The Fifth Queen Crowned
was his twin.
'Ah,' she cried, 'he threated that if I would not give evidence I must
go back to Lincolnshire. You do not know what it is to go back to
Lincolnshire. Ah, God! the old father, the old house, the wet. My
clothes were all mouldered. I was willing to give true evidence to save
myself, but they twisted it to false. It was the Duke of Norfolk ...'
The Lady Mary came slowly over the floor.
'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said, and her voice was
cold, hard, and commanding.
Mary Hall covered her face with her hands, and wailed desolately in a
high note, like a wolf's howl, that reverberated in that dim gallery.
The Lady Mary struck her a hard blow with the cover of her book upon the
hands and the side of her head.
'Against whom did you give your evidence?' she said again.
The woman fell over upon one hand, the other she raised to shield
herself. Her eyes were flooded with great teardrops; her mouth was open
in an agony. The Lady Mary raised her book to strike again: its covers
were of wood, and its angles bound with silver work. The woman screamed
out, and then uttered--
'Against Dearham and one Mopock first. And then against Sir T.
Culpepper.'
The Queen stood up to her height; her hand went over her heart; the
netted purse dropped to the floor soundlessly.
'God help me!' Mary Hall cried out. 'Dearham and Culpepper are both
dead!'
The Queen sprang back three paces.
'How dead!' she cried. 'They were not even ill.'
'Upon the block,' the maid said. 'Last night, in the dark, in their
gaols.'
The Queen let her hands fall slowly to her sides.
'Who did this?' she said, and Mary Hall answered--
'It was the King!'
The Lady Mary set her book under her arm.
'Ye might have known it was the King,' she said harshly. The Queen was
as still as a pillar of ebony and ivory, so black her dress was, and so
white her face and pendant hands.
'I repent me! I repent me!' the maid cried out. 'When I heard that they
were dead I repented me and came here. The old Duchess of Norfolk is in
gaol: she burned the letters of Dearham! The Lady Rochford is in gaol,
and old Sir Nicholas, and the Lady Cicely that was ever with the Queen;
the Lord Edmund Howard shall to gaol and his lady.'
'Why,' the Lady Mary said to the Queen, 'if you had not had such a fear
of nepotism, your father and mother and grandmother and cousin had been
here about you, and not so easily taken.'
The Queen stood still whilst all her hopes fell down.
'They have taken Lady Cicely that was ever with me,' she said.
'It was the Duke of Norfolk that pressed me most,' Mary Lascelles cried
out.
'Aye, he would,' the Lady Mary answered.
The Queen tottered upon her feet.
'Ask her more,' she said. 'I will not speak with her.'
'The King in his council ...' the girl began.
'Is the King in his council upon these matters?' the Lady Mary asked.
'Aye, he sitteth there,' Mary Hall said. 'And he hath heard evidence of
Mary Trelyon the Queen's maid, how that the Queen's Highness did bid her
begone on the night that Sir T. Culpepper came to her room, before he
came. And how that the Queen was very insistent that she should go, upon
the score of fatigue and the lateness of the hour. And she hath deponed
that on other nights, too, this has happened, that the Queen's Highness,
when she hath come late to bed, hath equally done the same thing. And
other her maids have deponed how the Queen hath sent them from her
presence and relieved them of tasks----'
'Well, well,' the Lady Mary said, 'often I have urged the Queen that she
should be less gracious. Better it had been if she had beat ye all as I
have done; then had ye feared to betray her.'
'Aye,' Mary Hall said, 'it is a true thing that your Grace saith there.'
'Call me not your Grace,' the Lady Mary said. 'I will be no Grace in
this court of wolves and hogs.'
That was the sole thing that she said to show she was of the Queen's
party. But ever she questioned the kneeling woman to know what evidence
had been given, and of the attitude of the lords.
The young Poins had sworn roundly that the Queen had bidden him to
summon no guards when her cousin had broken in upon her. Only Udal had
said that he knew nothing of how Katharine had agreed with her cousin
whilst they were in Lincolnshire. It had been after his time there that
Culpepper came. It had been after his time, too, and whilst he lay in
chains at Pontefract that Culpepper had come to her door. He stuck to
that tale, though the Duke of Norfolk had beat and threatened him never
so.
'Why, what wolves Howards be,' the Lady Mary said, 'for it is only
wolves, of all beasts, that will prey upon the sick of their kind.'
The Queen stood there, swaying back as if she were very sick, her eyes
fast closed, and the lids over them very blue.
It was only when the Lady Mary drew from the woman an account of the
King's demeanour that she showed a sign of hearing.
'His Highness,' the woman said, 'sate always mute.'
'His Highness would,' the Lady Mary said. 'He is in that at least
royal--that he letteth jackals do his hunting.'
It was only when the Archbishop of Canterbury, reading from the
indictment of Culpepper, had uttered the words: 'did by the obtaining of
the Lady Rochford meet with the Queen's Highness by night in a secret
and vile place,' that the King had called out--
'Body of God! mine own bedchamber!' as if he were hatefully mocking the
Archbishop.
The Queen leant suddenly forward--
'Said he no more than that?' she cried eagerly.
'No more, oh your dear Grace,' the maid said. And the Queen shuddered
and whispered--
'No more!--And I have spoken to this woman to obtain no more than "no
more."'
Again she closed her eyes, and she did not again speak, but hung her
head forward as if she were thinking.
'Heaven help me!' the maid said.
