'Why, stay, and I will be brief,' he pleaded. 'I dally because it is
sweet talking to a fair woman in a black place.'
'You are easily content, for all the sweet words you get from me,' she
scorned him.
'See you,' he said earnestly. 'It is true that I am set to watch you.
I love you because you are fair; I might bend you, since I hold you in
the hollow of my hand. But I am a continent man, and there is here a
greater stake to be had than any amorous satisfaction. I would save my
country from a man who has been a friend, but is grown a villain.
Listen.'
He appeared to pause to collect his words together.
'Baumbach, the Saxish ambassador, is here seeking to tack us to the
Schmalkaldner heresies. Yesterday he was with Privy Seal, who loveth
the Lutheran alliance. So Privy Seal takes him to his house, and shows
him his marvellous armoury, which is such that no prince nor emperor
hath elsewhere. So says Privy Seal to Baumbach: "_I love your
alliance; but his Highness will naught of it._" And he fetched a heavy
sigh.'
Katharine said:
'What is this hearsay to me?'
'He fetched a heavy sigh,' Throckmorton continued. 'And your uncle or
Gardiner knew how heavy a sigh it was their hearts would be very
glad.'
'This means that the King's Highness is very far from Privy Seal?'
Katharine asked.
'His Highness hateth to do business with small princelings.'
Throckmorton seemed to laugh at the King's name. 'His high and
princely stomach loveth only to deal with his equals, who are great
kings. I have seen the letters that have passed about this Cleves
wedding. Not one of them is from his Highness' hand. It is Privy Seal
alone that shall bear the weight of the blow when rupture cometh.'
'Well, she is a foul slut,' Katharine said, and her heart was full of
sympathy for the heavy King.
'Nay, she is none such,' Throckmorton answered. 'If you look upon her
with an unjaundiced eye, she will pass for a Christian to be kissed.
It is not her body that his Highness hateth, but her fathering. This
is a very old quarrel betwixt him and Privy Seal. His Highness hath
been wont to see himself the arbiter of the Christian world. Now Privy
Seal hath made of him an ally of German princelings. His Highness
loveth the Old Faith and the old royal ways. Now Privy Seal doth seek
to make him take up the faith of Schmalkaldners, who are a league of
bakers and unfrocked monks. Madam Howard, I tell you that if there
were but one man that could strike after the new Parliament is called
together....'
Katharine cried:
'The very stones that Cromwell hath soaked with blood will rise to
fall upon him when the King's feet no longer press them down.'
Throckmorton laughed almost inaudibly.
'Norfolk feareth Gardiner for a spy; Gardiner feareth the ambition of
Norfolk; Bonner would sell them both to Privy Seal for the price of an
archbishopric. The King himself is loth to strike, since no man in the
land could get him together such another truckling Parliament as can
Privy Seal.'
He stopped speaking and let his words soak into her in the darkness,
and after a long pause her voice came back to her.
'It is true that I have heard no man speak as you do.... I can see
that his dear Highness must be hatefully inclined to this filthy
alliance.'
'Why, you are minded to come into my hut with me,' he chuckled. 'There
are few men so clear in the head as I am. So listen again to me. If
you would strike at this man, it is of no avail to meddle with him at
home. It shall in no way help you to clamour of good monks done to
death, of honest men ruined, of virgins thrown on to dung-heaps. The
King hath had the pence of these good monks, the lands of these honest
men, and the golden neck-collars off these virgins.'
She called out, 'Keep thy tongue off this sacred King's name. I will
listen to no more lewdness.'
A torch passing outside sent a moving square of light through the
high grating across the floor of the cellar. The damp walls became
dimly visible with shining snail-tracks on them, and his great form
leaning negligently upon a cask, his hand arrested in the pulling of
his long beard, his eyes gleaming upon her, sardonic and amused. The
light twisted round abruptly and was gone.
'You are monstrous fair,' he said, and sighed. She shuddered.
'No,' his mocking voice came again, 'speak not to the King--not to
whomsoever you shall elect to speak to the King--of this man's work at
home. The King shall let him go very unwillingly, since no man can so
pack a Parliament to do the King's pleasure. And he hath a nose for
treasons that his Highness would give his own nose to possess.'
'Keep thy tongue off the King's name,' she said again.
He laughed, and continued pensively: 'A very pretty treason might be
made up of his speech before his armoury to Baumbach. Mark again how
it went. Says he: "_Here are such weaponings as no king, nor prince,
nor emperor hath in Christendom. And in this country of ours are
twenty gentlemen, my friends, have armouries as great or greater._"
Then he sighs heavily, and saith: "_But our King will never join with
your Schmalkaldners. Yet I would give my head that he should._"...
Your madamship marks that this was said to the ambassador from the
Lutheran league?'
'You cannot twist that into a treason,' Katharine whispered.
'No doubt,' he said reasonably, 'such words from a minister to an
envoy are but a courtesy, as one would say, "_I fain would help you,
but my master wills it not._"'
The voice suddenly grew crafty. 'But these words, spoken before an
armoury and the matter of twenty gentlemen with armouries greater. Say
that these twenty are creatures of my Lord Cromwell, _implicitur_, for
the Lutheran cause. And again, the matter, "_No king hath such an
armoury._"... _No_ king, I would have you observe.'
'Why, this is monstrous foolish pettifogging,' Katharine said. 'No
king would believe a treason in such words.'
'I call to mind Gilmaw of Hurstleas, near our homes,' the voice came,
reflectively.
'I did know him,' said Katharine. 'You had his head.'
