'A prudent tongue is also a Christian possession,' he muttered.
'Nay there is no one to hear in this room,' she said.
He bent over her to raise her to her feet and holding before her eyes
his missal, he indicated to her certain prayers that she should recite
in order to prevent the fiend's coming to her again. Suddenly he
commanded her to tell him how often she had conversed with the King's
Highness.
Gardiner was the bitterest of all whom Cromwell had to hate him. He
had been of the King's Council, and a secretary before Cromwell had
reached the Court, and, but for Cromwell, he might well have been the
King's best minister. But Cromwell had even taken his secretaryship;
and he was set upon having Privy Seal down all through those ten
years. He had been bishop before any of these changes had been thought
of, and by such Papists as Katharine Howard he was esteemed the most
holy man in the land.
She told him that she had seen the King but once for a little time.
'They told me it was many times,' he answered fiercely. 'Should I have
come here merely to chatter with you?'
There was something sinister and harsh even in the bluish tinge of his
shaven jaws, and his agate-blue eyes were sombre, threatening and
suspicious.
She answered: 'But once,' and related the story very soberly.
He threatened her with his finger.
'Have a care that you speak truth. Things will not always remain in
this guise. I come to warn you that you speak the King with a loyal
purpose. His Highness listens sometimes to the promptings of his
women.'
'You might have saved your journey,' she answered. 'I could speak no
otherwise if he loved me.'
He gazed involuntarily round at the hangings as if he suspected a
listener.
'Your Most Reverence does ill to doubt me,' Katharine said
submissively. 'I am of a true house.'
'No house is true save where it finds its account,' he answered
moodily. He could not believe that she spoke the truth--for he was
unable to believe that any man could speak the truth--but it was true
she was poorly housed, raggedly dressed and hidden up in a corner.
Nevertheless, these might be artifices. He made ostentatiously and
disdainfully towards the door.
'Why, God keep you,'--he moved his fingers in a negligent blessing--'I
believe you are true, though you are of little use.' Suddenly he shot
out:
'If you would stay here in peace your cousin Culpepper must begone.'
Katharine put her hand to her heart in sudden fear of these men who
surrounded her and knew everything.
'What hath Tom done?' she asked.
'He hath put a shame upon thee,' the bishop answered. He had fallen
upon Sir Christopher Aske: he had been set in chains for it, in the
Duke's ward room. But upon the coming of the Queen the night before,
all misdemeanants had been cast loose again. Culpepper had been kept
by the guards from entering the palace, where he had no place. But he
had fallen in with the Magister Udal in the courtyard. Being maudlin
and friendly at the time, he had cast his arms round the magister's
neck claiming him for a loved acquaintance. They had drunk together
and had started, towards midnight, to find the chamber of Katharine
Howard, Culpepper seeking his cousin, and the magister, Margot Poins.
On the way they had enlisted other jovial souls, and the tumult in the
corridor had arisen. 'These scandals are best avoided,' the bishop
finished. 'I have known women lose their lives through them when they
came to have husbands.'
'I could have calmed him,' Katharine said. 'He is always silent at a
word from me.'
Gardiner stood pondering, his head hanging down. His eyes, hard and
blue, flashed at her and then down again at the floor.
'They told me you were the King's good friend,' he said, resentfully.
'Your gossip Udal told my chaplain, and it hath been repeated.'
'They will talk where there are a many together,' Katharine answered;
'the magister is a notorious babbler and will have told many lies.'
'He is a spy of Privy Seal's and deep in his councils,' Gardiner
answered gloomily.
A heavy wind that had arisen hurled itself against the dark casement.
Little flaws of cold air penetrated the room, and the bishop pulled
his cap further down over his ears.
'My Lord Privy Seal would send my cousin to Calais where there is
fighting to come,' Katharine said.
Gardiner raised his head sharply at Cromwell's name.
'You speak sense at the end,' he muttered. To him too it had occurred
that if she was to be the King's peaceably, this madman must begone.
