the burden of it rose so loud that the image swayed over and fell
+unheard. At that too a silence fell, and presently there came the
+sound of axes chopping. The friar, swaying on his ladder, looked down
+and then made a great sign of the cross. The Bishop in his pulpit,
+raising his white arms in horror and imprecation, seemed to be giving
+the signal for new uproars.
+
+Whilst he shouted with delight, Culpepper felt a man catch at his leg.
+He kicked his foot loose, but his hand on the bridle was clutched.
+There was a fair man at his horse's shoulder that bore Privy Seal's
+lion badge upon his chest. His face was upturned, and in the clamour
+he spoke indistinguishable words. Culpepper struck towards the mouth
+with his fist; the man shrank back, but stood, nevertheless, close
+still in the crowd. When the silence fell again, Culpepper could hear
+amongst the swift chopping of the axes the words--
+
+'I rede ye ride swiftly to Hampton. I am the Lord Cromwell's man.'
+
+Culpepper brought his excited mind from the thought of the burning and
+the joy of the day, with its crowd and its odour of men, and sunshine
+and tumult.
+
+'Ye say? Swine,' he shouted. 'Come aside!' He caught at the man's
+collar and kicked his horse and pulled at its jaws till it drew them
+out of the thin crowd to a street's opening.
+
+'Sir,' the man said--he had a goodly cloth suit of dark green that
+spoke to his being of weight in some house-hold--'ye are like to lose
+your farms at Bromley an ye hasten not to Master Viridus, who holdeth
+the deedings to you.'
+
+Culpepper uttered an inarticulate roar and smote his patient horse on
+the side of the head for two minutes of fierce blows, digging with his
+heels into the girthings.
+
+'Sir,' the man said again, 'some lord will have these lands an ye come
+not to Hampton ere six of the clock. I know not the way of it that be
+a servant. But Master Viridus sent me with this message.'
+
+Already a thin swirl of blue smoke was ascending past the friar's
+figure to the bright sky; it caressed the beam of the gallows and
+Culpepper's bloodshot eye pursued it upwards.
+
+'Before God!' he muttered, 'I was set to see this burning. Ye have
+seen many; I never a one.' A new spasm of rage caught him: he dragged
+at his horse's head, and shouting, 'Gallop! gallop!' set off into the
+dark streets, his crony behind his back.
+
+In the Poultry he knocked over a man in a red coat that had a gold
+chain about his neck; on the Chepe he jumped his horse across a
+pigman's booth--it brought down Hogben, horse and pike; three drunken
+men were fighting in Paternoster Street--Culpepper charged above their
+bodies; but very shortly he came through Temple Bar and was in the
+marshes and fields. Well out between the hedgerows he was aware that
+one galloped behind him. He drew a violent rein where the Cow Brook
+crossed the deep muddied road and looked back.
+
+'Sir,' he called, 'this night I will hold a mouse on a chain above a
+coal fire. So I will see a burning, and my cousin Kat shall see it
+with me.' He spurred on again.
+
+By the time he was come to Brentford four men, habited like the first,
+rode behind him. When he stayed to let his horse drink from the river
+opposite Richmond Hill, he was aware that across the stream a pageant
+with sweet music marched a little beyond the further bank. He could
+see the tops of pikes and pennons amid the tree trunks.
+
+He muttered that such a pageant he would very soon make for himself;
+for, filled with the elation of his new magnificence, since Privy Seal
+was his friend and Viridus was earnest to do him favour, he imagined
+that no captain nor lord in that land soon should overpass him. For
+that any lord should desire his new lands troubled him little; only he
+hastened to cut that lord's throat and to kiss his cousin Kat.
+
+It was a quarter before six when he drew rein in the green yard that
+lay before the King's arch in Hampton. There befel the strangest
+scuffle there; flaring for a moment and gone out like the gunpowder
+they sometimes lit in saucers for sport. A man called Lascelles came
+slowly from under the arch to meet him, and then, running over the
+green grass from the little side door, came the young Poins in red
+breeches, pulling off a red coat that he had had but half the time to
+don and tugging at his sword whose hilt was caught in the sleeve hole.
+Even as he issued, Lascelles, walking slowly, began to run and to
+call. Four other men of Privy Seal's ran from under the arch, and the
+four men that had followed behind him so far, closed their horses
+round his. The boy had his sword out and his coat gave as he ran.
+Lascelles closed near him on the grass, stretched out a foot to trip,
+and the boy lay sprawling, his hands stretched out, his sword three
+yards before him. The four men that had run from the arch had him up
+upon his feet and held his arms when Culpepper had ridden the hundred
+yards from the gate to them.
