The King came to the revels at the Bishop of Winchester's, for these
too were given in honour of the Queen, and he had altered in his mind
to let the Emperor and Francis know that he was inclined to weaken in
his new alliances. Besides, there was the newest suitor for the hand
of the Lady Mary, the young Duke Philip of Wittelsbach, who must be
shown how great were the resources of the land. Young, gay, dark, a
famous warrior and a good Catholic, he sat behind the Queen and
speaking German of a sort he made her smile at times. The play was the
_Menechmi_ of Plautus, and Duke Philip interpreted it to her. She
seemed at times so nearly human that the King, glancing back over his
shoulder to note whether she disgraced him, could settle down into his
chair and rest both his back and his misgivings. Seeing the frown
leave his brow all the courtiers grew glad behind him; Cromwell talked
with animation to Baumbach, the ambassador from the Schmalkaldner
league, since he had not seen the King so gay for many days, and
Gardiner in his bishop's robes smiled with a black pleasure because
his feast was so much more prosperous than Privy Seal's had been.
There was no one there of the Lady Mary's household, because it was
not seemly that she should be where her suitor was before he had been
presented to her.
The large hall was lit with tapers at dusk and hung with ivy and with
holly; dried woodruff, watermint and other sweet herbs were scattered
about the floors to give an agreeable odour; the antlers of deer from
the bishop's chase in Winchester were like a forest of dead boughs,
branching from the walls, some gilded, some silvered, some supporting
shields emblazoned with the arms of the See, of the bishop, of the
King or of Cleves; an army of wood-pigeons and stock-doves with silver
collars about their necks was at one time let fly into the hall, and
the swish of their wings and afterwards their cooing among the golden
rafters of the high ceiling made pleasing sound and mingled with the
voices of sweet singing from the galleries at each end of the hall,
near the roof. The players spoke their parts bravely, and, because
this play was beloved among all others at the Court, there was a great
and general contentment.
For the after scene they had a display of theology. There were three
battles of men. In black with red hats, horns branching above them and
in the centre a great devil with a triple tiara, who danced holding up
an enormous key. These stood on the right. On the left were priests in
fustian, holding enormous flagons of Rhenish wine and dancing in a
drunken measure with their arms round more drunken doxies dressed like
German women. In the centre stood grave and reverend men wearing
horsehair beards and the long gowns of English bishops and priests.
Before these there knelt an angel in flame-coloured robes with wings
like the rainbow. The angel supported a great volume on the back of
which might be read in letters of gold, '_Regis Nostri Sapientia._'
The great devil, dancing forward, brandishing his key, roared that
these reverend men should kneel to him; he held out a cloven foot and
bade them kiss it. But a venerable bishop cried out, 'You be
Antichrist. I know you. You be the Arch Devil. But from this book I
will confound you. Thank God that we have one that leads us aright.'
Coming forward he read in Latin from the book of the King's Wisdom and
the great devil fell back fainting into the arms of the men in red
hats.
The King called out, 'By God, goodman Bishop, you have spoken well!'
and the Court roared.
Then one from the other side danced out, holding his flagon and
grasping his fat wife round the waist. He sang in a gross and German
way, smacking his lips, that these reverend Englishmen should leave
their godly ways and come down among the Lutherans. But the old bishop
cried out, 'Ay, Dr Martinus, I know thee; thou despisest the Body of
God; thou art a fornicator. God forbid that our English priests should
go among women as ye do. Listen to wisdom. For, thank God, we have one
to lead us aright!'
These words spread a sudden shiver into the hall, for no man there
knew whether the King had commanded them to be uttered. The King sat
back in his chair, half frowning; Anne blinked, Philip of Wittelsbach
laughed aloud, the Catholic ambassadors, Chapuys and Marillac, who had
fidgeted in their seats as if they would leave the hall, now leant
forward.
'Aye,' the player bishop called out, 'our goodly Queen cometh from a
Court that was never yet joined to your Schmalkaldners, nor to them
that go by your name, Dr Martinus, thou lecher. Here in England you
shall find no heresies but the pure and purged Word of God.'
