The Fifth Queen Crowned
that door-ward had his reasonable reasonings.'
He paused again, and looking upon the Queen's face for a sign:
'If it be thus, it is well,' he said, 'I will pardon and assoil you all,
if later it shall appear that this is the true truth.'
Lascelles whispered in the Archbishop's ear, and Cranmer uttered--
'The witnesses be here to prove it, if your Highness will.'
'Why,' the King said, 'it is late enough,' and he leered at Cranmer,
for whom he had an affection. He looked again upon the Queen to see how
fair she was and how bravely she bore herself, upright and without
emotion. 'This wife of mine,' he said, 'is ever of the pardoning side.
If ye had so injured me I had been among ye with fines and amercements.
But she, I perceive, will not have it so, and I am too glad to be smiled
upon now to cross her will. So, get you gone and sleep well. But, before
you go, I will have you listen to some words....'
He cleared his throat, and in his left hand took the Queen's.
'Know ye,' he said, 'that I am as proud of this my Queen as was ever
mother of her first-born child. For lo, even as the Latin poet saith,
that, upon bearing a child, many evil women are led to repentance and
right paths, so have I, your King, been led towards righteousness by
wedding of this lady. For I tell you that, but for certain small
hindrances--and mostly this treacherous disloyalty of the King o' Scots
that thus with his craven marrow hath featorously dallied to look upon
my face--but for that and other small things there had gone forth this
night through the dark to the Bishop of Rome certain tidings that,
please God, had made you and me and all this land the gladdest that be
in Christendom. And this I tell you, too, that though by this
misadventure and fear of the King o' Scots, these tidings have been
delayed, yet is it only for a little space and, full surely, that day
cometh. And for this you shall give thanks first to God and then to this
royal lady here. For she, before all things, having the love of God in
her heart, hath brought about this desired consummation. And this I say,
to her greater praise, here in the midmost of you all, that it be noised
unto the utmost corners of the world how good a Queen the King hath
taken to wife.'
The Queen had stood very motionless in the bright illuminations and
dancings of the torches. But at the news of delay, through the King of
Scots, a spasm of pain and concern came into her face. So that, if her
features did not again move they had in them a savour of anguish, her
eyebrows drooping, and the corners of her mouth.
'And now, good-night!' the King pursued with raised tones. 'If ever ye
slept well since these troublous times began, now ye may sleep well in
the drowsy night. For now, in this my reign, are come the shortening
years like autumn days. Now I will have such peace in land as cometh to
the husbandman. He hath ingarnered his grain; he hath barned his fodder
and straw; his sheep are in the byres and in the stalls his oxen. So,
sitteth he by his fireside with wife and child, and hath no fear of
winter. Such a man am I, your King, who in the years to come shall rest
in peace.'
The lords and gentlemen made their reverences, bows and knees; they
swept round in their coloured assembly, and the Queen stood very tall
and straight, watching their departure with saddened eyes.
The King was very gay and caught her by the waist.
'God help me, it is very late,' he said. 'Hearken!'
From above the corridor there came the drowsy sound of the clock.
'Thy daughter hath made her submission,' the Queen said. 'I had thought
this was the gladdest day in my life.'
'Why, so it is,' he said, 'as now day passeth to day.' The clock ceased.
'Every day shall be glad,' he said, 'and gladder than the rest.'
At her chamber door he made a bustle. He would have the Queen's women
come to untire her, a leech to see to Culpepper's recovery. He was
willing to drink mulled wine before he slept. He was afraid to talk with
his wife of delaying his letter to Rome. That was why he had told the
news before her to his lords.
He fell upon the Lady Rochford that stood, not daring to go, within the
Queen's room. He bade her sit all night by the bedside of T. Culpepper;
he reviled her for a craven coward that had discountenanced the Queen.
She should pay for it by watching all night, and woe betide her if any
had speech with T. Culpepper before the King rose.
III
Down in the lower castle, the Archbishop was accustomed, when he
undressed, to have with him neither priest nor page, but only, when he
desired to converse of public matters--as now he did--his gentleman,
Lascelles. He knelt above his kneeling-stool of black wood; he was
telling his beads before a great crucifix with an ivory Son of God upon
it. His chamber had bare white walls, his bed no curtains, and all the
other furnishing of the room was a great black lectern whereto there was
chained a huge Book of the Holy Writ that had his Preface. The tears
were in his eyes as he muttered his prayers; he glanced upwards at the
face of his Saviour, who looked down with a pallid, uncoloured face of
ivory, the features shewing a great agony so that the mouth was opened.
It was said that this image, that came from Italy, had had a face
serene, before the Queen Katharine of Aragon had been put away. Then it
had cried out once, and so remained ever lachrymose and in agony.
'God help me, I cannot well pray,' the Archbishop said. 'The peril that
we have been in stays with me still.'
'Why, thank God that we are come out of it very well,' Lascelles said.
'You may pray and then sleep more calm than ever you have done this
sennight.'
He leant back against the reading-pulpit, and had his arm across the
Bible as if it had been the shoulder of a friend.
'Why,' the Archbishop said, 'this is the worst day ever I have been
through since Cromwell fell.'
'Please it your Grace,' his confidant said, 'it shall yet turn out the
best.'
