Cromwell interrupted her, smiling that Venus, who made her so fair, gave her no need of a gift of tongues, and Minerva, who made her so learned, gave her no need of fairness. For the sake of the one and the other, he would very diligently enquire into these women’s courses. If they ha been guiltless, they should be richly repaid; if they ha been guilty, they should be pardoned.
Katharine flushed with a hot anger.
“Ye are a very craven lord,” she said. “If you may find them guilty, you shall have my head. But if you do find them innocent and shield them not, I swear I will strive to have thine.” Anger made her blue eyes dilate. “Have you no bowels of compassion for the right? Ye treat me as a fair woman—but I speak as a messenger of the King’s, that is God’s, to men who too long have hardened their hearts.”
Throckmorton laid back his head and laughed suddenly at the ceiling; Cranmer crossed himself; Wriothesley beat his heel upon the floor and shrugged his shoulders bitterly—but Lascelles, the Archbishop’s spy, kept his eyes upon Throckmorton’s face with a puzzled scrutiny.
“Why now does that man laugh?” he asked himself. For it seemed to him that by laughing Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. And indeed, Throckmorton applauded Katharine Howard. As policy her speech was neither here nor there, but as voicing a spirit, infectious and winning to men’s hearts, he saw that such speaking should carry her very far. And, if it should embroil her more than ever with Cromwell, it would the further serve his adventures. He was already conspiring to betray Cromwell, and he knew that, very soon now, Cromwell must pierce his mask of loyalty; and the more Katharine should have cast down her glove to Cromwell, the more he could shelter behind her; and the more men she could have made her friends with her beauty and her fine speeches, the more friends he too should have to his back when the day of discovery came. In the meantime he had in his sleeve a trick that he would speedily play upon Cromwell, the most dangerous of any that he had played. For below the stairs he had Udal, with his news of the envoy from Cleves to France, and with his copies of the envoy’s letters. But, in her turn, Katharine played him, unwittingly enough, a trick that puzzled him.
“Bones of St. Nairn!” he said; “she has him to herself. What mad prank will she play now?”
Katharine had drawn Cromwell to the very end of the gallery.
“As I pray that Christ will listen to my pleas when at the last I come to Him for pardon and comfort,” she said, “I swear that I will speak true words to you.”
He surveyed her, plump, alert, his lips moving one upon the other. He brought one white soft hand from behind his back to play with the furs upon his chest.
“Why, I believe you are a very earnest woman,” he said.
“Then, sir,” she said, “understand that your sun is near its setting. We rise, we wane; our little days do run their course. But I do believe you love your King his cause more than most men.”
“Madam Howard,” he said, “you have been my foremost foe.”
“Till five minutes agone I was,” she said.
He wondered for a moment if she were minded to beg him to aid her in growing to be Queen; and he wondered too how that might serve his turn. But she spoke again:
“You have very well served the King,” she said. “You have made him rich and potent. I believe ye have none other desire so great as that desire to make him potent and high in this world’s gear.”
“Madam Howard,” he said calmly, “I desire that—and next to found for myself a great house that always shall serve the throne as well as I.”
She gave him the right to that with a lowering of her eyebrows.
“I too would see him a most high prince,” she said. “I would see him shed lustre upon his friends, terror upon his foes, and a great light upon this realm and age.”
She paused to touch him earnestly with one long hand, and to brush back a strand of her hair. Down the gallery
