II

During the time that had ensued between January and that month of

March, it had been proved to Katharine Howard how well Throckmorton,

the spy, voiced the men folk of their day. He had left her alone, but

she seemed to feel his presence in all the air. He passed her in

corridors, and she knew from his very silence that he was carrying on

a fumbling game with her uncle Norfolk, and with Gardiner of

Winchester. He had not induced her to play his game--but he seemed to

have made her see that every man else in the world was playing a game

like his. It was not, precisely, any more a world of black and white

that she saw, but a world of men who did one thing in order that

something very different might happen a long time afterwards.

The main Court had moved from Greenwich to Hampton towards the end of

January, but the Lady Mary, with her ladies, came to a manor house at

Isleworth; and shut in as she was with a grim mistress--who assuredly

was all white or black--Katharine found herself like one with ears

strained to catch sounds from a distance, listening for the smallest

rumours that could come from the other great house up stream.

The other ladies each had their men, as Cicely Elliott had the old

knight. One of them had even six, who one day fought a _mêlée_ for her

favours on an eyot before the manor windows. These men came by barge

in the evenings, or rode over the flats with a spare horse to take

their mistresses a-hawking after the herons in the swampy places. So

that each of them had her channel by which true gossip might reach

her. But Katharine had none. Till the opening of March the magister

came to whisper with Margot Poins--then he was sent again to Paris to

set his pen at the service of Sir Thomas Wyatt, who had so many

letters to write. Thus she heard much women's tattle, but knew nothing

of what passed. Only it seemed certain that Gardiner of Winchester was

seeing fit--God knows why--to be hot in favour of the Old Faith. It

was certain, from six several accounts, that at Paul's Cross he had

preached a sermon full of a very violent and acceptable doctrine. She

wondered what move in the game this was: it was assuredly not for the

love of God. No doubt it was part of Throckmorton's plan. The

Lutherans were to be stirred to outrages in order to prove to the King

how insolent were they upon whom Privy Seal relied.

It gratified her to see how acute her prescience had been when Dr

Barnes made his furious reply to the bishop. For Dr Barnes was one of

Privy Seal's most noted men: an insolent fool whom he had taken out of

the gutter to send ambassador to the Schmalkaldners. And it was on the

day when Gardiner made his complaint to the King about Dr Barnes, that

her uncle Norfolk sent to her to come to him at Hampton.

He awaited her, grim and jaundiced, in the centre of a great, empty

room, where, shivering with cold, he did not let his voice exceed a

croaking whisper though there was panelling and no arras on the dim

walls. But, to his queries, she answered clearly:

'Nay, I serve the Lady Mary with her Latin. I hear no tales and I bear

none to any man.' And again:

'Three times I have spoken with the King's Highness, the Lady Mary

being by. And once it was of the Islands of the Blest, and once of the

Latin books I read, and once of indifferent matters--such as of how

apple trees may be planted against a wall in Lincolnshire.'

Her uncle gazed at her: his dark eyes were motionless and malignant by

habit; he opened his lips to speak; closed them again without a word

spoken. He looked at a rose, carved in a far corner of the ceiling,

looked at her again, and muttered:

'The French are making great works at Ardres.'

'Oh, aye,' she answered, 'my cousin Tom wrote me as much. He is

commanded to stay at Calais.'

'Tell me,' he said, 'will they go against Calais town in good

earnest?'

'If I knew that,' she answered, 'I should have had it in private words

from my lady whom I serve. And, if I had it in private words I would

tell it neither to you nor to any man.'

He scowled patiently and muttered:

'Then tell in private words back again this: That if the French King

or the Emperor do war upon us now Privy Seal will sit upon the King's

back for ever.'

'Ah, I know who hath talked with you,' she answered. 'Uncle, give me

your hand to kiss, for I must back to my mistress.'

He put his thin hand grimly behind his back.

'Ye spy, then, for others,' he said. 'Go kiss their feet.'

She laughed in a nettled voice:

'If the others get no more from me than your Grace of Norfolk....'

