'Never! never! Shall I come between the lion and his food?'
'It were better if your Grace would carry the accusation,' Lascelles
uttered nonchalantly, 'for the King will better hearken to you than to
any other. But another man will do it too.'
'I will not be of this plotting,' the Archbishop cried out. 'It is a
very wicked thing!' He looked round at the white Christ that, upon the
dark cross, bent anguished brows upon him. 'Give me strength,' he said.
'Why, your Grace shall not be of it,' Lascelles answered, 'until it is
proven in the eyes of your Grace--ay, and in the eyes of some of the
Papist Lords--as, for instance, her very uncle--that this Queen was
evil in her life before the King took her, and that she hath acted very
suspicious in the aftertime.'
'You shall not prove it to the Papist Lords,' Cranmer said. 'It is a
folly.'