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.'