The Lady Mary's rooms were seventeen in number; they ran the one into
the other, but they could each be reached by the public corridor
alongside. It was Magister Udal's privilege, his condition being above
that of serving man, to make his way through the rooms if he knew that
the Lady Mary was not in one of them. These chambers were tall and
gloomy; the light fell into them bluish and dismal; in one a pane was
lacking in a window; in another a stool was upset before a fire that
had gone out.
To traverse this cold wilderness Udal had set on his cap. He stood in
front of Katharine Howard in the third room and asked:
'You are ever of the same mind towards your magister?'
'I was never of any mind towards you,' she answered. Her eyes went
round the room to see how Princes were housed. The arras pictured the
story of the nymph Galatea; the windows bore intertwined in red glass
the cyphers H and K that stood for Katharine of Aragon. 'Your broken
fortunes are mended?' she asked indifferently.
He pulled a small book out of his pocket, ferreted among the leaves
and then setting his eye near the page pointed out his beloved line:
'_Pauper sum, pateor, fateor, quod Di dant fero._' Which had been
translated: 'I am poor, I confess; I bear it, and what the gods
vouchsafe that I take'--and on the broad margin of the book had
written: 'Cicero sayeth: That one cannot sufficiently praise them that
be patient having little: And Seneca: The first measure of riches is
to have things necessary--and, as ensueth therefrom, to be therewith
content!'
'I will give you a text from Juvenal,' she said, 'to add to these: Who
writes that no man is poor unless he be worthy of ridicule.'
He winced a little.
'Nay, you are hard! The text should be read: Nothing else maketh
poverty so hard to bear as that it forceth men to ridiculous
shifts.... _Quam quod ridiculos esse_....'
'Aye, magister, you are more learned even yet than I,' she said
indifferently. She made a step towards the next door but he stood in
front of her holding up his thin hands.
'You were my best pupil,' he said, with a hungry humility as if he
mocked himself. 'Poor I am, but mated to me you should live as do the
Hyperboreans, in a calm and voluptuous air.'
'Aye, to hang myself of weariness, as they do,' she answered.
He corrected her with the version of Pliny, but she answered only: 'I
have a great thirst upon me.'
His eyes were humorous, despairing and excited.
'Why should a lady not love her master?' he asked. 'There are
examples. Know you not the old rhyme:
'"_It was a lording's daughter, the fairest one of three,_
_Why lovéd of her master...._"'
'Ah, unspeakable!' she said. 'You bring me examples in the vulgar
tongue!'
'I babble for joy at seeing you and for grief at your harsh words,' he
answered.
She stood waiting with a sort of haughty submissiveness.
'I would you would delay your wooing. I have been on the road since
dawn with neither bit nor sup.'
He protested that he had starved more hideously than Tantalus since he
had seen her last.
She gave him indifferently her cheek to kiss.
'For pity's sake take me where I may rest,' she said, 'I have a maimed
arm.'
* * * * *
He uttered her panegyric, after a model of Tibullus, to the Lady
Rochford and the seven maids of honour under that lady's charge. He
was set upon Katharine's enjoyment, and he invented a lie that the
King had commanded a dress to be found for her to attend at the revels
that night. The maids were already dressing themselves. Two of them
were fairheaded, and four neither fair nor dark; but one was dark as
night, and dressed all in black with a white coif, so that she
resembled a magpie. Some were curling each other's hair and others
tightening stay-laces with little wheels set in their companions'
backs. Their bare shoulders were blue with the cold of the great
room, and their dresses lay in heaps upon sheets that were spread
about the clean floor--brocades sewn with pearls, velvets that were
inlaid with filagree work, indoor furs and coifs of fine lawn that
were delicately edged with black thread.
The high sounds of their laughter had reached through the door, but a
dead silence fell. The dark girl with a very long bust that raked back
like a pigeon's, and with dark and sparkling eyes, tittered derisively
at the magister and went on slowly rubbing a perfumed ointment into
the skin of her throat and shoulders.
'Shall he bring his ragged doxies here too?' she laughed. 'What a
taradiddle is this of Cophetua and a beggar wench.' The other maids
all tittered derisively at Udal.
