'For the rest, what you will I will do: submission to the King and such
cozening as he will ask of me. God keep you, for you stand in need of
it.'
* * * * *
At supper that night there sat all such knights and lordlings as ate at
the King's expense in the great hall that was in the midmost of the
castle, looking on to the courtyard. There were not such a many of them,
maybe forty; from the keeper of the Queen's records, the Lord d'Espahn,
who sat at the table head, down to the lowest of all, the young Poins,
who sat far below the salt-cellar. The greater lords of the Queen's
household, like the Lord Dacre of the North, did not eat at this common
table, or only when the Queen herself there ate, which she did at midday
when there was a feast.
Nevertheless, this eating was conducted with gravity, the Lord d'Espahn
keeping a vigilant eye down the table, which was laid with a fair white
cloth. It cost a man a fine to be drunk before the white meats were
eaten--unless, indeed, a man came drunk to the board--and the
salt-cellar of state stood a-midmost of the cloth. It was of silver from
Holland, and represented a globe of the earth, opened at the top, and
supported by knights' bannerets.
The hall was all of stone, with creamy walls, only marked above the iron
torch-holds with brandons of soot. A scutcheon of the King's arms was
above one end-door, with the Queen's above the other. Over each window
were notable deers' antlers, and over each side-door, that let in the
servers from the courtyard, was a scutcheon with the arms of a king
deceased that had visited the castle. The roof was all gilded and
coloured, and showed knaves' faces leering and winking, so that when a
man was in drink, and looked upwards with his head on his chair back,
these appeared to have life. The hall was called the Dacre Hall, because
the Lords Dacre of the North had built it to be an offering to various
kings that died whilst it was a-building.
Such knights as had pages had them behind their chairs, holding napkins
and ready to fill the horns with wine or beer. From kitchens or from
buttery-hatches the servers ran continually across the courtyard and
across the tiled floor, for the table was set back against the farther
wall, all the knights being on the wall side, since there were not so
many, and thus it was easier to come to them. There was a great clatter
with the knives going and the feet on the tiles, but little conversing,
for in that keen air eating was the principal thing, and in five minutes
a boar or a sheep's head would be stripped till the skull alone was
shown.
It was in this manner that Thomas Culpepper came into the hall when they
were all well set to, without having many eyes upon him. But the Lord
d'Espahn was aware, suddenly, of one that stood beside him.
'Gentleman, will you have a seat?' he said. 'Tell me your name and
estate, that I may appoint you one.' He was a grave lord, with a pointed
nose, dented at the end, a grey, square beard, and fresh colours on his
face. He wore his bonnet because he was the highest there, and because
there were currents of air at the openings of the doors.
Thomas Culpepper's face was of a chalky white. Somewhere Lascelles had
found for him a suit of green and red stockings. His red beard framed
his face, but his lips were pursed.
'Your seat I will have,' he said, 'for I am the Queen's cousin, T.
Culpepper.'
The Lord d'Espahn looked down upon his platter.
'You may not have my seat,' he said. 'But you shall have this seat at my
right hand that is empty. It is a very honourable seat, but mine you may
not have for it is the Queen's own that I hold, being her vicar here.'
'Your seat I will have,' Culpepper said.
The Lord d'Espahn was set upon keeping order and quiet in that place
more than on any other thing. He looked again down upon his platter, and
then he was aware of a voice that whispered in his ear--
'A' God's name, humour him, for he is very mad,' and, turning his eyes a
little, he saw that it was Lascelles above his chair head.
'Your seat I will have,' Culpepper said again. 'And this fellow, that
tells me he is the most potent lord there is here, shall serve behind my
chair.'
The Lord d'Espahn took up his knife and fork in one hand and his manchet
of bread in the other. He made as if to bow to Culpepper, who pushed him
by the shoulder away. Some lordlings saw this and wondered, but in the
noise none heard their words. At the foot of the table the squires said
that the Lord d'Espahn must have been found out in a treason. Only the
young Poins said that that was the Queen's cousin, come from Scotland,
withouten leave, for love of the Queen through whom he was sick in the
wits. This news ran through the castle by means of servers, cooks,
undercooks, scullions, maids, tiring-maids, and maids of honour, more
swiftly than it progressed up the table where men had the meats to keep
their minds upon.