Chapuys bent an aged white hand behind his ear to miss no word: his
true and smiling face blinked benevolently. Cromwell smiled too,
licking his lips dangerously; Baumbach, the Schmalkaldner,
understanding nothing, rolled his German blue eyes in his great head
like a pink baby's, and tried to catch the attention of Cromwell, who
talked over his shoulder to one of his men. But the many Lutherans
that there were in the hall scowled at the floor.
The player bishop was reading thunderous words of the King, written
many years before, against married priests. Henry sat back in his
round chair, grasping the arms with his enormous hands.
'Why, Master Bishop,' he called out. The player stopped his reading
and looked at the King, his air of austerity never leaving him. Henry,
however, waved his hand and said no more.
This dreadful incident caused a confusion in the players: they
faltered: the player Lutheran slunk back to his place with his wife,
and all of them stood with their hands hanging down. They consulted
among themselves and at last filed out from the room, leaving the
stage for some empty minutes bare and menacing. Men held their breath:
the King was seen to be frowning. But a quick music was played from
the galleries and a door opened behind. There came in many figures in
white to symbolify the deities of ancient Greece and Rome, and, in
black, with ashes upon her head, there was Ceres lamenting that
Persephone had been carried into the realms of Pluto. No green thing
should blow nor grow upon this earth, she wailed in a deep and full
voice, until again her daughter trod there. The other deities covered
their heads with their white skirts.
No one heeded this show very much in the hall, for the whispers over
what had gone before never subsided again that day. Men turned their
backs upon the stage in order to talk with others behind them, and it
was generally agreed that if this refurbishing of old doctrines were
no more than a bold stroke of Bishop Gardiner's, Henry at least had
not scowled very harshly upon it. So that, for the most part, they
thought that the Old Faith might come back again; whilst others
suddenly remembered, much more clearly than before, that Cleves was a
principality not truly Lutheran, and that the marriage with Anne had
not tied them at all to the Schmalkaldner's league. Therefore this
shadow of the old ways caused new uneasiness, for there was hardly any
man there that had not some of the monastery lands.
The King was the man least moved in the hall: he listened to the
lamentations of Mother Ceres and gazed at a number of naked boys who
issued suddenly from the open door. They spread green herbs in a path
from the door to the very feet of Anne, who blinked at them in
amazement, and they paid no heed to Mother Ceres, who asked
indignantly how any green thing could grow upon the earth that she had
bidden lie barren till her daughter came again.
Persephone stood framed in the doorway: she was all in white, very
slim and tall; in among her hair she had a wreath of green Egyptian
stones called feridets, of which many remained in the treasuries of
Winchester, because they were soft and of so little value that the
visitors of the monasteries had left them there. And she had these
green feridets, cut like leaves, worked into the white lawn, over her
breasts. In her left arm there lay a cornucopia filled with gold
coins, and in her right a silver coronet of olive leaves. She moved in
a slow measure to the music, bending her knees to right and to left,
and drawing her long dress into white lines and curves, until she
stood in the centre of the green path. She smiled patiently and with a
rapt expression as if she had come out of a dream. The wreath of olive
leaves, she said, the gods sent to their most virtuous, most beauteous
Queen, who had brought peace in England; the cornucopia filled with
gold was the offering of Plutus to the noble and benevolent King of
these parts. Her words could hardly be heard for the voices of the
theologians in the hall before her.
Henry suddenly turned back, lifted his hand, and shouted:
'Be silent!'
Persephone's voice became very audible in the midst of the terrified
hush of all these people, who feared their enormous King as if he
were a wild beast that at one moment you could play with and the next
struck you dead.
