'My Lady,' Katharine said, 'my Highness must get me a new maid in place of Margot Poins, that shall away into a nunnery. Is not that grief enough for poor Margot? Shall she think in truth that she has undone her father's house?'

'Then advance the springald to some post away from you,' the Lady Cicely said.

'Nay,' the Queen answered; 'he hath done nothing to merit advancement.'

She continued, with her head bent down over the writing on her knee, her lips moving a little as, sedulously, she drew large and plain letters with her pen.

'By Heaven,' the Lady Cicely said, 'you have too tickle a conscience to be a Queen of this world and day. In the time of Caesar you might have lived more easily.'

The Queen looked up at her from her writing; her clear eyes were untroubled.

'Aye,' she said. 'Lucio Domitio, Appio Claudio consulibus——'

Cicely Rochford set back her head and laughed at the ceiling.

'Aye, your Highness is a Roman,' she tittered like a magpie.

'In the day of Caesar it was simple to do well,' the Queen said.

'Why, I do not believe it,' Cicely answered her.

'Cousin! Cousin!' The old Lady Rochford warned her that this was the Queen, not her old playmate.

'But now,' the Queen said, 'with such a coming together and a concourse of peoples about us; with such holes and corners in a great Court——' She paused and sighed.

'Well, if I may not speak my mind,' Cicely Rochford said to the old lady, 'what good am I?'

'I did even what I might to keep this lamb Margot from the teeth of that wolf Magister,' the Queen said. 'I take shame to myself that I did no more. I will do a penance for it. But still I think that these be degenerate days.'

'Oh, Queen of dreams and fancies,' Cicely Rochford said. 'I am very certain that in the days of your noble Romans it was as it is now. Tell me, if you can, that in all your readings of hic and hoc you lit not upon such basenesses? You will not lay your hand upon your heart and say that never a man of Rome bartered his sister for the hope of advancement, or that never a learned doctor was a corrupter of youth? I have seen the like in the plays of Plautus that here have been played at Court.'

'Why,' the Queen said, 'the days of Plautus were days degenerated and fallen already from the ancient nobleness.'

'You should have Queened it before Goodman Adam fell,' Cicely Rochford mocked her. 'If you go back before Plautus, go back all the way.'

She shrugged her shoulders up to her ears and uttered a little sound like 'Pfui!' Then she said quickly—

'Give me leave to be gone, your Highness, that I may not grow over familiar like the boy with the pikestaff, for if it do not gall you it shall wring the withers of this my old husband's cousin!'

The old Lady Rochford, who was always thinking of what had been said two speeches ago, because she was so slow-witted, raised her gouty hands in the air and opened her mouth. But the Queen smiled faintly at Cicely.

'When I ask you to mince matters in my little room you shall do it. It was Lucius the Praetor that went always accompanied by a carping Stoic to keep him from being puffed up, and it was a good custom.'

'Before Heaven,' Cicely Rochford said in the midst of her curtsey at the door, 'shall I have the office of such a one as Diogenes who derided Alexander the Emperor? Then must my old husband live with me in a tub!'

'Pray you,' the Queen said after her through the door, 'look you around and spy me out a maid to be my tiring-woman and ward my spinsters. For nowadays I see few maids to choose from.'

When she was gone the old Lady Rochford timorously berated the Queen. She would have her be more distant with knights' wives and the like. For it was fitting for a Queen to be feared and deemed awful.

'I had rather be loved and deemed pitiful,' Katharine answered. 'For I was once such a one—no more—than she or thou, or very little more. Before the people I bear myself proudly for my lord his high honour. But I do lead a very cloistered life, and have leisure to reflect upon for what a little space authority endureth, and how that friendship and true love between friends are things that bear the weather better.' She did not say her Latin text, for the old lady had no Latin.

VI

In the underground cell, above the red and gold table that afternoon, Lascelles wrought at a fair copy of the King's letter to the Pope, amended as it had been by Udal's hand. The Archbishop had come into the room reading a book as he came from his prayers, and sate him down in his chair at the tablehead without glancing at his gentleman.

'Prithee, your Grace,' Lascelles said, 'suffer me to carry this letter mine own self to the Queen.'

The Archbishop looked up at him; his mournful eyes started wide; he leaned forward.

'Art thou Lascelles?' he asked.

'Aye, Lascelles I am,' the gentleman answered; 'but I have cut off my beard.'

The Archbishop was very weak and startled; he fell into an anger.

'Is this a time for vanities?' he said. 'Will you be after the wenches? You look a foolish boy! I do not like this prank.'

Lascelles put up his hand to stroke his vanished beard. His risible lips writhed in a foxy smile; his chin was fuller than you would have expected, round and sensuous with a dimple in the peak of it.

'Please it, your Grace,' he said, 'this is no vanity, but a scheme that I will try.'

'What scheme? What scheme?' the Archbishop said. 'Here have been too many schemes.' He was very shaken and afraid, because this world was beyond his control.

'Please it, your Grace,' Lascelles answered, 'ask me not what this scheme is.'

The Archbishop shook his head and pursed his lips feebly.

'Please it, your Grace,' Lascelles urged, 'if this scheme miscarry, your Grace shall hear no more of it. If this scheme succeed I trow it shall help some things forward that your Grace would much have forwarded. Please it, your Grace, to ask me no more, and to send me with this letter to the Queen's Highness.'

The Archbishop opened his nerveless hands before him; they were pale and wrinkled as if they had been much soddened in water. Since the King had bidden him compose that letter to the Pope of Rome, his hands had grown so. Lascelles wrote on at the new draft of the letter, his lips following the motions of his pen. Still writing, and with his eyes down, he said—

'The Queen's Highness will put from her her tirewoman in a week from now.'

The Archbishop moved his fingers as who should say—

'What is that to me!' His eyes gazed into the space above his book that lay before him on the table.

'This Margot Poins is a niece of the master-printer Badge, a Lutheran, of the Austin Friars.' Lascelles pursued his writing for a line further. Then he added—

'This putting away and the occasion of it shall make a great noise in the town of London. It will be said amongst the Lutherans that the Queen is answerable therefor. It will be said that the Queen hath a very lewd Court and companionship.'

The Archbishop muttered wearily—

'It hath been said already.'

'But not,' Lascelles said, 'since she came to be Queen.'

The Archbishop directed upon him his hang-dog eyes, and his voice was the voice of a man that would not be disturbed from woeful musings.

'What use?' he said bitterly; and then again, 'What use?'

Lascelles wrote on sedulously. He used his sandarach to the end of the page, blew off the sand, eyed the sheet sideways, laid it down, and set another on his writing-board.

'Why,' he brought out quietly, 'it may be brought to the King's Highness' ears.'

'What way?' the Archbishop said heavily, as if the thing were impossible. His gentleman answered—

'This way and that!' The King's Highness had a trick of wandering about among his faithful lieges unbeknown; foreign ambassadors wrote abroad such rumours which might be re-reported from the foreign by the King's servants.

'Such a report,' Lascelles said, 'hath gone up already to London town by a swift carrier.'

The Archbishop brought out wearily and distastefully—

'How know you? Was it you that wrote it?'

'Please it, your Grace,' his gentleman answered him, 'it was in this wise. As I was passing by the Queen's chamber wall I heard a great outcry——'

He laid down his pen beside his writing-board the more leisurely to speak.

He had seen Udal, beaten and shaking, stagger out from the Queen's door to where his guards waited to set him back in prison. From Udal he had learned of this new draft of the letter; of Udal's trouble he knew before. Udal gone, he had waited a little, hearing the Queen's voice and what she said very plainly, for the castle was very great and quiet. Then out had come the young Poins, breathing like a volcano through his nostrils, and like to be stricken with palsy, boy though he was. Him Lascelles had followed at a convenient distance, where he staggered and snorted. And, coming upon the boy in an empty guard-room near the great gate, he had found him aflame with passion against the Queen's Highness.

'I,' the boy had cried out, 'I that by my carrying of letters set this Howard where she sits! I!—and this is my advancement. My sister cast down, and I cast out, and another maid to take my sister's place.'

And Lascelles, in the guard-chamber, had shown him sympathy and reminded him that there was gospel for saying that princes had short memories.

'But I did not calm him!' Lascelles said.

On the contrary, upon Lascelles' suggestion that the boy had but to hold his tongue and pocket his wrongs, the young Poins had burst out that he would shout it all abroad at every street corner. And suddenly it had come into his head to write such a letter to his Uncle Badge the printer as, printed in a broadside, would make the Queen's name to stink, until the last generation was of men, in men's nostrils.

Lascelles rubbed his hands gently and sinuously together. He cast one sly glance at the Archbishop.

'Well, the letter was written,' he said. 'Be sure the broadside shall be printed.'

