Cicely Elliott fell back into her chair and laughed.
“What are we amongst that multitude?” she said. “Listen to me: When my menfolk were cast to die, I flew to Gardiner to save them. Gardiner would not speak. Now is he Bishop of Winchester—for he had goods of my father’s, and greased with them the way to his bishop’s throne. Fanshawe is a goodly Papist; but Cromwell hath let him have goods of the Abbey of Bright. Will Fanshawe help thee to bring back the Church? Then he must give up his lands. Will Cranmer help thee? Will Miners? Coney, I loved Federan, a true man: Miners hath his land today, and Federan’s mother starves. Will Miners help thee to gar the King do right? Then the mother of my love Federan must have Miners’ land and the rents for seven years. Will Cranmer serve thee to bring back the Bishop of Rome? Why, Cranmer would burn.”
“But the poorer sort—” Katharine said.
“There is no man will help thee whose help will avail,” Cicely mocked at her. “For hear me: No man now is up in the land that hath not goods of the Church; fields of the abbeys; spoons made of the parcel gilt from the shrines. There is no rich man now but is rich with stolen riches; there is no man now up that was not so set up. And the men that be down have lost their heads. Go dig in graves to find men that shall help thee.”
“Cromwell shall fall ere May goeth out,” Katharine said.
“Well, the King dotes upon thy sweet face. But Cromwell being down, there will remain the men he hath set up. Be they lovers of the old faith, or thee? Now, thy pranks will ruin all alike.”
“The King is minded to right these wrongs,” Katharine protested hotly.
“The King! The King!” Cicely laughed. “Thou lovest the King. … Nay an thou lovest the King. … But to be enamoured of the King. … And the King enamoured of thee … why, this pair of lovers cast adrift upon the land—”
Katharine said:
“Belike I am enamoured of the King: belike the King of me, I do not know. But this I know: he and I are minded to right the wrongs of God.”
Cicely Elliott opened her eyes wide.
“Why, thou art a very infectious fanatic!” she said. “You may well do these things. But you must shed much blood. You must widow many men’s wives. Body of God! I believe thou wouldst.”
“God forbid it!” Katharine said. “But if He so willeth it, fiat voluntas.”
“Why, spare no man,” Cicely answered. “Thou shalt not very easily escape.”
It was at this point that the magister was moved to keep no longer silence.
“Now, by all the gods of high Olympus!” he cried out, “such things shall not be alleged against me. For I do swear, before Venus and all the saints, that I am your man.”
Nevertheless, it was Margot Poins, wavering between her love for her magister and her love for her mistress, that most truly was carried away by Katharine’s eloquence.
“Mistress,” she said, and she indicated both the magister and his tall and bearded companion, “these two have made up a pretty plot upon the stairs. There are in it papers from Cleves and a matter of deceiving Privy Seal and thou shouldst be kept in ignorance asking to—to—”
Her gruff voice failed and her blushes overcame her, so that she wanted for a word. But upon the mention of papers and Privy Seal the old knight fidgeted and faltered:
“Why, let us begone.” Cicely Elliott glanced from one to the other of them with a malicious glee, and Throckmorton’s eyes blinked sardonically above his beard.
It had been actually upon the stairs that he had come upon the magister, newly down from his horse, and both stiff and bruised, with Margot Poins hanging about his neck and begging him to spare her a moment. Throckmorton crept up the dark stairway with his shoes soled with velvet. The magister was seeking to disengage himself from the girl with the words that he had a treaty form of the Duke of Cleves in his bosom and must hasten on the minute to give it to her mistress.
“Before God!” Throckmorton had said behind his back, “ye will do no such thing,” and Udal had shrieked out like a rabbit caught by a ferret in its bury. For here he had seemed to find himself caught by the chief spy of Privy Seal upon a direct treason against Privy Seal’s self.
But, dragging alike the terrified magister and the heavy, blonde girl who clung to him out from the dark stairhead into the corridor, where, since no one could come upon them unseen or unheard, it was the safest place in the palace to speak, Throckmorton had whispered into his ear a long, swift speech in which he minced no matters at all.
The time, he said, was ripe to bring down Privy Seal. He himself—Throckmorton himself—loved Kat Howard with a love compared to which the magister’s was a rushlight such as you bought fifty for a halfpenny. Privy Seal was ravening for a report of that treaty. They must, before all things, bring him a report that was false. For, for sure, upon that report Privy Seal would act, and, if they brought him a false report, Privy Seal would act falsely.
Udal stood perfectly still, looking at nothing, his thin brown hand clasped round his thin brown chin.
“But, above all,” Throckmorton had concluded, “show ye no papers to Kat Howard. For it is very certain that she will have no falsehoods employed to bring down Privy Seal, though she hate him as the Assyrian cockatrice hateth the symbol of the Cross.”
“Sir Throckmorton,” Margot Poins had uttered, “though ye be a paid spy, ye speak true words there.”
He pulled his beard and blinked at her.
“I am minded to reform,” he said. “Your mistress hath worked a miracle of conversion in me.”
She
