The Fifth Queen (30 page)

‘Listen,’ he said again. ‘To take you I have only to tear down this arras. Do you hear?’

He bared his head once more and said aloud to himself, ‘But perhaps she is even in the chapel.’

He stepped across the corridor, lifted a latch and looked in at double doors that were just beside her. Then, swiftly, he moved back once more to cover the stairhead.

‘God! God! God!’ she heard him mutter between his teeth.

‘Listen!’ he said again. ‘Listen! listen! listen!’ The words seemed to form part of an eager, hissed refrain. He was trembling with haste.

He began to press the arras, along the wall towards her, with his finger tips. Her breast sank with a sickening fall. Then, suddenly, he started back again; she could not understand why he did not come further—then she noticed that he was afraid, still, to leave the stairhead.

But why did he not call his men to him? He had a whole army at his back.

He was peering into the shadows—and something familiar in the poise of his head, his intent gaze, the line of his shoulders, as you may see a cat’s outlined against a lighted doorway, filled her with an intense lust for revenge. This man had wormed himself into her presence: he was a traitor over and over again. And he had fooled her! He had made her believe that he was lover to her. He had made her believe, and he had fooled her. He had shown her letter to Privy Seal.

After the night in the cellar she had had the end of her crucifix sharpened till it was needle-pointed. She trembled with eagerness. This foul carrion beast had fooled her that he might get her more utterly in his power. For this he had brought her down. He would have her to himself—in some dungeon of Privy Seal’s. Her fair hopes ended in this filth …

He was muttering:

‘Listen if you be there! Before God, Katharine Howard, I am true to you. Listen! Listen!’

His hand shivered, turned against the light. He was hearkening to some distant sound. He was looking away.

She tore the arras aside and sprang at him with her hand on high. But, at the sharp sound of the tearing cloth, he started
to one side and the needle point that should have pierced his face struck softly in at his shoulder or thereabouts. He gave a sharp hiss of pain.…

She was wrestling with him then. One of his hands was hot across her mouth, the other held her throat.

‘Oh fool!’ his voice sounded. ‘Bide you still.’ He snorted with fury and held her to him. The embroidery on his chest scraped her knuckles as she tried to strike upwards at his face. Her crucifix had fallen. He strove to muffle her with his elbows, but with a blind rage of struggle she freed her wrists and, in the darkness, struck where she thought his mouth would be.

Then his hand over her mouth loosened and set free her great scream. It rang down the corridor and seemed to petrify his grasp upon her. His fingers loosened—and again she was running, bent forward, crying out, in a vast thirst for mere flight.

As she ran, a red patch before her eyes, distant and clear beneath the torch, took the form of the King. Her cries were still loud, but they died in her throat.…

He was standing still with his fingers in his ears.

‘Dear God,’ she cried, ‘they have laid hands upon me. They have laid hands upon me.’ And she pressed her fingers hard across her throat as if to wipe away the stain of Throckmorton’s touch.

The King lifted his fingers from his ears.

‘Bones of Jago,’ he cried, ‘what new whimsy is this?’

‘They have laid hands upon me,’ she cried and fell upon her knees.

‘Why,’ he said, ‘here is a day nightmare. I know all your tale of a letter. Come now, pretty one. Up, pretty soul.’ He bent over benevolently and stroked her hand.

‘These dark passages are frightening to maids. Up now, pretty. I was thinking of thee.

‘Who the devil shall harm thee?’ he muttered again. ‘This is mine own house. Come, pray with me. Prayer is a very soothing thing. I was bound to pray. I pray ever at nightfall. Up now. Come—pray, pray, pray!’

His heavy benevolence for a moment shed a calmness upon the place. She rose, and pressing back the hair from her forehead, saw the long, still corridor, the guard beneath the torch, the doors of the chapel.

She said to herself pitifully: ‘What comes next?’ She was too wearied to move again.

Suddenly the King said:

‘Child, you did well to come to me, when you came in the stables.’

She leaned against the tapestry upon the wall to listen to him.

‘It is true,’ he admitted, ‘that you have men that hate you and your house. The Bishop of Winchester did show me a letter you wrote. I do pardon it in you. It was well written.’

‘Ah,’ she uttered wearily, ‘so you say now. But you shall change your mind ere morning.’

‘Body of God, no,’ he answered. ‘My mind is made up concerning you. Let us call a truce to these things. It is my hour for prayer. Let us go to pray.’

