I
'The Bishop of Rome----'
Thomas Cranmer began a hesitating speech. In the pause after the words
the King himself hesitated, as if he poised between a heavy rage and a
sardonic humour. He deemed, however, that the humour could the more
terrify the Archbishop--and, indeed, he was so much upon the joyous side
in those summer days that he had forgotten how to browbeat.
'Our holy father,' he corrected the Archbishop. 'Or I will say my holy
father, since thou art a heretic----'
Cranmer's eyes had always the expression of a man's who looked at
approaching calamity, but at the King's words his whole face, his closed
lips, his brows, the lines from his round nose, all drooped suddenly
downwards.
'Your Grace will have me write a letter to the--to his--to him----'
The downward lines fixed themselves, and from amongst them the
panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his
dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry
retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped at a weighty gibe--
'My Grace will have thy Grace write a letter to his Holiness.'
He dropped into a heavy impassivity, rolled his eyes, fluttered his
swollen fingers on the red and gilded table, and then said clearly, 'My.
Thy. His.'
When he was in that mood he spoke with a singular distinctness that came
up from his husky and ordinary joviality like something dire and
terrible--like that something that upon a clear smooth day will suggest
to you suddenly the cruelty that lies always hidden in the limpid sea.
'To Caesar--egomet, I mineself--that which is Caesar's: to him--that is to
say to his Holiness, our lord of Rome--the things which are of God! But
to thee, Archbishop, I know not what belongs.'
He paused and then struck his hand upon the table: 'Cold porridge is thy
portion! Cold porridge!' he laughed; 'for they say: Cold porridge to the
devil! And, since thou art neither God's nor the King's, what may I call
thee but the devil's self's man?'
A heavy and minatory silence seemed to descend upon him; the
Archbishop's thin hands opened suddenly as if he were letting something
fall to the ground. The King scowled heavily, but rather as if he were
remembering past heavinesses than for any present griefs.
'Why,' he said, 'I am growing an old man. It is time I redded up my
house.'
It was as if he thought he could take his time, for his heavily pursed
eyes looked down at the square tips of his fingers where they drummed on
the table. He was such a weighty man that the old chair in which he sat
creaked at the movement of his limbs. It was his affectation of courtesy
that he would not sit in the Archbishop's own new gilded and great chair
that had been brought from Lambeth on a mule's back along with the
hangings. But the other furnishings of that Castle of Pontefract were as
old as the days of Edward IV--even the scarlet wood of the table had
upon it the arms of Edward IV's Queen Elizabeth, side by side with that
King's. Henry noted it and said--
'It is time these arms were changed. See that you have here fairly
painted the arms of my Queen and me--Howard and Tudor--in token that we
have passed this way and sojourned in this Castle of Pontefract.'
He was dallying with time as if it were a luxury to dally: he looked
curiously round the room.
'Why, they have not housed you very well,' he said, and, as the
Archbishop shivered suddenly, he added, 'there should be glass in the
windows. This is a foul old kennel.'
'I have made a complaint to the Earl Marshal,' Cranmer said dismally,
'but 'a said there was overmuch room needed above ground.'
This room was indeed below ground and very old, strong, and damp. The
Archbishop's own hangings covered the walls, but the windows shot
upwards through the stones to the light; there was upon the ground of
stone not a carpet but only rushes; being early in the year, no
provision was made for firing, and the soot of the chimney back was
damp, and sparkled with the track of a snail that had lived there
undisturbed for many years, and neither increasing, because it had no
mate, nor dying, because it was well fed by the ferns that, behind the
present hangings, grew in the joints of the stones. In that low-ceiled
and dark place the Archbishop was aware that above his head were fair
and sunlit rooms, newly painted and hung, with the bosses on the
ceilings fresh silvered or gilt, all these fair places having been given
over to kinsmen of the yellow Earl Marshal from the Norfolk Queen
downwards. And the temporal and material neglect angered him and filled
him with a querulous bitterness that gnawed up even through his dread of
a future--still shadowy--fall and ruin.
The King looked sardonically at the line of the ceiling. He had known
that Norfolk, who was the Earl Marshal, had the mean mind to make him
set these indignities upon the Archbishop, and loftily he considered
this result as if the Archbishop were a cat mauled by his own dog whose
nature it was to maul cats.
The Archbishop had been standing with one hand on the arm of his heavy
chair, about to haul it back from the table to sit himself down. He had
been standing thus when the King had entered with the brusque words--
'Make you ready to write a letter to Rome.'
And he still stood there, the cold feet among the damp rushes, the cold
hand still upon the arm of the chair, the cap pulled forward over his
eyes, the long black gown hanging motionless to the boot tops that were
furred around the ankles.
'I have made a plaint to the Earl Marshal,' he said; 'it is not fitting
that a lord of the Church should be so housed.'
Henry eyed him sardonically.
'Sir,' he said, 'I am being brought round to think that ye are only a
false lord of the Church. And I am minded to think that ye are being
brought round to trow even the like to mine own self.'
His eyes rested, little and twinkling like a pig's, upon the opening of
the Archbishop's cloak above his breastbone, and the Archbishop's right
hand nervously sought that spot.
'I was always of the thought,' he said, 'that the prohibition of the
wearing of crucifixes was against your Highness' will and the teachings
of the Church.'
A great crucifix of silver, the Man of Sorrows depending dolorously from
its arms and backed up by a plaque of silver so that it resembled a
porter's badge, depended over the black buttons of his undercoat. He had
put it on upon the day when secretly he had married Henry to the papist
Lady Katharine Howard. On the same day he had put on a hair shirt, and
he had never since removed either the one or the other. He had known
very well that this news would reach the Queen's ears, as also that he
had fasted thrice weekly and had taken a Benedictine sub-prior out of
chains in the tower to be his second chaplain.
'Holy Church! Holy Church!' the King muttered amusedly into the stiff
hair of his chin and lips. The Archbishop was driven into one of his
fits of panic-stricken boldness.
'Your Grace,' he said, 'if ye write a letter to Rome you will--for I see
not how ye may avoid it--reverse all your acts of this last twenty
years.'
'Your Grace,' the King mocked him, 'by your setting on of chains,
crucifixes, phylacteries, and by your aping of monkish ways, ye have
reversed--well ye know it--all my and thy acts of a long time gone.'
He cast himself back from the table into the leathern shoulder-straps of
the chair.
'And if,' he continued with sardonic good-humour, 'my fellow and servant
may reverse my acts--videlicet, the King's--wherefore shall not
I--videlicet, the King--reverse what acts I will? It is to set me below
my servants!'
'I am minded to redd up my house!' he repeated after a moment.
'Please it, your Grace----' the Archbishop muttered. His eyes were upon
the door.
The King said, 'Anan?' He could not turn his bulky head, he would not
move his bulky body.
'My gentleman!' the Archbishop whispered.