The Lady Mary of England sat alone in a fair room with little arched
windows that gave high up on to the terrace. It was the best room that
ever she had had since her mother, the Queen Katharine of Aragon, had
been divorced.
Dressed in black she sat writing at a large table before one window. Her
paper was fitted on to a wooden pulpit that rose before her; one book
stood open upon it, three others lay open too upon the red and blue and
green pattern of the Saracen rug that covered her table. At her right
hand was a three-tiered inkstand of pewter, set about with the white
feathers of pens; and the snakelike pattern of the table-rug serpentined
in and out beneath seals of parcel gilt, a platter of bread, a sandarach
of pewter, books bound in wooden covers and locked with chains, books in
red velvet covers, sewn with silver wire and tied with ribbons. It ran
beneath a huge globe of the world, blue and pink, that had a golden pin
in it to mark the city of Rome. There were little wooden racks stuck
full with written papers and parchments along the wainscoting between
the arched windows, but all the hangings of the other walls were of
tinted and dyed silks, not any with dark colours, because Katharine
Howard had deemed that that room with its deep windows in the thick
walls would be otherwise dark. The room was ten paces deep by twenty
long, and the wood of the floor was polished. Against the wall, behind
the Lady Mary's back, there stood a high chair upon a platform. Upon the
platform a carpet began that ran up the wall and, overhead, depended
from the gilded rafters of the ceiling so that it formed a dais and a
canopy.
The Lady Mary sat grimly amongst all these things as if none of them
belonged to her. She looked in her book, she made a note upon her
paper, she stretched out her hand and took a piece of bread, putting it
in her mouth, swallowing it quickly, writing again, and then once more
eating, for the great and ceaseless hunger that afflicted her gnawed
always at her vitals.
A little boy with a fair poll was reaching on tiptoe to smell at a pink
that depended from a vase of very thin glass standing in the deep
window. The shield of the coloured pane cast a little patch of red and
purple on to his callow head. He was dressed all in purple, very square,
and with little chains and medallions, and a little dagger with a golden
sheath was about his neck. In one hand he had a piece of paper, in the
other a pencil. The Lady Mary wrote; the child moved on tiptoe, with a
sedulous expression of silence about his lips, near to her elbow. He
watched her writing for a long time with attentive eyes.
Once he said, 'Sister, I----' but she paid him no heed.
After a time she looked coldly at his face and then he moved along the
table, fingered the globe very gently, touched the books and returned to
her side. He stood with his little legs wide apart. Then he sighed, then
he said--
'Sister, the Queen did bid me ask you a question.'
She looked round upon him.
'This was the Queen's question,' he said bravely:
'"_Cur_--why--_nunquam_--never--_rides_--dost thou
smile--_cum_--when--_ego, frater tuus_--I, thy little
brother--_ludo_--play--_in camera tua_--in thy chamber?"'
'Little Prince,' she said, 'art not afeared of me?'
'Aye, am I,' he answered.
'Say then to the Queen,' she said, '"_Domina Maria_--the Lady
Mary--_ridet nunquam_--smileth never--_quod_--because--_timoris
ratio_--the reason of my fear--_bona et satis_--is good and
sufficient."'
He held his little head upon one side.
'The Queen did bid me say,' he uttered with his brave little voice,
'"Holy Writ hath it: _Ecce quam bonum et dignum est fratres--fratres----_"'
He faltered without embarrassment and added, 'I ha' forgot the words.'
'Aye!' she said, 'they ha' been long forgotten in these places; I deem
it is overlate to call them to mind.'
She looked upon him coldly for a long time. Then she stretched out her
hand for his paper.
'Your Highness, I will set you a copy.'