The Fifth Queen (67 page)

‘Shall there never be an end of old things?’ she said.

‘Even what old things?’ the Lady Mary asked.

The Queen shrugged her shoulders.

‘It was not they I came to talk of,’ she said. ‘I would sleep early, for the King comes to-morrow and I have much to plead with you.’

‘I am weary of your pleadings,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘You have pleaded enow. If you would be fresh for the King, be first fresh for me. Start a new hare.’

The Queen would have gainsaid her.

‘I have said you have pleaded enow,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘And you have pleaded enow. This no more amuses me. I will wager I guess from whom your letter was.’

Reluctantly the Queen held her peace; that day she had read in many ancient books, as well profane as of the Fathers of the Church, and she had many things to say, and they were near her lips and warm in her heart. She was much minded to have good news to give the King against his coming on the morrow; the great good news that should set up in that realm once more abbeys and chapters and the love of God. But she could not press these sayings upon the girl, though she pleaded still with her blue eyes.

‘Your letter is from Sir Nicholas Throckmorton,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘Even let me read it.’

‘You did know that that knight was come to Court again?’ the Queen said.

‘Aye; and that you would not see him, but like a fool did bid him depart again.’

‘You will ever be calling me a fool,’ Katharine retorted, ‘for giving ear to my conscience and hating spies and the suborners of false evidence.’

‘Why,’ the Lady Mary answered, ‘I do call it a folly to refuse to give ear to the tale of a man who has ridden far and fast, and at the risk of a penalty to tell it you.’

‘Why,’ Katharine said, ‘if I did forbid his coming to the Court under a penalty, it was because I would not have him here.’

‘Yet he much loved you, and did you some service.’

‘He did me a service of lies,’ the Queen said, and she was angry. ‘I would not have had him serve me. By his false witness Cromwell was cast down to make way for me. But I had rather have cast down Cromwell by the truth which is from God. Or I had rather he had never been cast down. And that I swear.’

‘Well, you are a fool,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘Let me look upon this knight’s letter.’

‘I have not read it,’ Katharine said.

‘Then will I,’ the Lady Mary answered. She made across the room to where the paper lay upon the table beside the great globe of the earth. She came back; she turned her round to the Queen; she made her a deep reverence, so that her black gown spread out stiffly around her, and, keeping her eyes ironically on Katharine’s face, she mounted backward up to the chair that was beneath the dais.

Katharine put her hand over her heart.

‘What mean you?’ she said. ‘You have never sat there before.’

‘That is not true,’ the Lady Mary said harshly. ‘For this last three days I have practised how, thus backward, I might climb to this chair and, thus seemly, sit in it.’

‘Even then?’ Katharine asked.

‘Even then I will be asked no more questions,’ her step-daughter answered. ‘This signifieth that I ha’ heard enow o’ thy voice, Queen.’

Katharine did not dare to speak, for she knew well this girl’s tyrannous and capricious nature. But she was nearly faint with emotion and reached sideways for the chair at the table; there
she sat and gazed at the girl beneath the dais, her lips parted, her body leaning forward.

Mary spread out the great sheet of Throckmorton’s parchment letter upon her black knees. She bent forward so that the light from the mantel at the room-end might fall upon the writing.

‘It seemeth,’ she said ironically, ‘that one descrieth better at the humble end of the room than here on high’—and she read whilst the Queen panted.

At last she raised her eyes and bent them darkly upon the Queen’s face.

‘Will you do what this knight asks?’ she uttered. ‘For what he asks seemeth prudent.’

‘A’ God’s name,’ Katharine said, ‘let me not now hear of this man.’

‘Why,’ the Lady Mary answered coolly, ‘if I am to be of the Queen’s alliance I must be of the Queen’s council and my voice have a weight.’

‘But will you? Will you?’ Katharine brought out.

‘Will you listen to my voice?’ Mary said. ‘I will not listen to yours. Hear now what this goodly knight saith. For, if I am to be your well-wisher, I must call him goodly that so well wishes to you.’

Katharine wrung her hands.

‘Ye torture me,’ she said.

‘Well, I have been tortured,’ Mary answered, ‘and I have come through it and live.’

She swallowed in her throat, and thus, with her eyes upon the writing, brought out the words—

‘This knight bids you beware of one Mary Lascelles or Hall, and her brother, Edward Lascelles, that is of the Archbishop’s service.’

