Cromwell had arranged this scene very carefully: for his power over the King fell away daily, and that day he had had to tell Baumbach, the Saxish ambassador, that there was no longer any hope of the King’s allying himself with the Schmalkaldner league. Therefore he was the more hot to discover a new Papist treason. The suggestion of Viridus that Katharine might be made either to discover or to invent one had filled him with satisfaction. There was no one who could be more believed if she could be ground down into swearing away the life of her uncle or any other man of high station. And to grind her down thus needed only many threats. He infused gradually more terror into his narrow eyes, and spoke more gravely:
“Neither do I desire the death of this traitor so hotly as doth his Highness. For there be these foul lies—and have you not heard the ancient fool’s prophecy that was made over thirty years ago: ‘That one with a Red Cap brought up from low degree should rule all the land under the King. (I trow ye know who that was.) And that after much mixing the land should by another Red Cap be reconciled or else brought to utter ruin’?”
“I am new to this place,” Katharine said; “I never heard that saying. God help me, I wish this man were dead.”
His voice grew the more deep as he saw that she was the more daunted:
“Aye: and whether the land be reconciled to the Bishop of Rome, or be brought to utter ruin, the one and the other signify the downfall of his Highness.”
The Chancellor interrupted piously:
“God save us. Whither should we all flee then!”
“It is not,” Viridus commented dryly, “that his Highness or my lord here do fear a fool prophecy made by a drunken man. But there being such a prophecy running up and down the land, and such a malignant and devilish Red Cap ranting up and down the world, the hearts of foolish subjects are made to turn.”
“Idiot wench,” the Chancellor suddenly yelped at her, “ignorant, naughty harlot! You had better have died than have uttered those your pretty words.”
“Why,” Cromwell said gently, “I am very sure that now you desire that your cousin should slay this traitor.” He paused, licked his lips and held out a hand. “Upon your life,” he barked, “tell no soul this secret.”
The faces of all the four men were again upon her, sardonic, leering and amused, and suddenly she felt that this was not the end of the matter: there was something untrue in this parade of threats. Cromwell was acting: they were all acting parts. Their speeches were all too long, too dryly spoken: they had been rehearsed! This was not the end of the matter—and neither her cousin nor Cardinal Pole was here the main point. She wondered for a wild moment if Cromwell, too, like Gardiner, thought that she had a voice with the King. But Cromwell knew as well as she that the King had seen her but once for a minute, and he was not a fool like Gardiner to run his nose into a mare’s nest.
“There is no power upon earth could save you from your doom if through you this matter miscarried,” he said, softly: “therefore, be you very careful: act as I would have you act: seek out that secret that I would know.”
It came irresistibly into Katharine’s head:
“These men know already very well that I have written to Bishop Gardiner! This is to hold a halter continuously above my head!” Then, at least, they did not mean to do away with her instantly. She dropped her eyes upon the ground and stood submissively whilst Privy Seal’s voice came cruel and level:
“You are a very fair wench, made for love and such stuff. You are an indifferent good Latinist who might offer good counsel. But be you very careful that you come not against me. You should not escape, but may burrow underground sooner than that. Your Aristotle should not help you, nor Lucretius, nor Lucan, nor Silius Italicus. Diodorus Siculus hath no maxim that should help you against me; but, like Diodorus the Dialectician, you should die of shame. Seneca shall help you if you but dally with that fool thought who sayeth: ‘Quaeris quo jaceas post obitum loco? Quo non nata jacent.’ Aye, thou shalt die and lie in an unknown grave as thou hadst never been born.”
She went, her knees trembling half with fear and half with rage, for it was impossible to imagine anything more threatening or more arrogant than his soft, cruel voice, that seemed to sound for long after in her ears, saying, “I have you at my mercy; see you do as I have bidden you.”
Watching the door that closed upon her, Viridus said, with a negligent amusement:
“That fool Udal hath set it all about that your lordship designed her for the recreation of his Highness.”
“Why,” Cromwell answered, with his motionless smile of contempt for his fellow men, “it is well to offer bribes to fools and threats to knaves.”
The Chancellor bleated, with amazed adulation, “Marvel that your lordship should give so much care to such a worthless rag!”
“An I had never put my heart into trifles, I had never stood here,” Cromwell snarled at him. “Would that my knaves would ever come to learn that!” He spoke again to Viridus: “See that this wench come never near his Highness. I like not her complexion.”
“Well, we may clap her up at any moment,” his man answered.
VII
The King came to the revels at the Bishop of Winchester’s, for these too were given in honour of the Queen, and he had altered in his mind to let the Emperor and Francis know that he was inclined to weaken in his new alliances. Besides, there was the newest suitor
