The Fifth Queen (32 page)

Her face appeared comely and smooth in his eyes, but she shook her head at him.

‘These be woeful and pretty stories,’ she said. ‘I would have you to tell me many of them.’

‘All through the night,’ he said eagerly, and made to clasp her in his arms. But she pushed him back again with her hand on his chest.

‘All through the night an you will,’ she said. ‘But first you shall tell a prettier tale before a man in a frock.’

He sprang full four feet back at one spring.

‘I have wedded no woman, yet,’ he said.

‘Then it is time you wed one now,’ she answered.

‘Oh widow, bethink you,’ he pleaded. ‘Would you spoil so pretty a tale? Would you humble so goodly a man’s pride?’

‘Why, it were a pity,’ she said. ‘But I am minded to take a husband.’

‘You have done well this ten years without one,’ he cried out.

Her face seemed to set like adamant as she turned her cheek to him.

‘Call it a woman’s mad freak,’ she said.

‘Six and twenty pupils in the fair game of love I have had,’ he said. ‘You shall be the seven and twentieth. Twenty and
seven are seven and two. Seven and two are nine. Now nine is the luckiest of numbers. Be you that one.’

‘Nay,’ she answered. ‘It is time you learned husbandry who have taught so many and earned so little.’

He slipped himself softly into the cushions beside her.

‘Would you spoil so fair a tale?’ he said. ‘Would you have me to break so many vows? I have promised a mort of women marriage, and so long as I be not wed I may keep faith with any one of them.’

She held her face away from him and laughed.

‘That is as it may be,’ she said. ‘But when you wed with me to-night you will keep faith with one woman.’

‘Woman,’ he pleaded. ‘I am a great scholar.’

‘Ay,’ she answered, ‘and great scholars have climbed to great estates.’

She continued to count the coins that came from his little money-bags; the shadow of her hood upon the great beams grew more portentous.

‘It is thought that your magistership may rise to be Chancellor of the Realm of England,’ she added.

He clutched his forehead.

‘Eheu!’ he said. ‘If you have heard men say that, you know that wedded to thee I could never climb.’

‘Then I shall very comfortably keep my inn here in Paris town,’ she answered. ‘You have here fourteen pounds and eleven shillings.’

He stretched forth his lean hands:

‘Why, I will marry thee in the morning,’ he said, and he moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue. Outside the door there was a shuffling of several feet.

‘I knew not other guests were in the house,’ he uttered, and fell again to kissing her.

‘Knew you not an envoy was come from Cleves?’ she whispered.

Her head fell back and he supported it with one trembling hand. He shook like a leaf when her voice rang out:

‘Au secours! Au secours!’

There was a great jangle, light fell into the dusky room through the doorhole, and he found himself beneath the eyes of many scullions with spits, cooks with carving forks, and kitchenmaids with sharpened distaffs of steel.

‘Now I will be wed this night,’ she laughed.

He moved to the end of the couch and blinked at her in the strong light.

‘I will be wed this night,’ she said again, and rearranged her head-dress, revealing, as her sleeves fell open, her white, plump arms.

‘Why, no!’ he answered irresolutely.

She said in French to her aids:

‘Come near him with the spits!’

They moved towards him, a white-clad body with their pointed things glittering in the light of torches. He sprang behind the great table against the window and seized the heavy-leaden sandarach. The French scullions knew, tho’ he had no French, that he would cleave one of their skulls, and they stood, a knot of seven—four men and three maids—in blue hoods, in the centre of the room.

‘By Mars and by Apollo!’ he said, ‘I was minded to wed with thee if I could no other way. But now, like Phaeton, I will cast myself from the window and die, or like the wretches thrown from the rock, called Tarpeian. I was minded to a folly: now I am minded rather for death.’

‘How nobly thy tongue doth wag, husband,’ she said, and cried in French for the rogues to be gone. When the door closed upon the lights she said in the comfortable gloom: ‘I dote upon thy words. My first was tongue-tied.’ She beckoned him to her and folded her arms. ‘Let us discourse upon this matter,’ she said comfortably. ‘Thus I will put it: you wed with me or spring from the window.’

‘I am even trapped?’ he asked.

‘So it comes to all foxes that too long seek for capons,’ she answered.

‘But consider,’ he said. He sat himself by the fireside upon a stool, being minded to avoid temptation.