+
+'Why,' said Culpepper, gazing upon the boy's face, 'it was thee
+wouldst have my farms.' He spat in the boy's face and rode
+complacently under the archway where were many men of Privy Seal's in
+the side chambers and on the steps that ran steeply to the King's new
+hall.
+
+'I do conceive now,' Culpepper, in descending from his horse, spoke to
+Lascelles, 'wherefore that knave would have had me stay in Calais and
+be warder of barges. 'A would have my lands here.'
+
+Word was given him that he must without delay go to the Sieur Viridus,
+and in a high good humour he followed the lead of Lascelles through
+the rabbit warren of small and new passages of the palace. In them it
+was already nearly dark.
+
+It was in that way that, landing at the barge stage, a little stiff
+with the cold of his barge journey, Throckmorton came upon the young
+Poins in his scarlet breeches, his face cut and bleeding in his
+contact with the earth, his sword gone. Privy Seal's men that had
+fallen upon him had kicked him out of the palace gates. They had no
+warrant yet to take him; the quarrel was none of theirs. The boy was
+of the King's Guard, it was true, but his company lay then at the
+Tower.
+
+Throckmorton cursed at him when he heard his news; and when he heard
+that Culpepper was then in the palace where window lights already
+shone before him, he ran to the archway. He had no time for reflection
+save as he ran. Word was given him in the archway itself that Privy
+Seal would see him instantly and with great haste and urgency. He
+asked only for news where Thomas Culpepper was, and ran, upon the
+disastrous hearing that Viridus had taken him up the privy stairway.
+And, in that darkness, thoughts ran in his head. Disaster was here.
+But what? Privy Seal called for him. He had no time for Privy Seal.
+Culpepper was gone to Kat Howard's room. Viridus there had taken him.
+There was no other room up the winding staircase to which he could
+go. Here was disaster! For whether he stayed Culpepper or no, Privy
+Seal must know that he had betrayed him. As he ran swiftly the
+desperate alternative coursed in his mind. Rich, the Chancellor of the
+Augmentations, and he had their tale pat, that Privy Seal was secretly
+raising the realm against the King. He himself had got good matter
+that morning listening to the treasonable talking of the printer
+Badge.
+
+Several men in the stair angle would have stopped him when at last he
+was at foot of the winding stairs. He whispered:
+
+'I be Throckmorton upon my master's business,' and was through and in
+the darkness of the stairway.
+
+Why was there no cresset? Why were there these men? It came into his
+mind that already the King had heard Culpepper. Already Katharine was
+arrested. He groaned as he mounted the stairs. For in that case, with
+those men behind him, he was in a gaol already. He paused to go back;
+then it came to him that, if he could win forward and find the King,
+who alone, by giving ear, could save him, he would yet not know first
+how Katharine had fared. He had a great stabbing at his heart with
+that thought, and once more mounted.
+
+From the door next hers there streamed a light. Hers was closed. He
+ran to it and knocked, leaning his head against the panels to listen.
+There was no sound, no sound at all when he knocked again. It was
+intolerable. He thrust the door open. No woman was there and no man.
+He went in. He thought: 'If the room be in disorder----'
+
+He made out in the twilight that the room stood as always; the chair
+loomed where it should; there was a spark on the hearth; the books
+were ordered on the table; no stool was overturned. He stood amid
+these things, his heart beating tumultuously, his ears pricked up,
+stilling his breathing to listen, in the blue twilight, like a wild
+beast.
+
+A voice said:
+
+'Body o' God! Throckmorton!' beneath its breath, the light of the next
+door grew large and smaller again; he caught from there the words:
+'It is Throckmorton.' And at the sound Throckmorton loosened his
+dagger in its sheath. Some glimmering of the plan reached him; they
+were awaiting Katharine's coming, and a great load fell from his mind.
+She was not yet taken.
+
+He paused to stroke his beard for fear it was disordered, pulled from
+over his shoulder the medallion on the chain; it had flown there as he
+ran. He pushed ajar the next door a minute later, having thought many
+thoughts and appearing stately and calm.
+
+He replaced the door at its exact angle and gazed at the three silent
+men. Thomas Culpepper, his brows knotted, his lips moving, was holding
+his head askew to see the measurements upon a map of his farm at
+Bromley. That Lascelles had gone out and come back saying that one
+Throckmorton was in the next room was nothing to him. The next room
+was nothing to him; he was there to hear of his farms.