'--How happy is England among the nations!' The voice rang out clear
and fluting like a boy's. 'Her people how free and bold! Her laws how
gentle and beneficent, her nobles how courteous and sweet in their
communings together for the public weal! How thrice happy that land
when peace is upon the earth! Her women how virtuous, her husbandmen
how satiated, her cattle how they let down their milk!'--She swayed
round to the gods that were uncovering their heads behind her: 'Aye,
my masters and fellow godheads: woe is me that we knew never this
happy and contented country. Better it had been there to dwell than
upon high Olympus: better than in the Cyclades: better than in the
Islands of the Blest that hide amid the Bermoothean tempest. Woe is
me!' Her expression grew more rapt; she paused as if she had lost the
thread of the words and then spoke again, gazing far out over the hall
as jugglers do in performing feats of balancing: 'For surely we had
been more safe than reigning alone above the clouds had we lived here,
the veriest hinds, beneath a King that is five times blessed, in that
he is most wealthy and generous of rewards, most noble of courage,
most eloquent, most learned in the law of men, and most high
interpreter of the law of God!'
Seeing that the King smiled, as though he had received a just
panegyric, a great clamour of applause went up in the hall, and
swaying beneath the weight of the cornucopia she came to the King over
the path of green herbs and boughs. Henry reached out his hands,
himself, to take his present, smiling and genial; and that alone was a
sign of great favour, for by rights she should have knelt with it,
offered it and then receded, giving it into the arms of a serving man.
She passed on, and would have crowned the Queen with the silver
wreath; but the great hood that Anne wore stood in the way, therefore
she laid it in the Queen's lap.
Henry caught at her hanging sleeve.
'That was a gay fine speech,' he said. 'I will have it printed.'
Little ripples of fear and coldness ran over her, for her dress was
thin and her arms bared between the loops above. Her eyes roved round
upon the people as if, tall and white, she were a Christian virgin in
the agonies of martyrdom. She tried to pull her sleeve from between
his great fingers, and she whispered in a sort of terror:
'You stay the masque!'
He lay back in his chair, laughing so that his grey beard shook.
'Why, thou art a pert baggage,' he said. 'I could stay their singing
for good an I would.'
He looked her up and down, commanding and good-humouredly malicious.
She put her hand to her throat as if it throbbed, and uttered with a
calmness of desperation:
'That were great pity. They have practised much, and their breaths are
passable sweet.'
The godheads with their beards of tow, their lyres and thunderbolts
all gilt, stood in an awkward crescent, their music having stopped.
Henry laughed at them.
'I know thy face,' he said. 'It would be less than a king to forget
it.'
'I am Katharine Howard,' she faltered, stretching out her hands
beseechingly. 'Let me go back to my place.'
'Oh, aye!' he answered. 'But thou'st shed thy rags since I saw thee on
a mule.' He loosed her sleeve. 'Let the good men sing, 'a God's name.'
In her relief to be free she stumbled on the sweet herbs.
* * * * *
It was a dark night into which they went out from the bishop's palace.
Cressets flared on his river steps, and there were torches down the
long garden for those who went away by road. Because there would be a
great crowd of embarkers at the bishop's landing place, so that there
might be many hours to wait until their barge should come, Katharine,
by the office of old Sir Nicholas, had made a compact with some of
the maids of honour of the Lady Elizabeth; a barge was to wait for
them at the Cross Keys, a common stage some ten minutes down the
river. Katharine, laughing, gay with relief and gladdened with words
of praise, held Margot's hand tight and kept her fingers on Sir
Nicholas' sleeve. It was raining a fine drizzle, so that the air of
the gardens smelt moist even against the odour of the torches. The old
knight pulled the hood of his gown up over his head, for he was hoarse
with a heavy cold. It was pitch black beyond the gate house; in the
open fields before the wall torches here and there appeared to burn in
mid-air, showing beneath them the heads and the hoods of their bearers
hurrying home, and, where they turned to the right along a narrow
lane, a torch showed far ahead above a crowd packed thick between dark
house-fronts and gables. They glistened with wet and sent down from
their gutters spouts of water that gleamed, catching the light of the
torch, like threads of opal fire on the pallid dove colour of the
towering house-fronts. The torch went round a corner, its light
withdrew along the walls by long jumps as its bearer stepped into the
distance ahead. Then it was all black. Walking was difficult over the
immense cobbles of the roadway, but in the pack of the crowd it was
impossible to fall, for people held one another. But it was also
impossible to speak, and, muffling her face in her hood, Katharine
walked smiling and squeezing Margot's hand out of pure pleasure with
the world that was so fair in the midst of this blackness and this
heavy cold.