Knowing how this King’s mind would change from hour to hour, she had little hope in his words. Nevertheless slowly it came into her mind that if she were ever to act, now that he was in the mood was the very hour. But she knew nothing of the coil in which she now was. Yet without the King she could do nothing; she was in the hands of other men: of Throckmorton, of Privy Seal, of God knew whom.

‘Sir,’ she said, ‘at the end of this passage stood a man.’

The King looked past her into the gloom.

‘He stands there still,’ he said. ‘He is tying his arm with a kerchief. He looks like one Throckmorton.’

‘Then, if he have not run,’ she said. ‘Call him here. He has had my knife in his arm. He holds a letter of mine.’

His neck stiffened suddenly.

‘You have been writing amorous epistles?’ he muttered.

‘God knows there was naught of love,’ she answered. ‘Do you bid him unpouch it.’ She closed her eyes; she was done with this matter.

Henry called:

‘Ho, you, approach!’ and as through the shadows Throckmorton’s shoes clattered on the boards he held out a thickly gloved hand. Throckmorton made no motion to put anything into it, and the King needs must speak.

‘This lady’s letter,’ he muttered.

Throckmorton bowed his head.

‘Privy Seal holdeth it,’ he answered.

‘You are all of a make,’ the King said gloomily. ‘Can no woman write a letter but what you will be of it?’

‘Sir,’ Throckmorton said, ‘this lady would have Privy Seal down.’

‘Well, she shall have him down,’ the King threatened him. ‘And thee! and all of thy train!’

‘I do lose much blood,’ Throckmorton answered. ‘Pray you let me finish the binding of my arm.’

He took between his teeth one end of his kerchief and the other in his right hand, and pulled and knotted with his head bent.

‘Make haste!’ the King grumbled. ‘Here! Lend room.’ And himself he took one end of the knot and pulled it tight, breathing heavily.

‘Now speak,’ he said. ‘I am not one made for the healing of cripples.’

Throckmorton brushed the black blood from the furs on his sleeve, using his gloves.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘I am in pain and my knees tremble, because I have lost much blood. I were more minded to take to my pallet.

Nevertheless, I am a man that do bear no grudge, being rather a very proper man, and one intent to do well to my country and its Lord.’

‘Sir,’ the King said, ‘if you are minded to speak ill of this lady you had best had no mouth.’

Throckmorton fell upon one knee.

‘Grant me the boon to be her advocate,’ he said. ‘And let me speak swiftly, for Privy Seal shall come soon and the Bishop of Winchester.’

‘Ass that you are,’ the King said, ‘fetch me a stool from the chapel, that I may not stand all the day.’

Throckmorton ran swiftly to the folding doors.

‘—Winchester comes,’ he said hurriedly, when he returned.

The King sat himself gingerly down upon the three-legged stool, balancing himself with his legs wide apart. A dark face peered from the folding doors: a priest’s shape came out from them.

‘Cousin of Winchester,’ the King called, ‘bide where you be.’

He had the air of a man hardly intent on what the spy could say. He had already made up his mind as to what he himself was to say to Katharine.

‘Sir,’ Throckmorton said, ‘this lady loves you well, and most well she loveth your Highness’ daughter. Most well, therefore, doth she hate Privy Seal. I, as your Highness knoweth, have for long well loved Privy Seal. Now I love others better—the common weal and your great and beneficent Highness. As I have told your Highness, this Lady Katharine hath laboured very heartily to bring the Lady Mary to love you. But that might not be. Now, your Highness being minded to give to these your happy realms a lasting peace, was intent that the Lady Mary should write a letter, very urgently, to your Highness’ foes urging them to make a truce with this realm, so that your Highness might cast out certain evil men and then better purge this realm of certain false doctrines.’

Amazement, that was almost a horror, made Katharine open wide the two hands that hung at her side.

‘You!’ she cried to the King. ‘
You
would have that letter written?’

He looked at her with a heavy astonishment.

‘Wherefore not?’ he asked.

‘My God! my God!’ she said. ‘And I have suffered!’

Her first feeling of horror at this endless plot hardly gave way to relief. She had been used as a tool; she had done the work. But she had been betrayed.

‘Aye, would I have the letter written,’ the King said. ‘What could better serve my turn? Would I not have mine enemies stay their arming against me?’