+
+Viridus, silent, dark and enigmatic, gazed at a spot upon the table;
+Lascelles, his mouth a little open, his eyes dilated, had his hands
+upon it.
+
+Without speaking, Throckmorton noted that the room was empty save for
+the table and benches; the hangings had been taken down; all the
+furnishings were gone. That morning the room had been well filled,
+warm, and in the occupancy of the Lady Deedes. Therefore Cromwell had
+worked this change. No other had this power. They waited, then, those
+three, for the coming of Katharine Howard or the King. Lascelles
+shewed fear and surprise at his being there; therefore Lascelles was
+deeply concerned in this matter. Lascelles was in the service of
+Cranmer that morning; now he sat there. Thus he, too, for certain, was
+in this plan; he was a new servant to Privy Seal--and new servants are
+zealous. With Viridus he had had some talk of events. Therefore
+Lascelles was the greatest danger.
+
+Throckmorton moved slowly behind Culpepper and sat down beside him; in
+his left hand he had his small dagger, its blue blade protruding from
+the ham; Culpepper beside him was at his right. He said very softly in
+Italian to Lascelles:
+
+'Both your hands are upon the table; if you move one my dagger pierces
+your eye to the brain. So also if you speak in the English language.'
+
+Lascelles muttered: 'Judas! _Traditore!_' Viridus sat motionless, and
+Culpepper moved his finger across the plan of the farm.
+
+'Here is the mixen,' he appealed to Viridus, who nodded.
+
+It was as if Throckmorton, with his slow manner and low voice, was a
+friend who had come in to speak to Lascelles about the weather or the
+burnings. He was no concern of Culpepper's, nor was Lascelles who had
+spoken no word at all.
+
+Throckmorton kept his head turned towards Lascelles as if he were
+still addressing him, and spoke in the same level voice, still in
+Italian.
+
+'Viridus, to thee I speak. This is a very great matter.' Unconsciously
+he used the set form of words of Privy Seal. 'Consider well these
+things. The day of our master is nigh at an end. Rich, Chancellor of
+the Augmentations, thy crony and master, and my ally, hath made a plan
+to go with me to the King this night with witnesses and papers
+accusing Privy Seal of raising the land against his Highness. Will you
+join with us, or will you be lost with Privy Seal?'
+
+Viridus kept his eyes upon the same spot of the table.
+
+'Tell me more,' he said. 'This matter is very weighty.' His tone was
+level, monotonous and still. He too might have been saying that the
+sunshine that day had been long.
+
+'A fad to talk Latin of ye courtiers,' Culpepper said with
+uninterested scorn. 'Ye will forget God's language of English.' He
+slapped Throckmorton on the sleeve. 'See, what a fine farm I have for
+my deserts,' he said.
+
+'Ye shall have better,' Throckmorton said. 'I have moved the King in
+your behalf.' But he kept his eyes on Lascelles.
+
+Culpepper cast back his cap from his eyes and leant away the better to
+slap Throckmorton on the back.
+
+'Ye ha' heard o' my deeds,' he said.
+
+'All England rings with them,' Throckmorton said. He interjected,
+'Still! hound!' to Lascelles in Italian, and went on to Culpepper: 'I
+ha' moved the King to come this night to thy cousin's room hard by for
+I knew ye would go to her. The King is hot to speak with thee. Comport
+thyself as I do bid thee and art a made man indeed.'
+
+Culpepper laughed with hysterical delight.
+
+'By Cock!' he shouted. 'Master Viridus, thou art naught to this. Three
+farms shall not content me nor yet ten.'
+
+Throckmorton's eyes shot a glance at Viridus and back again to
+Lascelles' face.
+
+'If you speak I slay you,' he said. Lascelles' eyes started from his
+head, his mouth worked, and on the table his hands jerked
+convulsively. But Throckmorton had seen that Viridus still sat
+motionless.
+
+'By Cock!' Culpepper cried. 'By Guy and Cock! let me kiss thee.'
+
+'Sir,' Throckmorton said, 'I pray you speak no more words, not at all
+till I bid you speak. I am a very great lord here; you shall observe
+gravity and decorum or never will I bring you to the King. You are not
+made for Courts.'
+
+'Oh, I kiss your hands,' Culpepper answered him. 'But wherefore have
+you a dagger?'
+
+'Sir,' Throckmorton said again, 'I will have you silent, for if the
+King should pass the door he will be offended by your babble.' He
+interjected to Viridus, speaking in Italian, 'Speak thou to this fool
+and engage him to think. I can give you no more grounds, but you must
+quickly decide either to go with Rich the Chancellor and myself or to
+remain the liege of the Privy Seal.'