The Lady Rochford, warming her back close before the fire, said
helplessly, 'I have no dresses beyond what you see.' She was already
attired in a bountiful wine-coloured velvet that was embroidered with
silver wire into entwined monograms of the initials of her name. Her
hood of purple made, above her ample brows, a castellated pattern
resembling the gate of a drawbridge. She, being the mistress of that
household, and compassionately loved by the ladies because she was so
helpless, timorous, and unable to control them, they had combined to
comb and perfume her and to lace her stomacher before setting about
their own clothing. White-haired and with a wrinkled face, she
appeared, under her rich clothes, like some will-less and pallid
captive that had been gorgeously bedizened to grace a conqueror's
triumph. She was cousin to the late Queen Anne Boleyn, and the terror
of her own escape, when the Queen and so many of her house had been
swept away, seemed still to remain in the drawing-in of her eyes. In
the mien of the youngest girls there, there could be seen a strained
tenseness of lids and lips as though, in the midst of laughter, they
were hearkening for distant sounds or the rustle of listeners behind
the tapestry. And where a small door came into one wall they had
pulled down the arras from in front of it, so that no one should enter
unobserved. Lady Rochford addressed herself to Katharine with limp
gestures of protest:
'God knows I would help you to a gown, but we have no more than we are
granted; here are seven ladies and seven dresses. Where can another be
got? The King's Highness knoweth little of ladies' gowns or he had
never ordered one against to-night. Each of those hath taken the women
seven weeks to sew.'
Udal said with a touch of anger, since it enraged him to have to
invent further, as if the one lie about the King were not enough: 'The
Lord Privy Seal commanded very strictly this thing to be done. He is
this lady's very diligent protector. Have a care how you disoblige
her.'
The ladies rustled their slight clothing at that name, turned their
backs, and looked at Katharine above their shoulders. The Lady
Rochford recoiled so far that her skirts were in danger from the fire
in the great hearth; her woebegone, flaccid face was suddenly drawn at
the mention of Cromwell, and she appeared about to kneel at
Katharine's feet. She looked round at the figures of the girls.
'One of these can stay if your ladyship will wear her dress,' she
flustered. 'But who is tall enow? Cicely is too long in the shank.
Bess's shoulders are too broad. Alack! God help me! I will do what I
can'--and she waved her hands disconsolately.
Cold, fatigue, and her maimed arm made Katharine waver on her feet.
This white-haired woman's panic seemed to her grotesque and
disgusting.
'Why, the magister lies,' she said. 'I am no such friend of Privy
Seal's.'
Swift and wicked glances passed among the girls; the dark one threw
back her head and laughed discordantly, like a magpie. She came with a
deft and hopping step and gazed at Katharine with her head on one
side.
'Old Crummock will want our teeth next to make him a new set. He may
have my head, tell him. I have no need for it, it aches so since he
killed my men-folk.'
Lady Rochford shuddered as if she had been struck.
'Beseech you,' she said weakly to Katharine. 'Cicely Elliott is
sometimes distraught. Believe not that we speak like this among
ourselves.' Her eyes wandered in a flustered and piteous way over her
girls and she whimpered, 'Jane Gaskell, stand back to back with this
lady.'
Katharine Howard cried out, 'Keep your gowns for your backs and your
tongues still. Woe betide the girl who calls me a gossip of Privy
Seal.'
Cicely Elliott cast her dark head back and uttered one of her
discordant laughs at the ceiling, and a girl, hiding behind the
others, called out, 'What a fine ----!'
Katharine cried, 'It is all lies that this fool magister utters. I
will go to no masques nor revels.' She turned upon Lady Rochford, her
face pallid, her lips open: 'Give me water,' she said harshly. 'I will
get me back to my pig-sties.'
Lady Rochford wrung her hands and protested that her ladyship should
not repeat that they were always thus. Privy Seal should not visit it
upon them.
The magister blinked upon the riot that his muddling had raised. He
called out, 'Be quiet. Be quiet. This lady is sick!' and stretched out
his hands to hold Katharine on her feet.