The young Poins, in his scarlet and black, drew his sister into a
corner of the hall in which the gentry of the Lords that were there
had already dined. It was a vast place, used as a rule for hearing
suitors to the Lord Privy Seal and for the audit dinners of his
tenantry in London. On its whitened walls there were trophies of arms,
and between the wall and the platform at the end of the hall was a
small space convenient for private talk. The rest of the people there
were playing round games for kissing forfeits or clustered round a
magician who had brought a large ape to tell fortunes by the _Sortes
Virgilianæ_. It fumbled about in the pages of a black-letter Æneid,
and scratched its side voluptuously: taking its own time it looked at
the pages attentively with a mournful parody of an aged sage, and set
its finger upon a line that the fates directed.
'Here's a great ado about thee,' Poins said, laughing at his sister.
'Thy name is up in this town of London.'
He had come in the bodyguard of the Queen, and had made time to slip
round to old Badge's low house behind the wall in order to beg from
his grandfather ten crowns to pay for a cloak he had lost at cards.
'Such a cackle among these Lutherans,' he mocked at Margot. 'Heard you
no hootings as your lady rode here behind us of the guard?'
'I heard none, nor she deserveth none,' Margot answered. 'For I love
her most well.'
'Aye, she hath done a rape on thee,' he laughed. 'Aye, our good uncle
hath printed a very secret libel upon her.' He began to whisper: Let
it not be known or a sudden vengeance might fall upon their house. It
was no small matter to print unlicensed broadsides. But their moody
uncle was out of all fear of consequences, so mad with rage. 'He would
have broken my back, because I tore thee from his tender keeping.'
'Sure it was never so tender,' Margot said. 'When was there a day that
he did not beat me?' But he would have married her to his apprentice,
a young fellow with a golden tongue, that preached every night to a
secret congregation in a Cripplegate cellar.
'Why, an thou observest my maxims,' the boy said, sententiously, 'I
will have thee a great lady. But uncle hath printed this libel, and
tongues are at work in Austin Friars.' It was said that this was a new
Papist plot. Margot was but the first that they should carry off. The
Duke and Bishop Gardiner were reported to have signed papers for
abducting all the Lutheran virgins in London. They were to be led from
the paths of virtue into Catholic lewdnesses, and all their boys were
to be abducted and sent into monasteries across the seas.
'Thus the race of Lutherans should die out,' he laughed. 'Why they are
hiding their maidens in pigeon-houses in Holborn. A boy called Hugh
hath gone out and never come home, and it is said that masked men in
black stuff gowns were seen to put him into a sack in Moorfields.'
'Well, here be great marvels,' Margot laughed.
He shook his red sides, and his blue eyes grew malicious and teasing:
'Such a strumpet as thy lady,' he uttered. 'A Papist Howard that is
known to have been loved by twenty men in Lincoln.'
Margot passed from laughter into hot anger:
'It is a marvel God strikes not their tongues with palsy that said
that,' she said swiftly. 'Why do you not kill some of them if you be a
man?'
'Why, be calmed,' he said. 'You have heard such tales before now. It
is no more than saying that a woman goes not to their churches to
pray.'
A young Marten Pewtress, half page, half familiar to the Earl of
Surrey, came towards them calling, 'Hal Poins.' He had black down upon
his chin and a roving eye. He wore a purple coat like a tabard, and a
cap with his master's arms upon a jewelled brooch.
'They say there's a Howard wench come to Court,' he cried from a
distance, 'and thy sister in her service.'
'We talk of her,' Poins answered. 'Here is my sister.'
The young Pewtress kissed the girl upon the cheek.
'Pray, you, sweetheart, unfold,' he said. 'You are a pretty piece, and
have a good brother that's my friend.'
He asked all of a breath whether this lady had yet had the small-pox?
whether her hair were her own? how tall she stood without high heels
to her shoon? whether her breath were sweet or her language unpleasing
in the Lincolnshire jargon? whether the King had sent her many
presents?