'Why, think no more of Heaven,' the Lady Mary said, 'there is but the
fire of hell for such beasts as you.'
'Had you such a brother as mine----' Mary Hall began. But the Lady Mary
cried out--
'Cease, dog! I have a worse father, but you have not found him force me
to work vileness.'
'All the other Papists have done worse than I,' Mary Hall said, 'for
they it was that forced us by threats to speak.'
'Not one was of the Queen's side?' the Lady Mary said.
'Not one,' Mary Hall answered. 'Gardiner was more fierce against her
than he of Canterbury, the Duke of Norfolk than either.'
The Lady Mary said--
'Well! well!'
'Myself I did hear the Duke of Norfolk say, when I was drawn to give
evidence, that he begged the King to let him tear my secrets from my
heart. For so did he abhor the abominable deeds done by his two nieces,
Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard, that he could no longer desire to
live. And he said neither could he live longer without some comfortable
assurance of His Highness's royal favour. And so he fell upon me----'
The woman fell to silence. Without, the rain had ceased, and, like heavy
curtains trailing near the ground, the clouds began to part and sweep
away. A horn sounded, and there went a party of men with pikes across
the terrace.
'Well, and what said you?' the Lady Mary said.
'Ask me not,' Mary Lascelles said woefully. She averted her eyes to the
floor at her side.
'By God, but I will know,' the Lady Mary snarled. 'You shall tell me.'
She had that of royal bearing from her sire that the woman was amazed at
her words, and, awakening like one in a dream, she rehearsed the
evidence that had been threated from her.
She had told of the lascivious revels and partings, in the maid's garret
at the old Duchess's, when Katharine had been a child there. She had
told how Marnock the musicker had called her his mistress, and how
Dearham, Katharine's cousin, had beaten him. And how Dearham had given
Katharine a half of a silver coin.
'Well, that is all true,' the Lady Mary said. 'How did you perjure
yourself?'
'In the matter of the Queen's age,' the woman faltered.
'How that?' the Lady Mary asked.
'The Duke would have me say that she was more than a young child.'
The Lady Mary said, 'Ah! ah! there is the yellow dog!' She thought for a
moment.
'And you said?' she asked at last.
'The Duke threated me and threated me. And say I, "Your Grace must know
how young she was." And says he, "I would swear that at that date she
was no child, but that I do not know how many of these nauseous Howard
brats there be. Nor yet the order in which they came. But this I will
swear that I think there has been some change of the Queen with a whelp
that died in the litter, that she might seem more young. And of a surety
she was always learned beyond her assumed years, so that it was not to
be believed."'
Mary Lascelles closed her eyes and appeared about to faint.
'Speak on, dog,' Mary said.
The woman roused herself to say with a solemn piteousness--
'This I swear that before this trial, when my brother pressed me and
threated me thus to perjure myself, I abhorred it and spat in his face.
There was none more firm--nor one half so firm as I--against him. But
oh, the Duke and the terror--and to be in a ring of so many villainous
men....'
'So that you swore that the Queen's Highness, to your knowledge, was
older than a child,' the Lady Mary pressed her.
'Ay; they would have me say that it was she that commanded to have these
revels....'
She leaned forward with both her hands on the floor, in the attitude of
a beast that goes four-footed. She cried out--
'Ask me no more! ask me no more!'
'Tell! tell! Beast!' the Lady Mary said.
'They threated me with torture,' the woman panted. 'I could do no less.
I heard Margot Poins scream.'
'They have tortured her?' the Lady Mary said.
'Ay, and she was in her pains elsewise,' the woman said.
'Did she say aught?' the Lady Mary said.
'No! no!' the woman panted. Her hair had fallen loose in her coif, it
depended on to her shoulder.
'Tell on! tell on!' the Lady Mary said.
'They tortured her, and she did not say one word more, but ever in her
agony cried out, "Virtuous! virtuous!" till her senses went.'
Mary Hall again raised herself to her knees.
'Let me go, let me go,' she moaned. 'I will not speak before the Queen.
I had been as loyal as Margot Poins.... But I will not speak before the
Queen. I love her as well as Margot Poins. But ... I will not----'
She cried out as the Lady Mary struck her, and her face was lamentable
with its opened mouth. She scrambled to one knee; she got on both, and
ran to the door. But there she cried out--
'My brother!' and fell against the wall. Her eyes were fixed upon the
Lady Mary with a baleful despair, she gasped and panted for breath.
'It is upon you if I speak,' she said. 'Merciful God, do not bid me
speak before the Queen!'
She held out her hands as if she had been praying.
'Have I not proved that I loved this Queen?' she said. 'Have I not fled
here to warn her? Is it not my life that I risk? Merciful God! Merciful
God! Bid me not to speak.'
'Speak!' the Lady Mary said.
The woman appealed to the Queen with her eyes streaming, but Katharine
stood silent and like a statue with sightless eyes. Her lips smiled, for
she thought of her Redeemer; for this woman she had neither ears nor
eyes.
'Speak!' the Lady Mary said.
'God help you, be it on your head,' the woman cried out, 'that I speak
before the Queen. It was the King that bade me say she was so old. I
would not say it before the Queen, but you have made me!'
The Lady Mary's hands fell powerless to her sides, the book from her
opened fingers jarred on the hard floor.
'Merciful God!' she said. 'Have I such a father?'
'It was the King!' the woman said. 'His Highness came to life when he