The Fifth Queen Crowned
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