The Archbishop faced round upon his knees; he had taken off the jewel
from before his breast, and, with his chain of Chaplain of the George,
it dangled across the corner of the fald-stool. His coat was unbuttoned
at the neck, his robe open, and it was manifest that his sleeves of
lawn were but sleeves, for in the opening was visible, harsh and grey,
the shirt of hair that night and day he wore.
'I am weary of this talk of the world,' he said. 'Pray you begone and
leave me to my prayers.'
'Please it your Grace to let me stay and hearten you,' Lascelles said,
and he was aware that the Archbishop was afraid to be alone with the
white Christ. 'All your other gentry are in bed. I shall watch your
sleep, to wake you if you cry out.'
And in his fear of Cromwell's ghost that came to him in his dreams, the
Archbishop sighed--
'Why stay, but speak not. Y'are over bold.'
He turned again to the wall; his beads clicked; he sighed and remained
still for a long time, a black shadow, huddled together in a black gown,
sighing before the white and lamenting image that hung above him.
'God help me,' he said at last. 'Tell me why you say this is _dies
felix_?'
Lascelles, who smiled for ever and without mirth, said--
'For two things: firstly, because this letter and its sending are put
off. And secondly, because the Queen is--patently and to all
people--proved lewd.'
The Archbishop swung his head round upon his shoulders.
'You dare not say it!' he said.
'Why, the late Queen Katharine from Aragon was accounted a model of
piety, yet all men know she was over fond with her confessor,' Lascelles
smiled.
'It is an approved lie and slander,' the Archbishop said.
'It served mightily well in pulling down that Katharine,' his confidant
answered.
'One day'--the Archbishop shivered within his robes--'the account and
retribution for these lies shall be to be paid. For well we know, you,
I, and all of us, that these be falsities and cozenings.'
'Marry,' Lascelles said, 'of this Queen it is now sufficiently proved
true.'
The Archbishop made as if he washed his hands.
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'what man shall believe it was by chance and
accident that she met her cousin on these moors? She is not a compass
that pointeth, of miraculous power, true North.'
'No good man shall believe what you do say,' the Archbishop cried out.
'But a multitude of indifferent will,' Lascelles answered.
'God help me,' the Archbishop said, 'what a devil you are that thus hold
out and hold out for ever hopes.'
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'I think you were well helped that day that I
came into your service. It was the Great Privy Seal that bade me serve
you and commended me.'
The Archbishop shivered at that name.
'What an end had Thomas Cromwell!' he said.
'Why, such an end shall not be yours whilst this King lives, so well he
loves you,' Lascelles answered.
The Archbishop stood upon his feet; he raised his hands above his head.
'Begone! Begone!' he cried. 'I will not be of your evil schemes.'
'Your Grace shall not,' Lascelles said very softly, 'if they miscarry.
But when it is proven to the hilt that this Queen is a very lewd
woman--and proven it shall be--your Grace may carry an accusation to the
King----'
Cranmer said--
'Never! never! Shall I come between the lion and his food?'
'It were better if your Grace would carry the accusation,' Lascelles
uttered nonchalantly, 'for the King will better hearken to you than to
any other. But another man will do it too.'
'I will not be of this plotting,' the Archbishop cried out. 'It is a
very wicked thing!' He looked round at the white Christ that, upon the
dark cross, bent anguished brows upon him. 'Give me strength,' he said.
'Why, your Grace shall not be of it,' Lascelles answered, 'until it is
proven in the eyes of your Grace--ay, and in the eyes of some of the
Papist Lords--as, for instance, her very uncle--that this Queen was
evil in her life before the King took her, and that she hath acted very
suspicious in the aftertime.'
'You shall not prove it to the Papist Lords,' Cranmer said. 'It is a
folly.'
He added vehemently--
'It is a wicked plot. It is a folly too. I will not be of it.'
'This is a very fortunate day,' Lascelles said. 'I think it is proven to
all discerning men that that letter to him of Rome shall never be sent.'
'Why, it is as plain as the truths of the Six Articles,' Cranmer
remonstrated, 'that it shall be sent to-morrow or the next day. Get you
gone! This King hath but the will of the Queen to guide him, and all her
will turns upon that letter. Get you gone!'
'Please it your Grace,' the spy said, 'it is very manifest that with the
Queen so it is. But with the King it is otherwise. He will pleasure the
Queen if he may. But--mark me well--for this is a subtle matter----'
'I will not mark you,' the Archbishop said. 'Get you gone and find
another master. I will not hear you. This is the very end.'
Lascelles moved his arm from the Bible. He bent his form to a bow--he
moved till his hand was on the latch of the door.
'Why, continue,' the Archbishop said. 'If you have awakened my fears,
you shall slake them if you can--for this night I shall not sleep.'
And so, very lengthily, Lascelles unfolded his view of the King's
nature. For, said he, if this alliance with the Pope should come, it
must be an alliance with the Pope and the Emperor Charles. For the King
of France was an atheist, as all men knew. And an alliance with the Pope
and the Emperor must be an alliance against France. But the King o'
Scots was the closest ally that Francis had, and never should the King
dare to wage war upon Francis till the King o' Scots was placated or
wooed by treachery to be a prisoner, as the King would have made him if