'It is a wicked plot. It is a folly too. I will not be of it.'
'This is a very fortunate day,' Lascelles said. 'I think it is proven to
all discerning men that that letter to him of Rome shall never be sent.'
'Why, it is as plain as the truths of the Six Articles,' Cranmer
remonstrated, 'that it shall be sent to-morrow or the next day. Get you
gone! This King hath but the will of the Queen to guide him, and all her
will turns upon that letter. Get you gone!'
'Please it your Grace,' the spy said, 'it is very manifest that with the
Queen so it is. But with the King it is otherwise. He will pleasure the
Queen if he may. But--mark me well--for this is a subtle matter----'
'I will not mark you,' the Archbishop said. 'Get you gone and find
another master. I will not hear you. This is the very end.'
Lascelles moved his arm from the Bible. He bent his form to a bow--he
moved till his hand was on the latch of the door.
'Why, continue,' the Archbishop said. 'If you have awakened my fears,
you shall slake them if you can--for this night I shall not sleep.'
And so, very lengthily, Lascelles unfolded his view of the King's
nature. For, said he, if this alliance with the Pope should come, it
must be an alliance with the Pope and the Emperor Charles. For the King
of France was an atheist, as all men knew. And an alliance with the Pope
and the Emperor must be an alliance against France. But the King o'
Scots was the closest ally that Francis had, and never should the King
dare to wage war upon Francis till the King o' Scots was placated or
wooed by treachery to be a prisoner, as the King would have made him if
James had come into England to the meeting. Well would the King, to
save his soul, placate and cosset his wife. But that he never dare do
whilst James was potent at his back.
And again, Lascelles said, well knew the Archbishop that the Duke of
Norfolk and his following were the ancient friends of France. If the
Queen should force the King to this Imperial League, it must turn
Norfolk and the Bishop of Winchester for ever to her bitter foes in that
land. And along with them all the Protestant nobles and all the Papists
too that had lands of the Church.
The Archbishop had been marking his words very eagerly. But suddenly he
cried out--
'But the King! The King! What shall it boot if all these be against her
so the King be but for her?'
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'this King is not a very stable man. Still, man
he is, a man very jealous and afraid of fleers and flouts. If we can
show him--I do accede to it that after what he hath done to-night it
shall not be easy, but we may accomplish it--if before this letter is
sent we may show him that all his land cries out at him and mocks him
with a great laughter because of his wife's evil ways--why then, though
in his heart he may believe her as innocent as you or I do now, it shall
not be long before he shall put her away from him. Maybe he shall send
her to the block.'
'God help me,' Cranmer said. 'What a hellish scheme is this.'
He pondered for a while, standing upright and frailly thrusting his hand
into his bosom.
'You shall never get the King so to believe,' he said; 'this is an idle
invention. I will none of it.'
'Why, it may be done, I do believe,' Lascelles said, 'and greatly it
shall help us.'
'No, I will none of it,' the Archbishop said. 'It is a foul scheme.
Besides, you must have many witnesses.'
'I have some already,' Lascelles said, 'and when we come to London Town
I shall have many more. It was not for nothing that the Great Privy Seal
commended me.'
'But to make the King,' Cranmer uttered, as if he were aghast and
amazed, 'to make the King--this King who knoweth that his wife hath done
no wrong--who knoweth it so well as to-night he hath proven--to make
_him_, him, to put her away ... why, the tiger is not so fell, nor the
Egyptian worm preyeth not on its kind. This is an imagination so
horrible----'
'Please it your Grace,' Lascelles said softly, 'what beast or brute hath
your Grace ever seen to betray its kind as man will betray brother, son,
father, or consort?'
The Archbishop raised his hands above his head.
'What lesser bull of the herd, or lesser ram, ever so played traitor to
his leader as Brutus played to Caesar Julius? And these be times less
noble.'