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.'