The Fifth Queen (75 page)

‘Ah,’ she cried, ‘he threated that if I would not give evidence I must go back to Lincolnshire. You do not know what it is to go back to Lincolnshire. Ah, God! the old father, the old house, the wet. My clothes were all mouldered. I was willing to give true evidence to save myself, but they twisted it to false. It was the Duke of Norfolk …’

The Lady Mary came slowly over the floor.

‘Against whom did you give your evidence?’ she said, and her voice was cold, hard, and commanding.

Mary Hall covered her face with her hands, and wailed desolately in a high note, like a wolf’s howl, that reverberated in that dim gallery.

The Lady Mary struck her a hard blow with the cover of her book upon the hands and the side of her head.

‘Against whom did you give your evidence?’ she said again.

The woman fell over upon one hand, the other she raised to shield herself. Her eyes were flooded with great teardrops; her mouth was open in an agony. The Lady Mary raised her book to strike again: its covers were of wood, and its angles bound with silver work. The woman screamed out, and then uttered—

‘Against Dearham and one Mopock first. And then against Sir T. Culpepper.’

The Queen stood up to her height; her hand went over her heart; the netted purse dropped to the floor soundlessly.

‘God help me!’ Mary Hall cried out. ‘Dearham and Culpepper are both dead!’

The Queen sprang back three paces.

‘How dead!’ she cried. ‘They were not even ill.’

‘Upon the block,’ the maid said. ‘Last night, in the dark, in their gaols.’

The Queen let her hands fall slowly to her sides.

‘Who did this?’ she said, and Mary Hall answered—

‘It was the King!’

The Lady Mary set her book under her arm.

‘Ye might have known it was the King,’ she said harshly. The Queen was as still as a pillar of ebony and ivory, so black her dress was, and so white her face and pendant hands.

‘I repent me! I repent me!’ the maid cried out. ‘When I heard that they were dead I repented me and came here. The old Duchess of Norfolk is in gaol: she burned the letters of Dearham! The Lady Rochford is in gaol, and old Sir Nicholas, and the Lady Cicely that was ever with the Queen; the Lord Edmund Howard shall to gaol and his lady.’

‘Why,’ the Lady Mary said to the Queen, ‘if you had not had such a fear of nepotism, your father and mother and grandmother and cousin had been here about you, and not so easily taken.’

The Queen stood still whilst all her hopes fell down.

‘They have taken Lady Cicely that was ever with me,’ she said.

‘It was the Duke of Norfolk that pressed me most,’ Mary Lascelles cried out.

‘Aye, he would,’ the Lady Mary answered.

The Queen tottered upon her feet.

‘Ask her more,’ she said. ‘I will not speak with her.’

‘The King in his council …’ the girl began.

‘Is the King in his council upon these matters?’ the Lady Mary asked.

‘Aye, he sitteth there,’ Mary Hall said. ‘And he hath heard evidence of Mary Trelyon the Queen’s maid, how that the Queen’s Highness did bid her begone on the night that Sir T. Culpepper came to her room, before he came. And how that the Queen was very insistent that she should go, upon the score of fatigue and the lateness of the hour. And she hath deponed that on other nights, too, this has happened, that the Queen’s Highness, when she hath come late to bed, hath
equally done the same thing. And other her maids have deponed how the Queen hath sent them from her presence and relieved them of tasks—’

‘Well, well,’ the Lady Mary said, ‘often I have urged the Queen that she should be less gracious. Better it had been if she had beat ye all as I have done; then had ye feared to betray her.’

‘Aye,’ Mary Hall said, ‘it is a true thing that your Grace saith there.’

‘Call me not your Grace,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘I will be no Grace in this court of wolves and hogs.’

That was the sole thing that she said to show she was of the Queen’s party. But ever she questioned the kneeling woman to know what evidence had been given, and of the attitude of the lords.

The young Poins had sworn roundly that the Queen had bidden him to summon no guards when her cousin had broken in upon her. Only Udal had said that he knew nothing of how Katharine had agreed with her cousin whilst they were in Lincolnshire. It had been after his time there that Culpepper came. It had been after his time, too, and whilst he lay in chains at Pontefract that Culpepper had come to her door. He stuck to that tale, though the Duke of Norfolk had beat and threatened him never so.

‘Why, what wolves Howards be,’ the Lady Mary said, ‘for it is only wolves, of all beasts, that will prey upon the sick of their kind.’

