Udal's fingers picked at the fur of his moth-eaten gown.
'God be favourable to me,' he said. 'If it were anything but
Chancellor!'
The King grew more rigid.
'Body of God,' he said, 'will you wed with this maid?'
'Ahi!' the Magister wailed; and his perturbation had in it something
comic and scarecrowlike, as if a wind shook him from within. 'If you
will make me anything but a Chancellor, I will. But a Chancellor, I dare
not.'
The King cast himself back in his chair. The suggested gibe rose
furiously to his lips; the Magister quailed and bent before him,
throwing out his hands.
'Sire,' he said, 'if--which God forbid--this were a Protestant realm I
might do it. But oh, pardon and give ear. Pardon and give ear----'
He waved one hand furiously at the silken canopy above them.
'It is agreed with one of mine in Paris that she shall come hither--God
forgive me, I must make avowal, though God knows I would not--she shall
come hither to me if she do hear that I have risen to be a Chancellor.'
The King said, 'Body of God!' as if it were an earthquake.
'If it were anything else but Chancellor she might not come, and I would
wed Margot Poins more willingly than any other. But--God knows I do not
willingly make this avowal, but am in a corner, _sicut vulpis in
lucubris_, like a fox in the coils--this Paris woman is my wife.'
Henry gave a great shout of laughter, but slowly Margot Poins fell
across the Queen's knees. She uttered no sound, but lay there
motionless. The sight affected Udal to an epileptic fury.
'Jove be propitious to me!' he stuttered out. 'I know not what I can
do.' He began to tear the fur of his cloak and toss it over the
battlements. 'The woman is my wife--wed by a friar. If this were a
Protestant realm now--or if I pleaded pre-contract--and God knows I ha'
promised marriage to twenty women before I, in an evil day, married
one--eheu!--to this one----'
He began to sob and to wring his thin hands.
'_Quod faciam? Me miser! Utinam. Utinam----_'
He recovered a little coherence.
'If this were a Protestant land ye might say this wedding was no
wedding, for that a friar did it; but I know ye will not suffer that----'
His eyes appealed piteously to the Queen.
'Why, then,' he said, 'it is not upon my head that I do not wed this
wench. You be my witness that I would wed; it gores my heart to see her
look so pale. It tears my vitals to see any woman look pale. As
Lucretius says, "Better the sunshine of smiles----"'
A little outputting of impatient breath from Katharine made him stop.
'It is you, your Grace,' he said, 'that make me thus tied. If you would
let us be Protestant, or, again, if I could plead pre-contract to void
this Paris marriage it would let me wed with this wench--eheu--eheu. Her
brother will break my bones----'
He began to cry out so lamentably, invoking Pluto to bear him to the
underworld, that the King roared out upon him--
'Why, get you gone, fool.'
The Magister threw himself suddenly upon his knees, his hands clasped,
his gown drooping over them down to his wrists. He turned his face to
the Queen.
'Before God,' he said, 'before high and omnipotent Jove, I swear that
when I made this marriage I thought it was no marriage!' He reflected
for a breath and added, at the recollection of the cook's spits that had
been turned against him when he had by woman's guile been forced into
marriage with the widow in Paris, 'I was driven into it by force, with
sharp points at my throat. Is that not enow to void a marriage? Is that
not enow? Is that not enow?'
Katharine looked out over the great levels of the view. Her face was
rigid, and she swallowed in her throat, her eye being glazed and hard.
The King took his cue from a glance at her face.
'Get you gone, Goodman Rogue Magister,' he said, and he adopted a
canonical tone that went heavily with his rustic pose. 'A marriage made
and consummated and properly blessed by holy friar there is no undoing.
You are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad
that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled
too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this my Court. Now you
have lost your preferment, and I am glad of it. Another and a better
than thou shall be the Queen's Chancellor, for another and a better than
thou shall wed this wench. We will get her such a goodly husband----'
A low, melancholy wail from Margot Poins' agonised face--a sound such as
might have been made by an ox in pain--brought him to a stop. It wrung
the Magister, who could not bear to see a woman pained, up to a pitch of
ecstatic courage.
'_Quid fecit Caesar_,' he stuttered; 'what Caesar hath done, Caesar can do
again. It was not till very lately since this canon of wedding and
consummating and blessing by a holy friar hath been derided and
contemned in this realm. And so it might be again----'
Katharine Howard cried out, 'Ah!' Her features grew rigid and as ashen
as cold steel. And, at her cry, the King--who could less bear than Udal
to hear a woman in pain--the King sprang up from his chair. It was as
amazing to all them as to hunters it is to see a great wild bull charge
with a monstrous velocity. Udal was rigid with fear, and the King had
him by the throat. He shook him backwards and forwards so that his book
fell upon the Queen's feet, bursting out of his ragged gown, and his
cap, flying from his opened hand, fell down over the battlement into an
elm top. The King guttered out unintelligible sounds of fury from his
vast chest and, planted on his huge feet, he swung the Magister round
him till, backwards and staggering, the eyes growing fixed in his brown
and rigid face, he was pushed, jerking at each step of the King, out of
sight behind the green silk curtains.
The Queen sat motionless in her purple velvet. She twisted one hand into
the chain of the medallion about her throat, and one hand lay open and
pale by her side. Margot Poins knelt at her side, her face hidden in the
Queen's lap, her two arms stretched out beyond her grey coifed head. For
a minute she was silent. Then great sobs shook her so that Katharine
swayed upon her seat. From her hidden face there came muffled and
indistinguishable words, and at last Katharine said dully--
'What, child? What, child?'
Margot moved her face sideways so that her mouth was towards Katharine.
'You can unmake it! You can unmake the marriage,' she brought out in
huge sobs.