“Little good of a friend you will have of Norfolk. ’Tis a bitter apple and a very rotten plank to lean upon.”
She could not any longer miss his meaning. The King’s scarlet and immense figure was already in the grey shadow of the arch under the tower. In walking, they had come near him, and while they waited he stood for a minute, gazing back down the path with boding and pathetic eyes; then he disappeared.
She looked at Cromwell and thanked him for the warning, “quia spicula praevisa minus laedunt.”
“I would have you read it: gaudia plus laetificant,” he answered gravely.
A man with a conch-shaped horn upturned was suddenly blowing beneath the archway seven hollow and reverberating grunts of sound that drowned his voice. A clear answering whistle came from the water-gate. Cromwell stayed, listening attentively; another stood forward to blow four blasts, another six, another three. Each time the whistle answered. They were the great officers’ signals for their barges that the men blew, and the whistle signified that these lay at readiness in the tideway. A bustle of men running, calling, and making pennons ready, began beyond the archway in the quadrangle.
Cromwell’s face grew calm and contented; the King was sending to meet Anne of Cleves.
“Y’ are well read?” he asked her slowly.
“I was brought up in the Latin tongue or ever I had the English,” she answered. “I had a good master, one that spoke the learned language always.”
“Aye, Nicholas Udal,” Cromwell said.
“You know all men in the land,” she said, with fear and surprise.
“I had him to master for the Lady Mary, since he is well disposed.”
“ ’Tis an arrant knave tho’ the best of pedagogues,” she answered. “He was cast out of his mastership at Eton for being a rogue.”
“For that, the worshipful your father had him to master,” he said ironically.
“No, for that he was a ruined man, and taught for his victuals. We welly starved at home, my sisters and I.”
He said slowly:
“The better need that you should grow beloved here.”
Standing there, before the bushes where no ears could overhear, he put to her more questions. She had some Greek, more than a little French, she could judge a good song, she could turn a verse in Latin or the vulgar tongue. She professed to be able to ride well, to be conversant with the terms of venery, to shoot with the bow, and to have studied the Fathers of the Church.
“These things are well liked in high places,” he said. “His Highness’ self speaks five tongues, loveth a nimble answer, and is a noble huntsman.” He surveyed her as if she were a horse he were pricing. “But I doubt not you have appraised yourself passing well,” he uttered.
“I have had some to make me pleasant speeches,” she answered, “but too many cannot be had.”
“See you,” he said slowly, “these tuckets that they blow from the gate signify that the new Queen cometh with a great state.” He bit his under lip and looked at her meaningly. “But a great state ensueth a great heaviness to the head of the State. Principis hymen, principium gravitatis. … ’Tis a small matter to me; you may make it a great one to your ladyship’s light fortunes.”
She knew that he awaited her saying:
“I do not take your lordship,” and she pulled the hood further over her face because it was cold, and uttered the words with her eyes on the ground.
“Why,” he said readily, “you are a lady having gifts that are much in favour in these days. Be careful to use those gifts and no others. Meddle in nothing that does not concern you. So you may make a great marriage with some lord in favour. But meddle in naught else!”
She would find many to set her an evil example. The other ladies amongst whom she was going were a mutinous knot. Let her be careful! If by her good behaviour she earned it, he would put the King in mind to advance her. If by good speeches and good example—since she had great store of learning—she could turn the hearts of these wicked ladies; if she could report to him evil designs or plots, he would speak to the King in such wise that His Highness should give her a great dower and any lord would marry her. Or he would advance her cousin so that he should become marriageable.
She said submissively:
“Your lordship would have me become a spy upon the ladies who shall be my fellows?”
He waved his hand with a large and calming gesture.
“I would have you work for the good of the State as you find it,” he said gravely. “That, too, is a doctrine of the Ancients.” He cited the case of Seneca, who supported the government of Nero, and she noted that he twisted to suit his purpose Tacitus’ account of the soldiers of that same Prince.
Nevertheless, she made no comment. For she knew that it is the nature of men calmly to ask hateful sacrifices of women. But her throat ached with rage. And when she followed him along the corridors of the palace she seemed to feel that each man, each woman that they passed hated that lord with a hatred born of fear.
He walked in front of her arrogantly, as if she were a straw to be drawn along in the wind of his progress. Doors flew open at a flick of his finger.
Suddenly they were in a tall room, long, and dim because it faced the north. It seemed an empty cavern, but there were in it many books upon a long table and at the far end, so that they looked quite small, two figures stood before a reading-pulpit. The voice of the serving man who had thrown open the door made the words “The Lord Privy Seal of England” echo mournfully along the gilded and dim rafters of the ceiling.
Cromwell hastened over the smooth, cold
