Katharine had drawn Cromwell to the very end of the gallery.
‘As I pray that Christ will listen to my pleas when at the last I come to Him for pardon and comfort,’ she said, ‘I swear that I will speak true words to you.’
He surveyed her, plump, alert, his lips moving one upon the other. He brought one white soft hand from behind his back to play with the furs upon his chest.
‘Why, I believe you are a very earnest woman,’ he said.
‘Then, sir,’ she said, ‘understand that your sun is near its setting. We rise, we wane; our little days do run their course. But I do believe you love your King his cause more than most men.’
‘Madam Howard,’ he said, ‘you have been my foremost foe.’
‘Till five minutes agone I was,’ she said.
He wondered for a moment if she were minded to beg him to aid her in growing to be Queen; and he wondered too how that might serve his turn. But she spoke again:
‘You have very well served the King,’ she said. ‘You have made him rich and potent. I believe ye have none other desire so great as that desire to make him potent and high in this world’s gear.’
‘Madam Howard,’ he said calmly, ‘I desire that—and next to found for myself a great house that always shall serve the throne as well as I.’
She gave him the right to that with a lowering of her eyebrows.
‘I too would see him a most high prince,’ she said. ‘I would see him shed lustre upon his friends, terror upon his foes, and a great light upon this realm and age.’
She paused to touch him earnestly with one long hand, and to brush back a strand of her hair. Down the gallery she saw Lascelles moving to speak with Throckmorton and Wriothesley holding the Archbishop earnestly by the sleeve.
‘See,’ she said, ‘you are surrounded now by traitors that will bring you down. In foreign lands your cause wavers. I tell you, five minutes agone I wished you swept away.’
Cromwell raised his eyebrows.
‘Why, I knew that this was difficult fighting,’ he said. ‘But I know not what giveth me your good wishes.’
‘My lord,’ she answered, ‘it came to me in my mind: What man is there in the land save Privy Seal that so loveth his master’s cause?’
Cromwell laughed.
‘How well do you love this King,’ he said.
‘I love this King; I love this land,’ she said, ‘as Cato loved Rome or Leonidas his realm of Sparta.’
Cromwell pondered, looking down at his foot; his lips moved furtively, he folded his hand inside his sleeves; and he shook his head when again she made to speak. He desired another minute for thought.
‘This I perceive to be the pact you have it in your mind to make,’ he said at last, ‘that if you come to sway the King towards Rome I shall still stay his man and yours?’
She looked at him, her lips parted with a slight surprise that he should so well have voiced thoughts that she had hardly put into words. Then her faith rose in her again and moved her to pitiful earnestness.
‘My lord,’ she uttered, and stretched out one hand. ‘Come over to us. ’Tis such great pity else—’tis such pity else.’
She looked again at Throckmorton, who, in the distance, was surveying the Archbishop’s spy with a sardonic amusement, and a great mournfulness went through her. For there was the traitor and here before her was the betrayed. Throckmorton had told her enough to know that he was conspiring against his master, and Cromwell trusted Throckmorton before any man in the land; and it was as if she saw one man with a dagger hovering behind another. With her woman’s instinct she felt that the man about to die was the better man, though he were her foe. She was minded—she was filled with a great desire to say: ‘Believe no word that Throckmorton shall tell you. The Duke of Cleves is now abandoning your cause.’ That much she had learnt from Udal five minutes before. But she could not bring herself to betray Throckmorton, who was a traitor for the sake of her cause. ‘ ’Tis such pity,’ she repeated again.
‘Good wench,’ Cromwell said, ‘you are indifferent honest; but never while I am the King’s man shall the Bishop of Rome take toll again in the King’s land.’
She threw up her hands.
‘Alack!’ she said; ‘shall not God and His Son our Saviour have their part of the King’s glory?’