Cranmer's head was sunk over his book.

'This lad,' Lascelles said softly, 'who in seven days' time again shall keep the Queen's door (for it is not true that the Queen's Highness is an ingrate, well sure am I), this lad shall be a very useful confidant; a very serviceable guide to help us to a knowledge of who goes in to the Queen and who cometh out.'

The Archbishop did not appear to be listening to his gentleman's soft voice and, resuming his pen, Lascelles finished his tale with—

'For I have made this lad my friend. It shall cost me some money, but I do not doubt that your Grace shall repay.'

The Archbishop raised his head.

'No, before God in heaven on His throne!' he said. His voice was shrill and high; he agitated his hands in their fine, tied sleeves. 'I will have no part in these Cromwell tricks. All is lost; let it be lost. I must say my prayers.'

'Has it been by saying of your Grace's prayers that your Grace has lived through these months?' Lascelles asked softly.

'Aye,' the Archbishop wrung his hands; 'you girded me and moved me when Cromwell lay at death, to write a letter to the King's Highness. To write such a letter as should appear brave and faithful and true to Privy Seal's cause.'

'Such a letter your Grace wrote,' Lascelles said; 'and it was the best writing that ever your Grace made.'

The Archbishop gazed at the table.

'How do I know that?' he said in a whisper. 'You say so, who bade me write it.'

'For that your Grace lives yet,' Lascelles said softly; 'though in those days a warrant was written for your capture. For, sure it is, and your Grace has heard it from the King's lips, that your letter sounded so faithful and piteous and true to him your late leader, that the King could not but believe that you, so loyal in such a time to a man disgraced and cast down beyond hope, could not but be faithful and loyal in the future to him, the King, with so many bounties to bestow.'

'Aye,' the Archbishop said, 'but how do I know what of a truth was in the King's mind who casteth down to-day one, to-morrow another, till none are left?'

And again Cranmer dropped his anguished eyes to the table.

* * * * *

In those days still—and he slept still worse since the King had bidden him write this letter to Rome—the Archbishop could not sleep on any night without startings and sweats and cryings out in his sleep. And he gave orders that, when he so cried out, the page at his bedside should wake him.

For then he was seeing the dreadful face of his great master, Privy Seal, when the day of his ruin had come. Cromwell had been standing in a window of the council chamber at Westminster looking out upon a courtyard. In behind him had come the other lords of the council, Norfolk with his yellow face, the High Admiral, and many others; and each, seating himself at the table, had kept his bonnet on his head. So Cromwell, turning, had seen them and had asked with his hard insolence and embittered eyes of hatred, how they dared be covered before he who was their president sat down. Then, up against him in the window-place there had sprung Norfolk at the chain of the George round his neck, and Suffolk at the Garter on his knee; and Norfolk had cried out that Thomas Cromwell was no longer Privy Seal of that kingdom, nor president of that council, but a traitor that must die. Then such rage and despair had come into Thomas Cromwell's terrible face that Cranmer's senses had reeled. He had seen Norfolk and the Admiral fall back before this passion; he had seen Thomas Cromwell tear off his cap and cast it on the floor; he had heard him bark and snarl out certain words into the face of the yellow dog of Norfolk.

'Upon your life you dare not call me traitor!' and Norfolk had fallen back abashed.

Then the chamber had seemed to fill with an awful gloom and darkness; men showed only like shadows against the window lights; the constable of the Tower had come in with the warrants, and in that gloom the earth had appeared to tremble and quake beneath the Archbishop's feet.

* * * * *

He crossed himself at the recollection, and, coming out of his stupor, saw that Lascelles was finishing his writings. And he was glad that he was here now and not there then.

'Prithee, your Grace,' the gentleman's soft voice said, 'let me bear, myself, this letter to the Queen.'

The Archbishop shivered frostily in his robes.

'I will have no more Cromwell tricks,' he said. 'I have said it'; and he affected an obdurate tone.

'Then, indeed, all is lost,' Lascelles answered; 'for this Queen is very resolved.'

The Archbishop cast his eyes up to the cold stone ceiling above him. He crossed himself.

'You are a very devil,' he said, and panic came into his eyes, so that he turned them all round him as if he sought an issue at which to run out.

'The Papist lords in this castle met on Saturday night,' Lascelles said; 'their meeting was very secret, and Norfolk was their head. But I have heard it said that not one of them was for the Queen.'

The Archbishop shrank within himself.

'I am not minded to hear this,' he said.

'Not one of them was for the Queen altogether; for she will render all lands and goods back to the Church, and there is no one of them but is rich with the lands and goods of the Church. That they that followed Cromwell are not for the Queen well your Grace knoweth,' his gentleman continued.

'I will not hear this; this is treason,' the Archbishop muttered.

'So that who standeth for the Queen?' Lascelles whispered. 'Only a few of the baser sort that have no lands to lose.'

'The King,' the Archbishop cried out in a terrible voice; 'the King standeth for her!'

He sprang up in his chair and then sank down again, covering his mouth with his hands, as if he would have intercepted the uttered words. For who knew who listened at what doors in these days. He whispered horribly—

'What a folly is this. Who shall move the King? Will reports of his ambassadors that Cleves, or Charles, or Francis miscall the Queen? You know they will not, for the King is aware of how these princes batten on carrion. Will broad sheets of the Lutheran? You know they will not, for the King is aware of how those coggers come by their tales. Will the King go abroad among the people any more to hear what they say? You know he will not. For he is grown too old, and his fireside is made too sweet——'

He wavered, and he could not work himself up with a longer show of anger.

'Prithee,' Lascelles said, 'let me bear this letter myself to the Queen.' His voice was patient and calm.

The Archbishop lay back, impotent, in his chair. His arms were along the arms of it: he had dropped his book upon the table. His long gown was draped all over him down to his feet; his head remained motionless; his eyes did not wink, and gazed at despair; his hands drooped, open and impotent.

Suddenly he moved one of them a very little.

VII

It was the Queen's habit to go every night, when the business of the day was done, to pray, along with the Lady Mary, in the small chapel that was in the roof of the castle. To vespers she went with all the Court to the big chapel in the courtyard that the King had builded especially for her. But to this little chapel, that was of Edward IV's time, small and round-arched, all stone and dark and bare, she went with the Lady Mary alone. Her ladies and her doorguards they left at the stair foot, on a level with the sleeping rooms of the poorer sort, but up the little stairway they climbed by themselves, in darkness, to pray privately for the conversion of England. For this little place was so small and so forgotten that it had never been desecrated by Privy Seal's men. It had had no vessels worth the taking, and only very old vestments and a few ill-painted pictures on the stone walls that were half hidden in the dust.

Katharine had found this little place when, on her first day at Pontefract, she had gone a-wandering over the castle with the King. For she was curious to know how men had lived in the old times; to see their rooms and to mark what old things were there still in use. And she had climbed thus high because she was minded to gaze upon the huge expanse of country and of moors that from the upper leads of the castle was to be seen. But this little chapel had seemed to her to be all the more sacred because it had been undesecrated and forgotten. She thought that you could not find such another in the King's realm at that time; she was very assured that not one was to be found in any house of the King's and hers.

And, making inquiries, she had found that there was also an old priest there served the chapel, doing it rather secretly for the well-disposed of the castle's own guards. This old man had fled, at the approach of the King's many, into the hidden valleys of that countryside, where still the faith lingered and lingers now. For, so barbarous and remote those north parts were, that a great many people had never heard that the King was married again, and fewer still, or none, knew that he and his wife were well inclined again towards Rome.

This old priest she had had brought to her. And he was so well loved that along with him came a cluster of weather-battered moorsmen, right with him into her presence. They kneeled down, being clothed with skins, and several of them having bows of a great size, to beg her not to harm this old man, for he was reputed a saint. The Queen could not understand their jargon but, when their suit was interpreted to her by the Lord Dacre of the North, and when she had had a little converse with the old priest, she answered that, so touched was her heart by his simplicity and gentleness, that she would pray the good King, her lord and master, to let this priest be made her confessor whilst there they stayed. And afterwards, if it were convenient, in reward for his faithfulness, he should be made a prior or a bishop in those parts. So the moorsmen, blessing her uncouthly for her fairness and kind words, went back with their furs and bows into their fastnesses. One of them was a great lord of that countryside, and each day he sent into the castle bucks and moor fowl, and once or twice a wolf. His name was Sir John Peel, and Sir John Peel, too, the priest was called.

So the priest served that little altar, and of a night, when the Queen was minded next day to partake of the host, he heard her confession. On other nights he left them there alone to say their prayers. It was always very dark with the little red light burning before the altar and two tapers that they lit beneath a statue of the Virgin, old and black and ill-carved by antique hands centuries before. And, in that blackness, they knelt, invisible almost, and still in the black gowns that they put on for prayers, beside a low pillar that gloomed out at their sides and vanished up into the darkness of the roof.