He frowned ominously, pivoted stiffly round on his heels, and said

over his shoulder:

'Then I will have thy cousin clapped up the first time he is found in

a drunken brawl at Calais.'

She was after him beseechingly, with her hands held out:

'Oh no, uncle,' and 'Oh, dear uncle. Let poor fool Tom be drunken when

drunken brawls work no manner of ill.'

'Then get you sent to the King of France, through the channel that you

wot of, the message I have given you to convey.' He kept his back to

her and spoke as if to the distant door.

'Why must I mull in these matters?' she asked him piteously, 'or why

must poor Tom? God help him, he found me bread when you had left me to

starve.' It came to her as pitiful that her cousin, swaggering and

unconscious, at a great distance, should be undone because these men

quarrelled near her. He moved stiffly round again--he was so bolstered

over with clothes against the cold.

'It is not you that must meddle here,' he said. 'It is your mistress.

Only she will be believed by those you wot of.'

'Speak you yourself,' she said.

He scowled hatefully.

'Who of the French would believe _me_,' he snarled. He had been so

made a tool of by Privy Seal in times past that he had lost all hope

of credence.

'If I may come to it, I will do it,' she said suddenly.

After all, it seemed to her, this action might bring about the

downfall of Privy Seal--and she desired his downfall. It would be a

folly to refuse her aid merely because her uncle was a craven man or

Throckmorton a knave. It was a true thing that she was to ask the Lady

Mary to say--that if France and Spain should molest England together

the Cleves alliance must stand for good--and with it Privy Seal.

'But, a' God's name, let poor Tom be,' she added.

He stood perfectly motionless for a moment, shrugged his shoulders

straight up and down, stood motionless for another moment, and then

held out his hand. She touched it with her lips.

* * * * *

There was a certain cate, or small cake, made of a paste sweetened

with honey and flavoured with cinnamon, that Katharine Howard very

much loved. She had never tasted them till one day the King had come

to visit his daughter, bearing with his own hands a great box of them.

He had had the receipt from Thomas Cromwell, who had had it of a Jew

in Italy. Mary so much disaffected her father that, taking them from

his hands with one knee nearly upon the ground, she had said that her

birth ill-fitted her to eat these princely viands, and she had placed

them on a ledge of her writing-pulpit. Heaving a heavy sigh, he

glanced at her book and said that he would not have her spoil her eyes

with too much of study; let her bid Lady Katharine to read and write

for her.

'She will have greater need of her eyes than ever I of mine,' Mary

answered with her passionless voice.

'I will not have you spoil your eyes,' he said heavily, and she gave

him back the reply:

'My eyes are your Highness'.'

He made with his shoulders a slow movement of exasperation, and,

turning to Katharine Howard, he began once more to talk of the Islands

of the Blest. He was dressed all in black furs that day, so that his

face appeared less pallid than when he had worn scarlet, and it seemed

to her suddenly that he was a very pitiful man--a man who could do

nothing; and one who, as Throckmorton had said, was nothing but a

doubt. There beside him, between the two of them, stood his

daughter--pale, straight, silent, her hands clasped before her. And

her father had come to placate her. He had brought her cates to eat,

or he would have beaten her into loving him. Yet Mary of England stood

as rigid as a knife-blade; you could move her neither by love nor by

threats. This man had sinned against this daughter; here he was

brought up against an implacability. He was omnipotent in everything

else; this was his Pillars of Hercules. So she exerted herself to be

pleasant with him, and at one moment of the afternoon he stretched out

a great hand to the cinnamon cakes and placed one in his own mouth. He

sat still, and, his great jaws moving slowly, he said that he scarcely

doubted that, if he himself could set sail with a great armada and

many men, he should find a calm region of tranquil husbandry and a

pure faith.

'It might be found,' he said; then he sighed heavily, and, looking

earnestly at her, brushed the crumbs from the furs about his neck.

'One day, doubtless, your Highness shall find them,' Katharine

answered, 'if your Highness shall apply yourself to the task.' She was

impatient with him for his sighs. Let him, if he would, abandon his

kingdom and his daughter to set out upon a quest, or let him stay

where he was and set to work at any other task.

