They asked, too, a riddle: “An a nutshell from Candlemas loved a merry bud in March, how should it come to pleasure and content?” and men who had the answer looked wise and shook their sides at guessing faces.
In a bower at the south end of the small garden Katharine Howard sat to play cat’s-cradle with the old lady of Rochford. This foolish game and this foolish old woman, with her unceasing tales of the Queen Anne Boleyn—who had been her cousin—gave to Katharine a great feeling of ease. With her troubled eyes and weary expression, her occasional groans as the rheumatism gnawed at her joints, the old lady minded her of the mother she had so seldom seen. She had always been somewhere away, all through Katharine’s young years, planning and helping her father to advancement that never came, and hopeless to control her wild children. Thus Katharine had come to love this poor old woman and consorted much with her, for she was utterly bewildered to control the Lady Mary’s maids that were beneath her care.
Katharine held out her hands, parallel, as if she were praying, with the strand of blue wool and silver cord crisscross and diagonal betwixt her fingers. The old lady bent above them, silent and puzzled, to get the key to the strings. Twice she protruded her gouty fingers, with swollen ends; and twice she drew them back to stroke her brows.
“I mind,” she said suddenly, “that I played cat’s-cradle with my cousin Anne, that was a sinful queen.” She bent again and puzzled about the strings. “In those days I had a great skill, I mind. We revised it to the eleventh change many times before her death.” Again she leant forward and again back. “I did come near my death, too,” she added.
Katharine’s eyes had been gazing past her; suddenly she asked:
“Was Anne Boleyn loved after she grew to be Queen?”
The old woman’s face took on a palsied and haunted look.
“God help you!” she said; “do you ask that?” and she glanced round her furtively in an agony of apprehension. Something had drawn all the gay gowns and embroidered stomachers towards the higher terrace. They were all alone in the arbour.
“Why,” Katharine said, “so many innocent creatures have been done to death since Cromwell came, that, though she was lewd before and a heretic all her days, I think doubts may be.”
The old lady pressed her hand upon her bosom where her heart beat.
“Madam Howard,” she said, “for my life I know not the truth of the matter. There was much trickery; God knoweth the truth.”
Katharine mused for a moment above the cat’s-cradle on her fingers. Near the joint at the end of the little one there was a small mole.
“Take you the fifth and third strings,” she said. “The king string holds your wrist,” and whilst the old face was still intent upon the problem she said:
“I think that if a woman come to be Queen it is odds that she will live chastely, how lewd soever she ha’ been aforetime.”
Lady Rochford set her fingers in between Katharine’s, but when she drew them back with the strings upon them, they wavered, lost their straightness, knotted and then resolved themselves into a single loop as in a swift wind a cloud dies away beneath the eyes of the beholder.
“Why, ’tis pity,” Katharine said.
All the lords and all the ladies were now upon the terrace above. The old lady had the string in her broad lap. Suddenly she bent forward, her eyes opened.
“She was the enemy of your Church,” she said. “But this I will tell you: upon occasions when men swore she had been with other men o’ nights, the Queen was in my bed with me!”
Katharine nodded silently.
“Who was I that I dare speak?” the old woman sobbed; and Katharine nodded again.
Lady Rochford rubbed together her fat hands as she were ringing them.
“Before God,” she moaned, “and by the blessed blood of Hailes that cured ever my pains, if a soul know a soul I knew Anne. If she was a woman like other women before she wedded the King, she was minded to be chaste after. Madam Howard,”—and she rocked her fat body to and fro upon the seat—“they came to me from both sides, your Papists and her heretics; they threatened me to keep silence of what I knew. I was to keep silence. I name no names. But they came o’ both sides, Papists and heretics; though she was middling true to the heretics they could not be true to her.”
Katharine answered her own thoughts with:
“Ay; but my cause is the good cause. Men shall be true to it.”
The old lady leaned forward and stroked her hands.
“Dearie,” she said, “dandling piece, sweet bit, there are no true men.” She had an entreaty in her tone, and her large blue eyes gazed fixedly. “Say that my cousin Anne was a heretic. I know naught of it save that my bones have ached always since the holy blood of Hailes was done away with that was wont to cure me. But the Queen Anne was hard driven because of a plotting; and no man stood her friend.” With her large and tear-filled eyes she gazed at the palace, where the pear trees upon the walls shewed new, pale leaves in the sunlight. “The great Cardinal was hard driven because of a plot, and no man was true to him. There is no true man. Hope not for one. Hope not for any one. The great Cardinal builded those walls and that palace—and where is he?”
“Yet,” Katharine said, “Privy Seal that is was true to him and profited
