The Story of Katharine Howard. Ford Madox Ford

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      ‘But this is a folly,’ she said. ‘A King may regard one for a minute, then it is past. Privy Seal would not bring me up against the King.’

      He flashed his gloomy blue eyes at her, suspecting her, and still threatening.

      ‘I know how Privy Seal will plot,’ he said passionately. ‘Having failed with one woman he will bring another.’

      He clenched his hands angrily and unclenched them: the wind moaned for a moment among the chimney stacks.

      ‘So it is!’ he cried, from deep down in his chest. ‘If it were not so, how is there all this clamour about his Highness and a woman?’

      ‘Most Reverend,’ she said, ‘there is no end to the inventions of Magister Udal.’

      ‘There is none to the machinations of the fiend, and Udal is of his councils,’ he said. ‘Be careful, I tell you, for your soul’s sake. Cromwell shall come to you offering you great bribes. Have a care I say!’

      She attempted to say that Udal had no voice at all in Privy Seal’s councils, being a garrulous magpie that no sane man would trust. But Gardiner had crossed his arms and stood, immense and shadowy, in the firelight. He hissed irritably between his teeth when she spoke, as if she interrupted his meditation.

      ‘All the world knows Udal for his spy,’ he said, sombrely. ‘If Udal hath babbled, God be thanked. I say again: if Privy Seal bring thee to the King, come thou to me. But, by the Grace of Heaven, I will forestall Privy Seal with thee and the King!’

      She forbore to contradict him any more; he had this maggot in his head, and was so wild to defeat Privy Seal with his own tool.

      He muttered: ‘Think you Privy Seal knoweth not the King’s taste? I tell you he hath seen an inclination in him towards you. This is a plot, but I have sounded it!’

      She let him talk, and asked, with a malice too fine for him to discern:

      ‘I should not shun the King’s presence for my soul’s sake?’

      ‘God forbid,’ he answered. ‘I may use thee to bring down Privy Seal.’

      He picked up a piece of bark from a faggot beside the fire and rolled it between his fingers. She stood looking at him intently, her lips a little parted, tall, graceful and submissive.

      ‘You are more fair-skinned than any his Highness has favoured before,’ he said in a meditative voice. ‘Yet Cromwell knows the King’s tastes better than any man.’ He sank down into her tall-backed chair and suddenly tossed the piece of bark into the fire. ‘I would have you walk across the floor, elevating your arms as you were the goddess Flora.’

      She tripped towards the door, held her arms above her head, turned her long body to right and left, bent very low in a courtesy to him, and let her hands fall restfully into her lap. The firelight shone upon the folds of her dress and in the white lining of her hood. He looked at her, leaning over the arm of the chair, his blue eyes hard with the strenuous rage of his new project.

      ‘You could take a part in an Italian interlude? A masque?’

      ‘I have a better memory of the French or Latin,’ she answered.

      ‘You do not turn pale? Your knees knock not together?’

      ‘I think I blush most,’ she said seriously.

      He answered, ‘You will be the better of a little colour,’ and began muffling his face with his cloak.

      ‘See you, then,’ his harsh voice commanded. ‘You shall see their Highnesses at Privy Seal’s house on the Saturday; but they shall see you at mine on the Tuesday. If you are good enough to serve the turn of Privy Seal, you may be good enough to serve mine. The King listens sometimes to the promptings of his women. I will teach you how you may bring this man down and set me in his place.’

      She reflected for a moment. ‘I would well serve you,’ she said. ‘But I do not believe this fable of the King, and I have no memory of Italian.’ She talked of being the Lady Mary’s servant, or that she must get her lady’s leave.

      His brows grew heavy, his eyes threatening and alarming beneath their heavy lids.

      ‘Be you faithful to me,’ he thundered. Even his thin and delicate hands seemed to menace her. ‘Retain your obedience to your Faith. Your duty is to that, and to no earthly lady before that.’

      Her eyes were cast down, her lips did not move. He said, harshly, ‘It will go ill with you if it become known to Cromwell I have visited you. Keep this matter secret as you love your liberty. I will send you the words you shall say by a private bearer. After, maybe, his Highness shall safeguard you, I admonishing him. But the Lady Mary shall bid you obey me in all things.’

      He opened the door and put his head out cautiously. Suddenly he drew it back and said in Latin, ‘Here is a spy.’ He did not flinch, but advanced into the corridor, keeping his back to the servitor whom already Master Viridus had sent to keep her door. Gardiner fumbled in his robes and pulled out his missal. He turned the pages over, and, speaking in a feigned and squeaky voice, once more indicated to her prayers against the visitations of fiends. Reading them aloud, he interspersed the Latin of the missal with the phrases, ‘You may pray to God he have not seen my face. Be you very silent and secret, or you are undone. I could in no wise save you from Cromwell unless the King becomes your protector.’ He finished in the vulgar tongue. ‘I pray my prayers with you may have availed to give you relief. But a simple priest as myself is of small skill in these visitations. You should have sent to some great Churchman or one of the worshipful bishops.’

      ‘Good Father Henry, I thank you,’ she answered, having entered into his artifice. He went away, feigning to limp on his right knee, and keeping his face from the spy.

      At the corner of the corridor Margot Poins, an immense blonde and gentle figure in Lutheran grey, stood back in the hangings. The Magister Udal leant over her, supporting himself with one hand against the wall above her head and one leg crossed beneath his gown.

      ‘Come you into my room,’ Katharine said to the girl; and to the magister, ‘Avoid, man of books. I will have no maid of mine undone by thee.’

      ‘Venio honoris causa,’ he said pertly, and Margot uttered, ‘He seeks me in wedlock,’ in a gruff, uncontrolled voice of a great young girl’s confusion, and immense blushes covered her large cheeks.

      Katharine laughed; she was sorely afraid of the serving man behind her, for that he was a spy set there by Viridus she was very sure, and she was casting about in her mind for a device that should let her tell whether or no he had known the bishop. The squeaky voice and the feigned limp seemed to her stratagems ignoble and futile on the part of a great Churchman, and his mania of plots and counter-plottings had depressed and wearied her, for she expected the great to be wise. But she played her part for him as it was her duty. She spoke to the girl with her scarlet cheeks.

      ‘Believe thou the magister after he hath ta’en thee afore a priest. He hath sought me and two score others in the cause of honour. Get you in, sweetheart.’

      She pushed the girl in at the door. The serving man sat on his stool; his shock of yellow hair had never known a comb, but he had a decent suit of a purplish wool-cloth. He had his eyes dully on the ground.

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