If Cromwell wished this lover of this girl out of the way, the reason
was not obscure.
'A man of his hath been here this very day,' Katharine said.
'Privy Seal learned whoremastering in Italy,' Gardiner cried
triumphantly. 'He saw signs that his Highness inclined to you. Have a
care for your little soul.'
'Why, I think Privy Seal had no such vain imagination,' Katharine
answered submissively. She would have laughed that the magister's
insane babblings should have raised such a coil; but Gardiner was a
man esteemed very saintly, and she kept her eyes on the floor.
'Give thou ear to no doctrines of Privy Seal's,' he answered swiftly.
'Thy soul should burn: I will curse thee. If the King shall offer thee
favours for thy friends come thou to me for spiritual guidance.'
She opened amazed and candid eyes upon him.
'But this is a folly,' she said. 'A King may regard one for a minute,
then it is past. Privy Seal would not bring me up against the King.'
He flashed his gloomy blue eyes at her, suspecting her, and still
threatening.
'I know how Privy Seal will plot,' he said passionately. 'Having
failed with one woman he will bring another.'
He clenched his hands angrily and unclenched them: the wind moaned for
a moment among the chimney stacks.
'So it is!' he cried, from deep down in his chest. 'If it were not so,
how is there all this clamour about his Highness and a woman?'
'Most Reverend,' she said, 'there is no end to the inventions of
Magister Udal.'
'There is none to the machinations of the fiend, and Udal is of his
councils,' he said. 'Be careful, I tell you, for your soul's sake.
Cromwell shall come to you offering you great bribes. Have a care I
say!'
She attempted to say that Udal had no voice at all in Privy Seal's
councils, being a garrulous magpie that no sane man would trust. But
Gardiner had crossed his arms and stood, immense and shadowy, in the
firelight. He hissed irritably between his teeth when she spoke, as if
she interrupted his meditation.
'All the world knows Udal for his spy,' he said, sombrely. 'If Udal
hath babbled, God be thanked. I say again: if Privy Seal bring thee to
the King, come thou to me. But, by the Grace of Heaven, I will
forestall Privy Seal with thee and the King!'
She forbore to contradict him any more; he had this maggot in his
head, and was so wild to defeat Privy Seal with his own tool.
He muttered: 'Think you Privy Seal knoweth not the King's taste? I
tell you he hath seen an inclination in him towards you. This is a
plot, but I have sounded it!'
She let him talk, and asked, with a malice too fine for him to
discern:
'I should not shun the King's presence for my soul's sake?'
'God forbid,' he answered. 'I may use thee to bring down Privy Seal.'
He picked up a piece of bark from a faggot beside the fire and rolled
it between his fingers. She stood looking at him intently, her lips a
little parted, tall, graceful and submissive.
'You are more fair-skinned than any his Highness has favoured before,'
he said in a meditative voice. 'Yet Cromwell knows the King's tastes
better than any man.' He sank down into her tall-backed chair and
suddenly tossed the piece of bark into the fire. 'I would have you
walk across the floor, elevating your arms as you were the goddess
Flora.'
She tripped towards the door, held her arms above her head, turned her
long body to right and left, bent very low in a courtesy to him, and
let her hands fall restfully into her lap. The firelight shone upon
the folds of her dress and in the white lining of her hood. He looked
at her, leaning over the arm of the chair, his blue eyes hard with the
strenuous rage of his new project.
'You could take a part in an Italian interlude? A masque?'
'I have a better memory of the French or Latin,' she answered.
'You do not turn pale? Your knees knock not together?'
'I think I blush most,' she said seriously.
He answered, 'You will be the better of a little colour,' and began
muffling his face with his cloak.
'See you, then,' his harsh voice commanded. 'You shall see their
Highnesses at Privy Seal's house on the Saturday; but they shall see
you at mine on the Tuesday. If you are good enough to serve the turn
of Privy Seal, you may be good enough to serve mine. The King listens
sometimes to the promptings of his women. I will teach you how you may
bring this man down and set me in his place.'