‘God is above us all,’ he answered. ‘But there is no room for two heads of a State, and in a State is room but for one army. I will have my King so strong that ne Pope ne priest ne noble ne people shall here have speech or power. So it is now; I have so made it, the King helping me. Before I came this was a distracted State; the King’s writ ran not in the east, not in the west, not in the north, and hardly in the south parts. Now no lord nor no bishop nor no Pope raises head against him here. And, God willing, in all the world no prince shall stand but by grace of this King’s Highness. This land shall have the wealth of all the world; this King shall guide this land. There shall be rich husbandmen paying no toll to priests, but to the King alone; there shall be wealthy merchants paying no tax to any prince nor emperor, but only to this King. The King’s court shall redress all wrongs; the King’s voice shall be omnipotent in the council of the princes.’
‘Ye speak no word of God,’ she said pitifully.
‘God is very far away,’ he answered.
‘Sir, my lord,’ she cried, and brushed again the tress from her forehead. ‘Ye have made this King rich with gear of the Church: if ye will be friends with me ye shall make this King a pauper to repay; ye have made this King stiffen his neck against God’s Vicegerent: if you and I shall work together ye shall make him re-humble himself. Christ the King of all the world was a pauper; Christ the Saviour of all mankind humbled Himself before God that was His Saviour.’
Cromwell said ‘Amen.’
‘Sir,’ she said again; ‘ye have made this King rich, but I will give to him again his power to sleep at night; ye have made this realm subject to this King, but, by the help of God, I will make it subject again to God. You have set up here a great State, but oh, the children of God do weep since ye came. Where is a town where lamentation is not heard? where is a town where no orphan or widow bewails the day that saw your birth?’ She had sobs in her voice and she wrung her hands. ‘Sir,’ she cried, ‘I say you are as a dead man already—your day of pride is past, whether ye aid us or no. Set yourself then to redress as heartily as ye have set yourself in the past to make sad. That land is blest whose people are happy; that State is aggrandised whence there arise songs praising God for His blessings. You have built up a great city of groans; set yourself now to build a kingdom where “Praise God” shall be sung. It is a contented people that makes a State great; it is the love of God that maketh a people rich.’
Cromwell laughed mirthlessly:
‘There are forty thousand men like Wriothesley in England,’ he said. ‘God help you if you come against them; there are forty times forty thousand and forty times that that pray you not again to set disorder loose in this land. I have broken all stiff necks in this realm. See you that you come not against some yet.’ He stopped, and added: ‘Your greatest foes should be your own friends if I be a dead man as you say.’ And he smiled at her bewilderment when he had added: ‘I am your bulwark and your safeguard.’
… ‘For, listen to me,’ he took up again his parable. ‘Whilst I be here I bear the rancour of your friends’ hatred. When I am gone you shall inherit it.’
‘Sir,’ she said, ‘I am not here to hear riddles, but here I am to pray you seek the right.’
‘Wench,’ he said pleasantly, ‘there are in this world many rights—you have yours; I mine. But mine can never be yours nor yours mine. I am not yet so dead as ye say; but if I be dead, I wish you so well that I will send you a phial of poison ere I send to take you to the stake. For it is certain that if you have not my head I shall have yours.’
She looked at him seriously, though the tears ran down her cheeks.
‘Sir,’ she uttered, ‘I do
take you to be a man of your word. Swear to me, then, that if upon the fatal hill I do save you your life and your estates, you will nowise work the undoing of the Church in time to come.’
‘Madam Queen that shall be,’ he said, ‘an ye gave me my life this day, to-morrow I would work as I worked yesterday. If ye have faith of your cause I have the like of mine.’
She hung her head, and said at last:
‘Sir, an ye have a little door here at the gallery end I will go out by it’; for she would not again face the men who made the little knot before the window. He moved the hangings aside and stood before the aperture smiling.
‘Ye came to ask a boon of me,’ he said. ‘Is it your will still that I grant it?’
‘Sir,’ she answered, ‘I asked a boon of you that I thought you would not grant, so that I might go to the King and shew him your evil dealings with his lieges.’
‘I knew it well,’ he said. ‘But the King will not cast me down till the King hath had full use of me.’
‘You have a very great sight into men’s minds,’ she uttered, and he laughed noiselessly once again.
‘I am as God made me,’ he said. Then he spoke once more. ‘I will read your mind if you will. Ye came to me in this crisis, thinking with yourself: Liars go unto the King saying, “This Cromwell is a traitor; cast him down, for he seeks your ill.” I will go unto the King saying, “This Cromwell grindeth the faces of the poor and beareth false witness. Cast him down, though he serve you well, since he maketh your name to stink to heaven.” So I read my fellowmen.’
