is a free land,’ the girl mumbled, her mild eyes sparkling with the contagious anger of her lover.
The old knight stood blinking upon Katharine.
‘You are like to lose all your servants in this quarrel,’ he said.
Katharine wrung her hands, and then turned her back upon them and drummed upon the table with her fingers. Udal caught Margot’s large hand and fumbled it beneath the furs of his robe: the old knight kept his smiling eyes upon Katharine’s back. Her voice came at last:
‘Why, I will not have Tom killed upon this occasion into which I brought him.’
Rochford shrugged his shoulders up to his ears.
‘Oh marvellous infatuation,’ he said.
Katharine spoke, still with her back turned and her shoulders heaving:
‘A marvellous infatuation!’ she said, her voice coming softly and deeply in her chest. ‘Why, after his fashion this man loved me. God help us, what other men have I seen here that would strike a straight blow? Here it is moving in the dark, listening at pierced walls, swearing of false treasons ——’
She swept round upon the old man, her face moved, her eyes tender and angry. She stretched out her hand, and her voice was pitiful and urgent.
‘Sir! Sir! What counsel do you give me, who are a knight of honour? Would you let a man who lay in the cradle with you go to a shameful death in an errand you had made for him?’
She leaned back upon the table with her eyes upon his face. ‘No you would not. How then could you give me such counsel?’
He said: ‘Well, well. You are in the right.’
‘Nearly I went with him to another place,’ she answered, ‘but half an hour ago. Would to God I had! for here it is all treacheries.’
‘Write your letter, child,’ he answered. ‘You shall give it to Cicely Elliott tomorrow in the morning. I will have it conveyed, but I will not be seen to handle it, for I am too young to be hanged.’
‘Why, God help you, knight,’ Udal whispered urgently from the doorway, ‘carry no letter in this affair — if you escape, assuredly this mad pupil of mine shall die. For the King ——?’ Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw’s: ‘That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates’ Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going whither so many great men have already passed, and to be subtracted from the way of so many judges that be iniquitous and corrupt.’
‘Why, what a plague. . . . ’ Katharine began.
He interrupted her quickly.
‘Here is your serving man back at last if you would rate him for leaving your door unkept.’
The man stood in the doorway, his lanthorn dangling in his hand, his cudgel stuck through his belt, his shock of hair rough like an old thatch, and his eyes upon the ground. He mumbled, feeling at his throat:
‘A man must eat. I was gone to my supper.’
‘You are like to have the nightmare, friend,’ the old knight said pleasantly. ‘It is ill to eat when most of the world sleeps.’
V
Cicely Elliott had indeed sent her old knight to Katharine with those overtures of friendship. Careless, dark, and a madcap, she had flown at Katharine because she had believed her a creature of Cromwell’s, set to spy upon the Lady Mary’s maids. They formed, the seven of them, a little, mutinous, babbling circle. Their lady’s cause they adored, for it was that of an Old Faith, such as women will not let die. The Lady Mary treated them with a hard indifference: it was all one to her whether they loved her or not; so they babbled, and told evil tales of the other side. The Lady Rochford could do little to hold them, for, having come very near death when the Queen Anne fell, she had been timid ever since, and Cicely Elliott was their ringleader.
Thus it was to her that one of Gardiner’s priests had come begging her to deliver to Katharine a copy of the words she was to speak in the masque, and from the priest Cicely had learnt that Katharine loved the Old Faith and hated Privy Seal as much as any of them. She had been struck with a quick remorse, and had suddenly seen Katharine as one that must be helped and made amends to. Thus she had pinned up her sleeve at Privy Seal’s. There, however, it had not been safe to speak with her.
‘Dear child,’ she said to Katharine next morning, ‘we may well be foils one to another, for I am dark and pert, like a pynot. They call me Mag Pie here. You shall be Jenny Dove of the Sun. But I am not afraid of your looks. Men that like the touch of the sloe in me shall never be drawn away by your sweet lips.’
She was, indeed, like a magpie, never still for a minute, fingering Katharine’s hair, lifting the medallion upon her chest, poking her dark eyes close to the embroidery on her stomacher. She had a trick of standing with her side face to you, so that her body seemed very long to her hips, and her dark eyes looked at you askance and roguish, whilst her lips puckered to a smile, a little on one side.
‘It was not your old knight called me Sweetlips,’ Katharine said. ‘I miscalled him foully last night.’
Cicely Elliott threw back her head and laughed.
‘Why, he is worshipful heavy to send on a message; but you may trust his advice when he gives it.’
‘I am come to think the same,’ Katharine said; ‘yet in this one matter I cannot take it.’
Cicely Elliott had taken to herself the largest and highest of the rooms set apart for these maids. The tapestries, which were her own, were worked in fair reds and greens, like flowers. She had a great silver mirror and many glass vases, in which were set flowers worked in silver and enamel, and a large, thin box carved out of an elephant’s tusk, to hold her pins; and all these were presents from the old knight.
‘Why,’ she said, ‘sometimes his advice shall fit a woman’s mood; sometimes he goes astray, as in the case of these gloves. Cheverel is a skin that will stretch so that after one wearing you may not tell the thumbs from stocking-feet. Nevertheless, I would be rid of your cousin.’
‘Not in this quarrel,’ Katharine answered. ‘Find him an honourable errand, and he shall go to Kathay.’
Cicely threw the stretched cheverel glove into the fire.
‘My knight shall give me a dozen pairs of silk, stitched with gold to stiffen them,’ she said. ‘You shall have six; but send your cousin in quest of the Islands of the Blest. They lie well out in the Western Ocean. If you can make him mislay his compass he will never come back to you.’
Katharine laughed.
‘I think he would come without compass or chart. Nevertheless, I will send me my letter by means of your knight to Bishop Gardiner.’
Cicely Elliott hung her head on her chest.
‘I do not ask its contents, but you may give it me.’
Katharine brought it out from the bosom of her dress, and the dark girl passed it up her sleeve.
‘This shall no doubt ruin you,’ she said. ‘But get you to our mistress. I will carry your letter.’
Katharine started back.
‘You!’ she said. ‘It was Sir Nicholas should have it conveyed.’
‘That poor, silly old man shall not be hanged in this matter,’ Cicely answered. ‘It is all one to me. If Crummock would have had my head he could have shortened me by that much a year ago.’
Katharine’s eyes dilated proudly.