+
+Never once did he take his eyes from Lascelles, and the sweat stood
+upon his forehead. Once when Lascelles moved he slid the dagger along
+the table with a sharp motion and a gasping of breath, as a pincer
+pressed to the death will make a faint. Yet his voice neither raised
+itself nor fell one shade.
+
+'And if I will aid you in this, what reward do I get?' Viridus asked.
+He too spoke low and unmovedly, keeping his eyes upon the table.
+
+'The one-half of my enrichments for five years, the one-half of those
+of the Chancellor, and my voice for you with the King and with the new
+Queen.'
+
+'And if I will not go with you?'
+
+'Then when the King passeth this door I do cry out "Treason! treason!"
+and you, I, and this man, and this shall to-night sleep in the King's
+prison, not in Privy Seal's. And I will have you think that I am sib
+and rib with Kat Howard who shall sway the King if her cousin be
+induced not to play the beast.'
+
+Viridus spoke no word; but when Culpepper, idle and gaping, reached
+out his hand to take the black flagon of wine that was between them
+under the candles on the table, Viridus stretched forth his hand and
+clasped the bottle.
+
+'It is not expedient that you drink,' he said.
+
+'Why somever then?' Culpepper asked.
+
+'That neither do you make a beast of yourself if you come before the
+King's great majesty this night,' Viridus said in his cold and
+minatory voice, 'not yet smell beastly of liquors when you kiss the
+King his hand.'
+
+Culpepper said:
+
+'By Cock! I had forgot the King's highness.'
+
+'See that you kneel before him and speak not; see that you raise your
+eyes not from the floor nor breathe loudly; see that when the King's
+high and awful majesty dismisses you you go quietly.' Throckmorton
+spoke. 'See that you speak not with nor of your cousin. For so
+dreadful is a king, and this King more than others; and so terrible
+his wrath and desire of worship--and this King's more than
+others--that if ye speak above a whisper's sound, if ye act other than
+as a babe before its preceptor's rod, you are cast out utterly and
+undone. You shall never more have farms nor lands; you shall never
+more have joyance nor gladness; you shall rot forgotten in a hole as
+you had never done brave things for the King's grace.'
+
+'By Cock!' Culpepper said, 'it seems it is easier to talk of a king
+than with one.'
+
+'See that you remember it,' Throckmorton said, 'for with great trouble
+have I brought this King so far to talk with you!'
+
+He moved his dagger yet nearer to Lascelles' form and held his finger
+to his lip. Viridus had never once moved; he stayed now as still as
+ever. Culpepper crammed his hand over his lips.
+
+For from without there came the sound of voices and, in that dead
+silence, the rustle of a woman's gown, swishing and soft. A deep voice
+uttered heavily:
+
+'Aye, I know your feelings. I have had my sadness.' It paused for a
+moment, and mouthed on: 'I can cap your Lucretius too with "_Usque
+adeo res humanas vis abdita----_"' It seemed that for a moment the
+speaker stayed before the door where all three held their breaths. 'I
+have read more of the Fathers, of late days, than of the writers
+profane.'
+
+They heard the breathing of a heavy man who had mounted stairs. The
+voice sounded more faintly:
+
+'Now you have naught further to think of than the goodly words of
+Ecclesiastes: "_Et cognovi quod non esset melius, nisi laetare
+et...._"' The voice died dead away with the closing of the door. And
+as a torch passed, Throckmorton knew that the King had waited there
+whilst light was being made in Katharine's room. He said softly to
+Viridus:
+
+'Whilst I go unto them you shall hold this dagger against this fool's
+throat. We gain as many hours as we may hold him from blabbing to
+Privy Seal. And consider that we must bring to the King Rich and Udal
+and many other witnesses this night.'
+
+'Throckmorton,' Viridus said, 'before thou goest thou shalt satisfy me
+of many things. I have not yet given myself into thy hands.'
+
+
+II
+
+
+A weary sadness had beset Katharine Howard ever since she had knelt
+before Anne of Cleves at Richmond, and it was of this the King had
+spoken outside the door whilst they had waited for light to be made.
+
+All Anne's protesting that willingly she rendered up a distasteful
+crown could not make Katharine hugely glad with the manner of her own
+taking it. And, when a messenger, dressed as a yeoman in green, had
+come into the bright gallery to beg the Queen and that fair lady the
+Lady Katharine Howard to come a-riding side by side and witness the
+sports that certain poor yeomen made in the woods upon Thames-side,
+she felt a sinking in her heart that no Rhenish of the Queen's could
+relieve. She desired to be alone and to pray--or to be alone with
+Henry and speak out her heart and devise how they might atone to the
+Queen. But she must ride at the Queen's right hand with the Duke of
+Suffolk at her left. It was so between their captives that the Caesars
+had ridden into Rome after the taking of barbaric kings. But she had
+waged no war.