Margaret Poins was a very large, fair, and credulous creature, rising
twenty. Florid and slow-speaking, she had impulses of daring that
covered her broad face with immense blushes. She was dressed in grey
linsey-woolsey, and wore a black hood after the manner of the stricter
Protestants, but she had round her neck a gilt medallion on a gold
chain that Katharine Howard had given her already. She was, it was
true, the daughter of a gentleman courtier, but he had been knocked on
the head by rebels near Exeter just before her birth, and her mother
had died soon after. She had been treated with gloomy austerity by her
uncle and with sinister kindness by her grandfather, whom she dreaded.
So that, coming from her Bedfordshire aunt, who had a hard cane, to
this palace, where she had seen fine dresses and had already been
kissed by two lords in the corridors, she was ready to aver that the
Lady Katharine had a breath as sweet as the kine, a white skin which
the small-pox had left unscarred, hair that reached to her ankles, and
a learning and a wit unimaginable. Her own fortune was made, she
believed, in serving her. Both the magister and her brother had sworn
it, and, living in an age of marvels--dragons, portents from the
heavens, and the romances of knight errantry--she was ready to believe
it. It was true that the lady's room had proved a cell more bare and
darker than her own at home, but Katharine's bright and careless
laughter, her fair and radiant height, and her ready kisses and
pleasant words, made the girl say with hot loyalty:
'She is more fair than any in the land, and, indeed, she is the apple
of the King's eye.' Her voice was gruff with emotion, but, suddenly
becoming very aware that she was talking to a strange young gentleman
who might scoff, she seemed to choke and put her hand over her mouth.
Brocades for dresses, perfumes, gloves, oranges, and even another
netted purse of green silk holding gold had continued to be brought to
their chamber ever since Privy Seal had signed the warrant, and, it
being about the new year, these ordinary vails and perquisites of a
Maid of Honour made a show. Margot believed very sincerely that these
things came direct from the King's hands, since they were formally
announced as coming of his Highness' great bounty.
She reported to young Pewtress, 'And even now she is with the Lord
Privy Seal, who brought her to Court.'
'He will go poaching among our Howards now,' Pewtress said. He stood
considering with an air of gloom that the Norfolk servants imitated
from their master, along with such sayings as that the times were very
evil, and that no true man's neck was safe on his shoulders. 'Pray
you, Sweetlips, tell no one this for a day until I have told my
master. It may get me some crowns.' He pinched her chin between his
thumb and forefinger. 'I will be your sweetheart, pretty.'
'Nay, I am provided with a good one,' Margot said seriously.
'You cannot have too many in this place. Take me for when the other's
in gaol and another for when I am hung, as all good men are like to
be.' He turned away lightly and loosened one of his jewelled garters,
so that his stockings should hang in slovenly folds to prove that he
was a man and despised niceness in his dress.
'I would that you be not too cheap to these gentry,' her brother said,
with his eyes on Pewtress.
'I did naught,' she answered. 'If a gentleman will kiss one, it is
uncourtly to turn away the cheek.'
'There is a way of not lending the lip,' he lectured her. 'I shall
school you. A kiss here, a kiss there, I grant you. But consider that
you be a gentleman's child, and ask who a man is.'
'He was well enough favoured,' she remonstrated.
'In these changing days many upstarts are come about the Court,' he
went on with his lesson. 'Such were not here in the old days. Crummock
hath wrought this. Seek advancement; pleasure your mistress, who can
advance you; smile upon the magister, who, being advanced, can advance
you. Speak courteous and fair words to any great lords that shall
observe you. So we can rise in the world.'
'I will observe thy words,' she said submissively, for he seemed to
her great and learned; 'but I like not that thou call'st me "you."'
'Why, these be grave matters,' he replied, 'and "you" is graver than
"thou." But I love thee well. I will take thee a walk if the sun shine
to-morrow.' He tightened his belt and took his pike from the corner.
'As for your lady; those that made these lies are lowsels. I could
slay a score of them if they pressed upon you two.'
