Privy Seal Part 23

'My mad nephew,' Master Printer Badge said to Throckmorton, 'shall travel down from his chamber anon. When ye shall see the pickle he is in ye shall understand wherefore it needeth ten minutes to his downcoming.' To Throckmorton's query he shook his dark, bearded head and muttered: 'Nay; ye used him for your own purposes. Ye should know better than I what is like to have befallen him.'

Throckmorton swallowed his haste and leant back against the edge of a press that was not at work. Of these presses there were four there in the middle of the room: tall, black, compounded of iron and wood, the square inwards of each rose and fell rhythmically above the flutter of the printed leaves that the journeymen withdrew as they rose, and replaced, white, unsullied and damp as they came together again. Along the walls the apprentice setters stood before the black formes and with abstruse, deliberate or hesitating expressions, made swift s.n.a.t.c.hes at the little leaden dice. The sifting sound of the leads going home and the creak of the presses with the heavy wheeze of one printer, huge and grizzled like a walrus, pulling the press-lever back and bending forward to run his eyes across the type--wheeze, creak and click--made a level and monotonous sound.

'Ye drill well your men,' Throckmorton said lazily, and smoothed his white fingers, holding them up against the light, as if they of all things most concerned him.

He had received that day at Hampton a letter from the printer here in Austin Friars, sent hastening by the hands of the pressman whose idle machine he now leant against. 'Sir,' the letter said, 'my nephew saith urgently that T.C. is landed at Greenwich. He might not stay him. What this importeth best is yknown to your wors.h.i.+pful self. By the swaying of the sea which late he overpa.s.sed, being tempestive, and by other things, my nephew is rendered incoherent. That G.o.d may save you and guide your counsels and those of your master to the more advantaging of the Protestant religion that now, praised be G.o.d! standeth higher in the realm than ever it did, is the prayer of Jno. Badge the Younger.'

Throckmorton had hastened there to the hedges of Austin Friars at the fastest of his bargemen's oars. The printer had told him that, but that the business was the Lord Privy Seal's and, as he understood, went to the advantaging of Protestantism and the casting down of Popery, never would he ha' sent with the letter his own printer journeyman, busied as they were with printing of his great Bible in English.

'Here is an idle press,' he said, pointing at the mute and lugubrious instrument of black, 'and I doubt I ha' done wrong.' His moody brow beneath the black, dishevelled hair became overcast so that it wrinkled into great furrows like crowns. 'I doubt whether I have done wrong,' and he folded his immense bare arms, on which the hair was like a black boar's, and pondered. 'If I thought I had done wrong, I might not sleep seven nights.'

A printer yawned at his loom, and the great dark man shouted at him:

'Foul knave, ye show indolence! Wot ye that ye be printing the Word of G.o.d to send abroad in this land? Wot ye that for this ye shall stand with the elect in Heaven?' He turned upon Throckmorton. 'Sir,' he said, 'your master Cromwell advanceth the cause, therefore I ha'

served him in this matter of the letter. But, sir, I am doubtful that, by losing one moment from the printing of the pure Word of G.o.d, I have not lost more time than a year's work of thy master.'

Throckmorton rubbed gently the long hand that he still held against the light.

'Ye fall away from Privy Seal?' he asked.

The printer gazed at him with glowering and suffused eyes, choking in his throat. He raised an enormous hand before Throckmorton's face.

'Courtier,' he cried, 'with this hand I ha' stopped an ox, smiting it between the eyes. Wo befal the man, traitor to Privy Seal, that I do meet and betwixt whose eyes this hand doth fall.' The hand quivered in the air with fury. 'I can raise a thousand 'prentices and a thousand journeymen to save Privy Seal from any peril; I can raise ten thousand citizens, and ten thousand to-morrow again from the s.h.i.+res by pamphlets of my printing; I can raise a mighty army thus to s.h.i.+eld him from Papists and the devil's foul contrivances. An I were a Papist, I would pray to him, were he dead, as he were a saint.' Throckmorton moved his face a line or two backwards from the gesticulating ham of a hand, and blinked his eyes. 'My gold were Privy Seal's an he needed it; my blood were his and my prayers. Nevertheless,' and his voice took a more exalted note, 'one letter of the Word of G.o.d, G.o.d aiding it, is of more avail than Privy Seal, or I, and all those I can love, or he. With his laws and his nose for treason he hath smitten the Amalekites above the belt; but a letter of the Word of G.o.d can smite them hip and thigh, G.o.d helping.' He seemed again to choke in his throat, and said more quietly: 'But ye shall not think a man in land better loveth this G.o.dly flail of the monks.'

'Why, I do think ye would stand up against the King's self,'

Throckmorton said, 'and I am glad to hear it.'

'Against all printers and temporal powers,' the printer answered.

Amongst the apprentices and journeymen a murmur arose of acclamation or of denial, some being of opinion that the King was divine in origin and inspiration, but for the most part they supported their master, and Throckmorton's blue eyes travelled from one to the other.

But the printer heaved a sigh of satisfaction.

'G.o.d be thanked,' he said, 'that keepeth the hearts of princes and guideth with His breath all temporal occurrences.' Throckmorton was about to touch his cap at the name of Omnipotence, but remembering that he was among Protestants changed the direction of his hand and scratched his cheek among the little hairs of his beard; 'the signs are favourable that our good King's Highness shall still incline to our cause and Privy Seal's.'

Throckmorton said: 'Anan?'

'Aye,' the printer said heavily, 'good news is come of Cleves.'

'Ye ha' news from Cleves?' Throckmorton asked swiftly.