There was a swishing repeated three times and three thuds and twists
of white on heads and shoulders just before her. Undistinguishable
yells of mockery dwindled down from high above, and a rush-light shone
at an immense elevation illuminating a faint square of casement that
might have been in the heavens. Three apprentices had thrown down
paper bags of powdered chalk. The men who had been struck, and several
others who had been maltreated on former nights, or who resented this
continual 'prentice scandal, began a frightful outcry at the door of
the house. More bags came bursting down and foul water; the yells and
battlecries rolled, in the narrow space under the house-fronts that
nearly kissed each other high overhead, and the crowd, brought to a
standstill, swayed and pushed against the walls. Katharine lost her
hold of the old knight's sleeve, and she could see no single thing.
She felt round her in the blackness for his arm, but a heavy man
stumbled against her. Suddenly his hand was under her arm, drawing her
a little; his voice seemed to say: 'Down this gully is a way about.'
In the passage it was blacker than the mouth of hell, and her eyes
still seemed to have in them the dazzle of light and triumph she had
just left. There was a frightful stench of garbage; and it appeared to
be a vault, because the outcry of the men besieging the door volleyed
and echoed the more thunderously. There came the sharp click of a
latch and Katharine found herself impelled to descend several steps
into a blackness from which came up a breath of closer air and a smell
of rotting straw. Fear suddenly seized upon her, and the conviction
that another man had taken the place of the old knight during the
scuffle. But a heavy pressure of an arm was suddenly round her waist,
and she was forced forward. She caught a shriek from Margot; the
girl's hand was torn from her own; a door slammed behind, and there
was a deep silence in which the heavy breathing of a man became
audible.
'If you cry out,' a soft voice said, 'I will let you go. But probably
you will lose your life.'
She had not a breath at all in her, but she gasped:
'Will you do a rape?' and fumbled in her pocket for her crucifix. Her
voice came back to her, muffled and close, so that she was in a very
small cellar.
'When you have seen my face, you may love me,' came to her ears in an
inane voice. 'I would you might, for you have a goodly mouth for
kisses.'
She breathed heavily; the click of the beads on her cross filled the
silence. She fitted the bar of the crucifix to her knuckles and felt
her breath come calmer. For, if the man struck a light she could
strike him in the face with the metal of her cross, held in the fist;
she could blind him if she hit an eye. She stepped back a little and
felt behind her the damp stone of a wall. The soft voice uttered more
loudly:
'I offer you a present of great price; I can solve your perplexities.'
Katharine breathed between her teeth and said nothing. 'But if you
draw a knife,' the voice went on, 'I will set you loose; there are as
good as Madam Howard.' On the door there came the sound of soft thuds.
'That is your maid, Margot Poins,' the voice said. 'You had better bid
her begone. This is a very evil gully; she will be strangled.'
Katharine called:
'Go and fetch some one to break down this door.'
The voice commented:
'In the City she will find none to enter this gully; it is a sanctuary
of outlaws.'
There was the faintest glimmer of a casement square, high up before
Katharine; violence and carryings off were things familiar to her
imagination. A hundred men might have desired her whilst she stood on
high in the masque. She said hotly:
'If you will hold me here for a ransom, you will find none to pay it.'
She heard the soft hiss of a laugh, and the voice:
'I would myself pay more than other men, but I would have no man see
us together.'
She shrank into herself, and held to the wall for comfort. She heard a
click, and in the light of a shower of brilliant sparks was the
phantom of a man's beard and dim walls; one tiny red glow remained in
the tinder, like an illuminant in a black nothingness. He seemed to
hold it about breast-high and to pause.