'But whether your Highness shall find them beyond the Western Isles or

hidden in this realm of England....'

He shrugged his great shoulders right up till the furs on them were

brushed by the feathers that fell from his bonnet.

'God, wench!' he said gloomily, 'that is a question you are main happy

to have time to dally with. I have wife and child, and kith and kin,

and a plaguey basket of rotten apples to make cider from.'

He pulled himself out of his chair with both hands on the arms,

stretched his legs as if they were cramped, and rolled towards the

door.

'Why, read of this matter in old books,' he said, 'and if you find the

place you shall take me there.' Then he spoke bitterly to the Lady

Mary, who had never moved.

'Since your eyes are mine, I bid you not spoil them,' he said. 'Let

this lady aid you. She has ten times more of learning than you have.'

But, taking his jewelled walking-stick from beside the door, he added,

'God, wench! you are my child. I have read your commentary, and I, a

man who have as much of good letters as any man in Christendom, am

well content to father you.'

'Did your Highness mark--this book being my child--which side of the

paper it was written on?' his daughter asked.

Katharine Howard sighed, for it was the Lady Mary's bitter jest that

she wrote on the rough side of the paper, having been born on the

wrong side of the blanket.

'Madam Howard,' she said to Katharine with a cold sneer, as of a very

aged woman, 'my father, who has taken many things from me to give to

other women, takes now my commentary to give to you. Pray you finish

it, and I will save mine eyes.'

As the King closed the door behind him she moved across to the chair

and sat herself down to gaze at the coals. Katharine knelt at her feet

and stretched out her hands. She was, she said, her mistress's woman.

But the Lady Mary turned obdurately the side of her face to her

suppliant; only her fingers picked at her black dress.

'I am your woman,' Katharine said. 'Before God and St Anthony, the

King is naught to me! Before God and the Mother of God, no man is

aught to me! I swear that I am your woman. I swear that I will speak

as you bid me speak, or be silent. May God do so to me if in aught I

act other than may be of service to you!'

'Then you may sit motionless till the green mould is over your

cheeks,' Mary answered.

But two days later, in the afternoon, Katharine Howard came upon her

mistress with her jaws moving voraciously. Half of the cinnamon cates

were eaten from the box on the writing-pulpit. A convulsion of rage

passed over the girl's dark figure; her eyes dilated and appeared to

blaze with a hot and threatening fury.

'If I could have thy head, before God I would shorten thee by the

neck!' she said. 'Stay now; go not. Take thy hand from the

door-latch.'

Sudden sobs shook her, and tears dropped down her furrowed and pallid

cheeks. She was tormented always by a gnawing and terrible hunger that

no meat and no bread might satisfy, so that, being alone with the

cates in the cold spring afternoon, she had, in spite of the donor,

been forced always nearer and nearer to them.

'God help me!' she said at last. 'Udal is gone, and the scullion that

supplied me in secret has the small-pox. How may I get me things to

eat?'

'To have stayed to ask me!' Katharine cried. 'What a folly was here!'

For, as a daughter of the King, the Lady Mary was little more than

herself; but because she was daughter to a queen that was at once a

saint and martyr, Katharine was ready to spend her life in her

service.

'I would stay to ask a service of any man or woman,' Mary answered,

'save only that I have this great hunger.' She clutched angrily at her

skirt, and so calmed herself.

'How may you help me?' she asked grimly. 'There are many that would

put poison in my food. My mother was poisoned.'

'I would eat myself of all the food that I bring you,' said Katharine.

'And if thou wast poisoned, I must get me another, and yet another

after that. You know who it is that would have me away.'

At that hint of the presence of Cromwell, Katharine grew more serious.

'I will save of my own food,' she answered simply.

'Till your bones stick through your skin!' Mary sneered. 'See you, do

you know one man you could trust?'

The shadow fell the more deeply upon Katharine, because her cousin--as

she remembered every day--the one man that she could trust, was in

Calais town.

'I know of two women,' she said; 'my maid Margot and Cicely Elliott.'