‘I would have your magistership forget the rogues that be without,’ she said.

‘They were a nightmare’s tale,’ he said.

‘Yet forget them not too utterly,’ she answered. ‘For I am of some birth. My father had seven horses and never followed the plough.’

‘Oh buxom one!’ he answered. ‘Of a comfortable birth and girth thou art. Yet with thee around my neck I might not easily climb.’

‘Magister,’ she said, ‘whilst thou climbest in London town thy wife will bide in Paris.’

‘Consider!’ he said. ‘There is in London town a fair, large maid called Margot Poins.’

‘Is she more fair than I?’ she asked. ‘I will swear she is.’

He tilted his stool forward.

‘No; no, I swear it,’ he said eagerly.

‘Then I will swear she is more large.’

‘No; not one half so bounteous is her form,’ he answered, and moved across to the couch.

‘Then if you can bear her weight up you can bear mine,’ she said, and moved away from him.

‘Nay,’ he answered. ‘She would help me on,’ and he fumbled in the shadows for her hand. She drew herself together into a small space.

‘You affect her more than me,’ she said, with a swift motion simulating jealousy.

‘By the breasts of Venus, no!’ he answered.

‘Oh, once more use such words,’ she murmured, and surrendered to him her soft hand. He rubbed it between both of his cold ones and uttered:

‘By the Paphian Queen: by her teams of doves and sparrows! By the bower of Phyllis and the girdle of Egypt’s self! I love thee!’

She gurgled ‘oh’s’ of pleasure.

‘But this Margot Poins is tirewoman to the Lady Katharine Howard.’

‘I am tirewoman to mine own self alone,’ she said. ‘Therefore you love her better.’

‘Nay, oh nay,’ he said gently. ‘But this Lady Katharine Howard is mistress to the King’s self.’

‘And I have been mistress to no married man save my husbands,’ she answered. ‘Therefore you love this Margot Poins better.’

He fingered her soft palm and rubbed it across his own neck.

‘Nay, nay,’ he said. ‘But I must wed with Margot Poins.’

‘Why with her more than with me or any other of your score and seven?’ she said softly.

‘Since the Lady Katharine will be Queen,’ he answered, and once again he was close against her side. She sighed softly.

‘Thus if you wed with me you will never be Chancellor,’ she said.

‘I would not anger the Queen,’ he answered. She nestled bountifully and warmly against him.

‘Swear even again that you like me more than the fair, large wench in London town,’ she whispered against his ear.

‘Even as Jove prized Danaë above the Queen of Heaven, even as Narcissus prized his shadow above all the nymphs, even as Hercules placed Omphale above his strength, or even as David the King of the Jews Bathsheba above …’

She murmured ‘Oh, oh,’ and placed her arms around his shoulders.

‘How I love thy brave words!’

‘And being Chancellor,’ he swore, ‘I will come back to thee,
oh woman of the sweet smiles, honey of Hymettus, Cypriote wine …’

She moved herself a little from him in the darkness.

‘And if you do not wed with Margot Poins …’

‘I pray a plague may fall upon her, but I must wed with her,’ he answered. ‘Come now; come now!’

‘Else the Lady Katharine shall be displeased with your magistership?’

He sought to draw her to him, but she stiffened herself a little.

‘And this Lady Katharine is mistress to the King of England’s realm?’

His hands moved tremblingly towards her in the darkness.

‘And this Lady Katharine shall be Queen?’

A hiss of exasperation came upon his lips, for she had slipped from beneath his hands into the darkness.

‘Why, then, I will not stay your climbing,’ she said. ‘Goodnight,’ and in the darkness he heard her sob.

The couch fell backwards as he swore and sprang towards her voice.

‘Magister!’ she said. ‘Hands off! Unwed thou shalt not have me, for I have sworn it.’

‘I have sworn to wed seven and twenty women,’ he said, ‘and have wedded with none.’

‘Nay, nay,’ she sobbed. ‘Hands off. Henceforth I will make no vows—but no one but thee shall wed me.’

‘Then wed me, in God’s name!’ he cried, and, screaming:

‘
Ho là! Apportez le prestre!
’ she softened herself in his arms.