'You never heard how Privy Seal did that,' the voice came back
mockingly. 'Goodman Gilmaw had many sheep died of the rot because it
rained seven weeks on end. So, coming back from a market-day, with too
much ale for prudence and too little for silence, he cried, "_Curse on
this rain! The weather was never good since knaves ruled about the
King._" So that came to the ears of Privy Seal, who made a treason of
it, and had his sheep, and his house, and his lands, and his head. He
was but one in ten thousand that have gone the same road home from
market and made speeches as treasonable.'
'Thus poor Gilmaw died?' Katharine asked. 'What a foul world this is!'
'Time it was cleansed,' he answered.
He let his words rankle for a time, then he said softly: 'Privy Seal's
words before his armoury were as treasonable as Gilmaw's on the market
road.'
Again he paused.
'Privy Seal may call thee to account for such a treason,' he said
afterwards. 'He holdeth thee in a hollow of his hand.'
She did not speak.
He said softly: 'It is a folly to be too proud to fight the world with
the world's weapons.'
The heavy darkness seemed to thrill with her silence. He could tell
neither whether she were pondering his words nor whether she still
scorned him. He could not even hear her breathing.
'God help me!' he said at last, in an angry high note, 'I am not such
a man as to be played with too long. People fear me.'
She kept silence still, and his voice grew high and shrill: 'Madam
Howard, I can bend you to my will. I have the power to make such a
report of you as will hang you to-morrow.'
Her voice came to him expressionlessly--without any inflexion. In few
words, what would he have of her? She played his own darkness off
against him, so that he could tell nothing new of her mood.
He answered swiftly: 'I will that you tell the men you know what I
have told you. You are a very little thing; it were no more to me to
cut you short than to drown a kitten. But my own neck I prize. What I
have told you I would have come to the ears of my lord of Winchester.
I may not be seen to speak with him myself. If you will not tell him,
another will; but I would rather it were you.'
'Evil dreams make thy nights hideous!' she cried out so suddenly that
his voice choked in his throat. 'Thou art such dirt as I would avoid
to tread upon; and shall I take thee into my hand?' She was panting
with disgust and scorn. 'I have listened to thee; listen thou to me.
Thou art so filthy that if thou couldst make me a queen by the touch
of a finger, I had rather be a goose-girl and eat grass. If by thy
forged tales I could cast down Mahound, I had rather be his slave than
thy accomplice! Could I lift my head if I had joined myself to thee?
thou Judas to the Fiend. Junius Brutus, when he did lay siege to a
town, had a citizen come to him that would play the traitor. He
accepted his proffered help, and when the town was taken he did flay
the betrayer. But thou art so filthy that thou shouldst make me do
better than that noble Roman, for I would flay thee, disdaining to be
aided by thee; and upon thy skin I would write a message to thy master
saying that thou wouldst have betrayed him!'
His laugh rang out discordant and full of black mirth; for a long time
his shoulders seemed to shake. He spoke at last quite calmly.
'You will have a very short course in this world,' he said.
A hoarse and hollow shouting reverberated from the gully; the glow of
a torch grew bright in the window-space. Katharine had been upon the
point of opening the door, but she paused, fearing to meet some night
villains in the gully. Throckmorton was now silent, as if he utterly
disdained her, and a frightful blow upon the wood of the door--so
certain were they that the torch would pass on--made them spring some
yards further into the cellar. The splintering blows were repeated;
the sound of them was deafening. Glaring light entered suddenly
through a great crack, and the smell of smoke. Then the door fell in
half, one board of it across the steps, the other smashing back to the
wall upon its hinges. Sparks dripped from the torch, smoke eddied
down, and upon the cellar steps were the legs of a man who rested a
great axe upon the ground and panted for breath.
'Up the steps!' he grunted. 'If you ever ran, now run. The guard will
not enter here.'
Katharine sped up the steps. It was old Rochford's face that greeted
hers beneath the torch. He grunted again, 'Run you; I am spent!' and
suddenly dashed the torch to the ground.
At the entry of the tunnel some make of creature caught at her sleeve.
She screamed and struck at a gleaming eye with the end of her
crucifix. Then nothing held her, and she ran to where, at the mouth of
the gully, there were a great many men with torches and swords peering
into the darkness of the passage.
* * * * *
In the barge Margot made an outcry of joy and relief, and the other
ladies uttered civil speeches. The old man, whose fur near the neck
had been slashed by a knife-thrust as he came away, explained
pleasantly that he was able to strike good blows still. But he shook
his head nevertheless. It was evil, he said, to have such lovers as
this new one. Her cousin was bad, but this rapscallion must be worse
indeed to harbour her in such a place.... Margot, who knew her London,
had caught him at the barge, to which he had hurried.
'Aye,' he said, 'I thought you had played me a trick and gone off with
some spark. But when I heard to what place, I fetched the guard along
with me.... Well for you that it was I, for they had not come for any
other man, and then you had been stuck in the street. For, see you,
whether you would have had me fetch you away or no it is ten to one
that a gallant who would take you there would mean that you should
never come away alive--and God help you whilst you lived in that
place.'
Katharine said:
'Why, I pray God that you may die on the green grass yet, with time
for a priest to shrive you. I was taken there against my will.' She
told him no more of the truth, for it was not every man's matter, and
already she had made up her mind that there was but one man to whom to
speak.... She went into the dark end of the barge and prayed until she
came to Greenwich, for the fear of the things she had escaped still
made her shudder, and in the company of Mary and the saints of
Lincolnshire alone could she feel any calmness. She thought they
whispered round her in the night amid the lapping of the water.