+
+She did not, in her heart, call shame upon the King; she knew him to
+be a heavy man with bitter sorrows who must in these violentnesses and
+brave shows find refuge and surcease; it was her province to endure
+and to find excuse for him. But to herself she quoted that phrase of
+Lucretius that the King again repeated: there was a hidden destiny
+that tamed the shows of the great; and she was the mutest of that
+throng that upon white horses, all with little flags flying and horns
+blowing, cantered to see the yeomen shoot. For the ladies and knights,
+avid of these things, loved above all good bowmanry and wagered with
+out-stretched hands for the marksmen that most they deemed to have
+skill or that usually seemed to enjoy the fortunate favours of chance
+and the winds.
+
+But, being alone with the King--(for when the Queen rode back to
+Richmond the notable bowman in green walked, holding Katharine's
+stirrup, back to Hampton at her saddle-bow)--she could not stay
+herself from venting her griefs.
+
+'_Et cognovi quod non esset melius nisi laetari et facere bene in vita
+sua_'--Henry finished his quotation when they were within her room. He
+sat himself down in her chair and stretched his legs apart; being
+tired with his long walk at her saddle bow, the more boisterous part
+of his great pleasure had left him. He was no more minded to slap his
+thigh, but he felt, as it was his favourite image of blessedness to
+desire, like a husbandman who sat beneath his vine and knew his
+harvesting prosper.
+
+'Body of God!' he said, 'this is the best day of my life. There doth
+no cloud remain. Here is the sunburst. For Cleves hath cut himself
+adrift; I need have no more truck with Anne; you have no more cause
+nor power to bend yourself from me; to-morrow the Parliament meets,
+such a Parliament to do my will as never before met in a Republic;
+therefore I have no more need of Cromwell.' He snapped his thumb and
+finger as if he were throwing away a pinch of dust, and when she fell
+to her knees before his chair, placed his hand upon her head and,
+smiling, huge and indulgent, spoke on.
+
+'This is such a day as seldom I have known since I was a child.' He
+leaned forward to stroke her dusky and golden hair and laid his hand
+upon her shoulder, his fingers touching her flushed cheek.
+
+'On other days I have said with Horace, who is more to my taste than
+your Lucretius: "_That man is great and happy who at day's end may
+say: To-day I have lived, what of storms or black clouds on the morrow
+betide._"'...
+
+He crossed his great legs encased in green, set his heavy head to one
+side and, though he could see she was minded to pray to him,
+continued to speak like a man uttering of his memories.
+
+'Such days as that of Horace I have known. But never yet such a day as
+to-day, which, good in itself, leadeth on to goodness and fair
+prospects for a certain morrow.' He smiled again. 'Why, I am no more
+an old man as I had thought to be. I have walked that far path beside
+thy horse.' It pleased him for two things: because he had walked with
+little fatigue and because he had been enabled to show her great and
+prodigal honour by so serving her for groom. 'This too I set to thy
+account as my good omen. And that thou art. No woman shall have such
+honours as thou in this land, save only the Mother of God.' And, after
+touching his green and jewelled bonnet, he cast it from his head on to
+the table.
+
+'Sir,' she cried out, and clasping her hands uttered her words in
+anguish and haste. 'Great kings and lords upon their affiancing day
+have ever had the habit of granting their brides a boon or twain--as
+the conferring of the revenues of a province, or the pardoning of
+criminals.'
+
+'Why, an thou come not to me to pardon Privy Seal----' he began.
+
+'Sir,' she cut in on his words, 'I crave no pardon for Privy Seal; but
+let me speak my mind.'
+
+He said tenderly:
+
+'Art in the mood to talk! Talk on! for I know no way to hinder thee.'
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'I ask thee no pardon for Privy Seal, neither his
+goods ne his life. I maintain this man hath well served thee and is no
+traitor; but since that he hath ground the faces of the poor, hath
+made thee to be hated by bringing of false witness, hath made the
+thirsty earth shrink from drinking of blood, hath cast down the
+Church--since that this man in this way hath brought peril upon the
+republic and upon the souls of poor and witless folk, this man hath
+wrought worse treasons than any that I wot of. If ye will adjudge him
+to die, I am no fool to say: No!'