The Queen stood there, swaying back as if she were very sick, her eyes fast closed, and the lids over them very blue.

It was only when the Lady Mary drew from the woman an account of the King’s demeanour that she showed a sign of hearing.

‘His Highness,’ the woman said, ‘sate always mute.’

‘His Highness would,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘He is in that at least royal—that he letteth jackals do his hunting.’

It was only when the Archbishop of Canterbury, reading from the indictment of Culpepper, had uttered the words: ‘did by the obtaining of the Lady Rochford meet with the Queen’s Highness by night in a secret and vile place,’ that the King had called out—

‘Body of God! mine own bedchamber!’ as if he were hatefully mocking the Archbishop.

The Queen leant suddenly forward—

‘Said he no more than that?’ she cried eagerly.

‘No more, oh your dear Grace,’ the maid said. And the Queen shuddered and whispered—

‘No more!—And I have spoken to this woman to obtain no more than “no more.” ’

Again she closed her eyes, and she did not again speak, but hung her head forward as if she were thinking.

‘Heaven help me!’ the maid said.

‘Why, think no more of Heaven,’ the Lady Mary said, ‘there is but the fire of hell for such beasts as you.’

‘Had you such a brother as mine—’ Mary Hall began. But the Lady Mary cried out—

‘Cease, dog! I have a worse father, but you have not found him force me to work vileness.’

‘All the other Papists have done worse than I,’ Mary Hall said, ‘for they it was that forced us by threats to speak.’

‘Not one was of the Queen’s side?’ the Lady Mary said.

‘Not one,’ Mary Hall answered. ‘Gardiner was more fierce against her than he of Canterbury, the Duke of Norfolk than either.’

The Lady Mary said—

‘Well! well!’

‘Myself I did hear the Duke of Norfolk say, when I was drawn to give evidence, that he begged the King to let him tear my secrets from my heart. For so did he abhor the abominable deeds done by his two nieces, Anne Boleyn and Katharine Howard, that he could no longer desire to live. And he
said neither could he live longer without some comfortable assurance of His Highness’s royal favour. And so he fell upon me—’

The woman fell to silence. Without, the rain had ceased, and, like heavy curtains trailing near the ground, the clouds began to part and sweep away. A horn sounded, and there went a party of men with pikes across the terrace.

‘Well, and what said you?’ the Lady Mary said.

‘Ask me not,’ Mary Lascelles said woefully. She averted her eyes to the floor at her side.

‘By God, but I will know,’ the Lady Mary snarled. ‘You shall tell me.’ She had that of royal bearing from her sire that the woman was amazed at her words, and, awakening like one in a dream, she rehearsed the evidence that had been threated from her.

She had told of the lascivious revels and partings, in the maid’s garret at the old Duchess’s, when Katharine had been a child there. She had told how Marnock the musicker had called her his mistress, and how Dearham, Katharine’s cousin, had beaten him. And how Dearham had given Katharine a half of a silver coin.

‘Well, that is all true,’ the Lady Mary said. ‘How did you perjure yourself?’

‘In the matter of the Queen’s age,’ the woman faltered.

‘How that?’ the Lady Mary asked.

‘The Duke would have me say that she was more than a young child.’

The Lady Mary said, ‘Ah! ah! there is the yellow dog!’ She thought for a moment.

‘And you said?’ she asked at last.

‘The Duke threated me and threated me. And say I, “Your Grace must know how young she was.” And says he, “I would swear that at that date she was no child, but that I do not know how many of these nauseous Howard brats there be. Nor yet the order in which they came. But this I will swear
that I think there has been some change of the Queen with a whelp that died in the litter, that she might seem more young. And of a surety she was always learned beyond her assumed years, so that it was not to be believed.” ’

Mary Lascelles closed her eyes and appeared about to faint.

‘Speak on, dog,’ Mary said.

The woman roused herself to say with a solemn piteousness—

‘This I swear that before this trial, when my brother pressed me and threated me thus to perjure myself, I abhorred it and spat in his face. There was none more firm—nor one half so firm as I—against him. But oh, the Duke and the terror—and to be in a ring of so many villainous men …’

‘So that you swore that the Queen’s Highness, to your knowledge, was older than a child,’ the Lady Mary pressed her.

‘Ay; they would have me say that it was she that commanded to have these revels …’

She leaned forward with both her hands on the floor, in the attitude of a beast that goes four-footed. She cried out—

‘Ask me no more! ask me no more!’

