The Fifth Queen Crowned
Faith--King, Lord Paramount."' He stirred in his chair.
'Set down all my styles and titles: "Duke
Palatine--Earl--Baron--Knight"--leave out nothing, for I will show how
mighty I am.' He hummed, considered, set his head on one side and then
began to speak swiftly--
'Set it down thus: "We, Henry, and the rest, being a very mighty King,
such as few have been, are become a very humble man. A man broken by
years, having suffered much. A man humbled to the dust, crawling to kiss
the wounds of his Redeemer. A Lord of many miles both of sea and land."
Why, say--
'"Guide and Leader of many legions, yet comes he to thee for guidance."
Say, too, "He who was proud cometh to thee to regain his pride. He who
was proud in things temporal cometh to thee that he may once more have
the pride of a champion in Christendom----"'
He had been speaking as if with a malicious glee, for his words seemed
to strike, each one, into the face of the pallid figure, darkly standing
before him. And he was aware that each word increased the stiff and
watchful constraint of the figure that knelt beside the table to write.
But suddenly his glee left him; he scowled at the Archbishop as if
Cranmer had caused him to sin. He pulled at the collar around his
throat.
'No,' he cried out, 'write down in simple words that I am a very sinful
man. Set it down that I grow old! That I am filled with fears for my
poor soul! That I have sinned much! That I recall all that I have done!
An old man, I come to my Saviour's Regent upon earth. A man aware of
error, I will make restitution tenfold! Say I am broken and aged and
afraid! I kneel down on the ground----'
He cast his inert mass suddenly a little forward as if indeed he were
about to come on to his knees in the rushes.
'Say----' he muttered--'say----'
But his face and his eyes became suffused with blood.
'It is a very difficult thing,' he uttered huskily, 'to meddle in these
sacred matters.'
He fell heavily back into his chair-straps once more.
'I do not know what I will have you to say,' he said.
He looked broodingly at the floor.
'I do not know,' he muttered.
He rolled his eyes, first to the face of the Archbishop, then to
Lascelles--
'Body of God--what carved turnips!' he said, for in the one face there
was only panic, and in the other nothing at all. He rolled on to his
feet, catching at the table to steady himself.
'Write what you will,' he called, 'to these intents and purposes. Or
stay to write--I will send you a letter much more good from the upper
rooms.'
Cranmer suddenly stretched out, with a timid pitifulness, his white
hands. But, rolling his huge shoulders, like a hastening bear, the King
went over the rushes. He pulled the heavy door to with such a vast force
that the latch came again out of the hasp, and the door, falling slowly
back and quivering as if with passion, showed them his huge legs
mounting the little staircase.
* * * * *
A long silence fell in that dim room. The Archbishop's lips moved
silently, the spy's glance went, level, along his parchment. Suddenly he
grinned mirthlessly and as if at a shameless thought.
'The Queen will write the letter his Grace shall send us,' he said.
Then their eyes met. The one glance, panic-stricken, seeing no issue,
hopeless and without resource, met the other--crafty, alert, fox-like,
with a dance in it. The glances transfused and mingled. Lascelles
remained upon his knees as if, stretching out his right knee behind him,
he were taking a long rest.
II
It was almost within earshot of these two men in their dim cell that the
Queen walked from the sunlight into shadow and out again. This great
terrace looked to the north and west, and, from the little hillock,
dominating miles of gently rising ground, she had a great view over
rolling and very green country. The original builders of the Castle of
Pontefract had meant this terrace to be flagged with stone: but the
work had never been carried so far forward. There was only a path of
stone along the bowshot and a half of stone balustrade; the rest had
once been gravel, but the grass had grown over it; that had been
scythed, and nearly the whole space was covered with many carpets of
blue and red and other very bright colours. In the left corner when you
faced inwards there was a great pavilion of black cloth, embroidered
very closely with gold and held up by ropes of red and white. Though
forty people could sit in it round the table, it appeared very small,
the walls of the castle towered up so high. They towered up so high, so
square, and so straight that from the terrace below you could hardly
hear the flutter of the huge banner of St George, all red and white
against the blue sky, though sometimes in a gust it cracked like a huge
whip, and its shadow, where it fell upon the terrace, was sufficient to
cover four men.
To take away from the grimness of the flat walls many little banners had
been suspended from loopholes and beneath windows. Swallow-tailed, long,
or square, they hung motionless in the shelter, or, since the dying away
of the great gale three days before, had looped themselves over their
staffs. These were all painted green, because that was the Queen's
favourite colour, being the emblem of Hope.
A little pavilion, all of green silk, at the very edge of the platform,
had all its green curtains looped up, so that only the green roof
showed; and, within, two chairs, a great leathern one for the King, a
little one of red and white wood for the Queen, stood side by side as if
they conversed with each other. At the top of it was a golden image of a
lion, and above the peak of the entrance another, golden too, of the
Goddess Flora, carrying a cornucopia of flowers, to symbolise that this
tent was a summer abode for pleasantness.