Mary of England reflected for a long time. Her eyes sunk deep in her

head, grey and baleful, had the look of her father's.

'Cicely Elliott is too well known for my woman,' she said. 'Thy maid

Margot is a great lump, too. Hath she no lover?'

The magister was in Paris.

'But a brother she hath,' Katharine said; 'one set upon advancement.'

Mary said moodily:

'Advancement, then, may be in this. God knoweth his own good time. But

you might tell him; or it were better you should bid her tell him....

In short words, and fur ... wait.'

She had a certain snake-like eagerness and vehemence in her motions.

She opened swiftly an aumbry in which there stood a tankard of milk.

She took a clean pen, and then turned upon Katharine.

'Before thou goest upon this errand,' she said, 'I would have thee

know that, for thee, there may be a traitor's death in this--and some

glory in Heaven.'

'You write to the Empress,' Katharine cried.

'I write to a man,' the Lady Mary said. 'Might you speak with clear

eyes to my father if you knew more than that?'

'I do not believe that you would bring your father down,' Katharine

said.

'Why, you have a very comfortable habit of belief,' Mary sneered at

her. 'In two words! Will you carry this treasonable letter or no?'

'God help me,' Katharine cried.

'Well, God help you,' her mistress jeered. 'Two nights agone you swore

to be my woman and no other man's. Here you are in a taking. Think

upon it.'

She dipped her white pen in the milk and began to write upon a great

sheet of paper, holding her head aslant to see the shine of the fluid.

Katharine fought a battle within herself. Here was treason to the

King--but that was a little thing to her. Yet the King was a father

whom she would bring back to this daughter, and the traitor was a

daughter whom she was sworn to serve and pledged to bring back to this

father. If then she conveyed this letter....

'Tell me,' she asked of the intent figure above the paper, 'when, if

ever, this plot shall burst?'

'Madam Howard,' the other answered, 'I heard thee not.'

'I say I will convey your Highness' letter if the plot shall not burst

for many days. If it be to come soon I will forswear myself and be no

longer your woman.'

'Why, what a pax is here?' her mistress faced round on her. 'What

muddles thy clear head? I doubt, knowing the craven kings that are of

my party, no plot shall burst for ten years. And so?'

'Before then thou mayest be brought back to thy father,' Katharine

said.

Mary of England burst into a hoarse laughter.

'As God's my life,' she cried, 'that may well be. And you may find a

chaste whore before either.'

Whilst she was finishing her letter, Katharine Howard prayed that Mary

the Mother of Mercy might soften the hatred of this daughter, even as,

of old times, she had turned the heart of Lucius the Syracusan. Then

there should be an end to plotting and this letter might work no ill.

Having waved the sheet of paper in the air to dry it, Mary crumpled it

into a ball.

'See you,' she said, 'if this miscarry I run a scant risk. For, if

this be a treason, this treason is well enough known already to them

you wot of. They might have had my head this six years on one shift or

another had they so dared. So to me it matters little.--But for

thee--and for thy maid Margot and this maid's brother and his house

and his father and his leman--death may fall on ye all if this ball of

paper miscarry.'

Katharine made no answer and her mistress spoke on.

'Take now this paper ball, give it to thy maid Margot, bid thy maid

Margot bear it to her brother Ned.' Her brother Ned should place it in

his sleeve and walk with it to Herring Lane at Hampton. There, over

against the house of the Sieur Chapuys, who was the Emperor's

ambassador to this Christian nation--over against that house there was

a cookshop to which resorted the servants of the ambassador. Passing

it by, Katharine's maid's brother should thrust his hand in at the

door and cry 'a pox on all stinking Kaiserliks and Papists,'--and he

should cast the paper at that cook's head. Then out would come master

cook to his door and claim reparation. And for reparation Margot's

brother Ned should buy such viands as the cook should offer him. These

viands he was to bring, as a good brother should, to his hungry

sister, and these viands his sister should take to her room--which was

Katharine's room. 'And, of an evening,' she finished, 'I shall come to

thy room to commune with thee of the writers that be dead and yet

beloved. Hast thou the lesson by heart? I will say it again.'