It was almost within earshot of these two men in their dim cell that the
Queen walked from the sunlight into shadow and out again. This great
terrace looked to the north and west, and, from the little hillock,
dominating miles of gently rising ground, she had a great view over
rolling and very green country. The original builders of the Castle of
Pontefract had meant this terrace to be flagged with stone: but the
work had never been carried so far forward. There was only a path of
stone along the bowshot and a half of stone balustrade; the rest had
once been gravel, but the grass had grown over it; that had been
scythed, and nearly the whole space was covered with many carpets of
blue and red and other very bright colours. In the left corner when you
faced inwards there was a great pavilion of black cloth, embroidered
very closely with gold and held up by ropes of red and white. Though
forty people could sit in it round the table, it appeared very small,
the walls of the castle towered up so high. They towered up so high, so
square, and so straight that from the terrace below you could hardly
hear the flutter of the huge banner of St George, all red and white
against the blue sky, though sometimes in a gust it cracked like a huge
whip, and its shadow, where it fell upon the terrace, was sufficient to
cover four men.
To take away from the grimness of the flat walls many little banners had
been suspended from loopholes and beneath windows. Swallow-tailed, long,
or square, they hung motionless in the shelter, or, since the dying away
of the great gale three days before, had looped themselves over their
staffs. These were all painted green, because that was the Queen's
favourite colour, being the emblem of Hope.
A little pavilion, all of green silk, at the very edge of the platform,
had all its green curtains looped up, so that only the green roof
showed; and, within, two chairs, a great leathern one for the King, a
little one of red and white wood for the Queen, stood side by side as if
they conversed with each other. At the top of it was a golden image of a
lion, and above the peak of the entrance another, golden too, of the
Goddess Flora, carrying a cornucopia of flowers, to symbolise that this
tent was a summer abode for pleasantness.
Here the King and Queen, for the four days that they had been in the
castle, had delighted much to sit, resting after their long ride up from
the south country. For it pleased Henry to let his eyes rest upon a
great view of this realm that was his, and to think nothing; and it
pleased Katharine Howard to think that now she swayed this land, and
that soon she would alter its face.
They looked out, over the tops of the elm trees that grew right up
against the terrace wall; but the land itself was too green, the fields
too empty of dwellings. There was no one but sheep between all the
hedgerows: there was, in all the wide view, but one church tower, and
where, in place and place, there stood clusters of trees as if to
shelter homesteads--nearly always the homesteads had fallen to ruin
beneath the boughs. Upon one ridge one could see the long walls of an
unroofed abbey. But, to the keenest eye no men were visible, save now
and then a shepherd leaning on his crook. There was no ploughland at
all. Now and then companies of men in helmets and armour rode up to or
away from the castle. Once she had seen the courtyard within the keep
filled with cattle that lowed uneasily. But these, she had learned, had
been taken from cattle thieves by the men of the Council of the Northern
Borders. They were destined for the provisioning of that castle during
her stay there, they being forfeit, whether Scotch or English.
'Ah,' she said, 'whilst his Grace rides north to meet the King's Scots I
will ride east and west and south each day.'
* * * * *
At that moment, whilst the King had left Cranmer and his spy and, to
regain his composure, was walking up and down in her chamber, she was
standing beside the Duke of Norfolk about midway between the end of the
terrace and the little green pavilion.
She was all in a dark purple dress, to please the King whose mood that
colour suited; and the Duke's yellow face looked out above a suit all of
black. He wore that to please the King too, for the King was of opinion
that no gathering looked gay in its colours that had not many men in
black amongst the number.