Having done their prayers, sometimes they stayed to converse and to meditate, for there they could be very private. On the night when the letter to Rome was redrafted, the Queen prayed much longer than the Lady Mary, who sat back upon a stool, silently, to await her finishing—for it seemed that the Queen was more zealous for the converting of those realms again to the old faith than was ever the Lady Mary. The tapers burned with a steady, invisible glow in the little side chapel behind the pillar; the altar gleamed duskily before them, and it was so still that through the unglassed windows they could hear, from far below in the black countryside, a tenuous bleating of late-dropped lambs. Katharine Howard's beads clicked and her dress rustled as she came up from her knees.

'It rests more with thee than with any other in this land,' her voice reverberated amongst the distant shadows. A bat that had been drawn in by the light flittered invisibly near them.

'Even what?' the Lady Mary asked.

'Well you know,' the Queen answered; 'and may the God to whom you have prayed, that softened the heart of Paul, soften thine in this hour!'

The Lady Mary maintained a long silence. The bat flittered, with a leathern rustle, invisible, between their very faces. At last Mary uttered, and her voice was taunting and malicious—

'If you will soften my heart much you must beseech me.'

'Why, I will kneel to you,' the Queen said.

'Aye, you shall,' Mary answered. 'Tell me what you would have of me.'

'Well you know!' Katharine said again.

In the darkness the lady's voice maintained its bitter mirth, as it were the broken laughter of a soul in anguish.

'I will have you tell me, for it is a shameful tale that will shame you in the telling.'

The Queen paused to consider of her words.

'First, you shall be reconciled with, and speak pleasantly with, the King your father and my lord.'

'And is it not a shameful thing you bid me do, to bid me speak pleasant words to him that slew my mother and called me bastard?'

The Queen answered that she asked it in the name of Christ, His pitiful sake, and for the good of this suffering land.

'None the less, Queen, thou askest it in the darkness that thy face may not be seen. And what more askest thou?'

'That when the Duke of Orleans his ambassadors come asking your hand in marriage, you do show them a pleasant and acquiescent countenance.'

The sacredness of that dark place kept Mary from laughing aloud.

'That, too, you dare not ask in the light of day, Queen,' she said. 'Ask on!'

'That when the Emperor's ambassadors shall ask for your hand you shall profess yourself glad indeed.'

'Well, here is more shame, that I should be prayed to feign this gladness. I think the angels do laugh that hear you. Ask even more.'

Katharine said patiently—

'That, having in reward of these favours, been set again on high, having honours shown you and a Court appointed round you, you shall gladly play the part of a princess royal to these realms, never gibing, nor sneering upon this King your father, nor calling upon the memory of the wronged Queen your mother.'

'Queen,' the Lady Mary said, 'I had thought that even in the darkness you had not dared to ask me this.'

'I will ask it you again,' the Queen said, 'in your room where the light of the candles shines upon my face.'

'Why, you shall,' the Lady Mary said. 'Let us presently go there.'

* * * * *

They went down the dark and winding stair. At the foot the procession of the coucher de la royne awaited them, first being two trumpeters in black and gold, then four pikemen with lanthorns, then the marshal of the Queen's household and five or seven lords, then the Queen's ladies, the Lady Rochford that slept with her, the Lady Cicely Rochford; the Queen's tiring-women, leaving a space between them for the Queen and the Lady Mary to walk in, then four young pages in scarlet and with the Queen's favours in their caps, and then the guard of the Queen's door, and four pikemen with torches whose light, falling from behind, illumined the path for the Queen's steps. The trumpeters blew four shrill blasts and then four with their fists in the trumpet mouths to muffle them. The brazen cries wound down the dark corridors, fathoms and fathoms down, to let men know that the Queen had done her prayers and was going to her bed. This great state was especially devised by the King to do honour to the new Queen that he loved better than any he had had. The purpose of it was to let all men know what she did that she might be the more imitated.

But the Queen bade them guide her to the Lady Mary's door, and in the doorway she dismissed them all, save only her women and her door guard and pikemen who awaited her without, some on stools and some against the wall, ladies and men alike.

The Lady Mary looked into the Queen's face very close and laughed at her when they were in the fair room and the light of the candles.

'Now you shall say your litany over again,' she sneered; 'I will sit me down and listen.' And in her chair at the table, with her face averted, she dug with little stabs into the covering rug the stiletto with which she was wont to mend her pens.

Standing by her, her face fully lit by the many candles that were upon the mantel, the Queen, dressed all in black and with the tail of her hood falling down behind to her feet, went patiently through the list of her prayers—that the Lady Mary should be reconciled with her father, that she should show at first favour to the ambassadors that sued for her hand for the Duke of Orleans, and afterwards give a glad consent to her marriage with the Prince Philip, the Emperor's son; and then, having been reinstated as a princess of the royal house of England, she should bear herself as such, and no more cry out upon the memory of Katharine of Aragon that had been put away from the King's side.

The Queen spoke these words with a serious patience and a level voice; but when she came to the end of them she stretched out her hand and her voice grew full.

'And oh,' she said, her face being set and earnest in entreaty towards the girl's back, 'if you have any love for the green and fertile land that gave birth both to you and to me——'

'But to me a bastard,' the Lady Mary said.

'If you would have the dishoused saints to return home to their loved pastures; if you would have the Mother of God and of us all to rejoice again in her dowry; if you would see a great multitude of souls, gentle and simple reconducted again towards Heaven——'

'Well, well!' the Lady Mary said; 'grovel! grovel! I had thought you would have been shamed thus to crawl upon your belly before me.'

'I would crawl in the dust,' Katharine said. 'I would kiss the mire from the shoon of the vilest man there is if in that way I might win for the Church of God——'

'Well, well!' the Lady Mary said.

'You will not let me finish my speech about our Saviour and His mother,' the Queen said. 'You are afraid I should move you.'

The Lady Mary turned suddenly round upon her in her chair. Her face was pallid, the skin upon her hollowed temples trembled—

'Queen,' she called out, 'ye blaspheme when ye say that a few paltry speeches of yours about God and souls will make me fail my mother's memory and the remembrances of the shames I have had.'

She closed her eyes; she swallowed in her throat and then, starting up, she overset her chair.

'To save souls!' she said. 'To save a few craven English souls! What are they to me? Let them burn in the eternal fires! Who among them raised a hand or struck a blow for my mother or me? Let them go shivering to hell.'

'Lady,' the Queen said, 'ye know well how many have gone to the stake over conspiracies for you in this realm.'

'Then they are dead and wear the martyr's crown,' the Lady Mary said. 'Let the rest that never aided me, nor struck blow for my mother, go rot in their heresies.'

'But the Church of God!' the Queen said. 'The King's Highness has promised me that upon the hour when you shall swear to do these things he will send the letter that ye wot of to our Father in Rome.'

The Lady Mary laughed aloud—

'Here is a fine woman,' she said. 'This is ever the woman's part to gloss over crimes of their men folk. What say you to the death of Lady Salisbury that died by the block a little since?'

She bent her body and poked her head forward into the Queen's very face. Katharine stood still before her.

'God knows,' she said. 'I might not stay it. There was much false witness—or some of it true—against her. I pray that the King my Lord may atone for it in the peace that shall come.'

'The peace that shall come!' the Lady Mary laughed. 'Oh, God, what things we women are when a man rules us. The peace that shall come? By what means shall it have been brought on?'

'I will tell you,' she pursued after a moment. 'All this is cogging and lying and feigning and chicaning. And you who are so upright will crawl before me to bring it about. Listen!'

And she closed her eyes the better to calm herself and to collect her thoughts, for she hated to appear moved.

'I am to feign a friendship to my father. That is a lie that you ask me to do, for I hate him as he were the devil. And why must I do this? To feign a smooth face to the world that his pride may not be humbled. I am to feign to receive the ambassadors of the Duke of Orleans. That is cogging that you ask of me. For it is not intended that ever I shall wed with a prince of the French house. But I must lead them on and on till the Emperor be affrighted lest your King make alliance with the French. What a foul tale! And you lend it your countenance!'

'I would well——' Katharine began.

'Oh, I know, I know,' Mary snickered. 'Ye would well be chaste but that it must needs be other with you. It was the thief's wife said that.

'Listen again,' she pursued, 'anon there shall come the Emperor's men, and there shall be more cogging and chicaning, and honours shall be given me that I may be bought dear, and petitioning that I should be set in the succession to make them eager. And then, perhaps, it shall all be cried off and a Schmalkaldner prince shall send ambassadors——'

'No, before God,' Katharine said.

