The Fifth Queen (24 page)

‘I shall never go near his Highness again,’ Katharine said.

‘Aye, but you will,’ he answered, ‘for ’tis your nature to
meddle; or ’tis your nature to work for the blessed saints. Put it which way you will. But his Highness meditateth to come near you.’

‘Why, you are mad,’ Katharine said wearily. ‘This is that maggot of Magister Udal’s.’

He lifted one finger in an affected, philosophic gesture.

‘Oh, nay,’ he laughed. ‘That his Highness meditateth more speech with you I am assured. For he did ask me where you usually resorted.’

‘He would know if I be a traitor.’

‘Aye, but from your own word of mouth he would know it.’ He grinned once more at her. ‘Do you think that I would forbear to court you if I were not afraid of another than you?’

She shrugged her shoulders up to her ears, and he sniggered, stroking his beard.

‘You may take that as a proof very certain,’ he said. ‘None of your hatred should have prevented me, for I am a very like-worthy man. Ladies that have hated afore now, I have won to love me. With you, too, I would essay the adventure. You are most fair, most virtuous, most simple—aye, and most lovable. But for the moment I am afraid. From now on, for many months, I shall not be seen to frequent you. For I have known such matters of old. A great net is cast: many fish—smaller than I be, who am a proper man—are taken up.’

‘It is good hearing that you will no more frequent me,’ Katharine said.

He nodded his great head.

‘Why, I speak of what is in my mind,’ he answered. ‘Think upon it, and it will grow clear when it is too late. But here I will draw you a picture of the King.’

‘I have seen his Highness with mine own eyes,’ she caught him up.

‘But your eyes are so clear,’ he sighed. ‘They see the black and the white of a man. The grey they miss. And you are slow
to learn. Nevertheless, already you have learned that here we have no yea-nay world of evil and good.…’

‘No,’ she said, ‘that I have not learned, nor never shall.’

‘Oh, aye,’ he mocked at her. ‘You have learned that the Bishop of Winchester, who is on the side of your hosts of heaven, is a knave and a fool. You have learned that I, whom you have accounted a villain, am for you, and a very wise man. You have learned that Privy Seal, for whose fall you have prayed these ten years, is, his deeds apart, the only good man in this quaking place.’

‘His acts are most hateful,’ Katharine said stoutly.

‘But these are not the days of Plutarch,’ he answered. ‘And I doubt the days of Plutarch never were. For already you have learned that a man may act most evilly, even as Privy Seal, and yet be the best man in the world. And.…’ he ducked his great head sardonically at her, ‘you have learned that a man may be most evil and yet act passing well for your good. So I will draw the picture of the King for you.…’

Something seductive in his voice, and the good humour with which he called himself villain, made Katharine say no more than:

‘Why, you are an incorrigible babbler!’

Whilst he had talked she had grown assured that the King meditated no imprisoning of her. The conviction had come so gradually that it had merely changed her terrified weariness into a soft languor. She lay back in her chair and felt a comfortable limpness in all her limbs.

‘His Highness,’ Throckmorton said, ‘God preserve him and send him good fortune—is a great and formidable club. His Highness is a most great and most majestic bull. He is a thunderbolt and a glorious light; he is a storm of hail and a beneficent sun. There are few men more certain than he when he is certain. There is no one so full of doubts when he doubteth. There is no wind so mighty as he when he is inspired to blow;
but God alone, who directeth the wind in its flight, knoweth when he will storm through the world. His Highness is a balance of a pair of scales. Now he is up, now down. Those who have ruled him have taken account of this. If you had known the Sieur Cromwell as I have, you would have known this very well. The excellent the Privy Seal hath been beknaved by the hour, and hath borne it with a great composure. For, well he knew that the King, standing in midst of a world of doubts, would, in the next hour, the next week, or the next month, come in the midst of doubts to be of Privy Seal’s mind. Then Privy Seal hath pushed him to action. Now his Highness is a good lover, and being himself a great doubter, he loveth a simple and convinced nature. Therefore he hath loved Privy Seal …’

‘In the name of the saints,’ Katharine laughed, ‘call you Privy Seal’s a simple nature?’

He answered imperturbably:

‘Call you Cato’s a complex one? He who for days and days and years and years said always one thing alone: “Carthage must be destroyed!” ’

‘But this man is no noble Roman,’ Katharine cried indignantly.

