“Aye,” Cranmer answered. “But would Rome have truck with me?” and he shook his head bitterly. He had been made Archbishop with no sanction from Rome.
Cromwell turned upon Wriothesley; the debonair smile was gone from his face; the friendly contempt that he had for the Archbishop was gone too; his eyes were hard, cruel and red, his lips hardened.
“Ye have done me a very evil turn,” he said. “Ye spoke stiff-necked folly to this lady. Ye shall learn, Protestants that ye are, that if I be the flail of the monks I may be a hail, a lightning, a bolt from heaven upon Lutherans that cross the King.”
The hard malice of his glance made Wriothesley quail and flush heavily.
“I thought ye had been our friend,” he said.
“Wriothesley,” Cromwell answered, “I tell thee, silly knave, that I be friend only to them that love the order and peace I have made, under the King’s Highness, in this realm. If it be the King’s will to stablish again the old faith, a hammer of iron will I be upon such as do raise their heads against it. It were better ye had never been born, it were better ye were dead and asleep, than that ye raised your heads against me.” He turned, then he swung back with the sharpness of a viper’s spring.
“What help have I had of thee and thy friends? I have bolstered up Cleves and his Lutherans for ye. What have he and ye done for me and my King? Your friend the Duke of Cleves has an envoy in Paris. Have ye found for why he comes there? Ye could not. Ye have botched your errand to Paris; ye have spoken naughtily in my house to a friend of the King’s that came friendlily to me.” He shook a fat finger an inch from Wriothesley’s eyes. “Have a care! I did send my visitors to smell out treason among the convents and abbeys. Wait ye till I send them to your conventicles! Ye shall not scape. Body of God! ye shall not scape.”
He placed a heavy hand upon Throckmorton’s shoulder.
“I would I had sent thee to Paris,” he said. “No envoy had come there whose papers ye had not seen. I warrant thou wouldst have ferreted them through.”
Throckmorton’s eyes never moved; his mouth opened and he spoke with neither triumph nor malice:
“In very truth, Privy Seal,” he said, “I have ferreted through enow of them to know why the envoy came to Paris.”
Cromwell kept his hands still firm upon his spy’s shoulder whilst the swift thoughts ran through his mind. He scowled still upon Wriothesley.
“Sir,” he said, “ye see how I be served. What ye could not find in Paris my man found for me in London town.” He moved his face round towards the great golden beard of his spy. “Ye shall have the farms ye asked me for in Suffolk,” he said. “Tell me now wherefore came the Cleves envoy to France. Will Cleves stay our ally, or will he send like a coward to his Emperor?”
“Privy Seal,” Throckmorton answered expressionlessly—he fingered his beard for a moment and felt at the medal depending upon his chest—“Cleves will stay your friend and the King’s ally.”
A great sigh went up from his three hearers at Throckmorton’s lie; and impassive as he was, Throckmorton sighed too, imperceptibly beneath the mantle of his beard. He had burned his boats. But for the others the sigh was of a great contentment. With Cleves to lead the German Protestant confederation, the King felt himself strong enough to make headway against the Pope, the Emperor and France. So long as the Duke of Cleves remained a rebel against his lord the Emperor, the King would hold over Protestantism the mantle of his protection.
Cromwell broke in upon their thoughts with his swift speech.
“Sirs,” he uttered, “then what ye will shall come to pass. Wriothesley, I pardon thee; get thee back to Paris to thy mission. Archbishop, I trow thou shalt have the head of that wench. Her cousin shall be brought here again from France.”
Lascelles, the Archbishop’s spy, who kept his gaze upon Throckmorton’s, saw the large man’s eyes shift suddenly from one board of the floor to another.
“That man is not true,” he said to himself, and fell into a train of musing. But from the others Cromwell had secured the meed of wonder that he desired. He had closed the interview with a dramatic speech; he had given them something to talk of.
VII
He held Throckmorton in the small room that contained upon its high stand the Privy Seal of England in an embroidered purse. All red and gold, this symbol of power held the eye away from the dark-green tapestry and from the pigeonholes filled with parchment scrolls wherefrom there depended so many seals each like a gout of blood. The room was so high that it appeared small, but there was room for Cromwell to pace about, and here, walking from wall to wall, he evolved those schemes that so fast held down the realm. He paced always, his hands behind his back, his lips moving one upon the other as if he ruminated—(His foes said that he talked thus with his familiar fiend that had the form of a bee.)—and his black cap with earflaps always upon his head, for he suffered much with the earache.
He walked now, up and down and up and down, saying nothing, whilst from time to time Throckmorton spoke a word or two. Throckmorton himself had his doubts—doubts as to how the time when it would be safe to let it be known that he had betrayed his master might be found to fit in with the time when his master must find that he had betrayed him. He had, as he saw it, to gain time for Katharine Howard so she might finally enslave the King’s desires.