+
+Henry wrinkled his brows and said:
+
+'Grinding the faces of the poor is in law no treason. Yet I may not
+slay him save upon the occasion of treason. I would a man would come
+to me that could prove him traitor.'
+
+Kneeling before the King she grasped each of his knees with one of her
+hands.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'this is your occasion, none of mine. I would ye
+would reconcile it to your conscience so to act to him as I would have
+you, for his injustice to the poor and for his cogged oaths. But yet
+grant me this: to cog oaths for the downfall of Privy Seal upon the
+occasion of treason ye must have many other innocents implicated with
+him; such men as have had no idea, no suspicion, no breath of treason
+in their hearts. Grant me their lives. Sir, let me tell you a tale
+that I read in Seneca.' She moved her body nearer to him upon the
+floor, set her hands upon his two arms and gazed, beseeching and
+piteous, up into his face.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'you may read it in Seneca for yourself that upon the
+occasion of Cinna's treachery being made known to the Emperor
+Augustus, the Emperor lay at night debating this matter in his mind.
+For on the one side, says he in words like this: "_Shall I pardon this
+man after that he hath assailed my life, my life that I have preserved
+in so many battles by sea and by land, after I have stablished one
+single peace throughout the globe into all the corners thereof? Shall
+he go free who has considered with himself not only to slay me but to
+slay me when I offered sacrifice, ere its consummation, so that I may
+be damned as well as slain? Shall I pardon this man?_" And, upon the
+other side, the Emperor Augustus, lying in the black of the night,
+being a prince, even as thou art, prone to leniency, said such words
+as these: "_Why dost thou, Augustus, live, if it is of import to so
+many people that thou diest? Shall there never be an end to thy
+vengeance and thy punishments? Is thy single life of such worth that
+so much ruin shall for ever be wrought to preserve it?_"'
+
+'Why, I have had these thoughts,' Henry said. 'Speak on. What did this
+Emperor that thought like me?'
+
+'Sir,' Katharine continued, and now she had her hands upon his
+shoulders, 'the Empress Livia his wife lay beside him and was aware of
+these his night sweats and his anguishes. "_And the counsels of a
+woman; shall these be listened to?_" she spoke to him. "_Do thou in
+this what the Physicians follow when their accustomed recipes are of
+no avail to cure. They do try the contrary drugs. By severity thou
+hast never, sire, profited from the beginning to this very hour that
+is; Lepidus has followed to death Savidienus; Murena, Lepidus; Caepio
+followed Murena; Eynatius, Caepio. Commence to essay at this pass how
+clemency shall act in cure. Cinna is convicted: pardon him. Further to
+harm thee he hath no power, and it shall for ever redound to thy
+glory._"'
+
+She leaned upon him with all her weight, having her arms about his
+neck.
+
+'Sir,' she said, 'the Emperor Augustus listened to his wife, and the
+days that followed are styled the Golden Age of Rome, he and the
+Empress having great glory.'
+
+Henry scratched his head, holding his beard back from her face that
+lay upon his chest; she drew herself from him and once more laid her
+hands upon his knees. Her fair face was piteous and afraid; her lips
+trembled.
+
+'Dear lord,' she began tremulously, 'I live in this world, and, great
+pity 'tis! I cannot but have seen how many have died by the block and
+faggots. Yet is there no end to this. Even to-day they have burnt upon
+the one part and the other. I do know thy occasions, thy trials, thy
+troubles. But think, sir, upon the Empress Livia. Cromwell being dead,
+find then a Cinna to pardon. Thou hast with thy great and princely
+endeavourings given a Roman peace to the world. Let now a Golden Age
+begin in this dear land.'
+
+She rose to her feet and stretched out both her hands.
+
+'These be the glories that I crave,' she said. 'I would have the glory
+of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy
+Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good
+counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But
+if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I
+beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for
+my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me
+as of such a noble woman of Rome.'
+
+Henry leaned forward and stroked first one knee and then the other.
+
+'Why, I will pardon some,' he said. 'It had not need of so many words
+of thine. I am sick of slaughterings when you speak.' A haughty and
+challenging frown came into his face; his brows wrinkled furiously; he
+gazed at the opening door that moved half imperceptibly, slowly, in
+the half light, after the accustomed manner, so that one within might
+have time to cry out if a visitor was not welcome. For, for the most
+part, in those days, ladies set bolts across their doors.
+
+Throckmorton stood there, blinking his eyes in the candle-light, and,
+slowly, he fell upon his knees.
+
+'Majesty,' he said, 'I knew not.'
+
+The King maintained a forbidding silence, his green bulk inert and
+dangerous.
