IV

'Men shall make us cry, in the end, steel our hearts how we will,' she

said to Margot Poins, who found her weeping with her head down upon

the table above a piece of paper.

'I would weep for no man,' Margot answered.

Large, florid, fair, and slow speaking, she gave way to one of her

impulses of daring that covered her afterwards with immense blushes

and left her buried in speechless confusion. 'I could never weep for

such an oaf as your cousin. He beats good men.'

'Once he sold a farm to buy me a gown,' Katharine said, 'and he goes

to a sure death if I may not stay him.'

'It is even the province of men--to die,' Margot answered. Her voice,

gruff with emotion, astonished herself. She covered her mouth with the

back of her great white hand as if she wished to wipe the word away.

'Beseech you, spoil not your eyes with sitting to write at this hour

for the sake of this roaring boy.'

Katharine sat to the table: a gentle knocking came at the door. 'Let

no one come, I have told the serving knave as much.' She sank into a

pondering over the wording of her letter to Bishop Gardiner. It was

not to be thought of that her cousin should murder a Prince of the

Church; therefore the bishop must warn the Catholics in Paris that

Cromwell had this in mind. And Bishop Gardiner must stay her cousin on

his journey: by a false message if needs were. It would be an easy

matter to send him such a message as that she lay dying and must see

him, or anything that should delay him until this cardinal had left

Paris.

The great maid behind her back was fetching from the clothes-prop a

waterglobe upon its stand; she set it down on the table before the

rush-light, moving on tiptoe, for to her the writing of a letter was a

sort of necromancy, and she was distressed for Katharine's sake. She

had heard that to write at night would make a woman blind before

thirty. The light grew immense behind the globe; watery rays flickered

broad upon the ceiling and on the hangings, and the paper shone with a

mellow radiance. The gentle knocking was repeated, and Katharine

frowned. For before she was half way through with the humble words of

greeting to the bishop it had come to her that this was a very

dangerous matter to meddle in, and she had no one by whom to send the

letter. Margot could not go, for it was perilous for her maid to be

seen near the bishop's quarters with all Cromwell's men spying about.

Behind her was the pleasant and authoritative voice of old Sir

Nicholas Rochford talking to Margot Poins. Katharine caught the name

of Cicely Elliott, the dark maid of honour who had flouted her a week

ago, and had pinned up her sleeve that day in Privy Seal's house.

The old man stood, grey and sturdy, his hand upon her doorpost. His

pleasant keen eyes blinked upon her in the strong light from her globe

as if he were before a good fire.

'Why, you are as fair as a saint with a halo, in front of that

jigamaree,' he said. 'I am sent to offer you the friendship of Cicely

Elliott.' When he moved, the golden collar of his knighthood shone

upon his chest; his cropped grey beard glistened on his chin, and he

shaded his eyes with his hand.

'I was writing of a letter,' Katharine said. She turned her face

towards him: the stray rays from the globe outlined her red curved

lips, her swelling chest, her low forehead; and it shone like the moon

rising over a hill, yellow and fiery in the hair above her brow. The

lines of her face drooped with her perplexities, and her eyes were

large and shadowed, because she had been shedding many tears.

'Cicely Elliott shall make you a good friend,' he said, with a modest

pride of his property; 'she shall marry me, therefore I do her such

services.'

'You are old for her,' Katharine said.

He laughed.

'Since I have neither chick nor child and am main rich for a subject.'

'Why, she is happy in her servant,' Katharine said abstractedly. 'You

are a very famous knight.'

'There are ballads of me,' he answered complacently. 'I pray to die in

a good tulzie yet.'

'If Cicely Elliott have her scarf in your helmet,' Katharine said, 'I

may not give you mine.' She was considering of her messenger to the

bishop. 'Will you do me a service?'

'Why,' he answered, with a gentle mockery, 'you have one tricksy

swordsman to bear your goodly colours.'

Katharine turned clean about to him and looked at him with attention,

to make out whether he might be such a man as would carry her letter

for her.

He returned her gaze directly, for he was proud of himself and of his

fame. He had fought in all the wars that a man might fight in since he

had been eighteen, and for fifteen years he had been captain of a

troop employed by the Council in keeping back the Scots of the

Borders. It was before Flodden Field that he had done his most famous

deed, about which there were many ballads. Being fallen upon by a bevy

of Scotsmen near a tall hedge, after he had been unhorsed, he had set

his back into a thorn bush, and had fought for many hours in the rear

of the Scottish troop, alone and with only his sword. The ballad that

had been made about him said that seventeen corpses lay in front of

the bush after the English won through to him. But since Cromwell had

broken up the Northern Councils, and filled them again with his own

men of no birth, the old man had come away from the Borders,

disdaining to serve at the orders of knaves that had been butchers'

sons and worse. He owned much land and was very wealthy, and, having

been very abstemious, because he came of an old time when knighthood

had still some of the sacredness and austerity of a religion, he was a

man very sound in limb and peaceable of disposition. In his day he had

been esteemed the most graceful whiffler in the world: now he used

only the heavy sword, because he was himself grown heavy.