Here the King and Queen, for the four days that they had been in the
castle, had delighted much to sit, resting after their long ride up from
the south country. For it pleased Henry to let his eyes rest upon a
great view of this realm that was his, and to think nothing; and it
pleased Katharine Howard to think that now she swayed this land, and
that soon she would alter its face.
They looked out, over the tops of the elm trees that grew right up
against the terrace wall; but the land itself was too green, the fields
too empty of dwellings. There was no one but sheep between all the
hedgerows: there was, in all the wide view, but one church tower, and
where, in place and place, there stood clusters of trees as if to
shelter homesteads--nearly always the homesteads had fallen to ruin
beneath the boughs. Upon one ridge one could see the long walls of an
unroofed abbey. But, to the keenest eye no men were visible, save now
and then a shepherd leaning on his crook. There was no ploughland at
all. Now and then companies of men in helmets and armour rode up to or
away from the castle. Once she had seen the courtyard within the keep
filled with cattle that lowed uneasily. But these, she had learned, had
been taken from cattle thieves by the men of the Council of the Northern
Borders. They were destined for the provisioning of that castle during
her stay there, they being forfeit, whether Scotch or English.
'Ah,' she said, 'whilst his Grace rides north to meet the King's Scots I
will ride east and west and south each day.'
* * * * *
At that moment, whilst the King had left Cranmer and his spy and, to
regain his composure, was walking up and down in her chamber, she was
standing beside the Duke of Norfolk about midway between the end of the
terrace and the little green pavilion.
She was all in a dark purple dress, to please the King whose mood that
colour suited; and the Duke's yellow face looked out above a suit all of
black. He wore that to please the King too, for the King was of opinion
that no gathering looked gay in its colours that had not many men in
black amongst the number.
He said--
'You do not ride north with his Grace?'
He leaned upon his two staves, one long and of silver, the other shorter
and gilt; his gown fell down to his ankles, his dark and half-closed
eyes looked out at a tree that, struck lately by lightning, stretched up
half its boughs all naked from a little hillock beside a pond a mile
away.
'So it is settled between his Grace and me,' she said. She did not much
like her uncle, for she had little cause. But, the King being away, she
walked with him rather than with another man.
'I ask, perforce,' he said, 'for I have much work in the ordering of
your progresses.'
'We meant that you should have that news this day,' she said.
He shot one glance at her face, then turned his eyes again upon the
stricken tree. Her face was absolutely calm and without expression, as
it had been always when she had directed him what she would have done.
He could trace no dejection in it: on the other hand, he gave her credit
for a great command over her features. That he had himself. And, in the
niece's eyes, as they moved from the backs of a flock of sheep to the
dismantled abbey on the ridge, there was something of the enigmatic
self-containment that was in the uncle's steady glance. He could observe
no dejection, and at that he humbled himself a little more.
'Ay,' he said, 'the ordering of your progresses is a heavy burden. I
would have you commend what I have done here.'
She looked at him, at that, as if with a swift jealousy. His eyes were
roving upon the gay carpets, the pavilions, and the flags against the
grim walls, depending in motionless streaks of colour.
'The King's Grace's self,' she said, 'did tell me that all these things
he ordered and thought out for my pleasuring.'
Norfolk dropped his eyes to the ground.
'Aye,' he said, 'his Grace ordered them and their placing. There is no
man to equal his Grace for such things; but I had the work of setting
them where they are. I would have your favour for that.'
She appeared appeased and gave him her hand to kiss. There was a little
dark mole upon the third finger.
'The last niece that I had for Queen,' he said, 'would not suffer me to
kiss her hand.'
She looked at him a little absently, for, because since she had been
Queen--and before--she had been a lonely woman, she was given to
thinking her own thoughts whilst others talked.
She was troubled by the condition of her chief maid Margot Poins. Margot
Poins was usually tranquil, modest, submissive in a cheerful manner and
ready to converse. But of late she had been moody, and sunk in a dull
silence. And that morning she had suddenly burst out into a smouldering,
heavy passion, and had torn Katharine's hair whilst she dressed it.
'Ay,' Margot had said, 'you are Queen: you can do what you will. It is
well to be Queen. But we who are dirt underfoot, we cannot do one single
thing.'
And, because she was lonely, with only Lady Rochford, who was foolish,
and this girl to talk to, it had grieved the Queen to find this girl
growing so lumpish and dull. At that time, whilst her hair was being
dressed, she had answered only--
'Yea; it is good to be a Queen. But you will find it in Seneca----' and
she had translated for Margot the passage which says that eagles are as
much tied by weighty ropes as are finches caught in tiny fillets.
'Oh, your Latin,' Margot had said. 'I would I had never heard the sound
of it, but had stuck to clean English.'
Katharine imagined then that it was some new flame of the Magister
Udal's that was troubling the girl, and this troubled her too, for she
did not like that her maids should be played with by men, and she loved
Margot for her past loyalties, readiness, and companionship.
* * * * *