She was no wanton. He could be sure of her fidelity. But she gave herself airs. She would teach her husband. She had become a clerk with her cleverness. A woman should have more sense.
Yet, to tell the truth, it distressed
Misguided Kate! he mused.
He had merely given his permission to have her examined, that was all. The next day they would come to take her to the Tower. He had no intention of harming Kate if she could satisfy them that she had not been dabbling in heresy. It was naught to do with him. He was a King, not an examiner of his subjects’ opinions. Others did that, and brought the results to him.
If Kate were innocent, she would have nothing to fear.
His little mouth was set in prim lines. There was justice in this land; and he had instituted it. If any of that long procession of headless corpses, which sometimes haunted his dreams, had proved their innocence, they would have retained their heads. That was how his conscience said it was, and that was how it must be.
But heretic or not, Kate was the best nurse he had ever had, and he needed Kate.
He roared to his gentlemen.
“I will go to see the Queen. I will see if I can calm her distress. Here! Get my chair and take me there. I declare I cannot put foot to the ground, yet I will make the journey to her apartment, since she is so sick. I will not trouble her to come here.”
Even while he cursed them for their clumsiness, he was smiling at his own benevolence. You see, he said to his conscience, what a clement ruler we are! We never condemn unjustly. Now I shall go to Kate and see what I can do for her. I shall try to soothe her malady, poor Kate!
They wheeled his chair through the great rooms, lifting it up the stairs when necessary. When they neared the Queen’s apartments, Seymour joined the party, but the King, so intent on his own thoughts, paid no heed to the sudden reappearance of that gentleman.
When the King entered the Queen’s bedchamber, Lady Herbert sank to her knees. The Queen raised herself at Henry’s approach.
“Don’t rise…don’t rise,” said Henry. “We know of your sickness.”
“Your Majesty is gracious,” said Katharine.
For a moment her eyes rested on the most handsome gentleman of the King’s bedchamber, but Seymour had looked quickly away.
Lady Herbert said: “Your Majesty, I fear the Queen is very ill.”
The King looked at her in mild distaste. “We asked not your opinion, my Lady Herbert. It is for the Queen’s physicians to give us news of the Queen’s health, and that when we ask it.” He looked round at the assembled company. “I would be alone with the Queen,” he said. “Push me nearer to the bed that I may see the Queen as I speak with her.”
They did this and, bowing low, left Henry and Katharine together.
The King began, not without a note of tenderness in his voice: “How now, Kate? What means this?”
“It is good of Your Grace to visit me thus,” said Katharine.
“You sound as pleased to see us as you would to see a ghost.”
“If I seem ungracious it is on account of the deep melancholy which besets me, my lord.”
The King gazed at her—so small and fragile in the huge and most splendid bed, her hair hanging about her shoulders.
“By my faith,” he said in those tones which she knew so well, “you’re a pretty wench with your hair thus disordered.”
She answered as though repeating a lesson she had at great pains taught herself. “I am glad my looks find favor in Your Majesty’s sight.”
“Looks?” cried the King. “Ah!” He winced as he moved forward in his chair that he might see her better. “Methinks I am too old to sigh because a woman’s hair is black or gold.”
“But Your Majesty is as young in spirit as he ever was. That is constantly proved.”
“H’m,” said the King. “But this poor body, Kate… Ah! There’s the pity of it. When I was twenty… when I was thirty…I was indeed a man.”
“But wisdom walketh hand in hand with our gray hairs, Your Grace. Which would you…youth and its follies, or age with its experience?”
And as she spoke she asked herself: How is it that I can talk thus, as though I cared for his opinion, as though I did not know his thoughts, his plans for me? But I flatter him because I want to live. Thomas came to my apartments at great risk to warn me…to let me know that I must live because he is waiting for me.
“There speaks my wise Queen,” said the King. “Methinks, Kate, that youth should be the right of kingship. Never to grow old! A king should be young for ever.”
“Had your royal father been eternally young, we should never have had his great and clement Majesty King Henry the Eighth upon the throne.”
The King shot her a swift glance, and she knew that she had made a mistake. Her nails hurt the palms of her hands. There must be no mistakes.
“Methinks you jest,” said Henry coldly. “You were ever fond of a jest…overfond.”
“My lord,” said Katharine earnestly, “I never was less in the mood for jokes.”
