'Ho, there! Come you out!'
Norfolk set his hand to his sword and so did Wriothesley. It was in both
their minds, as it were one thought, that if this was a treason of the
Bishop's he should there die.
From the blackness of the wall sides where the grille was there came the
sound of a terroring lock and a creaking door.
'God!' Norfolk said; 'who is this?'
There came the sound of breathing of one man who walked with noiseless
shoes.
'Have you heard enow to make you believe that these lords' hearts are
true to the endeavour of casting the Queen down?'
'I have heard enow,' a smooth voice said. 'I never thought it had been
otherwise.'
'Who is this?' Wriothesley said. 'I will know who this is that has heard
us.'
'You fool,' Gardiner said; 'this man is of the other side.'
'They have come to you!' Norfolk said.
'To whom else should we come,' the voice answered.
A subtler silence of agitation and thought was between these two men. At
last Gardiner said--
'Tell these lords what you would have of us?'
'We would have these promises,' the voice said; 'first, of you, my Lord
Duke, that if by our endeavours your brother's child be brought to a
trial for unchastity you will in no wise aid her at that trial with your
voice or your encouragement.'
'A trial!' and 'Unchastity!' the Duke said. 'This is a winter madness.
Ye know that my niece--St Kevin curse her for it--is as chaste as the
snow.'
'So was your other niece, Anne Boleyn, for all you knew, yet you dogged
her to death,' Gardiner said. 'Then you plotted with Papists; now it is
the turn of the Lutherans. It is all one, so we are rid of this pest.'
'Well, I will promise it,' the Duke said. 'Ye knew I would. It was not
worth while to ask me.'
'Secondly,' the voice said, 'of you, my Lord Duke, we would have this
service: that you should swear your niece is a much older woman than she
looks. Say, for instance, that she was in truth not the eleventh but the
second child of your brother Edmund. Say that, out of vanity, to make
herself seem more forward with the learned tongues when she was a child,
she would call herself her younger sister that died in childbed.'
'But wherefore?' the Duke said.
'Why,' Gardiner answered, 'this is a very subtle scheme of this
gentleman's devising. He will prove against her certain lewdnesses when
she was a child in your mother's house. If then she was a child of ten
or so, knowing not evil from good, this might not undo her. But if you
can make her seem then eighteen or twenty it will be enough to hang
her.'
Norfolk reflected.
'Well, I will say I heard that of her age,' he said; 'but ye had best
get nurses and women to swear to these things.'
'We have them now,' the voice said. 'And it will suffice if your Grace
will say that you heard these things of old of your brother. For your
Grace will judge this woman.'
'Very willingly I will,' Norfolk said; 'for if I do not soon, she will
utterly undo both me and all my friends.'
He reflected again.
'Those things will I do and more yet, if you will.'
'Why, that will suffice,' the voice said. It took a new tone in the
darkness.
'Now for you, Sir Henry Wriothesley,' it said. 'These simple things you
shall promise. Firstly, since you have the ear of the Mayor of London
you shall advise him in no way to hinder certain meetings of Lutherans
that I shall tell you of later. And, though it is your province so to
do, you shall in no wise hinder a certain master printer from printing
what broadsides and libels he will against the Queen. For it is
essential, if this project is to grow and flourish, that it shall be
spread abroad that the Queen did bewitch the King to her will on that
night at Pontefract that you remember, when she had her cousin in her
bedroom. So broadsides shall be made alleging that by sorcery she
induced the King to countenance his own shame. And we have witnesses to
swear that it was by appointment, not by chance, that she met with
Culpepper upon the moorside. But all that we will have of you is that
you will promise these two things--that the Lutherans may hold certain
meetings and the broadsides be printed.'
'Those I will promise,' came in Wriothesley's buried voice.
'Then I will no more of you,' the other's words came. They heard his
hands feeling along the wall till he came to the door by which he had
entered. The Bishop followed him, to let him out by a little door he had
had opened for that one night, into the street.
When he came back to the other two and unfolded to them what was the
scheme of the Archbishop's man, they agreed that it was a very good
plan. Then they fell to considering whether it should not serve their
turn to betray this plan at once to the Queen. But they agreed that, if
they preserved the Queen, they would be utterly ruined, as they were
like to be now, whereas, if it succeeded, they would be much the better
off. And, even if it failed, they lost nothing, for it would not readily
be believed that they had aided Lutherans, and there were no letters or
writings.
So they agreed to abide honourably by their promises--and very certain
they were that if clamour enough could be raised against the Queen, the
King would be bound into putting her away, though it were against his
will.