But the printer heaved a sigh of satisfaction.
“God be thanked,” he said, “that keepeth the hearts of princes and guideth with His breath all temporal occurrences.” Throckmorton was about to touch his cap at the name of Omnipotence, but remembering that he was among Protestants changed the direction of his hand and scratched his cheek among the little hairs of his beard; “the signs are favourable that our good King’s Highness shall still incline to our cause and Privy Seal’s.”
Throckmorton said: “Anan?”
“Aye,” the printer said heavily, “good news is come of Cleves.”
“Ye ha’ news from Cleves?” Throckmorton asked swiftly.
“From Cleves not,” the printer answered; “but from the Court by way of Paris and thence from Cleves.” And to the interested spy he related, accurately enough, that a make of mouthing, mowing, magister of the Latin tongues had come from Paris, having stolen copies of the Cleves envoy’s letters in that town, and that these letters said that Cleves was fast inclined to the true Schmalkaldner league of Lutherans and would pay tribute truly, but no more than that do fealty to the accursed leaguer of the Pope called Charles the Emperor.
Throckmorton inclined his cap at an angle to the floor.
“How had ye that news that was so secret?” he asked.
The printer shook his dark beard with an air of heavy pleasure.
“Ye have a great organisation of spies,” he said, “but better is the whisper of God among the faithful.”
“Why,” Throckmorton answered, “the magister Udal hath to his sweetheart thy niece Margot Poins.”
At her name the printer’s eyes filled with a sudden and violent heat.
“Seek another channel,” he cried, and waved his arms at the low ceiling. “Before the face of Almighty God I swear that I ha’ no truck with Margot my niece. Since she has been sib with the whore of the devil called Kat Howard, never hath she told me a secret through her paramour or elsewise. A shut head the heavy logget keepeth—let her not come within reach of my hand.” He swayed back upon his feet. “Let her not come,” he said. He bent his brows upon Throckmorton. “I marvel,” he uttered, “that ye who are so faithful a servant o’ Privy Seal’s can have truck with the brother of my niece Margot.”
“Printer,” Throckmorton answered him, “ye know well that when the leaven of Protestantism hath entered in there, houses are divided against themselves. A wench may be a foul Papist and serve, if ye will, Kat Howard; but her brother shall yet be an indifferent good servant for me.”
The printer, who had tolerated that his men should hear his panegyric of the Bible and Privy Seal, scowled at them now so that again the arms swung to and fro with the levers, the leads clicked. He put his great head nearer Throckmorton’s and muttered:
“Are ye certain my nephew serveth ye well? He was never wont to favour our cause, and, before ye sent him on this errand, he was wont to cry out in his cups that he was disgraced for having carried letters betwixt Kat Howard and the King. If this were true he was no friend of ours.”
“Why, it was true,” Throckmorton uttered negligently.
The printer caught at the spy’s wrist, and the measure of his earnestness showed the extent of his passion for Privy Seal’s cause.
“Use him no more,” he said. “Both children of my sister were ever indifferents. They shall not serve thee well.”
“It was ever Privy Seal’s motto and habit to use for his servitors those that had their necks in his noose. Such men serve him ever the best.”
The printer shook his head gloomily.
“I wager my nephew will yet play the traitor to Privy Seal.”
“I will do it myself ere that,” and Throckmorton yawned, throwing his head back.
“The scaldhead is there,” the printer said; and in the doorway there stood, supporting himself by the lintel, the young Poins. His face was greenish white; a plaster was upon his shaven head; he held up one foot as if it pained him to set it to the floor. Through the house-place where sat the aged grandfather with his cap pulled over his brows, pallid, ironical and seeming indescribably ancient, the printer led the spy. The boy hobbled after them, neglecting the old man’s words:
“Ha’ no truck with men of Privy Seal’s. Privy Seal hath stolen my ground.” In the long shed where they ate all, printer, grandfather, apprentices and journeymen, the printer thrust open the door with a heavy gesture, entering first and surveying the long trestles.
“Ye can speak here,” he said, and motioned away an aged woman. She bent above a sea coal fire on the hearth where boiled, hung from a hook, a great pot. The old thing, in short petticoats and a linsey woolsey bodice that had been purple and green, protested shrilly. Her crock was on the boil; she was not there to be driven away; she had work like other folk, and had been with the printer’s mother eight years before he was born. His voice, raised to its height, was useless to drown her words. She could not hear him; and shrugging his shoulders, he said to Throckmorton that she heard less than the walls, and that was the best place he had for them to talk in. He slammed the door behind him.
Throckmorton set his foot upon the bench that ran between table and wall. He scowled fell-ly at the boy, so that his brows came down below his nose-top. “Ye ha’ not stayed him,” he said.
The boy burst forth in a torrent of rage and despair. He cursed Throckmorton to his face for having sent him upon this errand.
“I ha’ been beaten by a gatewarden! by a knave! by a ploughman’s son from Lincolnshire!” he cried. “A’ cracked my skull with a pikestave and kicked me about the ribs when I lay on the ship’s floor, sick like a pig. God curse the day you sent me to Calais, a gentleman’s