'Oh, I know my father,' Mary laughed at her. 'You will keep him tied to Rome if you can. But you could not save the venerable Lady of Salisbury, nor you shall not save him from trafficking with Schmalkaldners and Lutherans if it shall serve his monstrous passions and his vanities. And if he do not this yet he will do other villainies. And you will cosset him in them—to save his hoggish dignity and buttress up his heavy pride. All this you stand there and ask.'

'In the name of God I ask it,' Katharine said. 'There is no other way.'

'Well then,' the Lady Mary said, 'you shall ask it many times. I will have you shamed.'

'Day and night I will ask it,' Katharine said.

The Lady Mary sniffed.

'It is very well,' she said. 'You are a proud and virtuous piece. I will humble you. It were nothing to my father to crawl on his belly and humble himself and slaver. He would do it with joy, weeping with a feigned penitence, making huge promises, foaming at the mouth with oaths that he repented, calling me his ever loved child——'

She stayed and then added—

'That would cost him nothing. But that you that are his pride, that you should do it who are in yourself proud—that is somewhat to pay oneself with for shamed nights and days despised. If you will have this thing you shall do some praying for it.'

'Even as Jacob served so will I,' Katharine said.

'Seven years!' the Lady Mary mocked at her. 'God forbid that I should suffer you for so long. I will get me gone with an Orleans, a Kaiserlik, or a Schmalkaldner leaguer before that. So much comfort I will give you.' She stopped, lifted her head and said, 'One knocks!'

They said from the door that a gentleman was come from the Archbishop with a letter to the Queen's Grace.

VIII

There came in the shaven Lascelles and fell upon his knees, holding up the sheets of the letter he had copied.

The Queen took them from him and laid them upon the great table, being minded later to read them to the Lady Mary, in proof that the King very truly would make his submission to Rome, supposing only that his daughter would make submission to her.

When she turned, Lascelles was still kneeling before the doorway, his eyes upon the ground.

'Why, I thank you,' she said. 'Gentleman, you may get you gone back to the Archbishop.'

She was thinking of returning to her duel of patience with the Lady Mary. But looking upon his blond and agreeable features she stayed for a minute.

'I know your face,' she said. 'Where have I seen you?'

He looked up at her; his eyes were blue and noticeable, because at times of emotion he was so wide-lidded that the whites showed round the pupils of them.

'Certainly I have seen you,' the Queen said.

'It is a royal gift,' he said, 'the memory of faces. I am the Archbishop's poor gentleman, Lascelles.'

The Queen said—

'Lascelles? Lascelles?' and searched her memory.

'I have a sister, the spit and twin of me,' he answered; 'and her name is Mary.'

The Queen said—

'Ah! ah!' and then, 'Your sister was my bed-fellow in the maid's room at my grandmother's.'

He answered gravely—

'Even so!'

And she—

'Stand up and tell me how your sister fares. I had some kindnesses of her when I was a child. I remember when I had cold feet she would heat a brick in the fire to lay to them, and such tricks. How fares she? Will you not stand up?'

'Because she fares very ill I will not stand upon my feet,' he answered.

'Well, you will beg a boon of me,' she said. 'If it is for your sister I will do what I may with a good conscience.'

He answered, remaining kneeling, that he would fain see his sister. But she was very poor, having married an esquire called Hall of these parts, and he was dead, leaving her but one little farm where, too, his old father and mother dwelt.

'I will pay for her visit here,' she said; 'and she shall have lodging.'

'Safe-conduct she must have too,' he answered; 'for none cometh within seven miles of this court without your permit and approval.'

'Well, I will send horses of my own, and men to safeguard her,' the Queen said. 'For, sure, I am beholden to her in many little things. I think she sewed the first round gown that ever I had.'

He remained kneeling, his eyes still upon the floor.

'We are your very good servants, my sister and I,' he said. 'For she did marry one—that Esquire Hall—that was done to death upon the gallows for the old faith's sake. And it was I that wrote the English of most of this letter to his Holiness, the Archbishop being ill and keeping his bed.'

'Well, you have served me very well, it is true,' the Queen answered. 'What would you have of me?'

'Your Highness,' he answered, 'I do well love my sister and she me. I would have her given a place here at the Court. I do not ask a great one; not one so high as about your person. For I am sure that you are well attended, and places few there are to spare about you.'

And then, even as he willed it, she bethought her that Margot Poins was to go to a nunnery. That afternoon she had decided that Mary Trelyon, who was her second maid, should become her first, and others be moved up in a rote.

'Why,' she said, 'it may be that I shall find her an occupation. I will not have it said—nor yet do it—that I have ever recompensed them that did me favours in the old times, for there are a many that have served well in the Court that then I was outside of, and those it is fitting first to reward. Yet, since, as you say you have writ the English of this letter, that is a very great service to the Republic, and if by rewarding her I may recompense thee, I will think how I may come to do it.'

He stood up upon his feet.

'It may be,' he said, 'that my sister is rustic and unsuited. I have not seen her in many years. Therefore, I will not pray too high a place for her, but only that she and I may be near, the one to the other, upon occasions, and that she be housed and fed and clothed.'

'Why, that is very well said,' the Queen answered him. 'I will bid my men to make inquiries into her demeanour and behaviour in the place where she bides, and if she is well fitted and modest, she shall have a place about me. If she be too rustic she shall have another place. Get you gone, gentleman, and a good-night to ye.'

He bent himself half double, in the then newest courtly way, and still bent, pivoted through the door. The Queen stayed a little while musing.

'Why,' she said, 'when I was a little child I fared very ill, if now I think of it; but then it seemed a little thing.'

'Y'had best forget it,' the Lady Mary answered.

'Nay,' the Queen said. 'I have known too well what it was to go supperless to my bed to forget it. A great shadowy place—all shadows, where the night airs crept in under the rafters.'

She was thinking of the maids' dormitory at her grandmother's, the old Duchess.

'I am climbed very high,' she said; 'but to think——'

She was such a poor man's child and held of only the littlest account, herding with the maids and the servingmen's children. At eight by the clock her grandmother locked her and all the maids—at times there were but ten, at times as many as a score—into that great dormitory that was, in fact, nothing but one long attic or grange beneath the bare roof. And sometimes the maids told tales or slept soon, and sometimes their gallants, grooms and others, came climbing through the windows with rope ladders. They would bring pasties and wines and lights, and coarsely they would revel.

'Why,' she said, 'I had a gallant myself. He was a musician, but I have forgot his name. Aye, and then there was another, Dearham, I think; but I have heard he is since dead. He may have been my cousin; we were so many in family, I have a little forgot.'

She stood still, searching her memory, with her eyes distant. The Lady Mary surveyed her face with a curious irony.

'Why, what a simple Queen you are!' she said. 'This is something rustic.'

The Queen joined her hands together before her, as if she caught at a clue.

'I do remember me,' she said. 'It was a make of a comedy. This Dearham, calling himself my cousin, beat this music musician for calling himself my gallant. Then goes the musicker to my grandam, bidding the old Duchess rise up again one hour after she had sought her bed. So comes my grandam and turns the key in the padlock and looketh in over all the gallimaufrey of lights and pasties and revels.

'Why,' she continued. 'I think I was beaten upon that occasion, but I could not well tell why. And I was put to sleep in another room. And later came my father home from some war. And he was angry that I had consorted so with false minions, and had me away to his own poor house. And there I had Udal for my Magister and evil fare and many beatings. But this Mary Lascelles was my bed-fellow.'

'Why, forget it,' the Lady Mary said again.

'Other teachers would bid me remember it that I might remain humble,' Katharine answered.

'Y'are humble enow and to spare,' the Lady Mary said. 'And these are not good memories for such a place as this. Y'had best keep this Mary Lascelles at a great distance.'

Katharine said—

'No; for I have passed my word.'

'Then reward her very fully,' the Lady Mary commended, and the Queen answered—

'No, for that is against my conscience. What have I to fear now that I be Queen?'

Mary shrugged her squared shoulders.

'Where is your Latin,' she said, 'with its nulla dies felix—call no day fortunate till it be ended.'

'I will set another text against that,' she said, 'and that from holy sayings—that justus ab aestimatione non timebit.'

'Well,' Mary answered, 'you will make your bed how you will. But I think you would better have learned of these maids how to steer a course than of your Magister and the Signor Plutarchus.'

The Queen did not answer her, save by begging her to read the King's letter to his Holiness.

'And surely,' she said, 'if I had never read in the noble Romans I had never had the trick of tongue to gar the King do so much of what I will.'

'Why, God help you,' her step-daughter said. 'Pray you may never come to repent it.'