'You had best be rid of Margot Poins,' the musing voice came out of
the thick air. 'Send her back to her mother's people: she gets you no
friends.'
Katharine wondered if she might strike about eighteen inches above
the tiny spark: or if in these impenetrable shadows there were a very
tall man.
'Your Margot's folk miscall you in shameful terms. I would be your
servant; but it is distasteful to a proper man to serve one that hath
about her an atmosphere of lewdness.'
Katharine cursed at him to relieve the agony of her fear.
The voice answered composedly:
'One greater than the devil is my master. But it is good hearing that
you are loyal to them that serve you: so you shall be loyal to me, for
I will serve you well.'
The spark in the tinder moved upwards; the man began to blow on it; in
the dim glimmer there appeared red lips, a hairy moustache, a straight
nose, gleaming eyes that looked across the flame, a high narrow
forehead, and the gleam of a jewel in a black cap. This glowing and
dusky face appeared to hang in the air. Katharine shrank with despair
and loathing: she had seen enough to know the man. She made a swift
step towards it, her arm drawn back; but the glow of the box moved to
one side, the ashes faded: there was already nothing before she could
strike.
'You see I am Throckmorton: a goodly knight,' the voice said,
laughing.
This man came from Lincolnshire, near her own home. He had been the
brother of a gentleman who had a very small property, and he had had
one sister. God alone knew for what crime his father had cursed
Throckmorton and left his patrimony to the monks at Ely--but his
sister had hanged herself. Throckmorton had disappeared.
In that black darkness she had seemed to feel his gloating over her
helplessness, and his laughing over all the villainies of his hateful
past. He was so loathsome to her that merely to be near him had made
her tremble when, the day before, he had fawned over her and shown her
the side door to Privy Seal's room. Now the sound of his breathing
took away all her power to breathe. She panted:
'Infamous dog, I will have you shortened by the head for this rape.'
'It is true I am a fool to play cat and mouse,' he answered. 'But I
was ever thus from a child: I have played silly pranks: listen to
gravity. I bring you here because I would speak to you where no ear
dare come to listen: this is a sanctuary of night robbers.' His voice
took on fantastically and grotesquely the nasal tones of Doctors of
Logic when they discuss abstract theses: 'I am a bold man to dare come
here; but some of these are in my pay. Nevertheless I am a bold man,
though indeed the step from life into death is so short and so easily
passed that a man is a fool to fear it. Nevertheless some do fear it;
therefore, as men go, I am bold; tho', since I set much store in the
intervention of the saints on my behalf, may be I am not so bold. Yet
I am a good man, or the saints would not protect me. On the other
hand, I am fain to do their work for them: so may be, they would
protect me whether I were virtuous or no. Maybe they would not,
however: for it is a point still disputed as to whether a saint might
use an evil tool to do good work. But, in short, I am here to tell you
what Privy Seal would have of you.'
'God help the pair of you,' Katharine said. 'Have ye descended to
cellar work now?'
'Madam Howard,' the voice came, 'for what manner of man do you take
me? I am a very proper man that do love virtue. There are few such
philosophers as I since I came out of Italy.'
It was certain to her now that Privy Seal, having seen her thick with
the Bishop of Winchester, had delivered her into the hands of this
vulture. 'If you have a knife,' she said, 'put it into me soon. God
will look kindly on you and I would pardon you half the crime.' She
closed her eyes and began to pray.
'Madam Howard,' he answered, in a lofty tone of aggrievement, 'the
door is on the latch: the latch is at your hand to be found for a
little fumbling: get you gone if you will not trust me.'
'Aye: you have cut-throats without,' Katharine said. She prayed in
silence to Mary and the saints to take her into the kingdom of heaven
with a short agony here below. Nevertheless, she could not believe
that she was to die: for being still young, though death was always
round her, she believed herself born to be immortal.
