'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 behindthe 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 beatra curaor 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.
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 siftingsound, 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, ahumour, 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 andcommodity 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 inten 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 youdo? What will youdo?'
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 hisleman; 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 withboth. 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.'
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 grewmoody, 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 QueenAnne 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 bewaged. 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: πλεἱη μὲν γὰρ γᾶια, πλεἱη δέ θὰλασσα 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 PrivySeal, 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.'
'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 kneesso 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 amoving 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 haveprayed 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 atrick 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. 'Iwould 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 oncemore. '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 thatPrivy 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 ahail, a lightning, a bolt from heaven upon Lutherans that cross the King.'
The hard malice of his glance made Wriothesley quail and flush heavily.