‘There was never a nature more Roman,’ Throckmorton mocked at her. ‘For if Cato cried for years:
Delenda est Carthago
, Cromwell hath contrived for years:
Floreat rex meus
. Cato stuck at no means. Privy Seal hath stuck at none. Madam Howard: Privy Seal wrote to the King in his first letter, when he was but a simple servant of the Cardinal, “I, Thomas Cromwell, if you will give ear to me, will make your Grace the richest and most puissant king ever there was.” So he wrote ten years agone; so he hath said and written daily for all those years. This it is to have a simple nature …’

‘But the vile deeds!’ Katharine said.

‘Madam Howard,’ Throckmorton laughed, ‘I would ask you how many broken treaties, how many deeds of treachery,
went to the making of the Roman state, since Sinon a traitor brought about the fall of Troy, since Aeneas betrayed Queen Dido and brought the Romans into Italy, until Sylla played false with Marius, Cæsar with the friends of Sylla, Brutus with Cæsar, Antony with Brutus, Octavius with Antony—aye, and until the Blessed Constantine played false to Rome herself.’

‘Foul man, ye blaspheme,’ Katharine cried.

‘God keep me from that sin,’ he answered gravely.

‘—And of all these traitors,’ she continued, ‘not one but fell.’

‘Aye, by another traitor,’ he caught her up. ‘It was then as now. Men fell, but treachery prospered—aye, and Rome prospered. So may this realm of England prosper exceedingly. For it is very certain that Cromwell hath brought it to a great pitch, yet Cromwell made himself by betraying the great Cardinal.’

Katharine protested too ardently to let him continue. The land was brought to a low and vile estate. And it was known that Cromwell had been, before all things, and to his own peril, faithful to the great Cardinal’s cause.

Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders.

‘Without doubt you know these histories better than I,’ he answered. ‘But judge them how you will, it is very certain that the King, who loveth simple natures, loveth Privy Seal.’

‘Yet you have said that he lay under a great shadow,’ Katharine convicted him.

‘Well,’ he said composedly, ‘the balance is down against him. This league with Cleves hath brought him into disfavour. But well he knoweth that, and it will be but a short time ere he will work again, and many years shall pass ere again he shall misjudge. Such mistakes hath he made before this. But there hath never been one to strike at him in the right way and at the right time. Here then is an opening.’

Katharine regarded him with a curiosity that was friendly and awakened: he caught her expression and laughed.

‘Why, you begin to learn,’ he said.

‘When you speak clearly I can take your meaning,’ she answered.

‘Then believe me,’ he said earnestly. ‘Tell all with whom you may come together. And you may come to your uncle very easily. Tell him that if he may find France and Spain embroiled within this five months, Privy Seal and Cleves may fall together. But, if he delay till Privy Seal hath shaken him clear of Cleves, Cromwell shall be our over-king for twenty years.’

He paused and then continued:

‘Believe me again. Every word that is spoken against Privy Seal shall tell its tale—until he hath shaken himself clear of this Cleves coil. His Highness shall rave, but the words will rankle. His Highness shall threaten you—but he shall not strike—for he will doubt. It is by his doubts that you may take him.’

‘God help me,’ Katharine said. ‘What is this of “you” to me?’

He did not heed her, but continued:

‘You may speak what you will against Privy Seal—but speak never a word against the glory of the land. It is when you do call this realm the Fortunate Land that at once you make his Highness incline towards you—and doubt. “Island of the Blest,” say you. This his Highness rejoices, saying to himself: “My governing appeareth Fortunate to the World.” But his Highness knoweth full well the flaws that be in his Fortunate Island. And specially will he set himself to redress wrongs, assuage tears, set up chantries, and make his peace with God. But if you come to him saying: “This land is torn with dissent. Here heresies breed and despair stalks abroad”; if you say all is not well, his Highness getteth enraged. “All is well,” he will swear. “All is well, for I made it”—and he would throw his cap into the face of Almighty God rather than change one jot of his work. In short, if you will praise him you make him humble, for at bottom the man is humble; if you will blame him
you will render him rigid as steel and more proud than the lightning. For, before the world’s eyes, this man must be proud, else he would die.’

