The Fifth Queen

by Ford Madox Ford

  ‘You are old for her,’ Katharine said.

  He laughed.

  ‘Since I have neither chick nor child and am main rich for a subject.’

  ‘Why, she is happy in her servant,’ Katharine said abstractedly. ‘You are a very famous knight.’

  ‘There are ballads of me,’ he answered complacently. ‘I pray to die in a good tulzie yet.’

  ‘If Cicely Elliott have her scarf in your helmet,’ Katharine said, ‘I may not give you mine.’ She was considering of her messenger to the bishop. ‘Will you do me a service?’

  ‘Why,’ he answered, with a gentle mockery, ‘you have one tricksy swordsman to bear your goodly colours.’

  Katharine turned clean about to him and looked at him with attention, to make out whether he might be such a man as would carry her letter for her.

  He returned her gaze directly, for he was proud of himself and of his fame. He had fought in all the wars that a man might fight in since he had been eighteen, and for fifteen years he had been captain of a troop employed by the Council in keeping back the Scots of the Borders. It was before Flodden Field that he had done his most famous deed, about which there were many ballads. Being fallen upon by a bevy of Scotsmen near a tall hedge, after he had been unhorsed, he had set his back into a thorn bush, and had fought for many hours in the rear of the Scottish troop, alone and with only his sword. The ballad that had been made about him said that seventeen corpses lay in front of the bush after the English won through to him. But since Cromwell had broken up the Northern Councils, and filled them again with his own men of no birth, the old man had come away from the Borders, disdaining to serve at the orders of knaves that had been butchers’ sons and worse. He owned much land and was very wealthy, and, having been very abstemious, because he came of an old time when knighthood had still some of the sacredness and austerity of a religion, he was a man very sound in limb and peaceable of disposition. In his day he had been esteemed the most graceful whiffler in the world: now he used only the heavy sword, because he was himself grown heavy.

  Katharine answered his gentle sneer at her cousin:

  ‘It is true that I have a servant, but he is gone and may not serve me.’ Yet the knight would find it in the books of chivalry that certain occasions or great quests allowed of a knight’s doing the errands of more than one lady: but one lady, as for instance the celebrated Dorinda, might have her claims asserted by an illimitable number of knights, and she begged him to do her a service.

  ‘I have heard of these Errantry books,’ he said. ‘In my day there were none such, and now I have no letters.’

  ‘How, then, do you pass the long days of peace,’ Katharine asked, ‘if you neither drink nor dice?’

  He answered: ‘In telling of old tales and teaching their paces to the King’s horses.’

  He drew himself up a little. He would have her understand that he was not a horse leech: but there was in these four-footed beasts a certain love for him, so that Richmond, the King’s favourite gelding, would stand still to be bled if he but laid his hand on the great creature’s withers to calm him. These animals he loved, since he grew old and might not follow arguments and disputations of hic and hoc. ‘There were none such in my day. But a good horse is the same from year’s end to year’s end …’

  ‘Will you carry a letter for me?’ Katharine asked.

  ‘I would have you let me show you some of his Highness’ beasts,’ he added. ‘I breed them to the manage myself. You shall find none that step more proudly in Christendom or Heathenasse.’

  ‘Why, I believe you,’ she answered. Suddenly she asked: ‘You have ridden as knight errant?’

  He said: ‘For three weeks only. Then the Scots came on too thick and fast to waste time.’ His dark eyes blinked and his broad lips moved humorously with his beard. ‘I swore to do service to any lady; pray you let me serve you.’

  ‘You can do me a service,’ she said.

  He moved his hand to silence her.

  ‘Pray you take it not amiss. But there is one that hates you.

  She said:

  ‘Perhaps there are a many; but do me a service if you will.’

  ‘Look you,’ he said, ‘these times are no times of mine. But I know it is prudent to have servitors that love one. I saw yours shake a fist at your door.’

  Katharine said:

  ‘A man?’ She looked at Margot, who, big, silent and flushed, was devouring the celebrated hero of ballads with adoring eyes. He laughed.

  ‘That maid would kiss your feet. But, in these days, it is well to make friends with them that keep doors. The fellow at yours would spit upon you if he dared.’

  Katharine said carelessly:

  ‘Let him even spit in his imagination, and I shall whip him.’

  The old knight looked out of the door. He left it wide open, so that no man might listen.

  ‘Why, he is still gone,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘See you,’ he began. ‘So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy set upon one.’

  He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal’s, had been set in place. He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking all the time with his broad back to her.

  ‘See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the throat …’

  Katharine said hastily:

  ‘He hath heard little to harm me.’

  ‘It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,’ the old knight answered. ‘I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his treasons.’

  Katharine said:

  ‘I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford …’

  He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned dignity and distinction.

  ‘I meddle in none of these matters,’ he said again. ‘But these ladies know that you hate one they hate.’

  He said suddenly, ‘Ah!’ a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:

  ‘I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,’ he said. ‘But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.’

  Katharine said swiftly:

  ‘Take, then, a letter for me—to the Bishop of Winchester!’