Katharine answered his gentle sneer at her cousin:

'It is true that I have a servant, but he is gone and may not serve

me.' Yet the knight would find it in the books of chivalry that

certain occasions or great quests allowed of a knight's doing the

errands of more than one lady: but one lady, as for instance the

celebrated Dorinda, might have her claims asserted by an illimitable

number of knights, and she begged him to do her a service.

'I have heard of these Errantry books,' he said. 'In my day there were

none such, and now I have no letters.'

'How, then, do you pass the long days of peace,' Katharine asked, 'if

you neither drink nor dice?'

He answered: 'In telling of old tales and teaching their paces to the

King's horses.'

He drew himself up a little. He would have her understand that he was

not a horse leech: but there was in these four-footed beasts a certain

love for him, so that Richmond, the King's favourite gelding, would

stand still to be bled if he but laid his hand on the great creature's

withers to calm him. These animals he loved, since he grew old and

might not follow arguments and disputations of _hic_ and _hoc_. 'There

were none such in my day. But a good horse is the same from year's end

to year's end....'

'Will you carry a letter for me?' Katharine asked.

'I would have you let me show you some of his Highness' beasts,' he

added. 'I breed them to the manage myself. You shall find none that

step more proudly in Christendom or Heathenasse.'

'Why, I believe you,' she answered. Suddenly she asked: 'You have

ridden as knight errant?'

He said: 'For three weeks only. Then the Scots came on too thick and

fast to waste time.' His dark eyes blinked and his broad lips moved

humorously with his beard. 'I swore to do service to any lady; pray

you let me serve you.'

'You can do me a service,' she said.

He moved his hand to silence her.

'Pray you take it not amiss. But there is one that hates you.'

She said:

'Perhaps there are a many; but do me a service if you will.'

'Look you,' he said, 'these times are no times of mine. But I know it

is prudent to have servitors that love one. I saw yours shake a fist

at your door.'

Katharine said:

'A man?' She looked at Margot, who, big, silent and flushed, was

devouring the celebrated hero of ballads with adoring eyes. He

laughed.

'That maid would kiss your feet. But, in these days, it is well to

make friends with them that keep doors. The fellow at yours would spit

upon you if he dared.'

Katharine said carelessly:

'Let him even spit in his imagination, and I shall whip him.'

The old knight looked out of the door. He left it wide open, so that

no man might listen.

'Why, he is still gone,' he said. He cleared his throat. 'See you,' he

began. 'So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we

could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came

tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy

set upon one.'

He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that

only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal's, had been set in place.

He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking

all the time with his broad back to her.

'See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be

tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So

that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the

throat....'

Katharine said hastily:

'He hath heard little to harm me.'

'It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,' the old

knight answered. 'I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent

to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one

bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his

treasons.'

Katharine said:

'I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford....'

He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned

dignity and distinction.

'I meddle in none of these matters,' he said again. 'But these ladies

know that you hate one they hate.'

He said suddenly, 'Ah!' a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers

tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let

drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:

'I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,' he

said. 'But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone

from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.'

Katharine said swiftly:

'Take, then, a letter for me--to the Bishop of Winchester!'

He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.

'Must I go into your plots?' he asked, blinking and amused, as if he

had expected the errand.

She said urgently:

'I would have you tell me what Englishman now wears a red hat and is

like to be in Paris. I am very ignorant in these matters.'

'Then meddle not in them,' he said, 'for that man is even Cardinal

Pole; one that the King's Highness would very willingly know to be

dead.'

'God forbid that my cousin should murder a Prince of the Church, and

be slain in that quarrel,' she answered.

He started back and held his hands over his head.

'Why, God help you, child! Is that your errand?' he said, deep from

his chest. 'I meddle not in this matter.'

She answered obstinately:

'Pray you--by your early vows--consent to carry me my letter.'

He shook his head bodingly.

'I thought it had been a matter of a masque at the Bishop of

Winchester's; or I had never come nigh you. Cicely Elliott hath copied

out the part you should speak. Pray you ask me no more of the other

errand.'

She said:

'For a great knight you are a friend only in little matters!'

He uttered reproachfully:

'Child: it is no little matter to act as go-between for the Bishop of

Winchester, even if it be for no more than a masque. How otherwise

does he not send to you direct? So much I was ready to do for you, a

stranger, who am a man that has no party.'

She uttered maliciously:

'Well, well. I thought you came of the better times before our day.'