She reflected for a moment. 'I would well serve you,' she said. 'But I
do not believe this fable of the King, and I have no memory of
Italian.' She talked of being the Lady Mary's servant, or that she
must get her lady's leave.
His brows grew heavy, his eyes threatening and alarming beneath their
heavy lids.
'Be you faithful to me,' he thundered. Even his thin and delicate
hands seemed to menace her. 'Retain your obedience to your Faith. Your
duty is to that, and to no earthly lady before that.'
Her eyes were cast down, her lips did not move. He said, harshly, 'It
will go ill with you if it become known to Cromwell I have visited
you. Keep this matter secret as you love your liberty. I will send you
the words you shall say by a private bearer. After, maybe, his
Highness shall safeguard you, I admonishing him. But the Lady Mary
shall bid you obey me in all things.'
He opened the door and put his head out cautiously. Suddenly he drew
it back and said in Latin, 'Here is a spy.' He did not flinch, but
advanced into the corridor, keeping his back to the servitor whom
already Master Viridus had sent to keep her door. Gardiner fumbled in
his robes and pulled out his missal. He turned the pages over, and,
speaking in a feigned and squeaky voice, once more indicated to her
prayers against the visitations of fiends. Reading them aloud, he
interspersed the Latin of the missal with the phrases, 'You may pray
to God he have not seen my face. Be you very silent and secret, or you
are undone. I could in no wise save you from Cromwell unless the King
becomes your protector.' He finished in the vulgar tongue. 'I pray my
prayers with you may have availed to give you relief. But a simple
priest as myself is of small skill in these visitations. You should
have sent to some great Churchman or one of the worshipful bishops.'
'Good Father Henry, I thank you,' she answered, having entered into
his artifice. He went away, feigning to limp on his right knee, and
keeping his face from the spy.
At the corner of the corridor Margot Poins, an immense blonde and
gentle figure in Lutheran grey, stood back in the hangings. The
Magister Udal leant over her, supporting himself with one hand against
the wall above her head and one leg crossed beneath his gown.
'Come you into my room,' Katharine said to the girl; and to the
magister, 'Avoid, man of books. I will have no maid of mine undone by
thee.'
'_Venio honoris causa_,' he said pertly, and Margot uttered, 'He seeks
me in wedlock,' in a gruff, uncontrolled voice of a great young girl's
confusion, and immense blushes covered her large cheeks.
Katharine laughed; she was sorely afraid of the serving man behind
her, for that he was a spy set there by Viridus she was very sure, and
she was casting about in her mind for a device that should let her
tell whether or no he had known the bishop. The squeaky voice and the
feigned limp seemed to her stratagems ignoble and futile on the part
of a great Churchman, and his mania of plots and counter-plottings had
depressed and wearied her, for she expected the great to be wise. But
she played her part for him as it was her duty. She spoke to the girl
with her scarlet cheeks.
'Believe thou the magister after he hath ta'en thee afore a priest. He
hath sought me and two score others in the cause of honour. Get you
in, sweetheart.'
She pushed the girl in at the door. The serving man sat on his stool;
his shock of yellow hair had never known a comb, but he had a decent
suit of a purplish wool-cloth. He had his eyes dully on the ground.
'As you value your servitorship, let no man come into my room when I
be out,' Katharine said to him. 'Saving only the Father Henry that was
here now.'
The man raised expressionless blue eyes to her face.
'I know not his favours,' he said in a peasant's mutter. 'Maybe I
should know him if I saw him again. I am main good at knowing people.'
'Why, he is from the Sheeres,' Katharine added, still playing, though
she was certain that the man knew Gardiner. 'You shall know him by his
voice and his limp.'
He answered, 'Maybe,' and dropped his eyes to the ground. She sent him
to fetch her some candles, and shut the door upon him.