The Fifth Queen Crowned. Ford Madox Ford

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СКАЧАТЬ said that it was more than a crown. When she guessed that he had made ready such a huge cavalcade that she might with great comfort and safety ride with him into Scotland, he laughed, contented that she should think of going with him upon that long journey. He stood looking at her, his little eyes blinking, his face full of pride and joy, and suddenly he uttered—

      'The Church of God is come back again.' He touched his cap at the sacred name. 'I ha' made submission to the Pope.'

      He looked her full in the face to get all the delight he might from her looks and her movements.

      Her blue eyes grew large; she leaned forward in her chair; her mouth opened a little; her sleeves fell down to the ground. 'Now am I indeed crowned!' she said, and closed her eyes. 'Benedicta sit mater dei!' she uttered, and her hand went over her heart place; 'deo clamavi nocte atque dië.'

      She was silent again, and she leaned more forward.

      'Sit benedicta dies haec; sit benedicta hora haec benedictaque, saeculum saeculûm, castra haec.'

      She looked out upon the great view: she aspired the air.

      'Ad colles,' she breathed, 'levavi oculos meos; unde venit salvatio nostra!'

      'Body of God,' Henry said, 'all things grow plain. All things grow plain. This is the best day that ever I knew.'

IV

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      The Lady Mary of England sat alone in a fair room with little arched windows that gave high up on to the terrace. It was the best room that ever she had had since her mother, the Queen Katharine of Aragon, had been divorced.

      Dressed in black she sat writing at a large table before one window. Her paper was fitted on to a wooden pulpit that rose before her; one book stood open upon it, three others lay open too upon the red and blue and green pattern of the Saracen rug that covered her table. At her right hand was a three-tiered inkstand of pewter, set about with the white feathers of pens; and the snakelike pattern of the table-rug serpentined in and out beneath seals of parcel gilt, a platter of bread, a sandarach of pewter, books bound in wooden covers and locked with chains, books in red velvet covers, sewn with silver wire and tied with ribbons. It ran beneath a huge globe of the world, blue and pink, that had a golden pin in it to mark the city of Rome. There were little wooden racks stuck full with written papers and parchments along the wainscoting between the arched windows, but all the hangings of the other walls were of tinted and dyed silks, not any with dark colours, because Katharine Howard had deemed that that room with its deep windows in the thick walls would be otherwise dark. The room was ten paces deep by twenty long, and the wood of the floor was polished. Against the wall, behind the Lady Mary's back, there stood a high chair upon a platform. Upon the platform a carpet began that ran up the wall and, overhead, depended from the gilded rafters of the ceiling so that it formed a dais and a canopy.

      The Lady Mary sat grimly amongst all these things as if none of them belonged to her. She looked in her book, she made a note upon her paper, she stretched out her hand and took a piece of bread, putting it in her mouth, swallowing it quickly, writing again, and then once more eating, for the great and ceaseless hunger that afflicted her gnawed always at her vitals.

      A little boy with a fair poll was reaching on tiptoe to smell at a pink that depended from a vase of very thin glass standing in the deep window. The shield of the coloured pane cast a little patch of red and purple on to his callow head. He was dressed all in purple, very square, and with little chains and medallions, and a little dagger with a golden sheath was about his neck. In one hand he had a piece of paper, in the other a pencil. The Lady Mary wrote; the child moved on tiptoe, with a sedulous expression of silence about his lips, near to her elbow. He watched her writing for a long time with attentive eyes.

      Once he said, 'Sister, I——' but she paid him no heed.

      After a time she looked coldly at his face and then he moved along the table, fingered the globe very gently, touched the books and returned to her side. He stood with his little legs wide apart. Then he sighed, then he said—

      'Sister, the Queen did bid me ask you a question.'

      She looked round upon him.

      'This was the Queen's question,' he said bravely: '"Cur—why—nunquam—never—rides—dost thou smile—cum—when—ego, frater tuus—I, thy little brother—ludo—play—in camerâ tuâ—in thy chamber?"'

      'Little Prince,' she said, 'art not afeared of me?'

      'Aye, am I,' he answered.

      'Say then to the Queen,' she said, '"Domina Maria—the Lady Mary—ridet nunquam—smileth never—quod—because—timoris ratio—the reason of my fear—bona et satis—is good and sufficient."'

      He held his little head upon one side.

      'The Queen did bid me say,' he uttered with his brave little voice, '"Holy Writ hath it: Ecce quam bonum et dignum est fratres—fratres——"' He faltered without embarrassment and added, 'I ha' forgot the words.'

      'Aye!' she said, 'they ha' been long forgotten in these places; I deem it is overlate to call them to mind.'

      She looked upon him coldly for a long time. Then she stretched out her hand for his paper.

      'Your Highness, I will set you a copy.'

      She took his paper and wrote—

      'Malo malo malâ.'

      He held it in his chubby fist, his head on one side.

      'I cannot conster it,' he said.

      'Why, think upon it,' she answered. 'When I was thy age I knew it already two years. But I was better beaten than thou.'

      He rubbed his little arm.

      'I am beaten enow,' he said.

      'Knowest not what a swingeing is,' she answered.

      'Then thou hadst a bitter childhood,' he brought out.

      'I had a good mother,' she cut him short.

      She turned her face to her writing again; it was bitter and set. The little prince climbed slowly into the chair on the dais. He moved sturdily and curled himself up on the cushion, studying the words on the paper all the while with a little frown upon his brows. Then, shrugging his shoulders, he set the paper upon his knee and began to write.

      At that date the Lady Mary was still called a bastard, though most men thought that that hardship would soon be reversed. It was said that great honours had been shown her, and that was apparent in the furnishing of her rooms, the fineness of her gear, the increase in the number of the women that waited on her, and the store of sweet things that was provided for her to eat. A great many men noted the chair with a dais that was set up always where she might be, in her principal room, and though her ladies said that she never sat in it, most men believed that she had made a pact with the King to do him honour and so to be reinstated in the estate in which she held her own. It was considered, too, that she no longer СКАЧАТЬ