PART TWO

THE THREATENED RIFT

I

In these summer days there was much faring abroad in the broad lands to north and to south of the Pontefract Castle. The sunlight lay across moors and uplands. The King was come with all his many to Newcastle; but no Scots King was there to meet him. So he went farther to northwards. His butchers drove before him herds of cattle that they slew some of each night: their hooves made a broad and beaten way before the King's horses. Behind came an army of tent men: cooks, servers, and sutlers. For, since they went where new castles were few, at times they must sleep on moorsides, and they had tents all of gold cloth and black, with gilded tent-poles and cords of silk and silver wire. The lords and principal men of those parts came out to meet him with green boughs, and music, and slain deer, and fair wooden kegs filled with milk. But when he was come near to Berwick there was still no Scots King to meet him, and it became manifest that the King's nephew would fail that tryst. Henry, riding among his people, swore a mighty oath that he would take way even into Edinburgh town and there act as he listed, for he had with him nigh on seven thousand men of all arms and some cannon which he had been minded to display for the instruction of his nephew. But he had, in real truth, little stomach for this feat. For, if he would go into Scotland armed, he must wait till he got together all the men that the Council of the North had under arms. These were scattered over the whole of the Border country, and it must be many days before he had them all there together. And already the summer was well advanced, and if he delayed much longer his return, the after progress from Pontefract to London must draw them to late in the winter. And he was little minded that either Katharine or his son should bear the winter travel. Indeed, he sent a messenger back to Pontefract with orders that the Prince should be sent forthwith with a great guard to Hampton Court, so that he should reach that place before the nights grew cold.

And, having stayed in camp four days near the Scots border—for he loved well to live in a tent, since it re-awoke in him the ardour of his youth and made him think himself not so old a man—he delivered over to the Earl Marshal forty Scots borderers and cattle thieves that had been taken that summer. These men he had meant to have handed, pardoned, to the Scots King when he met him. But the Earl Marshal set up, along the road into Scotland, from where the stone marks the border, a row of forty gallows, all high, but some higher than others; for some of the prisoners were men of condition. And, within sight of a waiting crowd of Scots that had come down to the boundaries of their land to view the King of England, Norfolk hanged on these trees the forty men.

And, laughing over their shoulders at this fine harvest of fruit, gibbering and dangling against the heavens on high, the King and his host rode back into the Border country. It was pleasant to ride in the summer weather, and they hunted and rendered justice by the way, and heard tales of battle that there had been before in the north country.

But there was one man, Thomas Culpepper, in the town of Edinburgh to whom this return was grievous. He had been in these outlandish parts now for more than nineteen months. The Scots were odious to him, the town was odious; he had no stomach for his food, and such clothes as he had were ragged, for he would wear nothing that had there been woven. He was even a sort of prisoner. For he had been appointed to wait on the King's Ambassador to the King of Scots, and the last thing that Throckmorton, the notable spy, had done before he had left the Court had been to write to Edinburgh that T. Culpepper, the Queen's cousin, who was a dangerous man, was to be kept very close and given no leave of absence.

And one thing very much had aided this: for, upon receiving news, or the rumour of news, that his cousin Katharine Howard—he was her mother's brother's son—had wedded the King, or had been shown for Queen at Hampton Court, he had suddenly become seized with such a rage that, incontinently, he had run his sword through an old fishwife in the fishmarket where he was who had given him the news, newly come by sea, thinking that because he was an Englishman this marriage of his King might gladden him. The fishwife died among her fish, and Culpepper with his sword fell upon all that were near him in the market, till, his heel slipping upon a haddock, he fell, and was fallen upon by a great many men.

He must stay in jail for this till he had compounded with the old woman's heirs and had paid for a great many cuts and bruises. And Sir Nicholas Hoby, happening to be in Edinburgh at that time, understood well what ailed Thomas Culpepper, and that he was mad for love of the Queen his cousin—for was it not this Culpepper that had brought her to the court, and, as it was said, had aforetime sold farms to buy her food and gowns when, her father being a poor man, she was well-nigh starving? Therefore Sir Nicholas begged alike the Ambassador and the King of Scots that they would keep this madman clapped up till they were very certain that the fit was off him. And, what with the charges of blood ransom and jailing for nine months, Culpepper had no money at all when at last he was enlarged, but must eat his meals at the Ambassador's table, so that he could not in any way come away into England till he had written for more money and had earned a further salary. And that again was a matter of many months, and later he spent more in drinking and with Scots women till he persuaded himself that he had forgotten his cousin that was now a Queen. Moreover, it was made clear to him by those about him that it was death to leave his post unpermitted.

But, with the coming of the Court up into the north parts, his impatience grew again, so that he could no longer eat but only drink and fight. It was rumoured that the Queen was riding with the King, and he swore a mighty oath that he would beg of her or of the King leave at last to be gone from that hateful city; and the nearer came the King the more his ardour grew. So that, when the news came that the King was turned back, Culpepper could no longer compound it with himself. He had then a plenty of money, having kept his room for seven days, and the night before that he had won half a barony at dice from a Scots archer. But he had no passport into England; therefore, because he was afraid to ask for one, being certain of a refusal, he blacked his face and hands with coal and then took refuge on a coble, leaving the port of Leith for Durham. He had well bribed the master of this ship to take him as one of his crew. In Durham he stayed neither to wash nor to eat, but, having bought himself a horse, he rode after the King's progress that was then two days' journey to the south, and came up with them. He had no wits left more than to ask of the sutlers at the tail of the host where the Queen was. They laughed at this apparition upon a haggard horse, and one of them that was a notable cutpurse took all the gold that he had, only giving him in exchange the news that the Queen was at Pontefract, from which place she had never stirred. With a little silver that he had in another bag he bought himself a provision of food, a store of drink, and a poor Kern to guide him, running at his saddle-bow.

He saw neither hills nor valleys, neither heather nor ling: he had no thoughts but only that of finding the Queen his cousin. At times the tears ran down his begrimed face, at times he waved his sword in the air and, spurring his horse, he swore great oaths. How he fared, where he rested, by what roads he went over the hills, that he never knew. Without a doubt the Kern guided him faithfully.

For the Queen, having news that the King was nearly come within a day's journey, rode out towards the north to meet him. And as she went along the road, she saw, upon a hillside not very far away, a man that sat upon a dead horse, beating it and tugging at its bridle. Beside him stood a countryman, in a garment of furs and pelts, with rawhide boots. She had a great many men and ladies riding behind her, and she had come as far as she was minded to go. So she reined in her horse and sent two prickers to ask who these men were.

And when she heard that this was a traveller, robbed of all his money and insensate, and his poor guide who knew nothing of who he might be, she turned her cavalcade back and commanded that the traveller should be borne to the castle on a litter of boughs and there attended to and comforted until again he could take the road. And she made occasion upon this to comment how ill it was for travellers that the old monasteries were done away with. For in the old time there were seven monasteries between there and Durham, wherein poor travellers might lodge. Then, if a merchant were robbed upon the highways, he could be housed at convenient stages on his road home, and might afterwards send recompense to the good fathers or not as he pleased or was able. Now, there was no harbourage left on all that long road, and, but for the grace of God, that pitiful traveller might have lain there till the ravens picked out his eyes.

And some commended the Queen's words and actions, and some few, behind their hands, laughed at her for her soft heart. And the more Lutheran sort said that it was God's mercy that the old monasteries were gone; for they had, they said, been the nests for lowsels, idle wayfarers, palmers, pilgrims, and the like. And, praise God, since that clearance fourteen thousand of these had been hanged by the waysides for sturdy rogues, to the great purging of the land.

II

In the part of Lincolnshire that is a little to the northeastward of Stamford was a tract of country that had been granted to the monks of St Radigund's at Dover by William the Conqueror. These monks had drained this land many centuries before, leaving the superintendence of the work at first to priors by them appointed, and afterwards, when the dykes, ditches, and flood walls were all made, to knights and poor gentlemen, their tenants, who farmed the land and kept up the defences against inundations, paying scot and lot to a bailiff and water-wardens and jurats, just as was done on the Romney marshes by the bailiff and jurats of that level.

And one of these tenants, holding two hundred acres in a simple fee from St Radigund's for a hundred and fifty years back, had been always a man of the name of Hall. It was an Edward Hall that Mary Lascelles had married when she was a maid at the Duchess of Norfolk's. This Edward Hall was then a squire, a little above the condition of a groom, in the Duchess's service. His parents dwelled still on the farm which was called Neot's End, because it was in the angle of the great dyke called St Neot's and the little sewer where St Radigund's land had its boundary stone.

