'I have heard that you were no good friend to your niece, Anne Boleyn,
when she was in her troubles.'
He swallowed in his throat and gazed impassively at the distant oak
tree, nevertheless his knee trembled with fury. And Katharine knew very
well that if, more than another, he took pleasure in giving pain with
his words, he bore the pain of other's words less well than most men.
'The Queen Anne,' he said, 'was a heretic. No better was she than a
Protestant. She battened upon the goods of our Church. Why should I
defend her?'
'Uncle,' she said, 'where got you the jewel in your bonnet?'
He started a little back at that, and the small veins in his yellow
eye-whites grew inflamed with blood.
'Queen----' he brought out between rage and astonishment that she
should dare the taunt.
'I think it came from the great chalice of the Abbey of Rising,' she
said. 'We are valiant defenders of the Church, who wear its spoils upon
our very brows.'
It was as if she had thrown down a glove to him and to a great many that
were behind him.
She knew very well where she stood, and she knew very well what her
uncle and his friends awaited for her, for Margot, her maid, brought her
alike the gossip of the Court and the loudly voiced threats and
aspirations of the city. For the Protestants--she knew them and cared
little for them. She did not believe there were very many in the King's
and her realm, and mostly they were foreign merchants and poor men who
cared little as long as their stomachs were filled. If these had their
farms again they would surely return to the old faith, and she was
minded to do away with the sheep. For it was the sheep that had brought
discontent to England. To make way for these fleeces the ploughmen had
been dispossessed.
It was natural that Protestants should hate her; but with Norfolk and
his like it was different. She knew very well that Norfolk came there
that day and waited every day, watching anxiously for the first sign
that the King's love for her should cool. She knew very well that they
said in the Court that with the King it was only possession and then
satiety. And she knew very well that when Norfolk's eyes searched her
face it was for signs of dismay and of discouragement. And when Norfolk
had said that he himself had placed the banners, the tents, the
pavilions and carpets that made gay all that grim terrace of the air, he
was essaying to make her think that the King was abandoning the task of
doing her honour. This had made her angry, for it was such folly. Her
uncle should have known that the King had discussed all these things
with her, asking her what she liked, and that all these bright colours
and these plaisaunces were what her man had gallantly thought out for
her. She carried her challenge still further.
'It ill becomes us Howards and all like us,' she said, 'to talk of how
we will defend the Church of God----'
'I am a swordsman only,' he said. 'Give me that----'
She was not minded to listen to him.
'It becomes us ill,' she said; 'and I take shame in it. For, a very few
years agone we Howards were very poor. Now we are very rich--though it
is true that my father is still a very poor man, and your stepmother, my
grandmother, has known hard shifts. But we Howards, through you who are
our head, became amongst the richest in the land. And how?'
'I have done services----' the Duke began.
'Why, there has been no new wealth made in this realm,' she said; 'it
came from the Church. Consider what you have had of this Abbey of
Risings that I speak of, because I knew it well as a child, and saw many
times then, sparkling in that which held the blood of my Saviour, the
jewel that is now in your cap.'
The Abbey of Risings, after the visitors had been to it and the monks
had been driven out, had fallen to the Duke of Norfolk. And his men had
stripped the lead from the roofs, the glass from the windows, the very
tiles from the floor. And this little abbey was only one of many, large
and small, that had fallen to the Duke, so that it was true enough that,
through him, the Howards had become a very rich family.