began. ‘So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy set upon one.’
He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal’s, had been set in place. He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking all the time with his broad back to her.
‘See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the throat. . . . ’
Katharine said hastily:
‘He hath heard little to harm me.’
‘It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,’ the old knight answered. ‘I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his treasons.’
Katharine said:
‘I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford. . . . ’
He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned dignity and distinction.
‘I meddle in none of these matters,’ he said again. ‘But these ladies know that you hate one they hate.’
He said suddenly, ‘Ah!’ a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:
‘I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,’ he said. ‘But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.’
Katharine said swiftly:
‘Take, then, a letter for me — to the Bishop of Winchester!’
He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.
‘Must I go into your plots?’ he asked, blinking and amused, as if he had expected the errand.
She said urgently:
‘I would have you tell me what Englishman now wears a red hat and is like to be in Paris. I am very ignorant in these matters.’
‘Then meddle not in them,’ he said, ‘for that man is even Cardinal Pole; one that the King’s Highness would very willingly know to be dead.’
‘God forbid that my cousin should murder a Prince of the Church, and be slain in that quarrel,’ she answered.
He started back and held his hands over his head.
‘Why, God help you, child! Is that your errand?’ he said, deep from his chest. ‘I meddle not in this matter.’
She answered obstinately:
‘Pray you — by your early vows — consent to carry me my letter.’
He shook his head bodingly.
‘I thought it had been a matter of a masque at the Bishop of Winchester’s; or I had never come nigh you. Cicely Elliott hath copied out the part you should speak. Pray you ask me no more of the other errand.’
She said:
‘For a great knight you are a friend only in little matters!’
He uttered reproachfully:
‘Child: it is no little matter to act as go-between for the Bishop of Winchester, even if it be for no more than a masque. How otherwise does he not send to you direct? So much I was ready to do for you, a stranger, who am a man that has no party.’
She uttered maliciously:
‘Well, well. I thought you came of the better times before our day.’
‘I have shewn myself a good enough man,’ he said composedly. He pointed one of his fingers at her.
‘Pole is not one that shall be easily slain. He is like to have in his pay the defter spadassins of the two. I have known him since he was a child till when he fled abroad.’
‘But my cousin!’ Katharine pleaded.
‘For the sake of your own little neck, let that gallant be hanged,’ he said smartly. ‘You have need of many friends; I can see it in your complexion, which is of a hasty loyalty. But I tell you, I had never come near you, so your cousin miscalled me, a man of worth and credit, had these ladies not prayed me to come to you.’
She raised herself to her full height.
‘It is not in the books of your knight-errantry,’ she cried, ‘that one should leave one’s friends to the hangman of Paris.’
The large figure of Margot Poins thrust itself upon them.
‘A’ God’s name,’ said her gruff voice of great emotion, ‘hear the words of this valiant soldier. Your cousin shall ruin you. It is true that he will drive from you all your good friends. . . . ’ She faltered, and her impulse carried her no further. Rochford tapped her flushed cheek gently with his glove, but a light and hushing step in the corridor made them all silent.
The Magister Udal stood before the door blinking his eyes at the light; Katharine addressed him imperiously—
‘You will carry a letter for me to save my cousin from death.’
He started, and leered at Margot, who was ready to sink into the ground.
‘Why, I had rather carry a bull to the temple of Jupiter, as Macrobius has it,’ he said, ‘meaning that. . . . ’
‘Yet you have drunk with him,’ Katharine interrupted him hotly, ‘you have gone hurling through the night with him. You have shamed me together.’
‘Yet I cannot forget Tully,’ he answered sardonically, ‘who warns me that a prudent man should be able to moderate the course of his friendship, even as he reins his horse. Est prudentis sustinere ut cursum. . . . ’
‘Mark you that!’ the old knight said to Katharine. ‘I will get my boy to read to me out of Tully, for that is excellent wisdom.’
‘God help me, this is Christendom!’ Katharine said, bitterly. ‘Shall one abandon one that lay in the same cradle with one?’
‘Your ladyship hath borne with him a day too long,’ Udal said. ‘He beat me like a dog five days since. Have you heard of the city called Ponceropolis, founded by the King Philip? Your good cousin should be ruler of that city, for the Great King peopled it with all the brawlers, cut-throats, and roaring boys of his dominions, to be rid of them.’ She became aware that he was very angry, for his whisper shook like the neigh of a horse.
The old knight winked at Margot.
‘Why this is a monstrous wise man,’ he said, ‘who yet speaks some sense.’
‘In short,’ the magister said, ‘If you will stick to this man, you shall lose me. For I have taken beatings and borne no malice — as in the case of men with whose loves or wives I have prospered better than themselves. But that this man should miscall me and beat me for the pure frenzy of his mind, causelessly, and for the love of blows! That is unbearable. To-night I walk for the first time after five days since he did beat me. And I ask you whom you shall here find the better servant?’
His thin figure was suddenly shaking with rage.
‘Why, this is conspiracy!’ Katharine cried.
‘A conspiracy!’ Udal’s voice rose up into a shriek. ‘If your ladyship were a Queen I would not be a Queen’s cousin’s whipping post.’ His arms jerked with the spasms of his rage like those of a marionette.
‘A shame that learned men should be so beaten!’ Margot’s gruff voice uttered.
Katharine