The printer shrugged his enormous shoulders.
“Oh, ignorant!” he said. “A hundred years ago kings made war with blows. Now it is done with black velvets or the lack of black velvets. And I love laurel with brims of gold if such garlands crown a Queen of our faith. And I lament their lack if by it the King’s Highness maketh war upon our faith. And Privy Seal shall dine with the Bishop of Winchester, and righteousness kiss with the whoredom of abomination.”
“An my Lord Cromwell knew how many armed men he had to his beck he had never made peace with Winchester,” the man from Kent cried. He rose from his bench and went to stand near the fire.
A door-latch clicked, and in the dark corner of the room appeared something pale and shining—the face of old Badge, who held open the stair-door and grinned at the assembly, leaning down from a high step.
“Weather-bound all,” he quavered maliciously. “I will tell you why.”
He slipped down the step, pulling behind him the large figure of his grandchild Margot.
“Get you gone back,” the printer snarled at her.
“That will I not,” her gruff voice came. “See where my back is wet with the drippings through the roof.”
She and her grandfather had been sitting on a bed in the upper room, but the rain was trickling now through the thatch. The printer made a nervous stride to his printing stick, and, brandishing it in the air, poured out these words:
“Whores and harlots shall not stand in the sight of the godly.”
Margot shrank back upon the stair-place and remained there, holding the bolt of the door in her hand, ready to shut off access to the upper house.
“I will take no beating, uncle,” she panted; “this is my grandfather’s abode and dwelling.”
The old man was sniggering towards the window. He had gathered up his gown about his knees and picked his way between the pools of water on the floor and the Lutherans on their chairs towards the window. He mounted upon an oak chest that stood beneath the casement and, peering out, chuckled at what he saw.
“A mill race and a dam,” he muttered. “This floor will be a duck pond in an hour.”
“Harlot and servant of a harlot,” the printer called to his niece. The Lutherans, who came from houses where father quarrelled with son and mother with daughter, hardly troubled more than to echo the printer’s words of abuse. But one of them, a grizzled man in a blue cloak, who had been an ancient friend of the household, broke out:
“Naughty wench, thou wast at the ordeal of Dr. Barnes.”
Margot, drawing her knees up to her chin where she sat on the stairs, answered nothing. Had she not feared her uncle’s stick, she was minded to have taken a mop to the floor and to have put a clout in the doorway.
“Abominable naughty wench,” the grizzled man went on. “How had ye the heart to aid in that grim scene? Knew ye no duty to your elders?”
Margot closed the skirts round her ankles to keep away the upward draught and answered reasonably:
“Why, Neighbour Ned, my mistress made me go with her to see a heretic swinged. And, so dull is it in our service, that I would go to a puppet show far less fine and thank thee for the chance.”
The printer spat upon the floor when she mentioned her mistress.
“I will catechize,” he muttered. “Answer me as I charge thee.”
The old man, standing on the chest, tapped one of the Germans on the shoulder.
“See you that wall, friend?” he laughed. “Is it not a noble dam to stay the flood back into our house? Now the Lord Cromwell. …”
The Lanzknecht rolled his eyes round, because he understood no English. The old man went on talking, but no one there, not even Margot Poins, heeded him. She looked at her uncle reasonably, and said:
“Why, an thou wilt set down thy stick I will even consider thee, uncle.” He threw the stick into the corner and immediately she went to fetch a mop from the cooking closet, where there lived a mumbling old housekeeper. The printer followed her with gloomy eyes.
“Is not thy mistress a naughty woman?” he asked, as a judge talks to a prisoner condemned.
She answered, “Nay,” as if she had hardly attended to him.
“Is she not a Papist?”
She answered, “Aye,” in the same tone and mopped the floor beneath a man’s chair.
Her grandfather, standing high on the oak chest, so that his bonnet brushed the beams of the dark ceiling, quavered at her:
“Would she not bring down this Crummock, whose wall hath formed a dam so that my land-space is now a stream and my house-floor a frog pond?”
She answered, “Aye, grandfer,” and went on with her mopping.
“Did she not go with a man to a cellar of the Rogues’ Sanctuary after Winchester’s feast?” Neighbour Ned barked at her. “Such are they that would bring down our Lord!”
“Did she not even so with her cousin before he went to Calais?” her uncle asked.
Margot answered seriously:
“Nay, uncle, no night but what she hath slept in these arms of mine that you see.”
“Aye, you are her creature,” Neighbour Ned groaned.
“Foul thing,” the printer shouted. “Eyes are upon thee and upon her. It was the worst day’s work that ever she did when she took thee to her arms. For I swear to God that her name shall be accursed in the land. I swear to God. …”
He choked in his throat. His companions muttered Harlot; Strumpet; Spouse of the Fiend. And suddenly the printer shouted:
“See you; Udal is her go-between with the King, and he shall receive thee as his price. He conveyeth her to