Culpepper sat, flung back in his chair, his eyes, lacklustre and open,
upon the cloth where his hands sprawled out. He said few words--only
when the Lord d'Espahn's server carved boar's head for him, he took one
piece in his mouth and then threw the plate full into the server's face.
This caused great offence amongst the serving-men, for this server was a
portly fellow that had served the Lord d'Espahn many years, and had a
face like a ram's, so grave it was. Having drunk a little of his wine,
Culpepper turned out the rest upon the cloth; his salt he brushed off
his plate with his sleeve. That was remembered for long afterwards by
many men and women. And it was as if he could not swallow, for he put
down neither meat nor drink, but sat, deadly and pale, so that some said
that he was rabid. Once he turned his head to ask the Lord d'Espahn--
'If a quean prove forsworn, and turn to a Queen, what should her true
love do?'
The Lord d'Espahn never made any answer, but wagged his beard from side
to side, and Culpepper repeated his question three separate times.
Finally, the platters were raised, and the Lord d'Espahn went away to
the sound of trumpets. Many of the lords there came peering round
Culpepper to see what sport he might yield. Lascelles went away,
following the scarlet figure of the young Poins, working his hand into
the boy's arm and whispering to him. The servers and disservers went to
their work of clearing the board.
But Culpepper sat there without word or motion, so that none of those
lords had any sport out of him. Some of them went away to roast pippins
at the Widow Amnot's, some to speak with the alchemist that, on the
roof, watched the stars. So one and the other left the room; the torches
burned out, most of them, and, save for two lords of the Archbishop's
following, who said boldly that they would watch and care for this man,
because he was the Queen's cousin, and there might be advancement in it,
Culpepper was left alone.
His sword he had not with him, but he had his dagger, and, just as he
drew it, appearing about to stab himself in the heart, there ran across
the hall the black figure of Lascelles, so that he appeared to have been
watching through a window, and the two lords threw themselves upon
Culpepper's arm. And all three began to tell him that there was better
work for him to do than that of stabbing himself; and Lascelles brought
with him a flagon of _aqua vitae_ from Holland, and poured out a little
for Culpepper to drink. And one of the lords said that his room was up
in the gallery near the Queen's, and, if Culpepper would go with him
there, they might make good cheer. Only he must be silent in the going
thither; afterwards it would not so much matter, for they would be past
the guards. So, linking their arms in his, they wound up and across the
courtyard, where the torchmen that waited on their company of diners to
light them, blessed God that the sitting was over, and beat their
torches out against the ground.
In the shadow of the high walls, and some in the moonlight, the
serving-men held their parliament. They discoursed of these things, and
some said that it was a great pity that T. Culpepper was come to Court.
For he was an idle braggart, and where he was disorder grew, and that
was a pity, since the Queen had made the Court orderly, and servants
were little beaten. But some said that like sire was like child, and
that great disorders there were in the Court, but quiet ones, and the
Queen the centre. But these were mostly the cleaners of dishes and the
women that swept rooms and spread new rushes. Upon the whole, the cooks
blessed the Queen, along with all them that had to do with feeding and
the kitchens. They thanked God for her because she had brought back the
old fasts. For, as they argued, your fast brings honours to cooks,
since, after a meagre day, your lord cometh to his trencher with a
better appetite, and then is your cook commended. The Archbishop's cooks
were the hottest in this contention, for they had the most reason to
know. The stablemen, palfreniers, and falconers' mates were, most part
of them, politicians more than the others, and these wondered to have
seen, through their peep-holes and door-cracks, the Queen's cousin go
away with these lords that were of the contrary party. Some said that T.
Culpepper was her emissary to win them over to her interests, and some,
that always cousins, uncles, and kin were the bitterest foes a Queen
had, as witness the case of Queen Anne Boleyn and the Yellow Dog of
Norfolk who had worked to ruin her. And some said it was marvellous that
there they could sit or stand and talk of such things--for a year or so
ago all the Court was spies, so that the haymen mistrusted them that
forked down the straw, and meat-servers them with the wine. But now each
man could talk as he would, and it made greatly for fellowship when a
man could sit against a wall, unbutton in the warm nights, and say what
he listed.
