The Fifth Queen Crowned
He spread out his knees, blinked at the view and when, having cast a
look round to see that Norfolk was gone--for it did not suit her that he
should see on what terms she was with the King--she seated herself on a
little foot-pillow at his feet, he set a great hand upon her head. She
leaned her arms across over his knees, and looked up at him appealingly.
'I do take it,' he said, 'that I must make some man rich to wed some
poor maid.'
'Oh, Solomon!' she said.
'And I do take it,' he continued with gravity, 'that this maid is thy
maid Margot.'
'How know you that?' she said.
'I have observed her,' he maintained gravely.
'Why, you could not well miss her,' she answered. 'She is as big as a
plough-ox.'
'I have observed,' he said--and he blinked his little eyes as if,
pleasurably, she were, with her words, whispering around his head. 'I
have observed that ye affected her.'
'Why, she likes me well. She is a good wench--and to-day she tore my
hair.'
'Then that is along of a man?' he asked. 'Didst not stick thy needle in
her arm? Or wilto be quit of her?'
She rubbed her chin.
'Why, if she wed, I mun be quit of her,' she said, as if she had never
thought of that thing.
He answered--
'Assuredly; for ye may not part man and lawful wife were you seven times
Queen.'
'Why,' she said, 'I have little pleasure in Margot as she is.'
'Then let her go,' he answered.
'But I am a very lonely Queen,' she said, 'for you are much absent.'
He reflected pleasurably.
'Thee wouldst have about thee a little company of well-wishers?'
'So that they be those thou lovest well,' she said.
'Why, thy maid contents me,' he answered. He reflected slowly. 'We must
give her man a post about thee,' he uttered triumphantly.
'Why, trust thee to pleasure me,' she said. 'You will find out a way
always.'
He scrubbed her nose gently with his heavy finger.
'Who is the man?' he said. 'What ruffler?'
'I think it is the Magister Udal,' she answered.
Henry said--
'Oh ho! oh ho!' And after a moment he slapped his thigh and laughed like
a child. She laughed with him, silverly upon a little sound between 'ah'
and 'e.' He stopped his laugh to listen to hers, and then he said
gravely--
'I think your laugh is the prettiest sound I ever heard. I would give
thy maid Margot a score of husbands to make thee laugh.'
'One is enough to make her weep,' she said; 'and I may laugh at thee.'
He said--
'Let us finish this business within the hour. Sit you upon your chair
that I may call one to send this ruffler here.'
She rose, with one sinuous motion that pleased him well, half to her
feet and, feeling behind her with one hand for the chair, aided herself
with the other upon his shoulder because she knew that it gave him joy
to be her prop.
'Call the maid, too,' she said, 'for I would come to the secret soon.'
That pleased him too, and, having shouted for a knave he once more shook
with laughter.
'Oh ho,' he said, 'you will net this old fox, will you?'
And, having sent his messenger off to summon the Magister from the Lady
Mary's room, and the maid from the Queen's, he continued for a while to
soliloquise as to Udal's predicament. For he had heard the Magister rail
against matrimony in Latin hexameters and doggerel Greek. He knew that
the Magister was an incorrigible fumbler after petticoats. And now, he
said, this old fox was to be bagged and tied up.
He said--
'Well, well, well; well, well!'
For, if a Queen commanded a marriage, a marriage there must be; there
was no more hope for the Magister than for any slave of Cato's. He was
cabined, ginned, trapped, shut in from the herd of bachelors. It pleased
the King very well.
The King grasped the gilded arms of his great chair, Katharine sat
beside him, her hands laid one within another upon her lap. She did not
say one single word during the King's interview with Magister Udal.
The Magister fell upon his knees before them and, seeing the laughing
wrinkles round the King's little eyes, made sure that he was sent
for--as had often been the case--to turn into Latin some jest the King
had made. His gown fell about his kneeling shins, his cap was at his
side, his lean, brown, and sly face, with the long nose and crafty eyes,
was like a woodpecker's.
'Goodman Magister,' Henry said. 'Stand up. We have sent for thee to
advance thee.' Without moving his head he rolled his eyes to one side.
He loved his dramatic effects and wished to await the coming of the
Queen's maid, Margot, before he gave the weight of his message.
Udal picked up his cap and came up to his feet before them; he had
beneath his gown a little book, and one long finger between its leaves
to keep his place where he had been reading. For he had forgotten a
saying of Thales, and was reading through Caesar's Commentaries to find
it.
'As Seneca said,' he uttered in his throat, 'advancement is doubly sweet
to them that deserve it not.'
'Why,' the King said, 'we advance thee on the deserts of one that finds
thee sweet, and is sweet to one doubly sweet to us, Henry of Windsor
that speak sweet words to thee.'
The lines on Udal's face drooped all a little downwards.
'Y'are reader in Latin to the Lady Mary,' the King said.
'I have little deserved in that office,' Udal answered; 'the lady reads
Latin better than even I.'
'Why, you lie in that,' Henry said, ''a readeth well for she's my
daughter; but not so well as thee.'
Udal ducked his head; he was not minded to carry modesty further than in
reason.
'The Lady Mary--the Lady Mary of England----' the King said
weightily--and these last two words of his had a weight all their own,
so that he added, 'of England' again, and then, 'will have little longer
need of thee. She shall wed with a puissant Prince.'
'I hail, I felicitate, I bless the day I hear those words,' the Magister
said.
