The Story of Katharine Howard. Ford Madox Ford

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      VI

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      Cromwell watched the King’s great back with an attentive smile. He said, ironically, that he was her ladyship’s servant.

      ‘I would ye were,’ she answered. ‘They say you love not those that I love.’

      ‘I would have you not heed what men say,’ he answered, grimly. ‘I am douce to those that be of good-will to his Highness. Those that hate me are his ill-wishers.’

      ‘Then the times are evil,’ she said, ‘for they are many.’

      She added suddenly, as if she could not keep a prudent silence:

      ‘I am for the Old Faith in the Old Way. You have hanged many dear friends of mine whose souls I pray for.’

      He looked at her attentively.

      She had a supple, long body, a fair-tinted face, fair and reddish hair, and eyes that had a glint of almond green — but her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled. She was so intent upon speaking her mind that she had forgotten the pain of her arm. She thought that she must have said enough to anger this brewer’s son. But he answered only:

      ‘I think you have never been in the King’s court’— and, from his tranquil manner, she realised very suddenly that this man was not the dirt beneath her feet.

      She had never been in the King’s court; she had never, indeed, been out of the North parts. Her father had always been a very poor man, with an ancient castle and a small estate that he had nearly always neglected because it had not paid for the farming. Living men she had never respected — for they seemed to her like wild beasts when she compared them with such of the ancients as Brutus or as Seneca. She had been made love to and threatened by such men as her cousin; she had been made love to and taught Latin by her pedagogues. She was more learned than any man she had ever met — and, thinking upon the heroes of Plutarch, she found the present times despicable. She hardly owed allegiance to the King. Now she had seen him and felt his consciousness of his own power, she was less certain. But the King’s writs had hardly run in the Northern parts. Her men-folk and her mother’s people had hanged their own peasants when they thought fit. She had seen bodies swinging from tree-tops when she rode hawking. All that she had ever known of the King’s power was when the convent by their castle gates had been thrown out of doors, and then her men-folk, cursing and raging, had sworn that it was the work of Crummock. ‘Knaves ruled about the King.’

      If knaves ruled about him, the King was not a man that one need trouble much over. Her own men-folk, she knew, had made and unmade Kings. So that, when she thought of the hosts of saints and of the blessed angels that hovered, wringing their hands and weeping above England, she had wondered a little at times why they had never unmade this King.

      But to her all these things had seemed very far away. She had nothing to do but to read books in the learned tongues, to imagine herself holding disquisitions upon the spiritual republic of Plato, to ride, to shoot with the bow, to do needlework, or to chide the maids. Her cousin had loved her passionately; it was true that once, when she had had nothing to her back, he had sold a farm to buy her a gown. But he had menaced her with his knife till she was weary, and the ways of men were troublesome to her; nevertheless she submitted to them with a patient wisdom.

      She submitted to the King; she submitted — though she hated him by repute — to Cromwell’s catechism as they followed the King at a decent interval.

      He walked beside her with his eyes on her face. He spoke of the King’s bounty in a voice that implied his own power. She was to be the Lady Mary’s woman. He had that lady especially in his good will, he saved for her household ladies of egregious gifts, presence and attainments. They received liberal honorariums, seven dresses by the year, vails, presents, perfumes from the King’s own still-rooms, and a parcel-gilt chain at the New Year. The Lady Rochford, who ruled over these ladies, was kind, courteous, free in her graces as in the liberties she allowed the ladies under her easy charge.

      He enlarged upon this picture as if it were a bribe that he alone could offer or withhold. And something at once cautious and priestly in his tone let her quick intuition know that he was both warning her and sounding her, to see how far her mutinous spirit would carry her. Once he said, ‘There must be tranquillity in the kingdom. The times are very evil!’

      She had felt very quickly that insults to this man would be a useless folly. He could not even feel them, and she kept her eyes on the ground and listened to him.

      He went on sounding her. It was part of his profession of kingcraft to know the secret hearts of every person with whom he spoke.

      ‘And your goodly cousin?’ He paused. The King had commanded that a place should be found for him. ‘Should he be best at Calais? There shall be blows struck there.’

      She knew very well that he was trying to discover how much she loved her cousin, and she answered in a low voice, ‘I would have him stay here. He is the sole friend I have in this place.’

      Cromwell said, with a hidden and encouraging meaning, her cousin was not her only friend there.

      ‘Aye, but your lordship is not so old a friend as he.’

      ‘Not me. Call me your good servant.’

      ‘There is even then my uncle.’

      ‘Little good of a friend you will have of Norfolk. ’Tis a bitter apple and a very rotten plank to lean upon.’

      She could not any longer miss his meaning. The King’s scarlet and immense figure was already in the grey shadow of the arch under the tower. In walking, they had come near him, and while they waited he stood for a minute, gazing back down the path with boding and pathetic eyes; then he disappeared.

      She looked at Cromwell and thanked him for the warning, ‘quia spicula praevisa minus laedunt.’

      ‘I would have you read it: gaudia plus laetificant,’ he answered gravely.

      A man with a conch-shaped horn upturned was suddenly blowing beneath the archway seven hollow and reverberating grunts of sound that drowned his voice. A clear answering whistle came from the water-gate. Cromwell stayed, listening attentively; another stood forward to blow four blasts, another six, another three. Each time the whistle answered. They were the great officers’ signals for their barges that the men blew, and the whistle signified that these lay at readiness in the tideway. A bustle of men running, calling, and making pennons ready, began beyond the archway in the quadrangle.

      Cromwell’s face grew calm and contented; the King was sending to meet Anne of Cleves.

      ‘Y’ are well read?’ he asked her slowly.

      ‘I was brought up in the Latin tongue or ever I had the English,’ she answered. ‘I had a good master, one that spoke the learned language always.’

      ‘Aye, Nicholas Udal,’ Cromwell said.

      ‘You know all men in the land,’ she said, with fear and surprise.

      ‘I had him to master for the Lady Mary, since he is well disposed.’

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