I
A grave and bearded man was found to cup her. He gave her a potion
composed of the juice of nightshade and an infusion of churchyard
moss. Her eyes grew dilated and she had evil dreams. She lay in a
small chamber that was quite bare and had a broken window, and the
magister ran from room to room begging for quilts to cover her.
It was nobody's affair. The Lord Privy Seal, her uncle, the Catholics,
and the King were still perturbed about Anne of Cleves, and there were
no warrants signed for Katharine's housing or food. All the palace was
trembling with confusion, for, when the Queen had been upon the point
of setting out from Rochester, the King was said to have been overcome
by a new spasm of disgust: she was put by again.
The young Earl of Surrey, a cousin of Katharine's, gave Udal
contemptuously a couple of crowns towards her nourishment. Udal
applied them to bribing Throckmorton, the spy who had been with Privy
Seal upon the barge, to inscribe on his lord's tablets the words:
'Katharine Howard to be provided for.' Udal made up his courage
sufficiently to speak to the Duke, whom he met in a corridor. The Duke
was jaundiced against his niece, because her cousin Culpepper had
fallen upon Sir Christopher Aske, the Duke's captain who had kept the
postern. It had needed seven men to master him, and this great tumult
had arisen in the King's own courtyard. Nevertheless, the Duke sent
his astrologer to cast Katharine's horoscope. He signed, too, an order
that some girl be found to attend on her.
Udal filled in the girl's name as Margot Poins, the granddaughter of
old Badge, of Austin Friars. Even among these clamours his tooth
watered for her, and he gave the order to young Poins to execute. The
young man rode off into Bedfordshire, where his sister had been sent
out of the way to the house of their aunt. He presented the order as
in the nature of a writ from the Duke, and amongst Lutherans in London
a heavy growl of rage went up--against Norfolk, against the Papists of
the Privy Council, and, above all, against Katharine Howard, whom they
called the New Harlot.
Katharine, having taken much nightshade juice, was raving upon her
bed. The leech became convinced that she was possessed by a demon,
because the pupils of her eyes were as large as silver groats, and her
hands picked at the coverlets. He ordered that thirteen priests should
say an exorcism at the door of her room, and that the potion of
nightshade--since it might inconvenience without dislodging the fiend
inhabiting her slender body--should be discontinued.
Udal sought for priests, but having no money, he was disregarded by
them. He ran to the chaplain of the Bishop of Winchester. For the
clergy upheld or ordained by Archbishop Cranmer were held to be less
efficacious in matters of witchcraft and possession. Just then
Cromwell had triumphed, and Anne of Cleves was upon the water coming
to the palace.
Bishop Gardiner's chaplain, a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes
sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a
pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in
that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal,
because Privy Seal had set him with the Lady Mary, passed amongst the
Papists for one of Cromwell's informants, and it amused his sardonic
and fantastic nature to affect mysterious denials, which made the
fiction the more firmly believed and gave to Udal himself a certain
hated prestige. The chaplain answered that in the present turmoil no
such body as thirteen clergymen could be found.
'But the lady shall be torn in pieces,' Udal shrieked. Panic had
overcome him. Who knew that the fiend, having torn his Katharine
asunder, might not enter into the body of his Margot, who was already
at her bedside? His lips quivered with terror, his eyes smiled
furiously, he wrung his hands. He swore he would penetrate to the
King's Highness' self. Udal was a man who stuck at nothing to gain a
point. He had heard from Katharine that the King had spoken graciously
to her, and he swore once more that she was the apple of the King's
eye, as well as a beloved disciple of Privy Seal's.
'Be sure,' he foamed, 'they shall be avenged on a Gardiner and his
crew if you let her die.'
The chaplain said impassively: 'God forbid that we, who are loyal to
his Highness, should listen to these tales you bring us of his
lechery!' They had there a new Queen, their duty was to her, and to no
Katharine Howard. The bishop's clergy were all joyfully setting to
welcome the lady from Cleves, they had no time to waste over a leman's
demons. It overjoyed him to refuse Privy Seal's man a boon on the plea
of loyalty to the new Queen. Nevertheless, he went straight to the
presence of the bishop, and told him the marvels that Udal had
reported.
