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 w
ander 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.’
PART THREE
The King Moves
I
MARCH 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.
‘Aye, and we have racks to be stretched on and hangmen to stretch them,’ the printer answered. ‘Is it with the sound of ordnance that a Queen is best welcomed? When she came to Westminster, what welcome had she? Sirs, I tell you the Mayor of London brought only barges and pennons and targets to her honour. The King’s Highness ordered no better state; therefore the King’s Highness honoureth not this Queen.’
A scrivener who had copied chronicles for another printer answered him:
‘Master Printer John Badge, ye are too much in love with velvet; ye are too avid of gold. Earlier records of this realm told of blows struck, of ships setting sail, of godly ways of life and of towns in France taken by storm. But in your books of the new reign we read all day of cloths of estate, of cloth of gold, of blue silk full of eyes of gold, of garlands of laurels set with brims of gold, of gilt bars, of crystal corals, of black velvet set with stones, and of how the King and his men do shift their suits six times in one day. The fifth Harry never shifted his harness for fourteen days in the field.’
The printer shrugged his enormous shoulders.
‘Oh, ignorant!’ he said. ‘A hundred years ago kings made war with blows. Now it is done with black velvets or the lack of black velvets. And I love laurel with brims of gold if such garlands crown a Queen of our faith. And I lament their lack if by it the King’s Highness maketh war upon our faith. And Privy Seal shall dine with the Bishop of Winchester, and righteousness kiss with the whoredom of abomination.’
‘An my Lord Cromwell knew how many armed men he had to his beck he had never made peace with Winchester,’ the man from Kent cried. He rose from his bench and went to stand near the fire.
A door-latch clicked, and in the dark corner of the room appeared something pale and shining—the face of old Badge, who held open the stair-door and grinned at the assembly, leaning down from a high step.
‘Weather-bound all,’ he quavered maliciously. ‘I will tell you why.’
He slipped down the step, pulling behind him the large figure of his grandchild Margot.
‘Get you gone back,’ the printer snarled at her.
‘That will I not,’ her gruff voice came. ‘See where my back is wet with the drippings through the roof.’
She and her grandfather had been sitting on a bed in the upper room, but the rain was trickling now through the thatch. The printer made a nervous stride to his printing stick, and, brandishing it in the air, poured out these words:
‘Whores and harlots shall not stand in the sight of the godly.’
Margot shrank back upon the stair-place and remained there, holding the bolt of the door in her hand, ready to shut off access to the upper house.
‘I will take no beating, uncle,’ she panted; ‘this is my grandfather’s abode and dwelling.’
The old man was sniggering towards the window. He had gathered up his gown about his knees and picked his way between the pools of water on the floor and the Lutherans on their chairs towards the window. He mounted upon an oak chest that stood beneath the casement and, peering out, chuckled at what he saw.
‘A mill race and a dam,’ he muttered. ‘This floor will be a duck pond in an hour.’
‘Harlot and servant of a harlot,’ the printer called to his niece. The Lutherans, who came from houses where father quarrelled with son and mother with daughter, hardly troubled more than to echo the printer’s words of abuse. But one of them, a grizzled man in a blue cloak, who had been an ancient friend of the household, broke out:
‘Naughty wench, thou wast at the ordeal of Dr Barnes.’
Margot, drawing her knees up to her chin where she sat on the stairs, answered nothing. Had she not feared her uncle’s stick, she was minded to have taken a mop to the floor and to have put a clout in the doorway.
‘Abominable naughty wench,’ the grizzled man went on. ‘How had ye the heart to aid in that grim scene? Knew ye no duty to your elders?’
Margot closed the skirts round her ankles to keep away the upward draught and answered reasonably:
‘Why, Neighbour Ned, my mistress made me go with her to see a heretic swinged. And, so dull is it in our service, that I would go to a puppet show far less fine and thank thee for the chance.’
The printer spat upon the floor when she mentioned her mistress.
‘I will catechize,’ he muttered. ‘Answer me as I charge thee.’
The old man, standing on the chest, tapped one of the Germans on the shoulder.
‘See you that wall, friend?’ he laughed. ‘Is
it not a noble dam to stay the flood back into our house? Now the Lord Cromwell …’
The Lanzknecht rolled his eyes round, because he understood no English. The old man went on talking, but no one there, not even Margot Poins, heeded him. She looked at her uncle reasonably, and said:
‘Why, an thou wilt set down thy stick I will even consider thee, uncle.’ He threw the stick into the corner and immediately she went to fetch a mop from the cooking closet, where there lived a mumbling old housekeeper. The printer followed her with gloomy eyes.
‘Is not thy mistress a naughty woman?’ he asked, as a judge talks to a prisoner condemned.
She answered, ‘Nay,’ as if she had hardly attended to him.
‘Is she not a Papist?’
She answered, ‘Aye,’ in the same tone and mopped the floor beneath a man’s chair.
Her grandfather, standing high on the oak chest, so that his bonnet brushed the beams of the dark ceiling, quavered at her:
‘Would she not bring down this Crummock, whose wall hath formed a dam so that my land-space is now a stream and my house-floor a frog pond?’
She answered, ‘Aye, grandfer,’ and went on with her mopping.
‘Did she not go with a man to a cellar of the Rogues’ Sanctuary after Winchester’s feast?’ Neighbour Ned barked at her. ‘Such are they that would bring down our Lord!’
‘Did she not even so with her cousin before he went to Calais?’ her uncle asked.
Margot answered seriously:
‘Nay, uncle, no night but what she hath slept in these arms of mine that you see.’
‘Aye, you are her creature,’ Neighbour Ned groaned.
‘Foul thing,’ the printer shouted. ‘Eyes are upon thee and upon her. It was the worst day’s work that ever she did when she took thee to her arms. For I swear to God that her name shall be accursed in the land. I swear to God …’
He choked in his throat. His companions muttered Harlot; Strumpet; Spouse of the Fiend. And suddenly the printer shouted: