'These knaves that love not our giving our ploughlands to sheep,'
Culpepper said. 'They say they starved through it. Yet 'tis the only
way to wealth. I had all my wealth by it. By now 'tis well gone, but I
go to the wars to get me more.'
'Rioters?' the King said again, heavily.
''Twas a small tulzie--a score of starved yeomen here and there. I
killed seven. The others were they that were hanged at Norwich.... But
the barns were brent, the sheep gone, and the house down and the
servants fled. I am her cousin of the mother's side. Of as good a
strain as Howards be.'
Henry, with his eyes still upon them, beckoned behind his back for
Cromwell to come. A score or so of poor yeomen, hinds and women, cast
out of their tenancies that wool might be grown for the Netherlands
weavers, starving, desperate, and seeing no trace of might and order
in their hidden lands, had banded, broken a few hedges and burnt a few
barns before the posse of the country could come together and take
them.
The King had not heard of it or had forgotten it, because such risings
were so frequent. His brows came down into portentous and bulging
knots, his eyes were veiled and threatening towards the woman's face.
He had conceived that a great rebellion had been hidden from his
knowledge.
She raised her head and shrieked at the sight of him, half started to
her feet, and once more sank down on the bench, clasping at her
cousin's hand. He said:
'Peace, Kate, it is the King.'
She answered: 'No, no,' and covered her face with her hands.
Henry bent a little towards her, indulgent, amused, and gentle as if
to a child.
'I am Harry,' he said.
She muttered:
'There was a great crowd, a great cry. One smote me on the arm. And
then this quiet here.'
She uncovered her face and sat looking at the ground. Her furs were
all grey, she had had none new for four years, and they were tight to
her young body that had grown into them. The roses embroidered on her
glove had come unstitched, and, against the steely grey of the river,
her face in its whiteness had the tint of mother of pearl and an
expression of engrossed and grievous absence.
'I have fared on foul ways this journey,' she said.
'Thy father's barns we will build again,' the King answered. 'You
shall have twice the sheep to your dower. Show me your eyes.'
'I had not thought to have seen the King so stern,' she answered.
Culpepper caught at the mule's bridle.
'Y' are mad,' he muttered. 'Let us begone.'
'Nay, in my day,' the King answered, 'y'ad found me more than kind.'
She raised her eyes to his face, steadfast, enquiring and unconcerned.
He bent his great bulk downwards and kissed her upon the temple.
'Be welcome to this place.' He smiled with a pleasure in his own
affability and because, since his beard had pricked her, she rubbed
her cheek. Culpepper said:
'Come away. We stay the King's Highness.'
Henry said: 'Bide ye here.' He wished to hear what Cromwell might say
of these Howards, and he took him down the terrace.
Culpepper bent over her with his mouth opened to whisper.
'I am weary,' she said. 'Set me a saddle cushion behind my shoulders.'
He whispered hurriedly:
'I do not like this place.'
'I like it well. Shall we not see brave shews?'
'The mule did stumble on the threshold.'
'I marked it not. The King did bid us bide here.'
She had once more laid her head back on the stone balustrade.
'If thou lovest me....' he whispered. It enraged and confused him to
have to speak low. He could not think of any words.
She answered unconcernedly:
'If thou lovest my bones ... they ache and they ache.'
'I have sold farms to buy thee gowns,' he said desperately.
'I never asked it,' she answered coldly.
Henry was saying:
'Ah, Princes take as is brought them by others. Poor men be commonly
at their own choice.' His voice had a sort of patient regret. 'Why
brought ye not such a wench?'
Cromwell answered that in Lincoln, they said, she had been a coin that
would not bear ringing.
'You do not love her house,' the King said. 'Y' had better have
brought me such a one.'
Cromwell answered that his meaning was she had been won by others. The
King's Highness should have her for a wink.
Henry raised his shoulders with a haughty and angry shrug. Such a
quarry was below his stooping. He craved no light loves.
'I do not miscall the wench,' Cromwell answered. She was as her kind.
The King's Highness should find them all of a make in England.
'Y' are foul-mouthed,' Henry said negligently. ''Tis a well-spoken
wench. You shall find her a place in the Lady Mary's house.'
Cromwell smiled, and made a note upon a piece of paper that he pulled
from his pocket.
Culpepper, his arms jerking angularly, was creaking out:
'Come away, a' God's name. By all our pacts. By all our secret vows.'
'Ay thou didst vow and didst vow,' she said with a bitter weariness.
'What hast to shew? I have slept in filthy beds all this journey.
Speak the King well. He shall make thee at a word.'
He spat out at her.
'Is thine eye cocked up to that level?... I am very hot, very
choleric. Thou hast seen me. Thou shalt not live. I will slay thee. I
shall do such things as make the moon turn bloody red.'
'Aye art thou there?' she answered coldly. 'Ye have me no longer upon
lone heaths and moors. Mend thy tongue. Here I have good friends.'
Suddenly he began to entreat:
'Thy mule did stumble--an evil omen. Come away, come away. I know well
thou lovest me.'
'I know well I love thee too well,' she answered, as if in scorn of
herself.
'Come away to thy father.'
'Why what a bother is this,' she said. 'Thou wouldst to the wars to
get thee gold? Thou wouldst trail a pike? Thou canst do little without
the ear of some captain. Here is the great captain of them all.'
'I dare not speak here,' he muttered huskily. 'But this King....' He
paused and added swiftly: 'He is of an ill omen to all Katharines.'
'Why, he shall give me his old gloves to darn,' she laughed. 'Fond
knave, this King standeth on a mountain a league high. A King shall
take notice of one for the duration of a raindrop's fall. Then it is
done. One may make oneself ere it reach the ground, or never. Besides,
'tis a well-spoken elder. 'Tis the spit of our grandfather Culpepper.'
When Henry came hurrying back, engrossed, to send Culpepper and the
mule to the gatehouse for a guide, she laughed gently for pleasure.
Culpepper said tremulously: 'She hath her father's commands to hasten
to Dover.'
'Her father taketh and giveth commands from me,' Henry answered, and
his glove flicked once more towards the gate. He had turned his face
away before Culpepper's hand grasped convulsively at his dagger and he
had Katharine Howard at his side sweeping back towards Cromwell.
She asked, confidingly and curiously: 'Who is that lord?' and, after
his answer, she mused, 'He is no friend to Howards.'
'Nay, that man taketh his friends among mine,' he answered. He stopped
to regard her, his face one heavy and indulgent smile. The garter on
his knee, broad and golden, showed her the words: '_Y pense_'; the
collars moved up and down on his immense chest, the needlework of
roses was so fine that she wondered how many women had sat up how many
nights to finish it: but the man was grey and homely.
'I know none of your ways here,' she said.
'Never let fear blanch thy cheeks till we are no more thy friend,' he
reassured her. He composed one of his gallant speeches:
'Here lives for thee nothing but joy.' Pleasurable hopes should be her
comrades while the jolly sun shone, and sweet content at night her
bedfellow....
He handed her to the care of the Lord Cromwell to take her to the Lady
Mary's lodgings. It was unfitting that she should walk with him, and,
with his heavy and bearlike gait, swinging his immense shoulders, he
preceded them up the broad path.