'The man is incontinent and a babbler,' the chaplain said. 'We may
believe one tenth.'
'Well, you shall find for once how this wench is housed and where,'
his master answered moodily. 'God knows what we may believe in these
days. Doubtless the Nuntio of Satan hath a new plot in the hatching.'
Making these enquiries, the chaplain came upon the backwash of Udal's
reports that the King loved some leman. Some lady, somewhere--some
said a Howard, some a Rochford, some would have it a Spanish
woman--was being hidden up, either by the King, by the Duke of
Norfolk, or by Privy Seal. God knew the truth of these things: but
similar had happened before; and it was certain that the Cleves woman
had been for long kept dangling at Rochester. Perhaps that was the
reason. His Highness had his own ways in these matters: but where
there was smoke, generally fire was to be found. The chaplain brought
this budget back to Bishop Gardiner. Gardiner swore a wild oath that,
by the bones of the Confessor, they had unmasked a new plot of Satan's
Legate, the Privy Seal. But, by the grace of God, he would
counter-plot him.
Udal, who had started all these rumours, had run to get the help of a
Dean of Durham, with whom formerly he had had much converse as to the
position of the Islands of the Blest. He never found him; the palace
was in confusion, with the doors all open and men running from room to
room to ask of each other how far it might be safe to be extravagant
in their demonstrations of joy at the coming of the new Queen.
All night long, from about dusk, the palace rang with salvos of
artillery, loud shouts and the blowing of horns: the windows glowed
duskily now and again with the light of bonfires that leapt up and
subsided. Margot Poins, who was used to rejoicings in the City, set
the heavy wooden bar across the door in Katharine Howard's room,
turned the immense key in the rusty lock, and opened to no knocking
until the day broke. There were shouts and stumblings in the corridor
outside and the magister himself, very intoxicated and shrieking, came
hammering at the door with several others towards one in the morning.
Katharine could walk by noon to the lodging that had at last been
assigned to her by Privy Seal's warrant. The magister, having got
himself soundly beaten the night before, was still sleeping away the
effects of it, so she and Margot stayed for an hour in solitude.
Voices passed the door many times, and at last a Master Viridus
entered stealthily. He was one of the Lord Cromwell's secretaries, and
he bore a purse. His name had been Greene but he had translated it to
give a more worshipful sound. His eyes were furtive and he moved his
lips perpetually in imitation of his master; wore a hooded cap, and
made much use of the Italian language.
'Bounty is the sign of the great, and honourable service ensureth its
continuance,' he said in a dry and arrogant voice. 'This is my Lord
Privy Seal's vails. My lord hath gone to his own house.'
He presented the purse of gold, and peered round at the room which,
following the warrant, had been assigned by a clerk from the Earl
Marshal's office.
'I thank your lord, and shall endeavour to deserve his good bounty,'
Katharine said. The nightshade juice being left two days behind she
had the use of her eyes and much of the stiffness had gone out of her
wrist.
'Your ladyship had much the wiser,' he answered. He lifted the
hangings and, under pretence of examining into her comfort, peered
into the great Flemish press and felt under the heavy black table to
see if it had a drawer for papers. Cromwell had been forced, following
the King's command, to give Katharine her place. But he had no love
for Howards, and already the maids of the Lady Mary were a mutinous
knot. Viridus was instructed to keep an attentive eye upon this
girl--for they might hang her very easily since she was outspoken; or,
having got her neck into a noose, they could work upon her terror and
make her spy upon the Lady Mary herself. None of the Lady Mary's women
were housed very sumptuously, but in this room there were at least an
old tapestry, a large Flemish chair, a feather bed in a niche like an
arched cell over which the hangings could be drawn, and a cord of wood
for the fire. He hummed and hawed that workmen must come to bring her
better hangings, and a servitor be found to keep her door. A watch was
to be set on her; the women who measured her for clothes would try to
discover whom she loved and hated, and the serving man at her door
would report her visitors.
