'There shall be no delay,' she said; 'I will not hear.' She smoothed a
strand of hair that had fallen over her forehead in a gesture that she
always had when she was deep in thoughts.
'This is what I would say,' she uttered. And she began to speak
levelly--
'Very truly you say when you say that once I made offer to be your
leman. But it was when I was a young girl, mazed with reading of books
in the learned tongue, and seeing all men as if they were men of those
days. So you appeared to me such a man as was Pompey the Great, or as
was Marius, or as was Sylla. For each of these great men erred; yet they
erred greatly as rulers that would rule. Or rather I did see you such a
one as was Caesar Julius, who, as you well wot, crossed a Rubicon and set
out upon a high endeavour. But you--never will you cross any Rubicon;
always you blow hot in the evening and cold at dawn. Neither do you, as
I had dreamed you did, rule in this your realm. For, even as a crow that
just now I watched, you are blown hither and thither by every gust that
blows. Now the wind of gossips blows so that you must have my life. And,
before God, I am glad of it.'
'Before God!' he cried out, 'I would save you!'
'Aye,' she answered sadly, 'to-day you would save me; to-morrow a foul
speech of one mine enemy shall gird you again to slay me. On the morrow
you will repent, and on the morrow of that again you will repent of
that. So you will balance and trim. If to-day you send a messenger to
Rome, to-morrow you will send another, hastening by a shorter route, to
stay him. And this I tell you, that I am not one to let my name be
bandied for many days in the mouths of men. I had rather be called a
sinner, adjudged and dead and forgotten. So I am glad that I am cast to
die.'
'You shall not die!' the King cried. 'Body of God, you shall not die! I
cannot live lacking thee. Kat---- Kat----'
'Aye,' she said, 'I must die, for you are not such a one as can stay in
the wind. Thus I tell you it will fall about that for many days you will
waver, but one day you will cry out--Let her die this day! On the morrow
of that day you will repent you, but, being dead, I shall be no more to
be recalled to life. Why, man, with this confession of mine, heard by
grooms and mayors of cities and the like, how shall you dare to save me?
You know you shall not.
'And so, now I am cast for death, and I am very glad of it. For, if I
had not so ensured and made it fated, I might later have wavered. For I
am a weak woman, and strong men have taken dishonourable means to escape
death when it came near. Now I am assured of death, and know that no
means of yours can save me, nor no prayers nor yielding of mine. I came
to you for that you might give this realm again to God. Now I see you
will not--for not ever will you do it if it must abate you a jot of your
sovereignty, and you never will do it without that abatement. So it is
in vain that I have sinned.
'For I trow that I sinned in taking the crown from the woman that was
late your wife. I would not have it, but you would, and I yielded. Yet
it was a sin. Then I did a sin that good might ensue, and again I do it,
and I hope that this sin that brings me down shall counterbalance that
other that set me up. For well I know that to make this confession is a
sin; but whether the one shall balance the other only the angels that
are at the gates of Paradise shall assure me.
'In some sort I have done it for your Highness' sake--or, at least, that
your Highness may profit in your fame thereby. For, though all that do
know me will scarcely believe in it, the most part of men shall needs
judge me by the reports that are set about. In the commonalty, and the
princes of foreign courts, one may believe you justified of my blood,
and, for this event, even to posterity your name shall be spared. I
shall become such a little dust as will not fill a cup. Yet, at least, I
shall not sully, in the eyes of men to come, your record.
'And that I am glad of; for this world is no place for me who am mazed
by too much reading in old books. At first I would not believe it,
though many have told me it was so. I was of the opinion that in the end
right must win through. I think now that it never shall--or not for many
ages--till our Saviour again come upon this earth with a great glory.
But all this is a mystery of the great goodness of God and the
temptations that do beset us poor mortality.
'So now I go! I think that you will not any more seek to hinder me, for
you have heard how set I am on this course. I think, if I have done
little good, I have done little harm, for I have sought to injure no
man--though through me you have wracked some of my poor servants and
slain my poor simple cousin. But that is between you and God. If I must
weep for them yet, though I was the occasion of their deaths and
tortures, I cannot much lay it to my account.
'If, by being reputed your leman, as you would have it, I could again
set up the Church of God, willingly I would do it. But I see that there
is not one man--save maybe some poor simple souls--that would have this
done. Each man is set to save his skin and his goods--and you are such a
weathercock that I should never blow you to a firm quarter. For what am
I set against all this nation?
'If you should say that our wedding was no wedding because of the
pre-contract to my cousin Dearham that you have feigned was made--why, I
might live as your reputed leman in a secret place. But it is not very
certain that even at that I should live very long. For, if I lived, I
must work upon you to do the right. And, if that I did, not very long
should I live before mine enemies again did come about me and to you.
And so I must die. And now I see that you are not such a man as I would
live with willingly to preserve my life.
'I speak not to reprove you what I have spoken, but to make you see that
as I am so I am. You are as God made you, setting you for His own
purposes a weak man in very evil and turbulent times. As a man is born
so a man lives; as is his strength so the strain breaks him or he
resists the strain. If I have wounded you with these my words, I do ask
your pardon. Much of this long speech I have thought upon when I was
despondent this long time past. But much of it has come to my lips
whilst I spake, and, maybe, it is harsh and rash in the wording. That I
would not have, but I may not help myself. I would have you wounded by
the things as they are, and by what of conscience you have, in your
passions and your prides. And this, I will add, that I die a Queen, but
I would rather have died the wife of my cousin Culpepper or of any other
simple lout that loved me as he did, without regard, without thought,
and without falter. He sold farms to buy me bread. You would not imperil
a little alliance with a little King o' Scots to save my life. And this
I tell you, that I will spend the last hours of the days that I have to
live in considering of this simple man and of his love, and in praying
for his soul, for I hear you have slain him! And for the rest, I commend
you to your friends!'
The King had staggered back against the long table; his jaw fell open;
his head leaned down upon his chest. In all that long speech--the
longest she had ever made save when she was shown for Queen--she had not
once raised or lowered her voice, nor once dropped her eyes. But she had
remembered the lessons of speaking that had been given her by her master
Udal, in the aforetime, away in Lincolnshire, where there was an orchard
with green boughs, and below it a pig-pound where the hogs grunted.
She went slowly down over the great stone flags of the great hall. It
was very gloomy now, and her figure in black velvet was like a small
shadow, dark and liquid, amongst shadows that fell softly and like
draperies from the roof. Up there it was all dark already, for the
light came downwards from the windows. She went slowly, walking as she
had been schooled to walk.
'God!' Henry cried out; 'you have not played false with Culpepper?' His
voice echoed all round the hall.