The light of the great fires grew dull in the line of kitchen windows;
sweethearting couples came in through the great gateway from the
grass-slopes beneath the castle walls. There was a little bustle when
four horsemen rode in to say that the King's Highness was but nine miles
from the castle, and torchmen must be there to light him in towards
midnight. But the Queen should not be told for her greater pleasure and
surprise. Then all these servingmen stood up and shook themselves, and
said--'To bed.' For, on the morrow, with the King back, there would
surely be great doings and hard work. And to mews and kennels and huts,
in the straw and beds of rushes, these men betook themselves. The young
lords came back laughing from Widow Amnot's at the castle foot; there
was not any light to be seen save one in all that courtyard full of
windows. The King's torchmen slumbered in the guard-room where they
awaited his approach. Darkness, silence, and deep shadow lay everywhere,
though overhead the sky was pale with moonlight, and, from high in the
air, the thin and silvery tones of the watchman's horn on the roof
filtered down at the quarter hours. A drowsy bell marked the hours, and
the cries and drillings of the night birds vibrated from very high.
V
Coming very late to her bedroom the Queen found awaiting her her
tiring-maid, Mary Trelyon, whom she had advanced into the post that
Margot Poins had held, and the old Lady Rochford.
'Why,' she said to her maid, 'when you have unlaced me you may go, or
you will not love my service that keeps you so late.'
Mary Trelyon cast her eyes on the ground, and said that it was such
pleasure to attend her mistress, that not willingly would she give up
that discoiffing, undoing of hair, and all the rest, for long she had
desired to have the handling of these precious things and costly
garments.
'No, you shall get you gone,' the Queen said, 'for I will not have you,
sweetheart, be red-lidded in the morning with this long watching, for
to-morrow the King comes, and I will have him see my women comely and
fair, though in your love you will not care for yourselves.'
Standing before her mirror, where there burned in silver dishes four
tall candles with perfumed wicks, Katharine offered her back to the
loosening fingers of this girl.
'I would not have you to think,' she said, 'that I am always thus late
and a gadabout. But this day'--the Queen's eyes sparkled, and her cheeks
were red with exaltation--'this day and this night are one that shall be
marked with red stones in the calendar of England, and late have I
travailed so to make them be.'
The girl was very black-avised, and her face beneath her grey hood--for
the Queen's maids were all in grey, with crowned roses, the device that
the King had given her at their wedding, worked in red silk on each
shoulder--her face beneath her grey hood was the clear shape of the thin
end of an egg. She worked at the unlacing of the Queen's gown, so that
she at last must kneel down to it.
Having finished, she remained upon her knees, but she twisted her
fingers in her skirt as if she were bashful, yet her face was perturbed
with red flushes on the dark cheeks.
The Queen, feeling that she knelt there upon her loosened gown and did
not get her gone, said--
'Anan?'
'Please you let me stay,' the girl said; but Katharine answered--
'I would commune with my own thoughts.'
'Please you hear me,' the girl said, and she was very earnest; but the
Queen answered--
'Why, no! If you have any boon to ask of me, you know very well that
to-morrow at eleven is the hour for asking. Now, I will sit still with
the silence. Bring me my chair to the table. The Lady Rochford shall put
out my lights when I be abed.'
The girl stood up and rolled, with a trick of appeal, her eyes to the
old Lady Rochford. This lady, all in grey too, but with a great white
hood because she was a widow, sat back upon the foot of the great bed.
Her face was perturbed, but it had been always perturbed since her
cousin, the Queen Anne Boleyn, had fallen by the axe. She put a gouty
and swollen finger to her lips, and the girl shrugged her shoulders with
a passion of despair, for she was very hot-tempered, and it was as if
mutinously that she fetched the Queen her chair and set it behind her
where she stood before the mirror taking off her breast jewel from its
chain. And again the girl shrugged her shoulders. Then she went to the
little wall-door that corkscrewed down into the courtyard through the
thick of the wall. Immediately after she was gone they heard the
lockguard that awaited her without set on the great padlock without the
door. Then his feet clanked down the stairway, he being heavily loaded
with weighty keys. It was the doors along the corridor that the young
Poins guarded, and these were never opened once the Queen was in her
room, save by the King. The Lady Rochford slept in the anteroom upon a
truckle-bed, and the great withdrawing-room was empty.