'My lord hath you very present in his mind,' Viridus said.
She was commanded to go on the Saturday to the house in Austin
Friars, where my lord was preparing a great feast in the honour of the
Queen.
Katharine said that she had no dress to go in.
'A seemly decent habit shall be got ready,' he answered. 'You shall
sit in a gallery in private, and it shall be pointed out to you what
lords you shall speak with and whom avoid.' For '_com' è bella
giovinezza_' ... How beautiful is youth, what a pleasant season! And
since it lasted but a short space it behoved us all--and her as much
as any--to make as much as might be whilst it endured. The regard of a
great lord such as Privy Seal brought present favours and future
honours in the land, honours being pleasant in their turn, when youth
is passed, like the mellow suns of autumn. 'Thereby indeed,' he
apostrophised her, 'the savour of youth reneweth itself again and
again.... "_Anzi rinuova come fa la luna_," in the words of Boccace.'
Her fair and upright beauty made Viridus acknowledge how excellent a
spy upon the Lady Mary she might make. Papistry and a loyal love for
the Old Faith seemed to be as strong in her candid eyes as it was
implicit in her name. The Lady Mary might trust her for that and talk
with her because of her skill in the learned tongues. Then, if they
held her in their hands, how splendid a spy she might make, being so
trusted! She might well be won for their cause by the offer of liberal
rewards, though Privy Seal's hand had been heavy upon all her
kinsfolk. These men of Privy Seal's get from him a maxim which he got
in turn from his master Macchiavelli: '_Advance therefore those whom
it shall profit thee to make thy servants: for men forget sooner the
death of a father than the loss of a patrimony_'--and either by
threats or by rewards they might make her very useful.
She had been minded to mock him in the beginning of his speech, but
his dangerous pale-blue eyes made her feel that if he were ridiculous
he was also very powerful, and that she was in the hands of these men.
Therefore she answered that youth indeed was a pleasant season when
health, good victuals and the love of God sustained it.
He surveyed her out of the corners of his eyes.
'Seek, then, to deserve these good things,' he said. He stayed some
time longer directing her how she should wear her clothes, and then in
the gathering dusk he dwindled stealthily through the door.
'It is to make you like a chained-up beast or slave,' Margot said to
her mistress.
'Why, hold your tongue, coney, after to-day,' Katharine answered, 'the
walls shall hear. I am a very poor man's daughter and must even earn
my bread if I would stay here.'
'They could never tie me so,' Margot retorted.
Her mistress laughed:
'Why, you may set nets for the wind, but what a man will catch is
still uncertain.'
It was cold, and they piled up the fire, waiting for some one to bring
them candles.
A tall and bulky figure, with a heavy cloak cast over one shoulder in
the Spanish fashion, but with a priest's cap, was suddenly in the
doorway.
'Ha, magister,' Katharine said, knowing no other man that could visit
her. But the firelight shone upon a heavy, firm jaw that was never the
magister's, on white hands and in threatening, steadfast eyes.
'I am the unworthy Bishop Gardiner, of Winchester,' a harsh voice
said. 'I seek one Katharine Howard. Peace be with you in these evil
days.'
Katharine fell upon her knees before this holy man. He gave her his
blessing perfunctorily, and muttered some words of the exorcism
against demons.
'I am even cured,' Katharine said.
He sent Margot Poins from the room, and stood in the firelight that
threw his great shadow to shake upon the hangings, towering above
Katharine Howard upon her knees. He was silent, as if he would
threaten her, and his brooding eyes glowed and devoured her face. Here
then, she thought, was the man from the other camp descending
secretly upon her. He had no need to threaten, for she was of his
side.
He said that a Magister Udal had reported that she stood in need of
Christian aid, and, speaking Latin with a heavy voice, he interrogated
her as to her faith. The times were evil: many and various heresies
stalked about the land: let her beware of trafficking with them.
Kneeling still in the firelight, she answered that, so far as was
lawful, she was a daughter of the Church.
He muttered: 'Lawful!' and looked at her for a long time with brooding
and fanatical eyes. 'I hear you have read many heathen books under a
strange master.'