  He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.

  ‘Must I go into your plots?’ he asked, blinking and amused, as if he had expected the errand.

  She said urgently:

  ‘I would have you tell me what Englishman now wears a red hat and is like to be in Paris. I am very ignorant in these matters.’

  ‘Then meddle not in them,’ he said, ‘for that man is even Cardinal Pole; one that the King’s Highness would very willingly know to be dead.’

  ‘God forbid that my cousin should murder a Prince of the Church, and be slain in that quarrel,’ she answered.

  He started back and held his hands over his head.

  ‘Why, God help you, child! Is that your errand?’ he said, deep from his chest. ‘I meddle not in this matter.’

  She answered obstinately:

  ‘Pray you—by your early vows—consent to carry me my letter.’

  He shook his head bodingly.

  ‘I thought it had been a matter of a masque at the Bishop of Winchester’s; or I had never come nigh you. Cicely Elliott hath copied out the part you should speak. Pray you ask me no more of the other errand.’

  She said:
/>
  ‘For a great knight you are a friend only in little matters!’

  He uttered reproachfully:

  ‘Child: it is no little matter to act as go-between for the Bishop of Winchester, even if it be for no more than a masque. How otherwise does he not send to you direct? So much I was ready to do for you, a stranger, who am a man that has no party.’

  She uttered maliciously:

  ‘Well, well. I thought you came of the better times before our day.’

  ‘I have shewn myself a good enough man,’ he said composedly. He pointed one of his fingers at her.

  ‘Pole is not one that shall be easily slain. He is like to have in his pay the defter spadassins of the two. I have known him since he was a child till when he fled abroad.’

  ‘But my cousin!’ Katharine pleaded.

  ‘For the sake of your own little neck, let that gallant be hanged,’ he said smartly. ‘You have need of many friends; I can see it in your complexion, which is of a hasty loyalty. But I tell you, I had never come near you, so your cousin miscalled me, a man of worth and credit, had these ladies not prayed me to come to you.’

  She raised herself to her full height.

  ‘It is not in the books of your knight-errantry,’ she cried, ‘that one should leave one’s friends to the hangman of Paris.’

  The large figure of Margot Poins thrust itself upon them.

  ‘A’ God’s name,’ said her gruff voice of great emotion, ‘hear the words of this valiant soldier. Your cousin shall ruin you. It is true that he will drive from you all your good friends …’ She faltered, and her impulse carried her no further. Rochford tapped her flushed cheek gently with his glove, but a light and hushing step in the corridor made them all silent.

  The Magister Udal stood before the door blinking his eyes at the light; Katharine addressed him imperiously—

  ‘You will carry a letter for me to save my cousin from death.’

  He started, and leered at Margot, who was ready to sink into the ground.

  ‘Why, I had rather carry a bull to the temple of Jupiter, as Macrobius has it,’ he said, ‘meaning that …’

  ‘Yet you have drunk with him,’ Katharine interrupted him hotly, ‘you have gone hurling through the night with him. You have shamed me together.’

  ‘Yet I cannot forget Tully,’ he answered sardonically, ‘who warns me that a prudent man should be able to moderate the course of his friendship, even as he reins his horse. Est prudentis sustinere ut cursum …’

  ‘Mark you that!’ the old knight said to Katharine. ‘I will get my boy to read to me out of Tully, for that is excellent wisdom.’

  ‘God help me, this is Christendom!’ Katharine said, bitterly. ‘Shall one abandon one that lay in the same cradle with one?’

  ‘Your ladyship hath borne with him a day too long,’ Udal said. ‘He beat me like a dog five days since. Have you heard of the city called Ponceropolis, founded by the King Philip? Your good cousin should be ruler of that city, for the Great King peopled it with all the brawlers, cut-throats, and roaring boys of his dominions, to be rid of them.’ She became aware that he was very angry, for his whisper shook like the neigh of a horse.

  The old knight winked at Margot.

  ‘Why this is a monstrous wise man,’ he said, ‘who yet speaks some sense.’

  ‘In short,’ the magister said, ‘if you will stick to this man, you shall lose me. For I have taken beatings and borne no malice—as in the case of men with whose loves or wives I have prospered better than themselves. But that this man should miscall me and beat me for the pure frenzy of his mind, causelessly, and for the love of blows! That is unbearable. To-night I walk for the first time after five days since he did beat me. And I ask you whom you shall here find the better servant?’

  His thin figure was suddenly shaking with rage.

  ‘Why, this is conspiracy!’ Katharine cried.

  ‘A conspiracy!’ Udal’s voice rose up into a shriek. ‘If your ladyship were a Queen I would not be a Queen’s cousin’s whipping post.’ His arms jerked with the spasms of his rage like those of a marionette.

  ‘A shame that learned men should be so beaten!’ Margot’s gruff voice uttered.

  Katharine turned upon her.

  ‘That is what made you speak e’ennow. You have been with this flibbertigibbet.’

  ‘This is a free land,’ the girl mumbled, her mild eyes sparkling with the contagious anger of her lover.

