IV

The Queen was walking in the long gallery of Hampton Court. The

afternoon was still new, but rain was falling very fast, so that through

the windows all trees were blurred with mist, and all alleys ran with

water, and it was very grey in the gallery. The Lady Mary was with her,

and sat in a window-seat reading in a book. The Queen, as she walked,

was netting a silken purse of a purple colour; her gown was very richly

embroidered of gold thread worked into black velvet, and the heavy day

pressed heavily on her senses, so that she sought that silence more

willingly. For three days she had had no news of her lord, but that

morning he was come back to Hampton, though she had not yet seen him,

for it was ever his custom to put off all work of the day before he came

to the Queen. Thus, if she were sad, she was tranquil; and, considering

only that her work of bringing him to God must begin again that night,

she let her thoughts rest upon the netting of her purse. The King, she

had heard, was with his council. Her uncle was come to Court, and

Gardiner of Winchester, and Cranmer of Canterbury, along with Sir A.

Wriothesley, and many other lords, so that she augured it would be a

very full council, and that night there would be a great banquet if she

was not mistaken.

She remembered that it was now many months since she had been shown for

Queen from that very gallery in the window that opened upon the

Cardinal's garden. The King had led her by the hand. There had been a

great crying out of many people of the lower sort that crowded the

terrace before the garden. Now the rain fell, and all was desolation. A

yeoman in brown fustian ran bending his head before the tempestuous

rain. A rook, blown impotently backwards, essayed slowly to cross

towards the western trees. Her eyes followed him until a great gust blew

him in a wider curve, backwards and up, and when again he steadied

himself he was no more than a blot on the wet greyness of the heavens.

There was an outcry at the door, and a woman ran in. She was crying out

still: she was all in grey, with the white coif of the Queen's service.

She fell down upon her knees, her hands held out.

'Pardon!' she cried. 'Pardon! Let not my brother come in. He prowls at

the door.'

It was Mary Hall, she that had been Mary Lascelles. The Queen came over

to raise her up, and to ask what it was she sought. But the woman wept

so loud, and so continually cried out that her brother was the fiend

incarnate, that the Queen could ask no questions. The Lady Mary looked

up over her book without stirring her body. Her eyes were awakened and

sardonic.

The waiting-maid looked affrightedly over her shoulders at the door.

'Well, your brother shall not come in here,' the Queen said. 'What would

he have done to you?'

'Pardon!' the woman cried out. 'Pardon!'

'Why, tell me of your fault,' the Queen said.

'I have given false witness!' Mary Hall blubbered out. 'I would not do

it. But you do not know how they confuse a body. And they threaten with

cords and thumbscrews.' She shuddered with her whole body. 'Pardon!' she

cried out. 'Pardon!'

And then suddenly she poured forth a babble of lamentations, wringing

her hands, and rubbing her lips together. She was a woman passed of

thirty, but thin still and fair like her brother in the face, for she

was his twin.

'Ah,' she cried, 'he threated that if I would not give evidence I must

go back to Lincolnshire. You do not know what it is to go back to

Lincolnshire. Ah, God! the old father, the old house, the wet. My

clothes were all mouldered. I was willing to give true evidence to save

myself, but they twisted it to false. It was the Duke of Norfolk ...'

The Lady Mary came slowly over the floor.

'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said, and her voice was

cold, hard, and commanding.

Mary Hall covered her face with her hands, and wailed desolately in a

high note, like a wolf's howl, that reverberated in that dim gallery.

The Lady Mary struck her a hard blow with the cover of her book upon the

hands and the side of her head.

'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said again.

The woman fell over upon one hand, the other she raised to shield

herself. Her eyes were flooded with great teardrops; her mouth was open

in an agony. The Lady Mary raised her book to strike again: its covers

were of wood, and its angles bound with silver work. The woman screamed

out, and then uttered--

'Against Dearham and one Mopock first. And then against Sir T.

Culpepper.'

