It was the Queen's habit to go every night, when the business of the day
was done, to pray, along with the Lady Mary, in the small chapel that
was in the roof of the castle. To vespers she went with all the Court to
the big chapel in the courtyard that the King had builded especially for
her. But to this little chapel, that was of Edward IV's time, small and
round-arched, all stone and dark and bare, she went with the Lady Mary
alone. Her ladies and her doorguards they left at the stair foot, on a
level with the sleeping rooms of the poorer sort, but up the little
stairway they climbed by themselves, in darkness, to pray privately for
the conversion of England. For this little place was so small and so
forgotten that it had never been desecrated by Privy Seal's men. It had
had no vessels worth the taking, and only very old vestments and a few
ill-painted pictures on the stone walls that were half hidden in the
dust.
Katharine had found this little place when, on her first day at
Pontefract, she had gone a-wandering over the castle with the King. For
she was curious to know how men had lived in the old times; to see their
rooms and to mark what old things were there still in use. And she had
climbed thus high because she was minded to gaze upon the huge expanse
of country and of moors that from the upper leads of the castle was to
be seen. But this little chapel had seemed to her to be all the more
sacred because it had been undesecrated and forgotten. She thought that
you could not find such another in the King's realm at that time; she
was very assured that not one was to be found in any house of the King's
and hers.
And, making inquiries, she had found that there was also an old priest
there served the chapel, doing it rather secretly for the well-disposed
of the castle's own guards. This old man had fled, at the approach of
the King's many, into the hidden valleys of that countryside, where
still the faith lingered and lingers now. For, so barbarous and remote
those north parts were, that a great many people had never heard that
the King was married again, and fewer still, or none, knew that he and
his wife were well inclined again towards Rome.
This old priest she had had brought to her. And he was so well loved
that along with him came a cluster of weather-battered moorsmen, right
with him into her presence. They kneeled down, being clothed with skins,
and several of them having bows of a great size, to beg her not to harm
this old man, for he was reputed a saint. The Queen could not understand
their jargon but, when their suit was interpreted to her by the Lord
Dacre of the North, and when she had had a little converse with the old
priest, she answered that, so touched was her heart by his simplicity
and gentleness, that she would pray the good King, her lord and master,
to let this priest be made her confessor whilst there they stayed. And
afterwards, if it were convenient, in reward for his faithfulness, he
should be made a prior or a bishop in those parts. So the moorsmen,
blessing her uncouthly for her fairness and kind words, went back with
their furs and bows into their fastnesses. One of them was a great lord
of that countryside, and each day he sent into the castle bucks and moor
fowl, and once or twice a wolf. His name was Sir John Peel, and Sir John
Peel, too, the priest was called.
So the priest served that little altar, and of a night, when the Queen
was minded next day to partake of the host, he heard her confession. On
other nights he left them there alone to say their prayers. It was
always very dark with the little red light burning before the altar and
two tapers that they lit beneath a statue of the Virgin, old and black
and ill-carved by antique hands centuries before. And, in that
blackness, they knelt, invisible almost, and still in the black gowns
that they put on for prayers, beside a low pillar that gloomed out at
their sides and vanished up into the darkness of the roof.
Having done their prayers, sometimes they stayed to converse and to
meditate, for there they could be very private. On the night when the
letter to Rome was redrafted, the Queen prayed much longer than the Lady
Mary, who sat back upon a stool, silently, to await her finishing--for
it seemed that the Queen was more zealous for the converting of those
realms again to the old faith than was ever the Lady Mary. The tapers
burned with a steady, invisible glow in the little side chapel behind
the pillar; the altar gleamed duskily before them, and it was so still
that through the unglassed windows they could hear, from far below in
the black countryside, a tenuous bleating of late-dropped lambs.
Katharine Howard's beads clicked and her dress rustled as she came up
from her knees.
'It rests more with thee than with any other in this land,' her voice
reverberated amongst the distant shadows. A bat that had been drawn in
by the light flittered invisibly near them.
'Even what?' the Lady Mary asked.
'Well you know,' the Queen answered; 'and may the God to whom you have
prayed, that softened the heart of Paul, soften thine in this hour!'
The Lady Mary maintained a long silence. The bat flittered, with a
leathern rustle, invisible, between their very faces. At last Mary
uttered, and her voice was taunting and malicious--
'If you will soften my heart much you must beseech me.'
'Why, I will kneel to you,' the Queen said.
'Aye, you shall,' Mary answered. 'Tell me what you would have of me.'
'Well you know!' Katharine said again.
In the darkness the lady's voice maintained its bitter mirth, as it were
the broken laughter of a soul in anguish.
'I will have you tell me, for it is a shameful tale that will shame you
in the telling.'
The Queen paused to consider of her words.
'First, you shall be reconciled with, and speak pleasantly with, the
King your father and my lord.'
'And is it not a shameful thing you bid me do, to bid me speak pleasant
words to him that slew my mother and called me bastard?'
The Queen answered that she asked it in the name of Christ, His pitiful
sake, and for the good of this suffering land.
'None the less, Queen, thou askest it in the darkness that thy face may
not be seen. And what more askest thou?'
'That when the Duke of Orleans his ambassadors come asking your hand in
marriage, you do show them a pleasant and acquiescent countenance.'
The sacredness of that dark place kept Mary from laughing aloud.
'That, too, you dare not ask in the light of day, Queen,' she said. 'Ask
on!'
'That when the Emperor's ambassadors shall ask for your hand you shall
profess yourself glad indeed.'
'Well, here is more shame, that I should be prayed to feign this
gladness. I think the angels do laugh that hear you. Ask even more.'