‘Then I have written your letter,’ she said bitterly. ‘That is why I should be gaoled.’

The King’s look of heavy astonishment did not leave him.

‘Why, sweetheart, shalt be made a countess,’ he said. ‘Y’ have done more in this than I or any man could do with my daughter.’

‘Wherefore, then, should this man have gaoled me?’ Katharine asked.

The King turned his heavy gaze upon Throckmorton. The big man’s eyes had a sunny and devious smile.

‘Sir,’ he said, ‘this is a subtle conceit of mine, since I am a subtle man. If I am set a task I do it ever in mine own way. Here there was a task.…

‘Pray you let me sit upon the floor!’ he craved. ‘My legs begin to fail.’

The King made a small motion with his hand, and the great man, letting himself down by one hand against the arras, leaned back his head and stretched his long legs half across the corridor.

‘In ten minutes Privy Seal shall be here with the letter,’ he said. ‘My head swims, but I will be brief.’

He closed his eyes and passed his hand across his forehead.

‘I do a task ever in mine own way,’ he began again. ‘Here am I. Here is Privy Seal. Your Highness is minded to know what passes in the mind of Privy Seal. Well: I am Privy Seal’s servant. Now, if I am to come at the mind of Privy Seal, I must serve him well. In this thing I might seem to serve him main well. Listen …’

He cleared his throat and then spoke again.

‘Your Highness would have this letter written by the Lady Mary. That, with the help of this fair dame, was a thing passing easy. But neither your Highness nor Privy Seal knew the channel through which these letters passed. Yet I discovered it. Now, think I to myself: here is a secret for which Privy Seal would give his head. Therefore, how better may I ingratiate myself with Privy Seal than by telling him this same fine secret?’

‘Oh, devil!’ Katharine Howard called out. ‘Who was Judas to thee?’

Throckmorton raised his head, and winked upwards at her.

‘It was a fine device?’ he asked. ‘Why, I am a subtle man.… Do you not see?’ he said. ‘The King’s Highness would have me keep the confidence of Privy Seal that I may learn out his secrets. How better should I keep that confidence than by seeming to betray your secret to Privy Seal?

‘It was very certain,’ he added, ‘that Privy Seal should give a warrant to gaol your la’ship. But it was still more certain that the King’s Highness should pardon you. Therefore no bones should have been broken. And I did come myself to take you to a safe place, and to enlighten you as to the comedy.’

‘Oh, Judas, Judas,’ she cried.

‘Could you but have trusted me,’ he said reproachfully, ‘you had spared yourself a mad canter and me a maimed arm.’

‘Why, you have done well,’ the King said heavily. ‘But you speak this lady too saucily.’

He was in a high and ponderous good humour, but he
stayed to reflect for a moment, with his head on one side, to see what he had gained.

‘This letter is written,’ he said. ‘But Cromwell holdeth it. How, then, has it profited me?’

‘Why,’ Throckmorton said, ‘Privy Seal shall come to bring the letter to your Highness; your Highness shall deliver it to me; I to the cook; the cook to the ambassador; the ambassador to the kings. And so the kings shall be prayed, by your daughter, whom they heed, to stay all unfriendly hands against your Highness.’

‘You are a shrewd fellow,’ the King said.

‘I have a shrewd ache in the head,’ the spy answered. ‘If you would give me a boon, let me begone.’

The King got stiffly up from his stool, and, bracing his feet firmly, gave the spy one hand. The tall man shook upon his legs.

‘Why, I have done well!’ he said, smiling. ‘Now Privy Seal shall take me for his very bedfellow, until it shall please your Highness to deal with him for good and all.’

He went, waveringly, along the corridor, brushing the hangings with his shoulder.

Katharine stood out before the King.

‘Now I will get me gone,’ she said. ‘This is no place for me.’

He surveyed her amiably, resting his hands on his red-clothed thighs as he sat his legs akimbo on his stool.

‘Why, it is main cold here,’ he said. ‘But bide a short space.’

‘I am not made for courts,’ she answered.

‘We will go pray anon,’ he quieted her, with his hand stretched out. ‘Give me a space for meditation, I am not yet in the mood for prayer.’

She pleaded, ‘Let me begone.’

‘Body of God,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘It is fitting that at this time that you do pray. You have escaped a great peril. But I am wont to drive away earthly passions ere I come before the Throne of grace.’