Katharine had her hand upon her cheek. She said musingly: ‘His Highness did threaten me with a gaol. But you say he will not strike. If I should pray him to restore the Church of God, would he not strike then?’

‘Child,’ Throckmorton answered, ‘it will lie with the way you ask it. If you say: “This land is heathen, your Grace hath so made it,” his Highness will be more than terrible. But if you say: “This land prospereth exceedingly and is beloved of the Mother of God,” his Highness will begin to doubt that he hath done little to pleasure God’s Mother—or to pleasure you who love that Heavenly Rose. Say how all good people rejoice that his Highness hath given them a faith pure and acceptable. And very shortly his Highness will begin to wonder of his Faith.’

‘But that were an ignoble flattery,’ Katharine said. He answered quietly:

‘No! no! For indeed his Highness hath given all he could give. It is the hard world that hath pushed him against you and against his good will. Believe me, his Highness loveth good doctrine better than you, I, or the Bishop of Rome. So that …’

He paused, and concluded:

‘This Lord Cromwell moves in the shadow of a little thing that casts hardly any shadow. You have seen it?’

She shook her head negligently, and he laughed:

‘Why, you will see it yet. A small, square thing upon a green hill. The noblest of our land kneel before it, by his Highness’ orders. Yet the worship of idols is contemned now.’ He let his malicious eyes wander over her relaxed, utterly resting figure.

‘I would ye would suffer me to kiss you on the mouth,’ he sighed.

‘Why, get you gone,’ she said, without anger.

‘Oh, aye,’ he said, with some feeling. ‘It is pleasant to be desired as I desire you. But it is true that ye be meat for my masters.’

‘I will take help from none of your lies.’ She returned to her main position.

He removed his bonnet, and bowed so low to her that his great and shining beard hung far away from his chest.

‘Madam Howard,’ he mocked, ‘my lies will help you well when the time comes.’

M
ARCH WAS A MONTH
of great storms of rain in that year, and the river-walls of the Thames were much weakened. April opened fine enough for men to get about the land, so that, on a day towards the middle of the month, there was a meeting of seven Protestant men from Kent and Essex, of two German servants of the Count of Oberstein, and of two other German men in the living-room of Badge, the printer, in Austin Friars. It happened that the tide was high at four in the afternoon, and, after a morning of glints of sun, great rain fell. Thus, when the Lord Oberstein’s men set out into the weather, they must needs turn back, because the water was all out between Austin Friars and the river. They came again into the house, not very unwillingly, to resume their arguments about Justification by Faith, about the estate of the Queen Anne, about the King’s mind towards her, and about the price of wool in Flanders.

The printer himself was gloomy and abstracted; arguments about Justification interested him little, and when the talk fell upon the price of wool, he remained standing, absolutely lost in gloomy dreams. It grew a little dark in the room, the sky being so overcast, and suddenly, all the voices having fallen, there was a gurgle of water by the threshold, and a little flood, coming in between sill and floor, reached as it were, a tiny
finger of witness towards his great feet. He looked down at it uninterestedly, and said:

‘Talk how you will, I can measure this thing by words and by print. Here hath this Queen been with us a matter of four months. Now in my chronicle the pageants that have been made in her honour fill but five pages.’ Whereas the chronicling of the jousts, pageants, merry-nights, masques and hawkings that had been given in the first four months of the Queen Jane had occupied sixteen pages, and for the Queen Anne Boleyn sixty and four. ‘What sort of honour is it, then, that the King’s Highness showeth the Queen?’ He shook his head gloomily.

‘Why, goodman,’ a woolstapler from the Tower Hamlets cried at him, ‘when they shot off the great guns against her coming to Westminster in February all my windows were broken by the shrinking of the earth. Such ordnance was never yet shot off in a Queen’s honour.’

The printer remained gloomily silent for a minute; the wind howled in the chimney-place, and the embers of the fire spat and rustled.

‘Even as ye are held here by the storm, so is the faith of God in these lands,’ he said. ‘This is the rainy season.’ More water came in beneath the door, and he added, ‘Pray God we be not all drowned in our holes.’

A motionless German, who had no English, shifted his feet from the wet floor to the cross-bar of his chair. Gloom, dispiritude, and dampness brooded in the low, dark room. But a young man from Kent, who, being used to ill weather, was not to be cast down by gloomy skies, cried out in his own dialect that they had arms to use and leaders to lead them.