The sweat was cold upon her face; but Throckmorton was upbraiding her
in a lofty nasal voice.
'I am an honourable knight,' he cried, in his affected and shocked
tones. 'If I have undone men, it was for love of the republic. I have
nipped many treasons in the bud. The land is safe for a true man,
because of my work.'
'You are a werewolf,' she shuddered; 'you eat your brother.'
'Why, enough of this talk,' he answered. 'I offer you a service, will
you take it? I am the son of a gentleman: I love wisdom for that she
alone is good. Virtue I love for virtue's sake, and I serve my King.
What more goeth to the making of a proper man? You cannot tell me.'
His voice changed suddenly:
'If you do hate a villain, now is the time to prove it. Would you have
him down? Then tell your gossip Winchester that the time approaches to
strike, and that I am ready to serve him. I have done some good work
for the King's Highness through Privy Seal. But my nose is a good one.
I begin to smell out that Privy Seal worketh treasonably.'
'You are a mad fool to think to trick me,' Katharine said. 'Neither
you nor I, nor any man, believes that Privy Seal would work a treason.
You would trick me into some foolish utterances. It needed not a
cellar in a cut-throat's gully for that.'
'Madam Spitfire,' his voice answered, 'you are a true woman; I a true
man. We may walk well together. Before the Most High God I wish you no
ill.'
'Then let me go,' she cried. 'Tell me your lies some other where.'
'The latch is near your hand still,' he said. 'But I will speak to you
no other where. It is only here in the abode of murder and evil men
that in these evil times a man may speak his mind and fear no
listener.'
She felt tremulously for the latch; it gave, and its rattling set her
heart on the jump. When she pulled the door ajar she heard voices in
the distant street. It rushed through her mind that he was set neither
on murder nor unspeakable things. Or, indeed, he had cut-throats
waiting to brain her on the top step. She said tremulously:
'Tell me what you will with me in haste!'
'Why, I have bidden your barge fellows wait for you,' he answered.
'Till cock-crow if need were. They shall not leave you. They fear me
too much. Shut the door again, for you dread me no more.'
Her knees felt suddenly limp and she clung to the latch for support;
she believed that Mary had turned the heart of this villain. He
repeated that he smelt treason working in the mind of an evil man, and
that he would have her tell the Bishop of Winchester.
'I did bring you here, for it is the quickest way. I came to you for I
saw that you were neither craven nor fool: nor high placed so that it
would be dangerous to be seen talking with you later, when you
understood my good will. And I am drawn towards you since you come
from near my home.'
Katharine said hurriedly, between her prayers:
'What will you of me? No man cometh to a woman without seeking
something from her.'
'Why, I would have you look favourably upon me,' he answered. 'I am a
goodly man.'
'I am meat for your masters,' she answered with bitter contempt. 'You
have the blood of my kin on your hands.'
He sighed, half mockingly.
'If you will not give me your favours,' he said in a low, laughing
voice, 'I would have you remember me according as my aid is of
advantage to you.'
'God help you,' she said; 'I believe now that you have it in mind to
betray your master.'
'I am a man that can be very helpful,' he answered, with his laughing
assurance that had always in it the ring of a sneer. 'Tell Bishop
Gardiner again, that the hour approaches to strike if these cowards
will ever strike.'
Katharine felt her pulses beat more slowly.
'Sir,' she said, 'I tell you very plainly that I will not work for the
advancement of the Bishop of Winchester. He turned me loose upon the
street to-night after I had served him, with neither guard to my feet
nor bit to my mouth. If my side goes up, he may go with it, but I love
him not.'
'Why, then, devise with the Duke of Norfolk,' he answered after a
pause. 'Gardiner is a black rogue and your uncle a yellow craven; but
bid them join hands till the time comes for them to cut each other's
throats.'
'You are a foul dog to talk thus of noblemen,' she said.
He answered:
'Oh, la! You have little to thank your uncle for. What do you want?
Will you play for your own hand? Or will you partner those two against
the other?'