+
+'This lady's cousin,' Throckmorton pronounced his words slowly, 'is
+new come from France whence he hath driven out from Paris town the
+Cardinal Pole.'
+
+The King lifted one hand from his thigh, and, heavily, let it fall
+again.
+
+Throckmorton felt his way still further.
+
+'This lady's cousin would speak with this lady in cousin-ship. He was
+set in my care by my lord Privy Seal. I have brought him thus far in
+safety. For some have made attacks upon him with swords.'
+
+Katharine's hand went to her throat where she stood, tall and half
+turning from the King to Throckmorton. The word 'Wherefore?' came from
+her lips.
+
+'Wherefore, I know not,' Throckmorton answered her steadily. His eyes
+shifted for a moment from the King and rested upon her face. 'But this
+I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.'
+
+'Belike,' the King said, 'these swordsmen were friends of Pole.'
+
+'Belike,' Throckmorton answered.
+
+He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.
+
+'For his sake,' he said, 'it were well if your Grace, having rewarded
+him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to
+Edinbro' in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and
+observe.'
+
+'Belike,' the King said. 'Get you gone.' But Throckmorton stayed there
+on his knees and the King uttered: 'Anan?'
+
+'Majesty,' Throckmorton said, 'I would ye would see this man who is a
+poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you
+reward him and send him from hence ere worse befall him.'
+
+The King raised his brows.
+
+'Ye love this man well,' he said.
+
+'Here is too much beating about the bush,' burst from Katharine's
+lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little
+and pale in the half light of the two candles. 'This cousin of mine
+loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of
+mine shall cause disorders--for indeed he is of disordered intervals.
+Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.'
+
+'Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,' Henry said. 'Let us see
+this yokel.' He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting,
+for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he
+must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St Thomas' shrine.
+
+Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin
+came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass
+the sill, and looking never at her but at the King's shoes, he knelt
+him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the
+midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:
+
+'Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought me food and
+dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.'
+
+Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:
+
+'Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe
+silence in the awful presence of kings.'
+
+Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a
+minute's space.
+
+'Silence!' he said. 'Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this
+lady's tongue?' He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.
+
+'Ye have done well,' he said. 'Give me your sword. I will knight you.
+I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight's fee farm of a hundred
+pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye
+were about my nephew's courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro'.' He
+waved his hand to Throckmorton. 'See him disposed,' he said.
+
+Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in
+his seat and thundered:
+
+'Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I
+ha' heard ye ha' made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By God,
+I am Harry of Windsor!'
+
+He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green
+shoulders below him.
+
+'Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,' he said. 'Get you gone!'
+
+Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the
+door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.
+
+'Poor Tom,' she cried. 'Best it is for thee and me that thou goest.
+Here thou hast no place.' He shook his head like a man in a daze and
+was gone.
+
+'Art too patient with the springald,' the King said.
+
+He thundered 'Body of God!' again when he saw Throckmorton once more
+fall to his knees.
+
+'Sire,' he said--and for the first time he faltered in his level
+tones--'a very great treason has come to my ken this day!'
+
+'Holy altar fires!' the King growled, 'let your treasons wait. Here
+hath this lady been talking to me very reasonably of a golden age.'
+
+'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to
+support him. 'This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain
+Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have
+seen it in thy town of London.'
+
+Katharine cried out, 'Ah!'
+
+The King leapt to his feet.
+
+'Ho, I will arm,' he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his
+hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But,
+even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret
+rebellions.
+
+'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he
+challenged her:
+
+'This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will
+to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of
+the printer, John Badge----' and he repeated the speech of the
+saturnine man--'that "_he would raise a thousand prentices and a
+thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could
+raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the
+shires!_"'
+
+Katharine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to
+sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to assure her
+that these words were true.
+
+But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.
+
+'Let us arm my guard,' he said. 'I will play Nero to London town.'
+
+Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.
+
+'Majesty,' he said, 'I have this man in my keeping.' And indeed, at
+his passing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and
+bring him to Hampton. 'I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your
+warrant, and Privy Seal's I dare not ask.'
+
+The King stayed in his pacing.
+
+'Thou art a jewel of a man,' he said. 'By Cock, I would I had many
+like thee.' And at the news that the head of this confederacy was
+taken his sudden fear fell. 'I will see this man. Bring him to me.'
+
+'Sire,' Katharine said, 'we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!'
+
+'Madam,' Throckmorton dared to speak. 'This is the man that hath
+printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath
+uttered more lewdnesses of your chastity.'
+
+'The more I will have him pardoned,' Katharine said, 'that his
+Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.'