But in the troublesome days of the late Privy Seal, Edward Hall had informed Throckmorton the spy of a conspiracy and rising that was hatching amongst the Radigund's men a little before the Pilgrimage of Grace, when all the north parts rose. For the Radigund's men cried out and murmured amongst themselves that if the Priory was done away with there would be an end of their easy and comfortable tenancy. Their rents had been estimated and appointed a great number of years before, when all goods and the produce of the earth were very low priced. And the tenants said that if now the King took their lands to himself or gave them to some great lord, very heavy burdens would be laid upon them and exacted; whereas in some years under easy priors the monks forgot their distant territory, and in bad seasons they took no rents at all. And even under hard and exacting priors the monks could take no more than their rentals, which were so small. They said, too, that the King and Thomas Cromwell would make them into heathen Greeks and turn their children to be Saracens. So these Radigund's men meditated a rising and conspiracy.

But, because Edward Hall informed Throckmorton of what was agate, a posse was sent into that country, and most of the men were hanged and their lands all taken from them. Those that survived from the jailing betook themselves to the road, and became sturdy beggars, so that many of them too came to the gallows tree.

Most of the land was granted to the Sieur Throckmorton with the abbey's buildings and tithe barns. But the Halls' farm and another of near three hundred acres were granted to Edward Hall. Then it was that Edward Hall could marry and take his wife, Mary Lascelles, down into Lincolnshire to Neot's End. But when the Pilgrimage of Grace came, and the great risings all over Lincolnshire, very early the rioters came to Neot's End, and they burned the farm and the byres, they killed all the beasts or drove them off, they trampled down the corn and laid waste the flax fields. And, between two willow trees along the great dyke, they set a pole, and from it they hanged Edward Hall over the waters, so that he dried and was cured like a ham in the smoke from his own stacks.

Then Mary Lascelles' case was a very miserable one; for she had to fend for the aged father and bedridden mother of Edward Hall, and there were no beasts left but only a few geese and ducks that the rebels could not lay their hands on. And the only home that they had was the farmhouse that was upon Edward Hall's other farm, and that they had let fall nearly into ruin. And for a long time no men would work for her.

But at last, after the rebellion was pitifully ended, a few hinds came to her, and she made a shift. And it was better still after Privy Seal fell, for then came Throckmorton the spy into his lands, and he brought with him carpenters and masons and joiners to make his house fair, and some of these men he lent to Mary Hall. But it had been prophesied by a wise woman in those parts that no land that had been taken from the monks would prosper. And, because all the jurats, bailiffs, and water-wardens had been hanged either on the one part or the other and no more had been appointed, at about that time the sewers began to clog up, the lands to swamp, murrain and fluke to strike the beasts and the sheep, and night mists to blight the grain and the fruit blossoms. So that even Throckmorton had little good of his wealth and lands.

Thus one morning to Mary Hall, who stood before her door feeding her geese and ducks, there came a little boy running to say that men-at-arms stood on the other side of the dyke that was very swollen and grey and broad. And they shouted that they came from the Queen's Highness, and would have a boat sent to ferry them over.

The colour came into Mary Hall's pale face, for even there she had heard that her former bedfellow was come to be Queen. And at times even she had thought to write to the Queen to help her in her misery. But always she had been afraid, because she thought that the Queen might remember her only as one that had wronged her childish innocence. For she remembered that the maids' dormitory at the old Duchess's had been no cloister of pure nuns. So that, at best, she was afraid, and she sent her yard-worker and a shepherd a great way round to fetch the larger boat of two to ferry over the Queen's men. Then she went indoors to redd up the houseplace and to attire herself.

To the old farmstead, that was made of wood hung over here and there with tilework with a base of bricks, she had added a houseplace for the old folk to sit all day. It was built of wattles that had had clay cast over them, and was whitened on the outside and thatched nearly down to the ground like any squatter's hut; it had cupboards of wood nearly all round it, and beneath the cupboards were lockers worn smooth with men sitting upon them, after the Dutch fashion—for there in Lincolnshire they had much traffic with the Dutch. There was a great table made of one slab of a huge oak from near Boston. Here they all ate. And above the ingle was another slab of oak from the same tree. Her little old step-mother sat in a stuff chair covered with a sheep-skin; she sat there night and day, shivering with the shaking palsy. At times she let out of her an eldritch shriek, very like the call of a hedgehog; but she never spoke, and she was fed with a spoon by a little misbegotten son of Edward Hall's. The old step-father sat always opposite her; he had no use of his legs, and his head was always stiffly screwed round towards the door as if he were peering, but that was the rheumatism. To atone for his wife's dumbness, he chattered incessantly whenever anyone was on that floor; but because he spoke always in Lincolnshire, Mary Hall could scarce understand him, and indeed she had long ceased to listen. He spoke of forgotten floods and ploughings, ancient fairs, the boundaries of fields long since flooded over, of a visit to Boston that King Edward IV had made, and of how he, for his fair speech and old lineage, had been chosen of all the Radigund's men to present into the King's hands three silver horseshoes. Behind his back was a great dresser with railed shelves, having upon them a little pewter ware and many wooden bowls for the hinds' feeding. A door on the right side, painted black, went down into the cellar beneath the old house. Another door, of bars of iron with huge locks from the old monastery, went into the old house where slept the maids and the hinds. This was always open by day but locked in the dark hours. For the hinds were accounted brutish lumps that went savage at night, like wild beasts, so that, if they spared the master's throat, which was unlikely, it was certain that they would little spare the salted meat, the dried fish, the mead, metheglin, and cyder that their poor cellar afforded. The floor was of stamped clay, wet and sweating but covered with rushes, so that the place had a mouldering smell. Behind the heavy door there were huge bolts and crossbars against robbers: the raftered ceiling was so low that it touched her hair when she walked across the floor. The windows had no glass but were filled with a thin reddish sheep-skin like parchment. Before the stairway was a wicket gate to keep the dogs—of whom there were many, large and fierce, to protect them alike from robbers and the hinds—to keep the dogs from going into the upper room.

Each time that Mary Hall came into this home of hers her heart sank lower; for each day the corner posts gave sideways a little more, the cupboard bulged, the doors were loth to close or open. And more and more the fields outside were inundated, the lands grew sour, the sheep would not eat or died of the fluke.

'And surely,' she would cry out at times, 'God created me for other guesswork than this!'

At nights she was afraid, and shivered at the thought of the fens and the black and trackless worlds all round her; and the ravens croaked, night-hawks screamed, the dog-foxes cried out, and the flames danced over the swampy grounds. Her mirror was broken on the night that they hanged her husband: she had never had another but the water in her buckets, so that she could not tell whether she had much aged or whether she were still brown-haired and pink-cheeked, and she had forgotten how to laugh, and was sure that there were crow's-feet about her eyelids.

Her best gown was all damp and mouldy in the attic that was her bower. She made it meet as best she could, and indeed she had had so little fat living, sitting at the head of her table with a whip for unruly hinds and louts before her—so little fat living that she could well get into her wedding-gown of yellow cramosyn. She smoothed her hair back into her cord hood that for so long had not come out of its press. She washed her face in a bucket of water: that and the press and her bed with grey woollen curtains were all the furnishing her room had. The straw of the roof caught in her hood when she moved, and she heard her old father-in-law cackling to the serving-maids through the cracks of the floor.

When she came down there were approaching, across the field before the door, six men in scarlet and one in black, having all the six halberds and swords, and one a little banner, but the man in black had a sword only. Their horses were tethered in a clump on the farther side of the dyke. Within the room the serving-maids were throwing knives and pewter dishes with a great din on to the table slab. They dropped drinking-horns and the salt-cellar itself all of a heap into the rushes. The grandfather was cackling from his chair; a hen and its chickens ran screaming between the maids' feet. Then Lascelles came in at the doorway.

III

The Sieur Lascelles looked round him in that dim cave.

'Ho!' he said, 'this place stinks,' and he pulled from his pocket a dried and shrivelled orange-peel purse stuffed with cloves and ginger. 'Ho!' he said to the cornet that was come behind him with the Queen's horsemen. 'Come not in here. This will breed a plague amongst your men!' and he added—

'Did I not tell you my sister was ill-housed?'

'Well, I was not prepared against this,' the cornet said. He was a man with a grizzling beard that had little patience away from the Court, where he had a bottle that he loved and a crony or two that he played all day at chequers with, except when the Queen rode out; then he was of her train. He did not come over the sill, but spoke sharply to his men.

'Ungird not here,' he said. 'We will go farther.' For some of them were for setting their pikes against the mud wall and casting their swords and heavy bottle-belts on to the table before the door. The old man in the armchair began suddenly to prattle to them all—of a horse-thief that had been dismembered and then hanged in pieces thirty years before. The cornet looked at him for a moment and said—

'Sir, you are this woman's father-in-law, I do think. Have you aught to report against her?' He bent in at the door, holding his nose. The old man babbled of one Pease-Cod Noll that had no history to speak of but a swivel eye.

