'You do not ride north with his Grace?'
He leaned upon his two staves, one long and of silver, the other shorter
and gilt; his gown fell down to his ankles, his dark and half-closed
eyes looked out at a tree that, struck lately by lightning, stretched up
half its boughs all naked from a little hillock beside a pond a mile
away.
'So it is settled between his Grace and me,' she said. She did not much
like her uncle, for she had little cause. But, the King being away, she
walked with him rather than with another man.
'I ask, perforce,' he said, 'for I have much work in the ordering of
your progresses.'
'We meant that you should have that news this day,' she said.
He shot one glance at her face, then turned his eyes again upon the
stricken tree. Her face was absolutely calm and without expression, as
it had been always when she had directed him what she would have done.
He could trace no dejection in it: on the other hand, he gave her credit
for a great command over her features. That he had himself. And, in the
niece's eyes, as they moved from the backs of a flock of sheep to the
dismantled abbey on the ridge, there was something of the enigmatic
self-containment that was in the uncle's steady glance. He could observe
no dejection, and at that he humbled himself a little more.
'Ay,' he said, 'the ordering of your progresses is a heavy burden. I
would have you commend what I have done here.'
She looked at him, at that, as if with a swift jealousy. His eyes were
roving upon the gay carpets, the pavilions, and the flags against the
grim walls, depending in motionless streaks of colour.
'The King's Grace's self,' she said, 'did tell me that all these things
he ordered and thought out for my pleasuring.'
Norfolk dropped his eyes to the ground.
'Aye,' he said, 'his Grace ordered them and their placing. There is no
man to equal his Grace for such things; but I had the work of setting
them where they are. I would have your favour for that.'
She appeared appeased and gave him her hand to kiss. There was a little
dark mole upon the third finger.
'The last niece that I had for Queen,' he said, 'would not suffer me to
kiss her hand.'
She looked at him a little absently, for, because since she had been
Queen--and before--she had been a lonely woman, she was given to
thinking her own thoughts whilst others talked.
She was troubled by the condition of her chief maid Margot Poins. Margot
Poins was usually tranquil, modest, submissive in a cheerful manner and
ready to converse. But of late she had been moody, and sunk in a dull
silence. And that morning she had suddenly burst out into a smouldering,
heavy passion, and had torn Katharine's hair whilst she dressed it.
'Ay,' Margot had said, 'you are Queen: you can do what you will. It is
well to be Queen. But we who are dirt underfoot, we cannot do one single
thing.'
And, because she was lonely, with only Lady Rochford, who was foolish,
and this girl to talk to, it had grieved the Queen to find this girl
growing so lumpish and dull. At that time, whilst her hair was being
dressed, she had answered only--
'Yea; it is good to be a Queen. But you will find it in Seneca----' and
she had translated for Margot the passage which says that eagles are as
much tied by weighty ropes as are finches caught in tiny fillets.
'Oh, your Latin,' Margot had said. 'I would I had never heard the sound
of it, but had stuck to clean English.'
Katharine imagined then that it was some new flame of the Magister
Udal's that was troubling the girl, and this troubled her too, for she
did not like that her maids should be played with by men, and she loved
Margot for her past loyalties, readiness, and companionship.
* * * * *
She came out of her thoughts to say to her uncle, remembering his speech
about her hands--
'Aye; I have heard that Anne Boleyn had six fingers upon her right
hand.'
'She had six upon each, but she concealed it,' he answered. 'It was her
greatest grief.'
Katharine realised that his sardonic tone, his bitter yellow face, the
croak in his voice, and his stiff gait--all these things were signs of
his hostility to her. And his mention of Anne Boleyn, who had been
Queen, much as she was, and of her bitter fate, this mention, if it
could not be a threat, was, at least, a reminder meant to give her fears
and misgiving. When she had been a child--and afterwards, until the very
day when she had been shown for Queen--her uncle had always treated her
with a black disdain, as he treated all the rest of the world. When he
had--and it was rarely enough--come to visit her grandmother, the old
Duchess of Norfolk, he had always been like that. Through the old
woman's huge, lonely, and ugly halls he had always stridden, halting a
little over the rushes, and all creatures must keep out of his way. Once
he had kicked her little dog, once he had pushed her aside; but
probably, then, when she had been no more than a child, he had not known
who she was, for she had lived with the servants and played with the
servants' children, much like one of them, and her grandmother had known
little of the household or its ways.