The magister confronted the lights, the leering scullions and the grinning maids with their great mantles; his brown, woodpecker-like face was alike crestfallen and thirsty with desire. A lean Dominican, with his brown cowl back and spectacles of horn, gabbled over his missal and took a crown’s fee—then asked another by way of penitence for the sin with
the maid locked up in another house. When they brought the bride favours of pink to pin into her gorget she said:

‘I long had loved thee for thy great words, husband. Therefore all these I had in readiness.’

With that knot fast upon him, the magister, clasping his gown upon his shins, looked askance at the floor. Whilst they made ready the bride, with great lights and laughter, she said:

‘I was minded to have a comfortable husband. And a comfortable husband is a husband much absent. What more comfortable than me in Paris town and thee in London city? I keep my inn here, thou mindest thy book there. Thou shalt here find a goodly capon upon occasion, and when thou hast a better house in London I will come share it.’

‘Trapped! Trapped!’ the magister muttered to himself. ‘Even as was Sir Launcelot!’

He considered of the fair and resentful Margot Poins whom it was incumbent indeed that he should wed: that Katharine Howard loved her well and was in these matters strait-laced. When his eyes measured his wife he licked his lips; when his eyes were on the floor his jaw fell. At best the new Mistress Udal would be in Paris. He looked at the rope tied round the thin middle of the brown priest, and suddenly he leered and cast off his cloak.

‘Let me remember to keep an equal mind in these hard matters,’ he quoted, and fell to laughing.

For he remembered that in England no marriage by a friar or monk held good in those years. Therefore he was the winner. And the long, square room, with the cave bed behind its shutter in the hollow of the wall, the light-coloured, square beams, and the foaming basin of bride-ale that a fat-armed girl in a blue kerseymere gown served out to scullion after scullion; the open windows from which a little knave was casting bride-pennies to some screaming beggars and women in the street; the blind hornman whose unseeing eyes glanced along the reed of his bassoon that he played before the open
door; the two saucy maids striving to wrest the bride’s stockings one from the other—all these things appeared friendly and jovial in his eyes. So that, when one of the maids, wresting the stocking, fell hard against him, he clasped her in his arms and kissed her till she struggled from him to drink a mug of bride-ale.

‘Hodie mihi: mihi atque cras!’
he said. For it was in his mind a goodly thing to pay a usuress with base coins.

I
T WAS THREE DAYS LATER
, in the morning, that his captress said to the Magister Udal:

‘Husband, it is time that I gave thee the bridal gift.’

The magister, happy with a bellyful of carp, bread and breakfast ale, muttered ‘Anan?’ from above his copy of Lucretius. He sat in the window-seat of the great stone kitchen. Upon one long iron spit before the fire fourteen trussed capons turned in unison; the wooden shoes of the basting-maid clattered industriously; and from the chimney came the clank of the invisible smoke-vanes and the besooted chains. The magister, who loved above all things warmth, a full stomach, a comfortable woman and a good book, had all these things; he was well minded to stay in Paris town for fourteen days, when they were to slay a brown pig from the Ardennes, against whose death he had written an elegy in Sapphics.

‘For,’ said his better half, standing before him with a great loaf clasped to her bosom, ‘if you turn a horse from the stable between full and half full, like as not he will return of fair will to the crib.’

‘Oh Venus and Hebe in one body,’ the magister said, ‘I am minded to end here my scholarly days.’

‘I am minded that ye shall travel far erstwhile,’ she answered.

He laid down his book upon a clean chopping-board.

‘I know a good harbourage,’ he said.

She sat down beside him in the window and fingered the fur on his long gown, saying that, in this light, it showed ill-favouredly worm-eaten; and he answered that he never had wishes nor money for gowning himself, who cultivated the muses upon short commons. She turned rightway to the front the medal upon his chest, and folded her arms.

‘Whilst ye have no better house to harbour us,’ she said, ‘this shall serve. Let us talk of the to-come.’

He groaned a little.

‘Let us love to-day that’s here,’ he said, ‘I will read thee a verse from Lucretius, and you shall tell me the history of that fourth capon’—he pointed to a browned carcase that, upon the spit, whirled its elbows a full third longer than any of the line.

‘That is the master roasting-piece,’ she said, ‘so he browns there not too far, nor too close, for the envoy’s own eating.’

He considered the chicken with his head to one side.

‘It is the place of a wife to be subject to her lord,’ he said.

‘It is the place of a husband that he fendeth for ’s wife,’ she answered him. She tapped her fingers determinedly upon her elbows.