'I would not be so spoken of,' Margot answered.
'Then you must never rise in the world, as I am minded you shall,' he
retorted, 'for, you being in a high place, eyes will be upon you.'
Nevertheless, Katharine Howard heard no evil words shouted after her
that day. Pikemen and servitors of Cromwell were too thick upon all
the road to the Tower, where the courtiers took barge again. Cromwell
made very good order that no insults should reach the ears of such of
the Papist nobles as came to his feast; they would make use with the
King of evil words if any such were shouted. Thus the more dangerous
and the most foul-mouthed of that neighbourhood, when the Court went
by, found hands pressed over their mouths or scarves suddenly
tightened round their throats by stalwart men that squeezed behind
them in the narrow ways, so that not many more than twenty heads on
both sides were broken that day; and Margot Poins kept her mouth
closed tight with a sort of rustic caution--a shyness of her mistress
and a desire to spare her any pain. Thus it was not until long after
that Katharine heard of these rumours.
Katharine was in high good spirits. She had no great reason, for
Viridus had threatened her; the Queen had rolled her large eyes round
when Katharine had made her courtesy, but no words intelligible to a
Christian had come from the thick lips; and no lord or lady had
noticed her with a word except that, late in the afternoon, her cousin
Surrey, a young man with a sleepily insolent air and front teeth that
resembled a rabbit's, had suddenly planted himself in front of her as
she sat on a stool against the hangings. He had begun to ask her where
she was housed, when another young man caught him by the shoulder and
pulled him away before he could do more than bid her sit there till he
came again. She had been in no mood to do that for her cousin Surrey;
besides, she would not be seen to speak much with a Papist henchman in
that house. He could seek her if he wanted her company, so she went
into another part of the hall, where they were all strangers.
Except for the mere prudence of pretending to obey Viridus until it
should be safe to defy him and his master, she troubled little about
what was going to happen to her. It was enough that she was away from
the home where she had pined and been lonely. She sat on her stool,
watched the many figures that passed her, marked fashions of
embroidery, and thought that such speeches as she chanced to hear were
ill-turned. Her sister Maids of Honour turned their backs upon her.
Only the dark girl, Cicely Elliott, who had gibed at her a week ago,
helped her to pin her sleeve that had been torn by a sword-hilt of
some man who had turned suddenly in a crowd. But Katharine had learnt,
as well as the magister, that when one is poor one must accept what
the gods send. Besides, she knew that in the Lady Mary's household she
was certain to be avoided, for she was regarded still as a spy of old
Crummock's. That, most likely, would end some day, and she had no love
for women's chatter.
She sat late at night correcting the embroidery of some
true-love-knots that Margot had been making for her. A huckster had
been there selling ribands from France, and showing a doll dressed as
the ladies of the French King's Court were dressing that new year. He
had been talking of a monster that had been born to a pig-sty on
Cornhill, and lamenting that travel was become a grievous costly thing
since the monasteries, with their free hostel, had been done away
with. The monster had been much pondered in the city; certainly it
portended wars or strange public happenings, since it had the face of
a child, greyhound's ears, a sow's forelegs, and a dragon's tail. But
the huckster had gone to another room, and Margot was getting her
supper with the Lady Mary's serving-maids.
'Save us!' Katharine said to herself over her embroidery-frame, 'here
be more drunkards. If I were a Queen I would make a law that any man
should be burnt on the tongue that was drunk more than seven times in
the week.' But she was already on her feet, making for the door, her
frame dropped to the ground. There had been a murmur of voices through
the thick oak, and then shouts and objurgations.
Thomas Culpepper stood in the doorway, his sword drawn, his left hand
clutching the throat of the serving man who was guarding her room.
'God help us!' Katharine said angrily; 'will you ruin me?'
'Cut throats?' he muttered. 'Aye, I can cut a throat with any man in
Christendom or out.' He shook the man backwards and forwards to
support himself. 'Kat, this offal would have kept me from thee.'