‘I will not hear what Throckmorton says,’ Katharine answered.

‘Ay, but you shall,’ Mary said, ‘or I come down from this
chair. I am not minded to be allied to a Queen that shall be undone. That is not prudence.’

‘God help me!’ the Queen said.

‘God helps most willingly them that take counsel with themselves and prudence,’ her step-daughter answered; ‘and these are the words of the knight.’ She held up the parchment and read out:

‘ “Therefore I—and you know how much your well-wisher I be—upon my bended knees do pray you do one of two things: either to put out both these twain from your courts and presence, or if that you cannot or will not do, so richly to reward them as that you shall win them to your service. For a little rotten fruit will spread a great stink; a small ferment shall pollute a whole well. And these twain, I am advised, assured, convinced, and have convicted them, will spread such a rotten fog and mist about your reputation and so turn even your good and gracious actions to evil seeming that—I swear and vow, O most high Sovereign, for whom I have risked, as you wot, life, limb and the fell rack—” ’

The Lady Mary looked up at the Queen’s face.

‘Will you not listen to the pleadings of this man?’ she said.

‘I will so reward Lascelles and his sister as they have merited,’ the Queen said. ‘So much and no more. And not all the pleadings of this knight shall move me to listen to any witness that he brings against any man nor maid. So help me, God; for I do know how he served his master Cromwell.’

‘For love of thee!’ the Lady Mary said.

The Queen wrung her hands as if she would wash a stain from them.

‘God help me!’ she said. ‘I prayed the King for the life of Privy Seal that was!’

‘He would not hear thee,’ the Lady Mary said. She looked long upon the Queen’s face with unmoved and searching eyes.

‘It is a new thing to me,’ she said, ‘to hear that you prayed for Privy Seal’s life.’

‘Well, I prayed,’ Katharine said, ‘for I did not think he worked treason against the King.’

The Lady Mary straightened her back where she sat.

‘I think I will not show myself less queenly than you,’ she said. ‘For I be of a royal race. But hear this knight.’

And again she read:

‘ “I have it from the lips of the cornet that came with this Lascelles to fetch this Mary Lascelles or Hall: I, Throckmorton, a knight, swear that I heard with mine own ears, how for ever as they rode, this Lascelles plied this cornet with questions about your high self. As thus: ‘Did you favour any gentleman when you rode out, the cornet being of your guard?’ or, ‘Had he heard a tale of one Pelham, a knight, of whom you should have taken a kerchief?’—and this, that and the other, for ever, till the cornet spewed at the hearing of him. Now, gracious and most high Sovereign Consort, what is it that this man seeketh?” ’

Again the Lady Mary paused to look at the Queen.

‘Why,’ Katharine said, ‘so mine enemies will talk of me. I had been the fool you styled me if I had not awaited it. But—’ and she drew up her body highly. ‘My life is such and such shall be that none such arrow shall pierce my corslet.’

‘God help you,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘What has your life to do with it, if you will not cut out the tongues of slanderers?’

She laughed mirthlessly, and added—

‘Now this knight concludes—and it is as if he writhed his hands and knelt and whined and kissed your feet—he concludeth with a prayer that you will let him come again to the Court. “For,” says he, “I will clean your vessels, serve you at table, scrape the sweat off your horse, or do all that is vilest. But suffer me to come that I may know and report to you what there is whispered in these jail places.” ’

Katharine Howard said—

‘I had rather borrow Pelham’s kerchief.’

The Lady Mary dropped the parchment on to the floor at her side.

‘I rede you do as this knight wills,’ she said; ‘for, amidst the little sticklers of spies that are here, this knight, this emperor of spies, moves as a pillow of shadow. He stalks amongst them as, in the night, the dread and awful lion of Numidia. He shall be to you more a corslet of proof than all the virtue that your life may borrow from the precepts of Diana. We, that are royal and sit in high places, have our feet in such mire.’

‘Now before God on His throne,’ Katharine Howard said, ‘if you be of royal blood, I will teach you a lesson. For hear me—’

‘No, I will hear thee no more,’ the Lady Mary answered; ‘I will teach thee. For thou art not the only one in this land to be proud. I will show thee such a pride as shall make thee blush.’

She stood up and came slowly down the steps of the dais. She squared back her shoulders and folded her hands before her; she erected her head, and her eyes were dark. When she was come to where the Queen sat, she kneeled down.