‘Tell! tell! Beast!’ the Lady Mary said.

‘They threated me with torture,’ the woman panted. ‘I could do no less. I heard Margot Poins scream.’

‘They have tortured her?’ the Lady Mary said.

‘Ay, and she was in her pains elsewise,’ the woman said.

‘Did she say aught?’ the Lady Mary said.

‘No! no!’ the woman panted. Her hair had fallen loose in her coif, it depended on to her shoulder.

‘Tell on! tell on!’ the Lady Mary said.

‘They tortured her, and she did not say one word more, but ever in her agony cried out, “Virtuous! virtuous!” till her senses went.’

Mary Hall again raised herself to her knees.

‘Let me go, let me go,’ she moaned. ‘I will not speak before the Queen. I had been as loyal as Margot Poins.… But I will
not speak before the Queen. I love her as well as Margot Poins. But … I will not—’

She cried out as the Lady Mary struck her, and her face was lamentable with its opened mouth. She scrambled to one knee; she got on both, and ran to the door. But there she cried out—

‘My brother!’ and fell against the wall. Her eyes were fixed upon the Lady Mary with a baleful despair, she gasped and panted for breath.

‘It is upon you if I speak,’ she said. ‘Merciful God, do not bid me speak before the Queen!’

She held out her hands as if she had been praying.

‘Have I not proved that I loved this Queen?’ she said. ‘Have I not fled here to warn her? Is it not my life that I risk? Merciful God! Merciful God! Bid me not to speak.’

‘Speak!’ the Lady Mary said.

The woman appealed to the Queen with her eyes streaming, but Katharine stood silent and like a statue with sightless eyes. Her lips smiled, for she thought of her Redeemer; for this woman she had neither ears nor eyes.

‘Speak!’ the Lady Mary said.

‘God help you, be it on your head,’ the woman cried out, ‘that I speak before the Queen. It was the King that bade me say she was so old. I would not say it before the Queen, but you have made me!’

The Lady Mary’s hands fell powerless to her sides, the book from her opened fingers jarred on the hard floor.

‘Merciful God!’ she said. ‘Have I such a father?’

‘It was the King!’ the woman said. ‘His Highness came to life when he heard these words of the Duke’s, that the Queen was older than she reported. He would have me say that the Queen’s Highness was of a marriageable age and contracted to her cousin Dearham.’

‘Merciful God!’ the Lady Mary said again. ‘Dear God, show me some way to tear from myself the sin of my begetting.
I had rather my mother’s confessor had been my father than the King! Merciful God!’

‘Never was woman pressed as I was to say this thing. And well ye wot—better than I did before—what this King is. I tell you—and I swear it—’

She stopped and trembled, her eyes, from which the colour had gone, wide open and lustreless, her face pallid and ashen, her mouth hanging open. The Queen was moving towards her.

She came very slowly, her hands waving as if she sought support from the air, but her head was erect.

‘What will you do?’ the Lady Mary said. ‘Let us take counsel!’

Katharine Howard said no word. It was as if she walked in her sleep.

T
HE
K
ING SAT ON THE RAISED THRONE
of his council chamber. All the Lords of his Council were there and all in black. There was Norfolk with his yellow face who feigned to laugh and scoff, now that he had proved himself no lover of the Queen’s. There was Gardiner of Winchester, sitting forward with his cruel and eager eyes upon the table. Next him was the Lord Mayor, Michael Dormer, and the Lord Chancellor. And so round the horse-shoe table against the wall sat all the other lords and commissioners that had been appointed to make inquiry. Sir Anthony Browne was there, and Wriothesley with his great beard, and the Duke of Suffolk with his hanging jaw. A silence had fallen upon them all, and the witnesses were all done with.

On high on his throne the King sat, monstrous and leaning over to one side, his face dabbled with tears. He gazed upon Cranmer who stood on high beside him, the King gazing upwards into his face as if for comfort and counsel.

‘Why, you shall save her for me?’ he said.

Cranmer’s face was haggard, and upon it too there were tears.

‘It were the gladdest thing that ever I did,’ he said, ‘for I do believe this Queen is not so guilty.’

‘God of His mercy bless thee, Cranmer,’ he said, and wearily he touched his black bonnet at the sacred name. ‘I have done all that I might when I spoke with Mary Hall. It shall save me her life.’