Old Rochford smiled contentedly.
“I have saved my head and my lands in these perilous times by letting no man know,” he said.
“Aye,” Katharine met his words with scorn and appeal. “You have kept your head on your shoulders and the rent from your lands in your poke. But oh, sir, it is certain that, being a man, you love either the new ways or the old; it is certain that, being a spurred knight, you should love the old ways. Sir, bethink you and take heed of this: that the angels of God weep above England, that the Mother of God weeps above England; that the saints of God do weep—and you, a spurred knight, do wield a good sword. Sir, when you stand before the gates of Heaven, what shall you answer the warders thereof?”
“Please God,” the old knight answered, “that I have struck some good blows.”
“Aye; you have struck blows against the Scots,” Katharine said. “But the beasts of the field strike as well against the foes of their kind—the bull of the herd against lions; the Hyrcanian tiger against the troglodytes; the basilisk against many beasts. It is the province of a man to smite not only against the foes of his kind but—and how much the more?—against the foes of his God.”
In the full flow of her speaking there came in the great, blonde Margot Poins, her body-maid. She led by the hand the Magister Udal, and behind them followed, with his foxy eyes and long, smooth beard, the spy Throckmorton, vivid in his coat of green and scarlet stockings. And, at the antipathy of his approach, Katharine’s emotions grew the more harrowing—as if she were determined to shew this evil supporter of her cause how a pure fight should be waged. They moved on tiptoe and stood against the hangings at the back.
She stretched out her hands to the old knight.
“Here you be in a pitiful and afflicted land from which the saints have been driven out; have you struck one blow for the saints of God? Nay, you have held your peace. Here you be where good men have been sent to the block: have you decried their fates? You have seen noble and beloved women, holy priests, blessed nuns defiled and martyred; you have seen the poor despoiled; you have seen that knaves ruled by aid of the devil about a goodly king. Have you struck one blow? Have you whispered one word?”
The colour rushed into Margot Poins’ huge cheeks. She kept her mouth open to drink in her mistress’s words, and Throckmorton waved his hands in applause. Only Udal shuffled in his broken-toed shoes, and old Rochford smiled benignly and tapped his chest above the chains.
“I have struck good blows in the quarrels that were mine,” he answered.
Katharine wrung her hands.
“Sir, I have read it in books of chivalry, the province of a knight is to succour the Church of God, to defend the body of God, to set his lance in rest for the Mother of God; to defend noble men cast down, and noble women; to aid holy priests and blessed nuns; to succour the despoiled poor.”
“Nay, I have read no books of chivalry,” the old man answered; “I cannot read.”
“Ah, there be pitiful things in this world,” Katharine said, and her chest was troubled.
“You should quote Hesiodus,” Cicely mocked her suddenly from her stool. “I marked this text when all my menfolk were slain: πλεἱη μὲν γὰρ γᾶια, πλεἱη δέ θὰλασσα so I have laughed ever since.”
Upon her, too, Katharine turned.
“You also,” she said; “you also.”
“No, before God, I am no coward,” Cicely Elliott said. “When all my menfolk were slain by the headsman something broke in my head, and ever since I have laughed. But before God, in my way I have tried to plague Cromwell. If he would have had my head he might have.”
“Yet what hast thou done for the Church of God?” Katharine said.
Cicely Elliott sprang to the floor and raised her hands with such violence that Throckmorton moved swiftly forward.
“What did the Church of God for me?” she cried. “Guard your face from my nails ere you ask me that again. I had a father; I had two brothers; I had two men I loved passing well. They all died upon one day upon the one block. Did the saints of God save them? Go see their heads upon the gates of York?”
“But if they died for God His pitiful sake,” Katharine said—“if they did die in the quarrel of God’s wounds—”
Cicely Elliott screamed, with her hands above her head.
“Is that not enow? Is that not enow?”
“Then it is I, not thou, that love them,” Katharine said; “for I, not thou, shall carry on the work for which they died.”
“Oh gaping, pink-faced fool!” Cicely Elliott sneered at her.
She began to laugh, holding her black sides in, her face thrown back. Then she closed her mouth and stood smiling.
“You were made for a preacher, coney,” she said. “Fine to hear thee belabouring my old, good knight with doughty words.”
“Gibe as thou wilt; scream as thou wilt—” Katharine began. Cicely Elliott tossed in on her words:
“My head ached so. I had the right of it to scream. I cannot be minded of my menfolk but my head will ache. But I love thy fine preaching. Preach on.”
Katharine raised herself from her chair.
“Words there must be that will move thee,” she said, “if God will give them to me.”
“God hath withdrawn Himself from this world,” Cicely answered. “All mankind goeth a-mumming.”
“It was another thing that Polycrates said.” Katharine, in spite of her emotion, was quick to catch the misquotation.
“Coney,” Cicely Elliott answered, “all men wear masks; all men lie; all men desire the goods of all men and seek how they may get them.”
“But Cromwell being down, these things shall change,” Katharine answered.
