“What said Lord Cassilis of this? And the fellow Knighton? I saw them at the stairs.”
Privy Seal had such eyes that it was delicate work lying to him. But Throckmorton brought out heavily:
“Cassilis, that this Lady Anne should never be Queen.”
“Aye, but she must,” the Chancellor bleated. He had been bribed by two of the Cleves lords to get them lands in Kent when the Queen should be in power. Cromwell’s silence made Throckmorton continue against his will:
“Knighton, that the Queen’s breath should turn the King’s stomach against you! Dr. Miley, the Lutheran preacher, that by this evening’s work the Kingdom of God on earth was set trembling, the King having the nature of a lecher. …”
He tried to hold back. After all, it came into his mind, this man was nearly down. Any one of the men upon whom he now spied might come to be his master very soon. But Cromwell’s voice said, “And then?” and he made up his mind to implicate none but the Scotch lord, who was at once harmless and unliable to be harmed.
“Lord Cassilis,” he brought out, “said again that your lordship’s head should fall ere January goes out.”
He seemed to feel the great man’s sneer through the darkness, and was coldly angry with himself for having invented no better lie. For if this invisible and threatening phantom that hid itself among these shadows outlasted January he might yet outlast some of them. He wondered which of Cromwell’s innumerable ill-wishers it might best serve him to serve. But for the Chancellor of the Augmentations the heavy silence of calamity, like the waiting at a bedside for death to come, seemed to fall upon them. He imagined that the Privy Seal hid himself in that shadow in order to conceal a pale face and shaking knees. But Cromwell’s voice came harsh and peremptory to Throckmorton:
“What men be abroad at this night season? Ask my helmsmen.”
Two torchlights, far away to the right, wavered shaking trails in the water that, thus revealed, shewed agitated and chopped by small waves. The Chancellor’s white beard shook with the cold, with fear of Cromwell, and with curiosity to know how the man looked and felt. He ventured at last in a faint and bleating voice:
“What did his lordship think of this matter? Surely the King should espouse this lady and the Lutheran cause.”
Cromwell answered with inscrutable arrogance:
“Why, your cause is valuable. But this is a great matter. Get you in if you be cold.”
Throckmorton appeared noiselessly at his elbow, whilst the Chancellor was mumbling: “God forbid I should be called Lutheran.”
The torches, Throckmorton said, were those of fishers who caught eels off the mud with worms upon needles.
“Such night work favours treason,” Cromwell muttered. “Write in my notebook, ‘The Council to prohibit the fishing of eels by night.’ ”
“What a nose he hath for treasons,” the Chancellor whispered to Throckmorton as they rustled together into the cabin. Throckmorton’s face was gloomy and pensive. The Privy Seal had chosen none of his informations for noting down. Assuredly the time was near for him to find another master.
The barge swung round a reach, and the lights of the palace of Greenwich were like a flight of dim or bright squares in mid air, far ahead. The King’s barge was already illuminating the crenellated arch at the top of the river steps. A burst of torches flared out to meet it and disappeared. The Court was then at Greenwich, nearly all the lords, the bishops and the several councils lying in the Palace to await the coming of Anne of Cleves on the morrow. She had reached Rochester that evening after some days’ delay at Calais, for the winter seas. The King had gone that night to inspect her, having been given to believe that she was soberly fair and of bountiful charms. His courteous visit had been in secret and in disguise; therefore there were no torchmen in the gardens, and darkness lay between the river steps and the great central gateway. But a bonfire, erected by the guards to warm themselves in the courtyard, as it leapt up or subsided before the wind, shewed that tall tower pale and high or vanishing into the night with its carved stone garlands, its stone men at arms, its lions, roses, leopards, and naked boys. The living houses ran away from the foot of the tower, till the wings, coming towards the river, vanished continually into shadows. They were low by comparison, gabled with false fronts over each set of rooms and, in the glass of their small-paned windows, the reflection of the fire gleamed capriciously from unexpected shadows. This palace was called Placentia by the King because it was pleasant to live in.
Cromwell mounted the steps with a slow gait and an arrogant figure. Under the river arch eight of his gentlemen waited upon him, and in the garden the torches of his men shewed black yew trees cut like peacocks, clipped hedges like walls with archways above the broad and tiled paths, and fountains that gleamed and trickled as if secretly in the heavy and bitter night.
A corridor ran from under the great tower right round the palace. It was full of hurrying people and of grooms who stood in knots beside doorways. They flattened themselves against the walls before the Lord Privy Seal’s procession of gentlemen in black with white staves, and the ceilings seemed to send down moulded and gilded stalactites to touch his head. The beefeater before the door of the Lady Mary’s lodgings spat upon the ground when he had passed. His hard glance travelled along the wall like a palpable ray, about the height of a man’s head. It passed over faces and slipped back to the gilded wainscoting; tiring-women upon whom it fell shivered, and the serving men felt their bowels turn within them. His round