'Well,' the grizzled cornet said, 'I shall get little sense here.' He turned upon Mary Hall.

'Mistress,' he said, 'I have a letter here from the Queen's High Grace,' and, whilst he fumbled in his belt to find a little wallet that held the letter, he spoke on: 'But I misdoubt you cannot read. Therefore I shall tell you the Queen's High Grace commandeth you to come into her service—or not, as the report of your character shall be. But at any rate you shall come to the castle.'

Mary Hall could find no words for men of condition, so long she had been out of the places where such are found. She swallowed in her throat and held her breast over her heart.

'Where is the village here?' the cornet said, 'or what justice is there that can write you a character under his seal?'

She made out to say that there was no village, all the neighbourhood having been hanged. A half-mile from there there was the house of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, a justice. From the house-end he might see it, or he might have a hind to guide him. But he would have no guide; he would have no man nor maid nor child to go from there to the justice's house. He set one soldier to guard the back door and one the front, that none came out nor went beyond the dyke-end.

'Neither shall you go, Sir Lascelles,' he said.

'Well, give me leave with my sister to walk this knoll,' Lascelles said good-humouredly. 'We shall not corrupt the grass blades to bear false witness of my sister's chastity.'

'Ay, you may walk upon this mound,' the cornet answered. Having got out the packet of the Queen's letter, he girded up his belt again.

'You will get you ready to ride with me,' he said to Mary Hall. 'For I will not be in these marshes after nightfall, but will sleep at Shrimpton Inn.'

He looked around him and added—

'I will have three of your geese to take with us,' he said. 'Kill me them presently.'

Lascelles looked after him as he strode away round the house with the long paces of a stiff horseman.

'Before God,' he laughed, 'that is one way to have information about a quean. Now are we prisoners whilst he inquires after your character.'

'Oh, alack!' Mary Hall said, and she cast up her hands.

'Well, we are prisoners till he come again,' her brother said good-humouredly. 'But this is a foul hole. Come out into the sunlight.'

She said—

'If you are with them, they cannot come to take me prisoner.'

He looked her full in the eyes with his own that twinkled inscrutably. He said very slowly—

'Were your mar-locks and prinking-prankings so very evil at the old Duchess's?'

She grew white: she shrank away as if he had threatened her with his fist.

'The Queen's Highness was such a child,' she said. 'She cannot remember. I have lived very godly since.'

'I will do what I can to save you,' he said. 'Let me hear about it, as, being prisoners, we may never come off.'

'You!' she cried out. 'You who stole my wedding portion!'

He laughed deviously.

'Why, I have laid it up so well for you that you may wed a knight now if you do my bidding. I was ever against your wedding Hall.'

'You lie!' she said. 'You gar'd me do it.'

The maids were peeping out of the cellar, whither they had fled.

'Come upon the grass,' he said. 'I will not be heard to say more than this: that you and I stand and fall together like good sister and goodly brother.'

Their faces differed only in that hers was afraid and his smiling as he thought of new lies to tell her. Her face in her hood, pale beneath its weathering, approached the colour of his that shewed the pink and white of indoors. She came very slowly near him, for she was dazed. But when she was almost at the sill he caught her hand and drew it beneath his elbow.

'Tell me truly,' she said, 'shall I see the Court or a prison?... But you cannot speak truth, nor ever could when we were tiny twins. God help me: last Sunday I had the mind to wed my yard-man. I would become such a liar as thou to come away from here.'

'Sister,' he said, 'this I tell you most truly: that this shall fall out according as you obey me and inform me'; and, because he was a little the taller, he leaned over her as they walked away together.

* * * * *

On the fourth day from then they were come to the great wood that is to south and east of the castle of Pontefract. Here Lascelles, who had ridden much with his sister, forsook her and went ahead of the slow and heavy horses of that troop of men. The road was broadened out to forty yards of green turf between the trees, for this was a precaution against ambushes of robbers. Across the road, after he had ridden alone for an hour and a half, there was a guard of four men placed. And here, whilst he searched for his pass to come within the limits of the Court, he asked what news, and where the King was.

It was told him that the King lay still at the Fivefold Vents, two days' progress from the castle, and as it chanced that a verderer's pricker came out of the wood where he had been to mark where the deer lay for to-morrow's killing, Lascelles bade this man come along with him for a guide.

'Sir, ye cannot miss the way,' the pricker said surlily. 'I have my deer to watch.'

'I will have you to guide me,' Lascelles said, 'for I little know these parts.'

'Well,' the pricker answered him, 'it is true that I have not often seen you ride a-hawking.'

Whilst they went along the straight road, Lascelles, who unloosened the woodman's tongue with a great drink of sherry-sack, learned that it was said that only very unwillingly did the King lie so long at the Fivefold Vents. For on the morrow there was to be driven by, up there, a great herd of moor stags and maybe a wolf or two. The King would be home with his wife, it was reported, but the younger lords had been so importunate with him to stay and abide this gallant chase and great slaughter that, they having ridden loyally with him, he had yielded to their prayers and stayed there—twenty-four hours, it was said.

'Why, you know a great deal,' Lascelles answered.

'We who stand and wait had needs have knowledge,' the woodman said, 'for we have little else.'

'Aye, 'tis a hard service,' Lascelles said. 'Did you see the Queen's Highness o' Thursday week borrow a handkerchief of Sir Roger Pelham to lure her falcon back?'

'That did not I,' the woodman answered, 'for o' Thursday week it was a frost and the Queen rode not out.'

'Well, it was o' Saturday,' Lascelles said.

'Nor was it yet o' Saturday,' the woodman cried; 'I will swear it. For o' Saturday the Queen's Highness shot with the bow, and Sir Roger Pelham, as all men know, fell with his horse on Friday, and lies up still.'

'Then it was Sir Nicholas Rochford,' Lascelles persisted.

'Sir,' the woodman said, 'you have a very wrong tale, and patent it is that little you ride a-hunting.'

'Well, I mind my book,' Lascelles said. 'But wherefore?'

'Sir,' the woodman answered, 'it is thus: The Queen when she rides a-hawking has always behind her her page Toussaint, a little boy. And this little boy holdeth ever the separate lures for each hawk that the Queen setteth up. And the falcon or hawk or genette or tiercel having stooped, the Queen will call upon that eyass for the lure appropriated to each bird as it chances. And very carefully the Queen's Highness observeth the laws of the chase, of venery and hawking. For the which I honour her.'

Lascelles said, 'Well, well!'

'As for the borrowing of a handkerchief,' the woodman pursued, 'that is a very idle tale. For, let me tell you, a lady might borrow a jewelled feather or a scarlet pouch or what not that is bright and shall take a bird's eye—a little mirror upon a cord were a good thing. But a handkerchief! Why, Sir Bookman, that a lady can only do if she will signify to all the world: "This knight is my servant and I his mistress." Those very words it signifieth—and that the better for it showeth that that lady is minded to let her hawk go, luring the gentleman to her with that favour of his.'

'Well, well,' Lascelles said, 'I am not so ignorant that I did not know that. Therefore I asked you, for it seemed a very strange thing.'

'It is a very foolish tale and very evil,' the man answered. 'For this I will swear: that the Queen's Highness—and I and her honour for it—observeth very jealously the laws of wood and moorland and chase.'

'So I have heard,' Lascelles said. 'But I see the castle. I will not take you farther, but will let you go back to the goodly deer.'

'Pray God they be not wandered fore,' the woodman said. 'You could have found this way without me.'

* * * * *

There was but one road into the castle, and that from the south, up a steep green bank. Up the roadway Lascelles must ride his horse past four men that bore a litter made of two pikes wattled with green boughs and covered with a horse-cloth. As Lascelles passed by the very head of it, the man that lay there sprang off it to his feet, and cried out—

'I be the Queen's cousin and servant. I brought her to the Court.' Lascelles' horse sprang sideways, a great bound up the bank. He galloped ten paces ahead before the rider could stay him and turn round. The man, all rags and with a black face, had fallen into the dust of the road, and still cried out outrageously. The bearers set down the litter, wiped their brows, and then, falling all four upon Culpepper, made to carry him by his legs and arms, for they were weary of laying him upon the litter from which incessantly he sprang.

But before them upon his horse was Lascelles and impeded their way. Culpepper drew in and pushed out his legs and arms, so that they all four staggered, and—

'For God's sake, master,' one of them grunted out, 'stand aside that we may pass. We have toil enow in bearing him.'

'Why, set the poor gentleman down upon the litter,' Lascelles said, 'and let us talk a little.'

The men set Culpepper on the horse-cloth, and one of them knelt down to hold him there.

