“Our garden man would say …” she began a sentence. Her eye fell upon one of these very crumpled balls of paper. It lay upon the table and it confused her to think that it appeared like an apple. “Would say … would say …” she faltered.
He looked at her with enquiring eyes, round in his great head.
“It is too late,” she finished.
“Even too late for what?” he asked.
“Too late in the year to set the trees back,” she answered and her fit of nervousness had passed. “For there is a fluid in trees that runneth upward in the spring of the year to greet the blessed sun.”
“Why, what a wise lady is this!” he said, half earnest. “I would I had such an adviser as thou hast,” he continued to his daughter.
He frowned for a moment, remembering that, being who he was, he should stand in need of no advice.
“See you,” he said to Katharine. “You have spoken of many things and wisely, after a woman’s fashion of book-learning. Now I am minded that you should hear me speak upon the Word of God which is a man’s matter and a King’s. This day sennight I am to have brought to my closet a heretic, Dr. Barnes. If ye will ye may hear me confound him with goodly doctrines.”
He raised both his eyebrows heavily and looked first at the Lady Mary.
“You, I am minded, shall hear a word of true doctrine.”
And to Katharine, “I would hear how you think that I can manage a disputation. For the fellow is the sturdiest rogue with a yard of tongue to wag.”
Katharine maintained a duteous silence; the Lady Mary stood with her hands clasped before her. Upon Katharine he smiled suddenly and heavily.
“I grow too old to be a match for thee in the learning of this world. Thy tongue has outstripped me since I am become stale. … But hear me in the other make of talk.”
“I ask no better,” Katharine said.
“Therefore,” he finished, “I am minded that you, Mog, and your ladies all, do move your residences from here to my house at Hampton. This is an old and dark place; there you shall be better honoured.”
He lay back in his chair and was pleased with the care that he took of his daughter. Katharine glided intently across the smooth bare floor and took the ball of paper in her hand. His eyes followed her and he moved his head round after her movements, heavily, and without any motion of his great body. He was in a comfortable mood, having slept well the night before, and having conversed agreeably in the bosom of a family where pleasant conversation was a rare thing. For the Lady Mary had forborne to utter biting speeches, since her eyes too had been upon that ball of paper. The King did not stay for many minutes after Katharine had gone.
She was excited, troubled and amused—and, indeed, the passing of those letters held her thoughts in those few days. Thus it was easy to give the paper to her maid Margot, and easy to give Margot the directions. But she knew very well by what shift Margot persuaded her scarlet-clothed springald of a brother to take the ball and to throw it into the cookshop. For the young Poins was set upon advancement, and Margot, buxom, substantial and honest-faced, stood before him and said: “Here is your chance for advancement made …” if he could carry these missives very secretly.
“For, brother Poins,” she said, “thou knowest these great folks reward greatly—and these things pass between folks very great. If I tell thee no names it is because thou canst see more through a stone wall than common folk.”
So the young Poins cocked his bonnet more jauntily, and, setting out up river to Hampton, changed his scarlet clothes for a grey coat and puritan hose, and in the dark did his errand very well. He carried a large poke in which he put the larded capons and the round loaves that the cook sold to him. Later, following a reed path along the river, he came swiftly down to Isleworth with his bag on a cord and, in the darkness from beneath the walls, he slung bag and cord in at Katharine Howard’s open window. For several times this happened before the Lady Mary’s court was moved to Hampton. At first, Katharine had her tremors to put up with—and it was only when, each evening, with a thump and swish, the bag, sweeping out of the darkness, sped across her floor—it was only then that Katharine’s heart ceased from pulsing with a flutter. All the while the letters were out of her own hands she moved on tiptoe, as if she were a hunter intent on surprising a coy quarry. Nevertheless, it was impossible for her to believe that this was a dangerous game; it was impossible to believe that the heavy, unsuspicious and benevolent man who tried clumsily to gain his daughter’s love with bribes of cakes and kerchiefs—that this man could be roused to order her to her death because she conveyed from one place to another a ball of paper. It was more like a game of passing a ring from hand to hand behind the players’ backs, for kisses for forfeits if the ring were caught. Nevertheless, this was treason-felony; yet it was furthering the dear cause of the saints.
It was on the day on which her uncle Norfolk had sent for her that the King had his interview with the heretical Dr. Barnes—nicknamed Antoninus Anglicanus.
The Lady Mary and Katharine Howard and her maid, Margot, were set
