Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (247 page)

She bent her body and poked her head forward into the Queen’s very face. Katharine stood still before her.

‘God knows,’ she said. ‘I might not stay it. There was much false witness — or some of it true — against her. I pray that the King my Lord may atone for it in the peace that shall come.’

‘The peace that shall come!’ the Lady Mary laughed. ‘Oh, God, what things we women are when a man rules us. The peace that shall come? By what means shall it have been brought on?’

‘I will tell you,’ she pursued after a moment. ‘All this is cogging and lying and feigning and chicaning. And you who are so upright will crawl before me to bring it about. Listen!’

And she closed her eyes the better to calm herself and to collect her thoughts, for she hated to appear moved.

‘I am to feign a friendship to my father. That is a lie that you ask me to do, for I hate him as he were the devil. And why must I do this? To feign a smooth face to the world that his pride may not be humbled. I am to feign to receive the ambassadors of the Duke of Orleans. That is cogging that you ask of me. For it is not intended that ever I shall wed with a prince of the French house. But I must lead them on and on till the Emperor be affrighted lest your King make alliance with the French. What a foul tale! And you lend it your countenance!’

‘I would well — —’ Katharine began.

‘Oh, I know, I know,’ Mary snickered. ‘Ye would well be chaste but that it must needs be other with you. It was the thief’s wife said that.

‘Listen again,’ she pursued, ‘anon there shall come the Emperor’s men, and there shall be more cogging and chicaning, and honours shall be given me that I may be bought dear, and petitioning that I should be set in the succession to make them eager. And then, perhaps, it shall all be cried off and a Schmalkaldner prince shall send ambassadors — —’

‘No, before God,’ Katharine said.

‘Oh, I know my father,’ Mary laughed at her. ‘You will keep him tied to Rome if you can. But you could not save the venerable Lady of Salisbury, nor you shall not save him from trafficking with Schmalkaldners and Lutherans if it shall serve his monstrous passions and his vanities. And if he do not this yet he will do other villainies. And you will cosset him in them — to save his hoggish dignity and buttress up his heavy pride. All this you stand there and ask.’

‘In the name of God I ask it,’ Katharine said. ‘There is no other way.’

‘Well then,’ the Lady Mary said, ‘you shall ask it many times. I will 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.

VII
I

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.’