It was very still in the Queen's room and most shadowy, except before
the mirror where the candle flames streamed upwards. The pillars of the
great bed were twisted out of dark wood; the hangings of bed and walls
were all of a dark blue arras, and the bedspread was of a dark red
velvet worked in gold with pomegranates and pomegranate leaves. Only the
pillows and the turnover of the sheets were of white linen-lawn, and the
bed curtains nearly hid them with shadows. Where the Queen sat there was
light like that of an altar in a dim chapel, for the room was so huge.
She sat before her glass, silently taking off her golden things. She
took the jewel off the chain round her neck and laid it in a casket of
gold and ivory. She took the rings off her fingers and hung them on the
lance of a little knight in silver. She took off her waist where it hung
to a brooch of feridets, her pomander of enamel and gold; she opened it
and marked the time by the watch studded with sable diamonds that it
held.
'Past eleven,' she said, 'if my watch goes right.'
'Indeed it is past eleven,' the Lady Rochford sighed behind her.
The Queen sat forward in her chair, looking deep into the shadows of her
mirror. A great relaxation was in all her limbs, for she was very tired,
so that though she was minded to let down her hair she did not begin to
undo her coif, and though she desired to think, she had no thoughts.
From far away there came a muffled sound as if a door had been roughly
closed, and the Lady Rochford shot out a little sound between a scream
and a sigh.
'Why, you are very affrighted,' the Queen said. 'One would think you
feared robbers; but my guards are too good.'
She began to unloosen from her hood her jewel, which was a rose
fashioned out of pink shell work set with huge dewdrops of diamonds and
crowned with a little crown of gold.
'God knows,' she said, 'I ha' trinkets enow for robbers. It takes me too
long to undo them. I would the King did not so load me.'
'Your Highness is too humble for a Queen,' the old Lady Rochford
grumbled. 'Let me aid you, since the maid is gone. I would not have you
speak your maids so humbly. My Cousin Anne that was the Queen----'
She came stiffly and heavily forward from the bed with her hands out to
discoif her lady; but the Queen turned her head, caught at her fat hand,
put it against her cheek and fondled it.
'I would have your Highness feared by all,' the old lady said.
'I would have myself by all beloved,' Katharine answered. 'What, am I to
play the Queen and Highness to such serving-maids as I was once the
fellow and companion to?'
'Your Highness should not have sent the wench away,' the old woman said.
'Well, you have taken on a very sour voice,' the Queen said. 'I will
study to pleasure you more. Get you now back and rest you, for I know
you stand uneasily, and you shall not uncoif me.'
She began to unpin her coif, laying the golden pins in the silver
candle-dishes. When her hair was thus set free of a covering, though it
was smoothly braided and parted over her forehead, yet it was lightly
rebellious, so that little mists of it caught the light, golden and
rejoiceful. Her face was serious, her nose a little peaked, her lips
rested lightly together, and her blue eyes steadily challenged their
counterparts in the mirror with an assured and gentle glance.
'Why,' she said, 'I believe you have the right of it--but for a queen I
must be the same make of queen that I am as a woman. A queen gracious
rather than a queen regnant; a queen to grant petitions rather than one
to brush aside the petitioners.'
She stopped and mused.
'Yet,' she said, 'you will do me the justice to say that in the open and
in the light of day, when men are by or the King's presence demands it,
I do ape as well as I may the painted queens of galleries and the
stately ladies that are to be seen in pictured books.'
'I would not have had you send away the maid,' the old Lady Rochford
said.
'God help me,' the Queen answered. 'I stayed her petition till the
morrow. Is that not queening it enough?'
The Lady Rochford suddenly wrung her hands.
'I had rather,' she said, 'you had heard her and let her stay. Here
there are not people enough to guard you. You should have many scores of
people. This is a dreary place.'
'Heaven help me,' the Queen said. 'If I were such a queen as to be
affrighted, you would affright me. Tell me of your cousin that was a
sinful queen.'