‘I acknowledge thee to be my mother,’ she said, ‘that have married the King, my father. I pray you that you do take me by the hand and set me in that seat that you did raise for me. I pray you that you do style me a princess, royal again in this land. And I pray you to lesson me and teach me that which you would have me do as well as that which it befits me to do. Take me by the hand.’

‘Nay, it is my lord that should do this,’ the Queen whispered. Before that she had started to her feet; her face had a flush of joy; her eyes shone with her transparent faith. She brushed back a strand of hair from her brow; she folded her hands on her breasts and raised her glance upwards to seek the dwelling-place of Almighty God and the saints in their glorious array.

‘It is my lord should do this!’ she said again.

‘Speak no more words,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘I have heard enow of thy pleadings. You have heard me say that.’

She continued upon her knees.

‘It is thou or none!’ she said. ‘It is thou or none shall witness this my humiliation and my pride. Take me by the hand. My patience will not last for ever.’

The Queen set her hand between the girl’s. She raised her to her feet.

When the Lady Mary stood high and shadowy, in black, with her white face beneath that dais, she looked down upon the Queen.

‘Now, hear me!’ she said. ‘In this I have been humble to you; but I have been most proud. For I have in my veins a greater blood than thine or the King’s, my father’s. For, inasmuch as Tudor blood is above Howard’s, so my mother’s, that was royal of Spain, is above Tudor’s. And this it is to be royal—

‘I have had you, a Queen, kneel before me. It is royal to receive petitions—more royal still it is to grant them. And in this, further, I am more proud. For, hearing you say that you had prayed the King for Cromwell’s life, I thought, this is a virtue-mad Queen. She shall most likely fall!—Prudence biddeth me not to be of her party. But shall I, who am royal, be prudent? Shall I, who am of the house of Aragon, be more afraid than thou, a Howard?

‘I tell you—No! If you will be undone for the sake of virtue, blindly, and like a fool, unknowing the consequences, I, Mary of Aragon and England, will make alliance with thee, knowing that the alliance is dangerous. And, since it is more valiant to go to a doom knowingly than blindfold, so I do show myself more valiant than thou. For well I know—since I saw my mother die—that virtue is a thing profitless, and impracticable in this world. But you—you think it shall set up temporal monarchies and rule peoples. Therefore, what you do you do for profit. I do it for none.’

‘Now, by the Mother of God,’ Katharine Howard said, ‘this is the gladdest day of my life.’

‘Pray you,’ Mary said, ‘get you gone from my sight and hearing, for I endure ill the appearance and sound of joy. And, Queen, again I bid you beware of calling any day fortunate till its close. For, before midnight you may be ruined utterly. I have known more Queens than thou. Thou art the fifth I have known.’

She added—

‘For the rest, what you will I will do: submission to the King and such cozening as he will ask of me. God keep you, for you stand in need of it.’

At supper that night there sat all such knights and lordlings as ate at the King’s expense in the great hall that was in the midmost of the castle, looking on to the courtyard. There were not such a many of them, maybe forty; from the keeper of the Queen’s records, the Lord d’Espahn, who sat at the table head, down to the lowest of all, the young Poins, who sat far below the salt-cellar. The greater lords of the Queen’s household, like the Lord Dacre of the North, did not eat at this common table, or only when the Queen herself there ate, which she did at midday when there was a feast.

Nevertheless, this eating was conducted with gravity, the Lord d’Espahn keeping a vigilant eye down the table, which was laid with a fair white cloth. It cost a man a fine to be drunk before the white meats were eaten—unless, indeed, a man came drunk to the board—and the salt-cellar of state stood a-midmost of the cloth. It was of silver from Holland, and represented a globe of the earth, opened at the top, and supported by knights’ bannerets.

The hall was all of stone, with creamy walls, only marked above the iron torch-holds with brandons of soot. A scutcheon of the King’s arms was above one end-door, with the Queen’s above the other. Over each window were notable
deers’ antlers, and over each side-door, that let in the servers from the courtyard, was a scutcheon with the arms of a king deceased that had visited the castle. The roof was all gilded and coloured, and showed knaves’ faces leering and winking, so that when a man was in drink, and looked upwards with his head on his chair back, these appeared to have life. The hall was called the Dacre Hall, because the Lords Dacre of the North had built it to be an offering to various kings that died whilst it was a-building.