'Therefore,' the King said--and his ears had caught the rustle of
Margot's grey gown--'we will let thee no more be reader to that my
daughter.'
Margot came round the green silk curtains that were looped on the corner
posts of the pavilion. When she saw the Magister her great, fair face
became slowly of a fiery red; slowly and silently she fell, with motions
as if bovine, to her knees at the Queen's side. Her gown was all grey,
but it had roses of red and white silk round the upper edges of the
square neck-place, and white lawn showed beneath her grey cap.
'We advance thee,' Henry said, 'to be Chancellier de la Royne, with an
hundred pounds by the year from my purse. Do homage for thine office.'
Udal fell upon one knee before Katharine, and dropping both cap and
book, took her hand to raise to his lips. But Margot caught her hand
when he had done with it and set upon it a huge pressure.
'But, Sir Chancellor,' the King said, 'it is evident that so grave an
office must have a grave fulfiller. And, to ballast thee the better, the
Queen of her graciousness hath found thee a weighty helpmeet. So that,
before you shall touch the duties and emoluments of this charge you
shall, and that even to-night, wed this Madam Margot that here kneels.'
Udal's face had been of a coppery green pallor ever since he had heard
the title of Chancellor.
'Eheu!' he said, 'this is the torture of Tantalus that might never
drink.'
In its turn the face of Margot Poins grew pale, pushed forward towards
him; but her eyes appeared to blaze, for all they were a mild blue, and
the Queen felt the pressure upon her hand grow so hard that it pained
her.
The King uttered the one word, 'Magister!'
Udal's fingers picked at the fur of his moth-eaten gown.
'God be favourable to me,' he said. 'If it were anything but
Chancellor!'
The King grew more rigid.
'Body of God,' he said, 'will you wed with this maid?'
'Ahi!' the Magister wailed; and his perturbation had in it something
comic and scarecrowlike, as if a wind shook him from within. 'If you
will make me anything but a Chancellor, I will. But a Chancellor, I dare
not.'
The King cast himself back in his chair. The suggested gibe rose
furiously to his lips; the Magister quailed and bent before him,
throwing out his hands.
'Sire,' he said, 'if--which God forbid--this were a Protestant realm I
might do it. But oh, pardon and give ear. Pardon and give ear----'
He waved one hand furiously at the silken canopy above them.
'It is agreed with one of mine in Paris that she shall come hither--God
forgive me, I must make avowal, though God knows I would not--she shall
come hither to me if she do hear that I have risen to be a Chancellor.'
The King said, 'Body of God!' as if it were an earthquake.
'If it were anything else but Chancellor she might not come, and I would
wed Margot Poins more willingly than any other. But--God knows I do not
willingly make this avowal, but am in a corner, _sicut vulpis in
lucubris_, like a fox in the coils--this Paris woman is my wife.'
Henry gave a great shout of laughter, but slowly Margot Poins fell
across the Queen's knees. She uttered no sound, but lay there
motionless. The sight affected Udal to an epileptic fury.
'Jove be propitious to me!' he stuttered out. 'I know not what I can
do.' He began to tear the fur of his cloak and toss it over the
battlements. 'The woman is my wife--wed by a friar. If this were a
Protestant realm now--or if I pleaded pre-contract--and God knows I ha'
promised marriage to twenty women before I, in an evil day, married
one--eheu!--to this one----'
He began to sob and to wring his thin hands.
'_Quod faciam? Me miser! Utinam. Utinam----_'
He recovered a little coherence.
'If this were a Protestant land ye might say this wedding was no
wedding, for that a friar did it; but I know ye will not suffer that----'
His eyes appealed piteously to the Queen.
'Why, then,' he said, 'it is not upon my head that I do not wed this
wench. You be my witness that I would wed; it gores my heart to see her
look so pale. It tears my vitals to see any woman look pale. As
Lucretius says, "Better the sunshine of smiles----"'
A little outputting of impatient breath from Katharine made him stop.
'It is you, your Grace,' he said, 'that make me thus tied. If you would
let us be Protestant, or, again, if I could plead pre-contract to void
this Paris marriage it would let me wed with this wench--eheu--eheu. Her
brother will break my bones----'
He began to cry out so lamentably, invoking Pluto to bear him to the
underworld, that the King roared out upon him--
'Why, get you gone, fool.'
The Magister threw himself suddenly upon his knees, his hands clasped,
his gown drooping over them down to his wrists. He turned his face to
the Queen.
'Before God,' he said, 'before high and omnipotent Jove, I swear that
when I made this marriage I thought it was no marriage!' He reflected
for a breath and added, at the recollection of the cook's spits that had
been turned against him when he had by woman's guile been forced into
marriage with the widow in Paris, 'I was driven into it by force, with
sharp points at my throat. Is that not enow to void a marriage? Is that
not enow? Is that not enow?'
Katharine looked out over the great levels of the view. Her face was
rigid, and she swallowed in her throat, her eye being glazed and hard.
The King took his cue from a glance at her face.
'Get you gone, Goodman Rogue Magister,' he said, and he adopted a
canonical tone that went heavily with his rustic pose. 'A marriage made
and consummated and properly blessed by holy friar there is no undoing.
You are learned enough to know that. Rogue that you be, I am very glad
that you are trapped by this marriage. Well I know that you have dangled
too much with petticoats, to the great scandal of this my Court. Now you