‘Sir,’ she said, ‘it is very true that I will not be linked with liars. And it is very true that men do so speak of you to the King’s Highness.’
‘Why,’ he answered her debonairly, ‘the King shall listen neither to them nor to you till the day be come. Then he will act in his own good way—upon the pretext that I be a traitor, or upon the pretext that I have borne false witness, or upon no pretext at all.’
‘Nevertheless will I speak for the truth that shall prevail,’ she answered.
‘Why, God help you!’ was his rejoinder.
Going back to his friends in the window Cromwell meditated that it was possible to imagine a woman that thought so simply; yet it was impossible to imagine one that should be able to act with so great a simplicity. On the one hand, if she stayed about the King she should be his safeguard, for it was very certain that she should not tell the King that he was a traitor. And that above all was what Cromwell had to fear. He had, for his own purposes, so filled the King with the belief that treachery overran his land, that the King saw treachery in every man. And Cromwell was aware, well enough, that such of his adherents as were Protestant—such men as Wriothesley—had indeed boasted that they were twenty thousand swords ready to fall upon even the King if he set against the reforming religion in England. This was the greatest danger that he had—that an enemy of his should tell the King that Privy Seal had behind his back twenty thousand swords. For that side of the matter Katharine Howard was even a safeguard, since with her love of truth she would assuredly combat these liars with the King.
But, on the other hand, the King had his superstitious fears; only that night, pale, red-eyed and heavy, and being unable to sleep, he had sent to rouse Cromwell and had furiously rated him, calling him knave and shaking him by the shoulder, telling him for the twentieth time to find a way to make a peace with the Bishop of Rome. These were only night-fears—but, if Cleves should desert Henry and Protestantism, if all Europe should stand solid for the Pope, Henry’s night-fears might eat up his day as well. Then indeed Katharine would be dangerous. So that she was indeed half foe, half friend.
It hinged all upon Cleves; for if Cleves stood friend to Protestantism the King would fear no treason; if Cleves sued for pardon to the Emperor and Rome, Henry must swing towards Katharine. Therefore, if Cleves stood firm to Protestantism and defied the Emperor, it would be safe to work at destroying Katharine; if not, he must leave her by the King to defend his very loyalty.
The Archbishop challenged him with uplifted questioning eyebrows, and he answered his gaze with:
‘God help ye, goodman Bishop; it were easier for thee to deal with this maid than for me. She would take thee to her friend if thou wouldst curry with Rome.’
‘Aye,’ Cranmer answered. ‘But would Rome have truck with me?’ and he shook his head bitterly. He had been made Archbishop with no sanction from Rome.
Cromwell turned upon Wriothesley; the debonair smile was gone from his face; the friendly contempt that he had for the Archbishop was gone too; his eyes were hard, cruel and red, his lips hardened.
‘Ye have done me a very evil turn,’ he said. ‘Ye spoke stiff-necked folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from heaven upon Lutherans that cross the King.’
The hard malice of his glance made Wriothesley quail and flush heavily.
‘I thought ye had been our friend,’ he said.
‘Wriothesley,’ Cromwell answered, ‘I tell thee, silly knave, that I be friend only to them that love the order and peace I have made, under the King’s Highness, in this realm. If it be the King’s will to stablish again the old faith, a hammer of iron will I be upon such as do raise their heads against it. It were better ye had never been born, it were better ye were dead and asleep, than that ye raised your heads against me.’ He turned, then he swung back with the sharpness of a viper’s spring.
‘What help have I had of thee and thy friends? I have bolstered up Cleves and his Lutherans for ye. What have he and ye done for me and my King? Your friend the Duke of Cleves has an envoy in Paris. Have ye found for why he comes there? Ye could not. Ye have botched your errand to Paris; ye have spoken naughtily in my house to a friend of the King’s that came friendlily to me.’ He shook a fat finger an inch from Wriothesley’s eyes. ‘Have a care! I did send my visitors to smell out treason among the convents and abbeys. Wait ye till I send them to your conventicles! Ye shall not scape. Body of God! ye shall not scape.’
