‘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 an
d 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.
V
THE KING 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.’
Cranmer looked round upon the lords below them; they were all silent but only the Duke of Norfolk who laughed to the Lord Mayor. The Lord Mayor, a burly man, was more pallid and haggard than any. All the others had fear for themselves written upon their faces. But the citizen was not used to these trials, of which the others had seen so many.
The Archbishop fell on his knees on the step before the King’s throne.
‘Gracious and dread Lord,’ he said, and his low voice trembled like that of a schoolboy, ‘Saviour, Lord, and Fount of Justice of this realm! Hitherto these trials have been of traitor-felons and villains outside the circle of your house. Now that they be judged and dead, we, your lords, pray you that you put off from you this most heavy task of judge. For inasmuch as we live by your life and have health by your health, in this realm afflicted with many sores that you alone can heal and dangers that you alone can ward off, so we have it assured and certain that many too great labours and matters laid upon you imperil us all. In that, as well for our selfish fears as for the great love, self-forgetting, that we have of your person, we pray you that—coming now to the trial of this your wife—you do rest, though well assured we are that greatly and courageously you would adventure it, upon the love of us your lords. Appoint, therefore, such a Commission as you shall well approve to make this most heavy essay and trial.’
So low was his voice that, to hear him, many lords rose from their seats and came over against the throne. Thus all that company were in the upper part of the hall, and through the great window at the further end the sun shone down upon them, having parted the watery clouds. To their mass of black it gave blots and gouts of purple and blue and scarlet, coming through the dight panes.
‘Lay off this burden of trial and examination upon us that so willingly, though with sighs and groans, would bear it.’
Suddenly the King stood up and pointed, his jaw fallen open. Katharine Howard was coming up the floor of the hall. Her hands were folded before her; her face was rigid and calm; she looked neither to right nor to left, but only upon the King’s face. At the edge of the sunlight she halted, so that she stood, a black figure in the bluish and stony gloom of the hall with the high roof a great way above her head. All the lords began to pull off their bonnets, only Norfolk said that he would not uncover before a harlot.
The Queen, looking upon Henry’s face, said with icy and cold tones—
‘I would have you to cease this torturing of witnesses. I will make con
fession.’
No man then had a word to say. Norfolk had no word either.
‘If you will have me confess to heresy, I will confess to heresy; if to treason, to treason. If you will have me confess to adultery, God help me and all of you, I will confess to adultery and all such sins.’
The King cried out—
‘No! no!’ like a beast that is stabbed to the heart; but with cold eyes the Queen looked back at him.
‘If you will have it adultery before marriage, it shall be so. If it be to be falseness to my Lord’s bed, it shall be so; if it be both, in the name of God, be it both, and where you will and how. If you will have it spoken, here I speak it. If you will have it written, I will write out such words as you shall bid me write. I pray you leave my poor women be, especially them that be sick, for there are none that do not love me, and I do think that my death is all that you need.’
She paused; there was no sound in the hall but the strenuous panting of the King.
‘But whether,’ she said, ‘you shall believe this confession of mine, I leave to you that very well do know my conversation and my manner of life.’
Again she paused and said—
‘I have spoken. To it I will add that heartily I do thank my sovereign lord that raised me up. And, in public, I do say it, that he hath dealt justly by me. I pray you pardon me for having delayed thus long your labours. I will get me gone.’
Then she dropped her eyes to the ground.
Again the King cried out—
‘No! no!’ and, stumbling to his feet he rushed down upon his courtiers and round the table. He came upon her before she was at the distant door.
‘You shall not go!’ he said. ‘Unsay! unsay!’
She said, ‘Ah!’ and recoiled before him with an obdurate and calm repulsion.
‘Get ye gone, all you minions and hounds,’ he cried. And running in upon them he assailed them with huge blows and curses, sobbing lamentably, so that they fled up the steps and out on to the rooms behind the throne. He came sobbing, swift and maddened, panting and crying out, back to where she awaited him.
‘Unsay! unsay!’ he cried out.