The Queen stood up to her height; her hand went over her heart; the

netted purse dropped to the floor soundlessly.

'God help me!' Mary Hall cried out. 'Dearham and Culpepper are both

dead!'

The Queen sprang back three paces.

'How dead!' she cried. 'They were not even ill.'

'Upon the block,' the maid said. 'Last night, in the dark, in their

gaols.'

The Queen let her hands fall slowly to her sides.

'Who did this?' she said, and Mary Hall answered--

'It was the King!'

The Lady Mary set her book under her arm.

'Ye might have known it was the King,' she said harshly. The Queen was

as still as a pillar of ebony and ivory, so black her dress was, and so

white her face and pendant hands.

'I repent me! I repent me!' the maid cried out. 'When I heard that they

were dead I repented me and came here. The old Duchess of Norfolk is in

gaol: she burned the letters of Dearham! The Lady Rochford is in gaol,

and old Sir Nicholas, and the Lady Cicely that was ever with the Queen;

the Lord Edmund Howard shall to gaol and his lady.'

'Why,' the Lady Mary said to the Queen, 'if you had not had such a fear

of nepotism, your father and mother and grandmother and cousin had been

here about you, and not so easily taken.'

The Queen stood still whilst all her hopes fell down.

'They have taken Lady Cicely that was ever with me,' she said.

'It was the Duke of Norfolk that pressed me most,' Mary Lascelles cried

out.

'Aye, he would,' the Lady Mary answered.

The Queen tottered upon her feet.

'Ask her more,' she said. 'I will not speak with her.'

'The King in his council ...' the girl began.

'Is the King in his council upon these matters?' the Lady Mary asked.

'Aye, he sitteth there,' Mary Hall said. 'And he hath heard evidence of

Mary Trelyon the Queen's maid, how that the Queen's Highness did bid her

begone on the night that Sir T. Culpepper came to her room, before he

came. And how that the Queen was very insistent that she should go, upon

the score of fatigue and the lateness of the hour. And she hath deponed

that on other nights, too, this has happened, that the Queen's Highness,

when she hath come late to bed, hath equally done the same thing. And

other her maids have deponed how the Queen hath sent them from her

presence and relieved them of tasks----'

'Well, well,' the Lady Mary said, 'often I have urged the Queen that she

should be less gracious. Better it had been if she had beat ye all as I

have done; then had ye feared to betray her.'

'Aye,' Mary Hall said, 'it is a true thing that your Grace saith there.'

'Call me not your Grace,' the Lady Mary said. 'I will be no Grace in

this court of wolves and hogs.'

That was the sole thing that she said to show she was of the Queen's

party. But ever she questioned the kneeling woman to know what evidence

had been given, and of the attitude of the lords.

The young Poins had sworn roundly that the Queen had bidden him to

summon no guards when her cousin had broken in upon her. Only Udal had

said that he knew nothing of how Katharine had agreed with her cousin

whilst they were in Lincolnshire. It had been after his time there that

Culpepper came. It had been after his time, too, and whilst he lay in

chains at Pontefract that Culpepper had come to her door. He stuck to

that tale, though the Duke of Norfolk had beat and threatened him never

so.

'Why, what wolves Howards be,' the Lady Mary said, 'for it is only

wolves, of all beasts, that will prey upon the sick of their kind.'

The Queen stood there, swaying back as if she were very sick, her eyes

fast closed, and the lids over them very blue.

It was only when the Lady Mary drew from the woman an account of the

King's demeanour that she showed a sign of hearing.

'His Highness,' the woman said, 'sate always mute.'

'His Highness would,' the Lady Mary said. 'He is in that at least

royal--that he letteth jackals do his hunting.'

It was only when the Archbishop of Canterbury, reading from the

indictment of Culpepper, had uttered the words: 'did by the obtaining of

the Lady Rochford meet with the Queen's Highness by night in a secret

and vile place,' that the King had called out--

'Body of God! mine own bedchamber!' as if he were hatefully mocking the

Archbishop.