Privy Seal: His Last Venture

'Aye, pull down Cur Crummock,' Cicely said. 'I think the King shall not long stay away from thy desires.'

The old knight burst in:

'I take it ill that ye speak of these things. I take it ill. I will not have 'ee lose thy head in these quarrels.'

'Husband,' Cicely laughed round at him, 'three years ago Cur Crummock had the heads of all my menfolk, having sworn they were traitors.'

'The more reason that he have not mine and thine now,' the old knight answered grimly. 'I am not for these meddlings in things that concern neither me nor thee.'

Cicely Elliott set her elbows upon her knees and her chin upon her knuckles. She gazed into the fire and grew moody, as was her wont when she had chanced to think of her menfolk that Cromwell had executed.

'He might have had my head any day this four years,' she said. 'And had you lost my head and me you might have had any other maid any day that se'nnight.'

'Nay, I grow too old,' the knight answered. 'A week ago I dropped my lance.'

Cicely continued to gaze at nothings in the fire.

'For thee,' she said scornfully to Katharine, 'it were better thou hadst never been born than have meddled between kings and ministers and faiths and nuns. You are not made for this world. You talk too much. Get you across the seas to a nunnery.'

Katharine looked at her pitifully.

'Child,' she said, 'it was not I that spoke of thy menfolk.'

'Get thyself mewed up,' Cicely repeated more hotly; 'thou wilt set all this world by the ears. This is no place for virtues learned from learned books. This is an ill world where only evil men flourish.'

The old knight still fidgeted to be gone.

'Nay,' Katharine said seriously, 'ye think I will work mine own advantage with the King. But I do swear to thee I have it not in my mind.'

'Oh, swear not,' Cicely mumbled, 'all the world knoweth thee to be that make of fool.'

'I would well to get me made a nun – but first I will bring nunneries back from across the seas to this dear land.'

Cicely laughed again – for a long and strident while.

'You will come to no nunnery if you wait till then,' she said. 'Nuns without their heads have no vocation.'

'When Cromwell is down, no woman again shall lose her head,' Katharine answered hotly.

Cicely only laughed.

'No woman again!' Katharine repeated.

'Blood was tasted when first a queen fell on Tower Hill.' Cicely pointed her little finger at her. 'And the taste of blood, even as the taste of wine, ensureth a certain oblivion.'

'You miscall your King,' Katharine said.

Cicely laughed and answered: 'I speak of my world.'

Katharine's blood came hot to her cheeks.

'It is a new world from now on,' she answered proudly.

'Till a new queen's blood seal it an old one,' Cicely mocked her earnestness. 'Hadst best get thee to a nunnery across the seas.'

'The King did bid me bide here.' Katharine faltered in the least.

'You have spoken of it with him?' Cicely said. 'Why, God help you!'

Katharine sat quietly, her fair hair gilded by the pale light of the gusty day, her lips parted a little, her eyelids drooping. It behoved her to move little, for her scarlet dress was very nice in its equipoise, and fain she was to seem fine in Privy Seal's eyes.

'This King hath a wife to his tail,' Cicely mocked her.

The old knight had recovered his quiet; he had his hand upon his haunch, and spoke with his air of wisdom:

'I would have you to cease these talkings of dangerous things,' he said. 'I am Rochford of Bosworth Hedge. I have kept my head and my lands, and my legs from chains – and how but by leaving to talk of dangerous things?'

Katharine moved suddenly in her chair. This speech, though she had heard it a hundred times before, struck her now as so craven that she forgot alike her desire to keep fine and her friendship for the old man's new wife.

'Aye, you have been a coward all your life,' she said: for were not her dear nuns in Lincoln gaol, and this was a knight that should have redressed wrongs!

Old Rochford smiled with his air of tranquil wisdom and corpulent age.

'I have struck good blows,' he said. 'There have been thirteen ballads writ of me.'

'You have kept so close a tongue,' Katharine said to him hotly, 'that I know not what you love. Be you for the old faith, or for this Church of devils that Cromwell hath set up in the land? Did you love Queen Katharine or Queen Anne Boleyn? Were you glad when More died, or did you weep? Are you for the Statute of Users, or would you end it? Are you for having the Lady Mary called bastard – God pardon me the word! – or would you defend her with your life? – I do not know. I have spoken with you many times – but I do not know.'

Old Rochford smiled contentedly.

'I have saved my head and my lands in these perilous times by letting no man know,' he said.

'Aye,' Katharine met his words with scorn and appeal. 'You have kept your head on your shoulders and the rent from your lands in your poke. But oh, sir, it is certain that, being a man, you love either the new ways or the old; it is certain that, being a spurred knight, you should love the old ways. Sir, bethink you and take heed of this: that the angels of God weep above England, that the Mother of God weeps above England; that the saints of God do weep – and you, a spurred knight, do wield a good sword. Sir, when you stand before the gates of Heaven, what shall you answer the warders thereof?'

'Please God,' the old knight answered, 'that I have struck some good blows.'

'Aye; you have struck blows against the Scots,' Katharine said. 'But the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their kind – the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but – and how much the more? – against the foes of his God.'

In the full flow of her speaking there came in the great, blonde Margot Poins, her body-maid. She led by the hand the Magister Udal, and behind them followed, with his foxy eyes and long, smooth beard, the spy Throckmorton, vivid in his coat of green and scarlet stockings. And, at the antipathy of his approach, Katharine's emotions grew the more harrowing – as if she were determined to shew this evil supporter of her cause how a pure fight should be waged. They moved on tiptoe and stood against the hangings at the back.

She stretched out her hands to the old knight.

'Here you be in a pitiful and afflicted land from which the saints have been driven out; have you struck one blow for the saints of God? Nay, you have held your peace. Here you be where good men have been sent to the block: have you decried their fates? You have seen noble and beloved women, holy priests, blessed nuns defiled and martyred; you have seen the poor despoiled; you have seen that knaves ruled by aid of the devil about a goodly king. Have you struck one blow? Have you whispered one word?'

The colour rushed into Margot Poins' huge cheeks. She kept her mouth open to drink in her mistress's words, and Throckmorton waved his hands in applause. Only Udal shuffled in his broken-toed shoes, and old Rochford smiled benignly and tapped his chest above the chains.

'I have struck good blows in the quarrels that were mine,' he answered.

Katharine wrung her hands.