In the underground cell, above the red and gold table that afternoon,
Lascelles wrought at a fair copy of the King's letter to the Pope,
amended as it had been by Udal's hand. The Archbishop had come into the
room reading a book as he came from his prayers, and sate him down in
his chair at the tablehead without glancing at his gentleman.
'Prithee, your Grace,' Lascelles said, 'suffer me to carry this letter
mine own self to the Queen.'
The Archbishop looked up at him; his mournful eyes started wide; he
leaned forward.
'Art thou Lascelles?' he asked.
'Aye, Lascelles I am,' the gentleman answered; 'but I have cut off my
beard.'
The Archbishop was very weak and startled; he fell into an anger.
'Is this a time for vanities?' he said. 'Will you be after the wenches?
You look a foolish boy! I do not like this prank.'
Lascelles put up his hand to stroke his vanished beard. His risible lips
writhed in a foxy smile; his chin was fuller than you would have
expected, round and sensuous with a dimple in the peak of it.
'Please it, your Grace,' he said, 'this is no vanity, but a scheme that
I will try.'
'What scheme? What scheme?' the Archbishop said. 'Here have been too
many schemes.' He was very shaken and afraid, because this world was
beyond his control.
'Please it, your Grace,' Lascelles answered, 'ask me not what this
scheme is.'
The Archbishop shook his head and pursed his lips feebly.
'Please it, your Grace,' Lascelles urged, 'if this scheme miscarry, your
Grace shall hear no more of it. If this scheme succeed I trow it shall
help some things forward that your Grace would much have forwarded.
Please it, your Grace, to ask me no more, and to send me with this
letter to the Queen's Highness.'
The Archbishop opened his nerveless hands before him; they were pale and
wrinkled as if they had been much soddened in water. Since the King had
bidden him compose that letter to the Pope of Rome, his hands had grown
so. Lascelles wrote on at the new draft of the letter, his lips
following the motions of his pen. Still writing, and with his eyes down,
he said--
'The Queen's Highness will put from her her tirewoman in a week from
now.'