He placed a heavy hand upon Throckmorton’s shoulder.
‘I would I had sent thee to Paris,’ he said. ‘No envoy had come there whose papers ye had not seen. I warrant thou wouldst have ferreted them through.’
Throckmorton’s eyes never moved; his mouth opened and he spoke with neither triumph nor malice:
‘In very truth, Privy Seal,’ he said, ‘I have ferreted through enow of them to know why the envoy came to Paris.’
Cromwell kept his hands still firm upon his spy’s shoulder whilst the swift thoughts ran through his mind. He scowled still upon Wriothesley.
‘Sir,’ he said, ‘ye see how I be served. What ye could not find in Paris my man found for me in London town.’ He moved his face round towards the great golden beard of his spy. ‘Ye shall have the farms ye asked me for in Suffolk,’ he said. ‘Tell me now wherefore came the Cleves envoy to France. Will Cleves stay our ally, or will he send like a coward to his Emperor?’
‘Privy Seal,’ Throckmorton answered expressionlessly—he fingered his beard for a moment and felt at the medal depending upon his chest—‘Cleves will stay your friend and the King’s ally.’
A great sigh went up from his three hearers at Throckmorton’s lie; and impassive as he was, Throckmorton sighed too, imperceptibly beneath the mantle of his beard. He had burned his boats. But for the others the sigh was of a great contentment. With Cleves to lead the German Protestant confederation, the King felt himself strong enough to make headway against the Pope, the Emperor and France. So long as the Duke of Cleves remained a rebel against his lord the Emperor, the King would hold over Protestantism the mantle of his protection.
Cromwell broke in upon their thoughts with his swift speech.
‘Sirs,’ he uttered, ‘then what ye will shall come to pass. Wriothesley, I pardon thee; get thee back to Paris to thy mission. Archbishop, I trow thou shalt have the head of that wench. Her co
usin shall be brought here again from France.’
Lascelles, the Archbishop’s spy, who kept his gaze upon Throckmorton’s, saw the large man’s eyes shift suddenly from one board of the floor to another.
‘That man is not true,’ he said to himself, and fell into a train of musing. But from the others Cromwell had secured the meed of wonder that he desired. He had closed the interview with a dramatic speech; he had given them something to talk of.
VII
HE HELD THROCKMORTON in the small room that contained upon its high stand the Privy Seal of England in an embroidered purse. All red and gold, this symbol of power held the eye away from the dark-green tapestry and from the pigeonholes filled with parchment scrolls wherefrom there depended so many seals each like a gout of blood. The room was so high that it appeared small, but there was room for Cromwell to pace about, and here, walking from wall to wall, he evolved those schemes that so fast held down the realm. He paced always, his hands behind his back, his lips moving one upon the other as if he ruminated—(His foes said that he talked thus with his familiar fiend that had the form of a bee)—and his black cap with ear-flaps always upon his head, for he suffered much with the earache.
He walked now, up and down and up and down, saying nothing, whilst from time to time Throckmorton spoke a word or two. Throckmorton himself had his doubts—doubts as to how the time when it would be safe to let it be known that he had betrayed his master might be found to fit in with the time when his master must find that he had betrayed him. He had, as he saw it, to gain time for Katharine Howard so she might finally enslave the King’s desires. That there was one weak spot in her armour he thought he knew, and that was her cousin that was said to be her lover. That Cromwell knew of her weak spot he knew too; that Cromwell through that would strike at her he knew too. All depended upon whether he could gain time so that Cromwell should be down before he could use his knowledge.
For that reason he had devised the scheme of making Cromwell feel a safety about the affairs of Cleves. Udal fortunately wrote a very swift Latin. Thus, when going to fetch Katharine to her interview with Privy Seal he had found Udal bursting with news of the Cleves embassy and with the letters of the Duke of Cleves actually copied on papers in his poke, Throckmorton had very swiftly advised with himself how to act. He had set Udal very earnestly to writing a false letter from Cleves to France—such a letter as Cleves might have written—and this false letter, in the magister’s Latin, he had placed now in his master’s hands, and, pacing up and down, Cromwell read from time to time from the scrap of paper.
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