'I will never partner with a spy and a villain,' she cried hotly.
He cried lightly:
'Ohé, Goosetherumfoodle! You will say differently before long. If you
will fight in a fight you must have tools. Now you have none, and your
situation is very parlous.'
'I stand on my legs, and no man can touch me,' she said hotly.
'But two men can hang you to-morrow,' he answered. 'One man you know;
the other is the Sieur Gardiner. Cromwell hath contrived that you
should write a treasonable letter; Gardiner holdeth that letter's
self.'
Katharine braved her own sudden fears with:
'Men are not such villains.'
'They are as occasion makes them,' he answered, with his voice of a
philosopher. 'What manner of men these times breed you should know if
you be not a fool. It is very certain that Gardiner will hang you,
with that letter, if you work not into his goodly hands. See how you
stand in need of a counsellor. Now you wish you had done otherwise.'
She said hotly:
'Never. So I would act again to-morrow.'
'Oh fool madam,' he answered. 'Your cousin's province was never to
come within a score miles of the cardinal. Being a drunkard and a
boaster he was sent to Paris to get drunk and to boast.'
The horror of the blackness, the damp, the foul smell, and all this
treachery made her voice faint. She stammered:
'Shew me a light, or let the door be opened. I am sick.'
'Neither,' he answered. 'I am as much as you in peril. With a light
men may see in at the casement; with an open door they may come
eavesdropping. When you have been in this world as long as I you will
love black night as well.'
Her brain swam for a moment.
'My cousin was never in this plot against me,' she uttered faintly.
He answered lightly:
'You may keep your faith in that toppet. Where you are a fool is to
have believed that Privy Seal, who is a wise man, or Viridus, who is a
philosopher after my heart, would have sent such a sot and babbler on
such a tickle errand.'
'He was sent!' protested Katharine.
'Aye, he was sent to blab about it in every tavern in Paris town. He
was sent to frighten the Red Cap out of Paris town. He was suffered to
blab to you that you might set your neck in a noose and be driven to
be a spy.'
His soft chuckle came through the darkness like an obscene applause of
a successful villainy; it was as if he were gloating over her folly
and the rectitude of her mind.
'Red Cap was working mischief in Paris--but Red Cap is timorous. He
will go post haste back to Rome, either because of your letter or
because of your cousin's boasting. But there are real and secret
murderers waiting for him in every town in Italy on the road to Rome.
Some are at Brescia, some at Rimini: at Padua there is a man with his
neck, like yours, in a noose. It is a goodly contrivance.'
'You are a vile pack,' Katharine said, and once more the smooth and
unctuous sound came from his invisible throat.
'How shall you decide what is vileness, or where will you find a
virtuous man?' he asked. 'Maybe you will find some among the bones of
your old Romans. Yet your Seneca, in his day, did play the villain. Or
maybe some at the Court of Mahound. I know not, for I was never there.
But here is a goodly world, with prizes for them that can take them.
Yet virtue may still flourish, for I have done middling well by
serving my country. Now I am minded to retire into my lands, to
cultivate good letters and to pursue virtue. For here about the Courts
there are many distractions. The times are evil times. Yet will I do
one good stroke more before I go.'
Katharine said hotly:
'If you go down into Lincolnshire, I will call upon every man there to
fall upon you and hang you.'
'Why,' he said, 'that is why I did come to you, since you are from
where my lands are. If I serve you, I would have you to smooth my path
there. I ask no more, for now I crave rest and a private life. It is
very assured that I should never find that here or in few parts of the
land--so well I have served my King. Therefore, if I serve you, you
and yours shall cast above my retired farms and my honourable leisure
the shadow of your protection. I ask no more.' He chuckled almost
inaudibly. 'I am set to watch you,' he said. 'Viridus will go to Paris
to catch another traitor called Brancetor, for the world is full of
traitors. Therefore, in a way, it rests with me to hang you.'
He seemed to be seated upon a cask, for there was a creaking of old
wood, and he spoke very leisurely.