  The old knight stood blinking upon Katharine.

  ‘You are like to lose all your servants in this quarrel,’ he said.

  Katharine wrung her hands, and then turned her back upon them and drummed upon the table with her fingers. Udal caught Margot’s large hand and fumbled it beneath the furs of his robe: the old knight kept his smiling eyes upon Katharine’s back. Her voice came at last:

  ‘Why, I will not have Tom killed upon this occasion into which I brought him.’

  Rochford shrugged his shoulders up to his ears.

  ‘Oh marvellous infatuation,’ he said.

  Katharine spoke, still with her back turned and her shoulders heaving:

  ‘A marvellous infatuation!’ she said, her voice coming softly and deeply in her chest. ‘Why, after his fashion this man loved me. God help us, what other men have I seen here that would strike a straight blow? Here it is moving in the dark, listening at pierced walls, swearing of false treasons—’

  She swept round upon the old man, her face moved, her eyes tender and angry. She stretched out her hand, and her voice was pitiful and urgent.

  ‘Sir! Sir! What counsel do you give me, who are a knight of honour? Would you let a man who lay in the cradle with you go to a shameful death in an errand you had made for him?’

  She leaned back upon the table with her eyes upon his face. ‘No you would not. How then could you give me such counsel?’

  He said: ‘Well, well. You are in the right.’

  ‘Nearly I went with him to another place,’ she answered, ‘but half an hour ago. Would to God I had! for here it is all treacheries.’

  ‘Write your letter, child,’ he answered. ‘You shall give it to Cicely Elliott to-morrow in the morning. I will have it conveyed, but I will not be seen to handle it, for I am too young to be hanged.’

  ‘Why, God help you, knight,’ Udal whispered urgently from the doorway, ‘carry no letter in this affair—if you escape, assuredly this mad pupil of mine shall die. For the King—?’ Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw’s: ‘That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates’ Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going whither so many great men have already passed, and to be subtracted from the way of so many judges that be iniquitous and corrupt.’

  ‘Why, what a plague …’ Katharine began.

  He interrupted her quickly.

  ‘Here is your serving man back at last if you would rate him for leaving your door unkept.’

  The man stood in the doorway, his lanthorn dangling in his hand, his cudgel stuck through his belt, his shock of hair rough like an old thatch, and his eyes upon the ground. He mumbled, feeling at his throat:

  ‘A man must eat. I was gone to my supper.’

  ‘You are like to have the nightmare, friend,’ the old knight said pleasantly. ‘It is ill to eat when most of the world sleeps.’

  V

  CICELY ELLIOTT HAD INDEED sent her old knight to Katharine with those overtures of friendship. Careless, dark, and a madcap, she had flown at Katharine because she had believed her a creature of Cromwell’s, set to spy upon the Lady Mary’s maids. They formed, the seven of them, a little, mutinous, babbling circle. Their lady’s cause they adored, for it was that of an Old Faith, such as women will not let die. The Lady Mary treated them with a hard indifference: it was all one to her whether they loved her or not; so they babbled, and told evil tales of the other side
. The Lady Rochford could do little to hold them, for, having come very near death when the Queen Anne fell, she had been timid ever since, and Cicely Elliott was their ringleader.

  Thus it was to her that one of Gardiner’s priests had come begging her to deliver to Katharine a copy of the words she was to speak in the masque, and from the priest Cicely had learnt that Katharine loved the Old Faith and hated Privy Seal as much as any of them. She had been struck with a quick remorse, and had suddenly seen Katharine as one that must be helped and made amends to. Thus she had pinned up her sleeve at Privy Seal’s. There, however, it had not been safe to speak with her.

  ‘Dear child,’ she said to Katharine next morning, ‘we may well be foils one to another, for I am dark and pert, like a pynot. They call me Mag Pie here. You shall be Jenny Dove of the Sun. But I am not afraid of your looks. Men that like the touch of the sloe in me shall never be drawn away by your sweet lips.’

  She was, indeed, like a magpie, never still for a minute, fingering Katharine’s hair, lifting the medallion upon her chest, poking her dark eyes close to the embroidery on her stomacher. She had a trick of standing with her side face to you, so that her body seemed very long to her hips, and her dark eyes looked at you askance and roguish, whilst her lips puckered to a smile, a little on one side.

  ‘It was not your old knight called me Sweetlips,’ Katharine said. ‘I miscalled him foully last night.’

  Cicely Elliott threw back her head and laughed.

  ‘Why, he is worshipful heavy to send on a message; but you may trust his advice when he gives it.’

  ‘I am come to think the same,’ Katharine said; ‘yet in this one matter I cannot take it.’

  Cicely Elliott had taken to herself the largest and highest of the rooms set apart for these maids. The tapestries, which were her own, were worked in fair reds and greens, like flowers. She had a great silver mirror and many glass vases, in which were set flowers worked in silver and enamel, and a large, thin box carved out of an elephant’s tusk, to hold her pins; and all these were presents from the old knight.