'If you will lend us your horse to lay him across, we may come more easily up,' one said. In these days the position and trade of a spy was so little esteemed—it had been far other with the great informers of Privy Seal's day—that these men, being of the Queen's guard, would talk roughly to Lascelles, who was a mere poor gentleman of the Archbishop's if his other vocation could be neglected. Lascelles sat, his hand upon his chin.

'You use him very roughly if this be the Queen's cousin,' he said.

The bearer set back his beard and laughed at the sky.

'This is a coif—a poor rag of a merchant,' he cried out. 'If this were the Queen's cousin should we bear him thus on a clout?'

'I am the Queen's cousin, T. Culpepper,' Culpepper shouted at the sky. 'Who be you that stay me from her?'

'Why, you may hear plainly,' the bearer said. 'He is mazed, doited, starved, thirsted, and a seer of visions.'

Lascelles pondered, his elbow upon his saddle-peak, his chin caught in his hand.

'How came ye by him?' he asked.

One with another they told him the tale, how, the Queen being ridden towards the north parts, at the extreme end of her ride had seen the man, at a distance, among the heather, flogging a dead horse with a moorland kern beside him. He was a robbed, parched, fevered, and amazed traveller. The Queen's Highness, compassionating, had bidden bear him to the castle and comfort and cure him, not having looked upon his face or heard his tongue. For, for sure then, she had let him die where he was; since, no sooner were these four, his new bearers, nearly come up among the knee-deep heather, than this man had started up, his eyes upon the Queen's cavalcade and many at a distance. And, with his sword drawn and screaming, he had cried out that, if that was the Queen, he was the Queen's cousin. They had tripped up his heels in a bed of ling and quieted him with a clout on the poll from an axe end.

'But now we have him here,' the eldest said; 'where we shall bestow him we know not.'

Lascelles had his eyes upon the sick man's face as if it fascinated him, and, slowly, he got down from his horse. Culpepper then lay very still with his eyes closed, but his breast heaved as though against tight and strong ropes that bound him.

'I think I do know this gentleman for one John Robb,' he said. 'Are you very certain the Queen's Highness did not know his face?'

'Why, she came not ever within a quarter mile of him,' the bearer said.

'Then it is a great charity of the Queen to show mercy to a man she hath never seen,' Lascelles answered absently. He was closely casting his eyes over Culpepper. Culpepper lay very still, his begrimed face to the sky, his hands abroad above his head. But when Lascelles bent over him it was as if he shuddered, and then he wept.

Lascelles bent down, his hands upon his knees. He was afraid—he was very afraid. Thomas Culpepper, the Queen's cousin, he had never seen in his life. But he had heard it reported that he had red hair and beard, and went always dressed in green with stockings of red. And this man's hair was red, and his beard, beneath coal grime, was a curly red, and his coat, beneath a crust of black filth, was Lincoln green and of a good cloth. And, beneath the black, his stockings were of red silk. He reflected slowly, whilst the bearers laughed amongst themselves at this Queen's kinsman in rags and filth.

Lascelles gave them his bottle of sack to drink empty among them, that he might have the longer time to think.

If this were indeed the Queen's cousin, come unknown to the Queen and mazed and muddled in himself to Pontefract, what might not Lascelles make of him? For all the world knew that he loved her with a mad love—he had sold farms to buy her gowns. It was he that had brought her to Court, upon an ass, at Greenwich, when her mule—as all men knew—had stumbled upon the threshold. Once before, it was said, Culpepper had burst in with his sword drawn upon the King and Kate Howard when they sat together. And Lascelles trembled with eagerness at the thought of what use he might not make of this mad and insolent lover of the Queen's!

But did he dare?

Culpepper had been sent into Scotland to secure him up, away at the farthest limits of the realm. Then, if he was come back? This grime was the grime of a sea-coal ship! He knew that men without passports, outlaws and the like, escaped from Scotland on the Durham ships that went to Leith with coal. And this man came on the Durham road. Then....

If it were Culpepper he had come unpermitted. He was an outlaw. Dare Lascelles have trade with—dare he harbour—an outlaw? It would be unbeknown to the Queen's Highness! He kicked his heels with impatience to come to a resolution.

He reflected swiftly:

What hitherto he had were: some tales spread abroad about the Queen's lewd Court—tales in London Town. He had, too, the keeper of the Queen's door bribed and talked into his service and interest. And he had his sister....

His sister would, with threatening, tell tales of the Queen before marriage. And she would find him other maids and grooms, some no doubt more willing still than Mary Hall. But the keeper of the Queen's door! And, in addition, the Queen's cousin mad of love for her! What might he not do with these two?

The prickly sweat came to his forehead. Four horsemen were issuing from the gate of the castle above. He must come to a decision. His fingers trembled as if they were a pickpocket's near a purse of gold.

He straightened his back and stood erect.

'Yes,' he said very calmly, 'this is my friend John Robb.'

He added that this man had been in Edinburgh where the Queen's cousin was. He had had letters from him that told how they were sib and rib. Thus this fancy had doubtless come into his brain at sight of the Queen in his madness.

He breathed calmly, having got out these words, for now the doubt was ended. He would have both the Queen's door-keeper and the Queen's mad lover.

He bade the bearers set Culpepper upon his horse and, supporting him, lead him to a room that he would hire of the Archbishop's chamberlain, near his own in the dark entrails of the castle. And there John Robb should live at his expenses.

And when the men protested that, though this was very Christian of Lascelles, yet they would have recompense of the Queen for their toils, he said that he himself would give them a crown apiece, and they might get in addition what recompense from the Queen's steward that they could. He asked them each their names and wrote them down, pretending that it was that he might send each man his crown piece.

So, when the four horsemen were ridden past, the men hoisted Culpepper into Lascelles' horse and went all together up into the castle.

But, that night, when Culpepper lay in a stupor, Lascelles went to the Archbishop's chamberlain and begged that four men, whose names he had written down, might be chosen to go in the Archbishop's paritor's guard that went next dawn to Ireland over the sea to bring back tithes from Dublin. And, next day, he had Culpepper moved to another room; and, in three days' time, he set it about in the castle that the Queen's cousin was come from Scotland. By that time most of the liquor had come down out of Culpepper's brain, but he was still muddled and raved at times.

IV

On that third night the Queen was with the Lady Mary, once more in her chamber, having come down as before, from the chapel in the roof, to pray her submit to her father's will. Mary had withstood her with a more good-humoured irony; and, whilst she was in the midst of her pleadings, a letter marked most pressing was brought to her. The Queen opened it, and raised her eyebrows; she looked down at the subscription and frowned. Then she cast it upon the table.

'Shall there never be an end of old things?' she said.

'Even what old things?' the Lady Mary asked.

The Queen shrugged her shoulders.

'It was not they I came to talk of,' she said. 'I would sleep early, for the King comes to-morrow and I have much to plead with you.'

'I am weary of your pleadings,' the Lady Mary said. 'You have pleaded enow. If you would be fresh for the King, be first fresh for me. Start a new hare.'

The Queen would have gainsaid her.

'I have said you have pleaded enow,' the Lady Mary said. 'And you have pleaded enow. This no more amuses me. I will wager I guess from whom your letter was.'

Reluctantly the Queen held her peace; that day she had read in many ancient books, as well profane as of the Fathers of the Church, and she had many things to say, and they were near her lips and warm in her heart. She was much minded to have good news to give the King against his coming on the morrow; the great good news that should set up in that realm once more abbeys and chapters and the love of God. But she could not press these sayings upon the girl, though she pleaded still with her blue eyes.

'Your letter is from Sir Nicholas Throckmorton,' the Lady Mary said. 'Even let me read it.'

'You did know that that knight was come to Court again?' the Queen said.

'Aye; and that you would not see him, but like a fool did bid him depart again.'

'You will ever be calling me a fool,' Katharine retorted, 'for giving ear to my conscience and hating spies and the suborners of false evidence.'

'Why,' the Lady Mary answered, 'I do call it a folly to refuse to give ear to the tale of a man who has ridden far and fast, and at the risk of a penalty to tell it you.'

'Why,' Katharine said, 'if I did forbid his coming to the Court under a penalty, it was because I would not have him here.'

'Yet he much loved you, and did you some service.'

'He did me a service of lies,' the Queen said, and she was angry. 'I would not have had him serve me. By his false witness Cromwell was cast down to make way for me. But I had rather have cast down Cromwell by the truth which is from God. Or I had rather he had never been cast down. And that I swear.'

'Well, you are a fool,' the Lady Mary said. 'Let me look upon this knight's letter.'

'I have not read it,' Katharine said.

'Then will I,' the Lady Mary answered. She made across the room to where the paper lay upon the table beside the great globe of the earth. She came back; she turned her round to the Queen; she made her a deep reverence, so that her black gown spread out stiffly around her, and, keeping her eyes ironically on Katharine's face, she mounted backward up to the chair that was beneath the dais.