'I have shewn myself a good enough man,' he said composedly. He

pointed one of his fingers at her.

'Pole is not one that shall be easily slain. He is like to have in his

pay the defter spadassins of the two. I have known him since he was a

child till when he fled abroad.'

'But my cousin!' Katharine pleaded.

'For the sake of your own little neck, let that gallant be hanged,' he

said smartly. 'You have need of many friends; I can see it in your

complexion, which is of a hasty loyalty. But I tell you, I had never

come near you, so your cousin miscalled me, a man of worth and credit,

had these ladies not prayed me to come to you.'

She raised herself to her full height.

'It is not in the books of your knight-errantry,' she cried, 'that one

should leave one's friends to the hangman of Paris.'

The large figure of Margot Poins thrust itself upon them.

'A' God's name,' said her gruff voice of great emotion, 'hear the

words of this valiant soldier. Your cousin shall ruin you. It is true

that he will drive from you all your good friends....' She faltered,

and her impulse carried her no further. Rochford tapped her flushed

cheek gently with his glove, but a light and hushing step in the

corridor made them all silent.

The Magister Udal stood before the door blinking his eyes at the

light; Katharine addressed him imperiously--

'You will carry a letter for me to save my cousin from death.'

He started, and leered at Margot, who was ready to sink into the

ground.

'Why, I had rather carry a bull to the temple of Jupiter, as Macrobius

has it,' he said, 'meaning that....'

'Yet you have drunk with him,' Katharine interrupted him hotly, 'you

have gone hurling through the night with him. You have shamed me

together.'

'Yet I cannot forget Tully,' he answered sardonically, 'who warns me

that a prudent man should be able to moderate the course of his

friendship, even as he reins his horse. _Est prudentis sustinere ut

cursum_....'

'Mark you that!' the old knight said to Katharine. 'I will get my boy

to read to me out of Tully, for that is excellent wisdom.'

'God help me, this is Christendom!' Katharine said, bitterly. 'Shall

one abandon one that lay in the same cradle with one?'

'Your ladyship hath borne with him a day too long,' Udal said. 'He

beat me like a dog five days since. Have you heard of the city called

Ponceropolis, founded by the King Philip? Your good cousin should be

ruler of that city, for the Great King peopled it with all the

brawlers, cut-throats, and roaring boys of his dominions, to be rid of

them.' She became aware that he was very angry, for his whisper shook

like the neigh of a horse.

The old knight winked at Margot.

'Why this is a monstrous wise man,' he said, 'who yet speaks some

sense.'

'In short,' the magister said, 'If you will stick to this man, you

shall lose me. For I have taken beatings and borne no malice--as in

the case of men with whose loves or wives I have prospered better than

themselves. But that this man should miscall me and beat me for the

pure frenzy of his mind, causelessly, and for the love of blows! That

is unbearable. To-night I walk for the first time after five days

since he did beat me. And I ask you whom you shall here find the

better servant?'

His thin figure was suddenly shaking with rage.

'Why, this is conspiracy!' Katharine cried.

'A conspiracy!' Udal's voice rose up into a shriek. 'If your ladyship

were a Queen I would not be a Queen's cousin's whipping post.' His

arms jerked with the spasms of his rage like those of a marionette.

'A shame that learned men should be so beaten!' Margot's gruff voice

uttered.

Katharine turned upon her.

'That is what made you speak e'ennow. You have been with this

flibbertigibbet.'

'This is a free land,' the girl mumbled, her mild eyes sparkling with

the contagious anger of her lover.

The old knight stood blinking upon Katharine.

'You are like to lose all your servants in this quarrel,' he said.

Katharine wrung her hands, and then turned her back upon them and

drummed upon the table with her fingers. Udal caught Margot's large

hand and fumbled it beneath the furs of his robe: the old knight kept

his smiling eyes upon Katharine's back. Her voice came at last:

'Why, I will not have Tom killed upon this occasion into which I

brought him.'

Rochford shrugged his shoulders up to his ears.

'Oh marvellous infatuation,' he said.

Katharine spoke, still with her back turned and her shoulders heaving:

'A marvellous infatuation!' she said, her voice coming softly and

deeply in her chest. 'Why, after his fashion this man loved me. God

help us, what other men have I seen here that would strike a straight

blow? Here it is moving in the dark, listening at pierced walls,

swearing of false treasons----'

She swept round upon the old man, her face moved, her eyes tender and

angry. She stretched out her hand, and her voice was pitiful and

urgent.

'Sir! Sir! What counsel do you give me, who are a knight of honour?

Would you let a man who lay in the cradle with you go to a shameful

death in an errand you had made for him?'

She leaned back upon the table with her eyes upon his face. 'No you

would not. How then could you give me such counsel?'