‘Not power enow to make me a laughing-stock for the men.’
‘Why, this is a free land,’ he answered. ‘You may rot in a ditch if you will, or worse if treasonable actions be brought home to you.’
Down below, wild men dressed in the skins of wolves, hares and stags ran round the tethered bears bearing torches of sweet wood, and a heavy and languorous smoke, like incense, mounted up to the gallery. Viridus’ unveiled threat made the necessity for submission come once more into her mind. Other wild men were leading in a lion, immense and lean as if it were a fawn-coloured ass. It roared and pulled at the golden chains by which the knot of men held it. Many ladies shrieked out, but the men dragged the lion into the open space before the dais where the Queen sat unmoved and stolid.
‘Would your master have me dip my fingers in the dish and wipe them on bread-manchets as the Queen does?’ Katharine asked in a serious expostulation.
‘It were an excellent action,’ Viridus answered.
There was a brazen flare of trumpets so that the smoke swirled among the rafters. Men with brass helmets and shields of brass were below in the hall.
‘They are costumed as the ancient Romans,’ Katharine said, lost in other thoughts.
Suddenly she saw that whilst all the other eyes were upon the lion, Throckmorton’s glare was again upon her face. He appeared to shake his head and to bow his immense and bearded form. It brought into her mind the dangerous visit of Bishop Gardiner. Suddenly he dropped his eyes.
‘You see some friends,’ Viridus’ voice asked beside her.
‘Nay, I have no friends here,’ Katharine answered.
She could not tell that the bearded spy’s eyes were not merely amorous in their intention, for such looks she was used to, and he was a very vile man.
‘In short,’ Viridus spoke, ‘it were an excellent action to act in all things as the Queen does. For fashions are a matter of fashion. It is all one whether you wipe your fingers on bread-manchets or on napkins. But when a fashion becometh general its strangeness departeth and it is esteemed fit for a King’s Court. Thus you may earn your bread: this is your duteous work. Observe the king of the beasts. See how it shall do its duty before the Queen, and mark the lesson.’ His voice penetrated, low and level, through all the din from below. Yet the men dressed like gladiators advanced towards the dais where the Queen sat eating unmoved. The lion before her growled frightfully, and dragged its keepers towards the men in brass. They drew their short swords and beat upon their shields crying: ‘We be Roman traitors that war upon this land.’ Then it appeared that among them in their crowd they had a large mannikin, dressed like themselves in brass and running upon wheels.
The ladies pressed the tables with their hands, making as if to rise in terror. But the mannikin toppling forward fell before the lion with a hollow sound of brass. The lean beast, springing at its throat, tore it to reach the highly smelling flesh that was concealed within the tunic, and the Romans fled, casting away their shields and swords. One of them had a red forked beard and wide-open blue eyes. He brought into Katharine’s mind the remembrance of her cousin. She wondered where he could be, and imagined him with that short sword, cutting his way to her side.
‘That sight is allegorically to show,’ Viridus was commenting beside her, ‘how the high valour of Britain shall defend from all foes this noble Queen.’
The lion having reached its meat lay down upon it.
Katharine remembered that Bishop Gardiner said that her cousin must be begone. She tried to say to Viridus: ‘Sir, I would fain obey you in these things, but I have a cousin that shall much hinder me.’
But the applause of the people below drowned her voice and Viridus continued talking.
Let it be true that the Queen, being alone, showed amongst their English fineries and nicenesses a gross and repulsive strangeness. But if their ladies put on her manners she should no longer be alone, and it would appear to the King and to all men that her example was both commended and emulated. It was a matter of kingcraft, and so the Lord Privy Seal was minded and determined.
‘Then I will even get myself such a hat and tear my capons apart with my fingers,’ Katharine said.
‘You had much the wiser,’ he answered.
The hall was now full of wild men, nymphs in white gowns, men bearing aspergers with which to scatter perfumes, and merry andrews, so that the floor could no longer be seen. A party of lords had overset a table in their efforts to get to the nymphs. The Queen was schooled to go out behind the arras, and the ladies, laughing, calling to each other and to the men at the other tables, and pinning up their hoods, filed out after her.
‘I shall do my best to please your master and mine,’ Katharine said. ‘But he must even help me, or I can be no example to emulate, but one at whom the finger of scorn is likely to be pointed.’
Viridus paused before he led his charge from the gallery. His pale-blue eyes were more placable.
‘You shall be well seconded. But have a care. Dally with no traitors. Speak fairly of your master’s friends.’ He touched her above the left breast with a claw-like finger. ‘The Italian writes: “Whoso mocketh my love mocketh also mine own self.”’
‘I mock none,’ Katharine said. ‘But I have a cousin to be provided for that neither you nor I shall mock with much safety if he be sober enough to stand.’
He listened to her with his hand upon the door of the gallery: his air was attentive and aroused. She related very simply how Culpepper had besieged her door —‘He came to London to help me on my way and to seek fortune in some war. I would that a place might be found for him, for here he is like to ruin both himself and me.’
‘We have need of good swordsmen for an errand,’ he said, in an absorbed voice.
‘There was never a better than Tom,’ Katharine said. ‘He hath cut a score of throats. Your lord would have sent him to Calais.’
He muttered:
‘Why, there are places other than Calais where a man may make a fortune.’
Something sinister in his brooding voice made her say:
‘I would not have him killed. He hath made me many presents.’
He looked at her expressionlessly:
‘It is very certain that you can not serve my lord with such a firebrand to your tail,’ he said. ‘I will find him an errand.’
‘But not where he shall be killed,’ she said again.
‘Why,’ he said slowly, ‘I will send him where he will make a great fortune.’
‘A great fortune would help him little,’ she answered. ‘I would have him sent where he may fight evenly matched.’
He laid his hand upon her wrist.
‘He is in as much danger here as anywhere. This is not Lincolnshire, but an ordered Court.’— A man drew his sword with some peril there, for there were laws against it. If men came brawling in the maids’ quarters at nights there were penalties of losing fingers, hands, or even heads. And the maids themselves were liable to be whipped. — He shook his head at her:
‘If your cousin hath so violent an inclination to you I were your best friend to send him far away.’
It was in his mind that if they were to breed this girl to be a spy they must keep her protected from madmen. Something of mystery in his manner penetrated to her quick senses.
‘God help me, what a dangerous place this is!’ she said. ‘I would I had never spoken to you of my cousin.’
He eyed her solemnly and said that if she were minded to wed this roaring boy they might both, and soon, earn fortunes to buy them land in a distant shire.