+
+Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify
+that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.
+
+'God send you never rue it,' he said. 'Majesty,' he continued to the
+King, 'give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about
+this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal's. For Privy Seal hath a
+mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me
+half-an-hour's space and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion
+to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and
+to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal
+is a false and damnable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I
+swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.'
+
+He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his
+other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the
+Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge
+when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that
+he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves.
+And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his
+armoury, to the Ambassador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne
+Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great
+houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the
+Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was minded to lay
+before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For,
+with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had
+gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned,
+she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for
+his ears were pricked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of
+the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the
+point of his dagger.
+
+The King said:
+
+'Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say
+that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee
+if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak
+of.'
+
+Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a
+moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against
+the door-post and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and passionate
+glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in
+silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him
+harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain
+that ever was in his life.
+
+And gazing back at him, Katharine's eyes were filled with pity, so
+sick he appeared to be.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Body of God!' the King said in the silence that fell upon them. 'Now
+I hold Cromwell.'
+
+Katharine cried out, 'Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!'
+
+He caught her masterfully in his arms.
+
+'This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,' he said.
+
+She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.
+
+'I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me
+go.'
+
+He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.
+
+'Listen to me,' she cried, 'listen to me! There have been broadsides
+printed against the truth of my body; there have been witnesses
+prepared against me. I will have you swear that you will read of these
+broadsides, and consider of these witnesses.'
+
+'Before God,' he said, 'I will hang the printers, and slay the
+witnesses with my fist. I know how these things be made.' He shook his
+fist. 'I love thee so that were they true, and wert thou the woman of
+Sodom, I would have thee to my Queen!'
+
+She cried out 'Ah!'
+
+'Child,' he calmed himself, 'I will keep my hands from thee. But I
+would fain have the kisses of thy mouth.'
+
+She went to lean upon her table, for her knees trembled.
+
+'Let me speak,' she said.
+
+'Why, none hinders,' he answered her kindly.
+
+'I swear I do love thee, so that thy voice is as the blows of hammers
+upon iron to me,' she said. 'I may have little rest, save when I speak
+with thee, for that sustaineth thy servant. But I fear these days and
+ways. This is a very crooked riddle. So much I desire thee that I am
+tremulous to take thee. If it be a madness call it a madness, but
+grant me this!'
+
+She looked at him distractedly, brushing her hands across her eyes.
+
+'It feels within my heart that I must do a penance,' she said. 'I have
+been wishful to feel upon my brow the pressure of the great crown.
+Therefore, grant me this: that I may not feel it. And be this the
+penance!'
+
+'Child,' he said, 'how may you be a Queen, and not crowned with pomp
+and state?'
+
+'Majesty,' she faltered, 'to prepare myself against that high office I
+have been reading in chronicles of the lives of them that have been
+Queens of England. It was his Grace of Canterbury that sent me these
+books for another purpose. But there ye shall read--in Asser and the
+Saxon Chronicles--how that the old Queens of Saxondom, when that they
+were humble or were wives coming after the first, sat not upon the
+throne to be crowned and sacred, but--so it was with Judith that was
+stepmother to King Alfred, and with some others whose names in this
+hurry I may not discover nor remember in my mind--they were, upon some
+holidays, shewn to the people as being the King's wife.'
+
+She hung her head.
+
+'For that I am humble in truth before the world and before my mother
+Mary in Heaven, and for that I am not thy first Queen, but even thy
+fifth; so I would be shewn and never crowned.'
+
+She leaned back against the table, supporting herself with her hands
+against its edges; her eyes piteously devoured his face.
+
+'Why, child,' he said, 'so thou wilt be that fifth Queen; whether thou
+wilt be a Queen crowned or a Queen shewn, what care I?'
+
+She no longer refused herself to his arms, for she had no more
+strength.
+
+'Mary be judge between me and them that speak against me,' she said,
+'I can no more hold out against my joy or longings.'
+
+'Sha't wear a hair shirt,' he said tenderly. 'Sha't go in sackcloth.
+Sha't have enow to do praying for me and thee. But hast no need of
+prayers.' He lulled her in his arms, swaying on his feet. 'Hast a
+great tongue. Speakest many words. But art a very child. God send thee
+all the joy I purpose thee. And, an thou hast sins, weight me further
+down in hell therewith.'
+
+The light of the candles threw their locked shadows along the wall and
+up the ceilings. Her head fell back, her eyes closed, so that she
+seemed to be dead and her listless hands were open in her skirts.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Privy Seal, by Ford Madox Ford
+
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