'From Cleves not,' the printer answered; 'but from the Court by way of Paris and thence from Cleves.' And to the interested spy he related, accurately enough, that a make of mouthing, mowing, magister of the Latin tongues had come from Paris, having stolen copies of the Cleves envoy's letters in that town, and that these letters said that Cleves was fast inclined to the true Schmalkaldner league of Lutherans and would pay tribute truly, but no more than that do fealty to the accursed leaguer of the Pope called Charles the Emperor.

Throckmorton inclined his cap at an angle to the floor.

'How had ye that news that was so secret?' he asked.

The printer shook his dark beard with an air of heavy pleasure.

'Ye have a great organisation of spies,' he said, 'but better is the whisper of G.o.d among the faithful.'

'Why,' Throckmorton answered, 'the magister Udal hath to his sweetheart thy niece Margot Poins.'

At her name the printer's eyes filled with a sudden and violent heat.

'Seek another channel,' he cried, and waved his arms at the low ceiling. 'Before the face of Almighty G.o.d I swear that I ha' no truck with Margot my niece. Since she has been sib with the wh.o.r.e of the devil called Kat Howard, never hath she told me a secret through her paramour or elsewise. A shut head the heavy logget keepeth--let her not come within reach of my hand.' He swayed back upon his feet. 'Let her not come,' he said. He bent his brows upon Throckmorton. 'I marvel,' he uttered, 'that ye who are so faithful a servant o' Privy Seal's can have truck with the brother of my niece Margot.'

'Printer,' Throckmorton answered him, 'ye know well that when the leaven of Protestantism hath entered in there, houses are divided against themselves. A wench may be a foul Papist and serve, if ye will, Kat Howard; but her brother shall yet be an indifferent good servant for me.'

The printer, who had tolerated that his men should hear his panegyric of the Bible and Privy Seal, scowled at them now so that again the arms swung to and fro with the levers, the leads clicked. He put his great head nearer Throckmorton's and muttered:

'Are ye certain my nephew serveth ye well? He was never wont to favour our cause, and, before ye sent him on this errand, he was wont to cry out in his cups that he was disgraced for having carried letters betwixt Kat Howard and the King. If this were true he was no friend of ours.'

'Why, it was true,' Throckmorton uttered negligently.

The printer caught at the spy's wrist, and the measure of his earnestness showed the extent of his pa.s.sion for Privy Seal's cause.

'Use him no more,' he said. 'Both children of my sister were ever indifferents. They shall not serve thee well.'

'It was ever Privy Seal's motto and habit to use for his servitors those that had their necks in his noose. Such men serve him ever the best.'

The printer shook his head gloomily.

'I wager my nephew will yet play the traitor to Privy Seal.'

'I will do it myself ere that,' and Throckmorton yawned, throwing his head back.

'The scaldhead is there,' the printer said; and in the doorway there stood, supporting himself by the lintel, the young Poins. His face was greenish white; a plaster was upon his shaven head; he held up one foot as if it pained him to set it to the floor. Through the house-place where sat the aged grandfather with his cap pulled over his brows, pallid, ironical and seeming indescribably ancient, the printer led the spy. The boy hobbled after them, neglecting the old man's words:

'Ha' no truck with men of Privy Seal's. Privy Seal hath stolen my ground.' In the long shed where they ate all, printer, grandfather, apprentices and journeymen, the printer thrust open the door with a heavy gesture, entering first and surveying the long trestles.

'Ye can speak here,' he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had work like other folk, and had been with the printer's mother eight years before he was born. His voice, raised to its height, was useless to drown her words. She could not hear him; and shrugging his shoulders, he said to Throckmorton that she heard less than the walls, and that was the best place he had for them to talk in. He slammed the door behind him.

Throckmorton set his foot upon the bench that ran between table and wall. He scowled fell-ly at the boy, so that his brows came down below his nose-top. 'Ye ha' not stayed him,' he said.

The boy burst forth in a torrent of rage and despair. He cursed Throckmorton to his face for having sent him upon this errand.

'I ha' been beaten by a gatewarden! by a knave! by a ploughman's son from Lincolns.h.i.+re!' he cried. 'A' cracked my skull with a pikestave and kicked me about the ribs when I lay on the s.h.i.+p's floor, sick like a pig. G.o.d curse the day you sent me to Calais, a gentleman's son, to be beat by a boor!' He broke off and began again. 'G.o.d curse you and the day I saw you! G.o.d curse Kat Howard and the day I carried her letter! G.o.d curse my sister Margot and the day she gar'd me carry the letters! And may a swift death of the pox take off Kat Howard's cousin--may he rot and stink through the earth above his grave. He would not fight with me, but aboard a s.h.i.+p when I was sick set a Lincolns.h.i.+re logget to beat me, a gentleman's son!'

'Why, thy gentility shall survive it,' Throckmorton said. 'But an it will not have more beating to its back, ye shall tell me where ye left T. Culpepper.'

'At Greenwich,' said the young Poins, and vomited forth curses. The old woman came from her pots to peer at the plasters on his skull, and then returned to the fire gibbering and wailing that she was not in that house plasters for to make.

'Knave,' Throckmorton said, 'an ye will not tell me your tale swiftly ye shall right now to the Tower. It is life and death to a leaden counter an I find not Culpepper ere nightfall.'

The young Poins stretched forth his arm and groaned.

'Part is bruises and part is sickness of the waves,' he muttered; 'but if I make not s.h.i.+ft to slit his weazand ere nightfall, pox take all my advancement for ever. I will tell my weary tale.'