Privy Seal Part 31

Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:

'Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe silence in the awful presence of kings.'

Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a minute's s.p.a.ce.

'Silence!' he said. 'Before G.o.d, silence! Have ye ever heard this lady's tongue?' He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.

'Ye have done well,' he said. 'Give me your sword. I will knight you.

I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight's fee farm of a hundred pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye were about my nephew's courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro'.' He waved his hand to Throckmorton. 'See him disposed,' he said.

Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in his seat and thundered:

'Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I ha' heard ye ha' made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By G.o.d, I am Harry of Windsor!'

He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green shoulders below him.

'Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,' he said. 'Get you gone!'

Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.

'Poor Tom,' she cried. 'Best it is for thee and me that thou goest.

Here thou hast no place.' He shook his head like a man in a daze and was gone.

'Art too patient with the springald,' the King said.

He thundered 'Body of G.o.d!' again when he saw Throckmorton once more fall to his knees.

'Sire,' he said--and for the first time he faltered in his level tones--'a very great treason has come to my ken this day!'

'Holy altar fires!' the King growled, 'let your treasons wait. Here hath this lady been talking to me very reasonably of a golden age.'

'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to support him. 'This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have seen it in thy town of London.'

Katharine cried out, 'Ah!'

The King leapt to his feet.

'Ho, I will arm,' he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But, even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret rebellions.

'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he challenged her:

'This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of the printer, John Badge----' and he repeated the speech of the saturnine man--'that "_he would raise a thousand prentices and a thousand journeymen to s.h.i.+eld Privy Seal from peril; that he could raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the s.h.i.+res!_"'

Katharine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to a.s.sure her that these words were true.

But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.

'Let us arm my guard,' he said. 'I will play Nero to London town.'

Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.

'Majesty,' he said, 'I have this man in my keeping.' And indeed, at his pa.s.sing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and bring him to Hampton. 'I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your warrant, and Privy Seal's I dare not ask.'

The King stayed in his pacing.

'Thou art a jewel of a man,' he said. 'By c.o.c.k, I would I had many like thee.' And at the news that the head of this confederacy was taken his sudden fear fell. 'I will see this man. Bring him to me.'

'Sire,' Katharine said, 'we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!'

'Madam,' Throckmorton dared to speak. 'This is the man that hath printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath uttered more lewdnesses of your chast.i.ty.'

'The more I will have him pardoned,' Katharine said, 'that his Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.'

Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.

'G.o.d send you never rue it,' he said. 'Majesty,' he continued to the King, 'give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal's. For Privy Seal hath a mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me half-an-hour's s.p.a.ce and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal is a false and d.a.m.nable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.'

He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves.

And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his armoury, to the Amba.s.sador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was minded to lay before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For, with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned, she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for his ears were p.r.i.c.ked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the point of his dagger.

The King said:

'Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak of.'

Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against the door-post and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and pa.s.sionate glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain that ever was in his life.

And gazing back at him, Katharine's eyes were filled with pity, so sick he appeared to be.

'Body of G.o.d!' the King said in the silence that fell upon them. 'Now I hold Cromwell.'

Katharine cried out, 'Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!'

He caught her masterfully in his arms.

'This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,' he said.

She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.

'I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me go.'

He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.

'Listen to me,' she cried, 'listen to me! There have been broadsides printed against the truth of my body; there have been witnesses prepared against me. I will have you swear that you will read of these broadsides, and consider of these witnesses.'

'Before G.o.d,' he said, 'I will hang the printers, and slay the witnesses with my fist. I know how these things be made.' He shook his fist. 'I love thee so that were they true, and wert thou the woman of Sodom, I would have thee to my Queen!'

She cried out 'Ah!'