Whilst Poins was already hastening towards the gateway, Throckmorton cried to him at a distance:
“Ask at each crossroad guardhouse and at all ferries and bridges if some have passed that way; and at the landing-stage if perchance caballeros have altered their desires and had it in their minds to take to boats.”
He sped through the wind to the riverside, set again his oars in motion and swept up the tide. It had turned and they made good progress.
VI
The Queen sat in her painted gallery at Richmond, and all around her her maids sewed and span. The gallery was long; along the panels that faced the windows were angels painted in red and blue and gold, and in the three centre squares St. George, whose face was the face of the King’s Highness, in one issued from a yellow city upon a green plain; in one with a cherry-coloured lance slew a green dragon from whose mouth issued orange-coloured flames; and in one carried away, that he might wed her in a rose-coloured tower on a hillside, a princess in a black gown with hair painted of real gold.
Whilst the maids sewed in silence the Queen sat still upon a stool. Light-skinned, not very stout, with a smooth oval face, she had laid her folded hands on the gold and pearl embroidery of her lap and gazed away into the distance, thinking. She sat so still that not even the lawn tips of her wide hood with its invisible, minute sewings of white, quivered. Her gown was of cloth of gold, but since her being in England she had learned to wear a train, and in its folds on the ground slept a small Italian greyhound. About her neck she had a partelet set with green jewels and with pearls. Her maids sewed; the spinning-wheels ate away the braided flax from the spindles, and the sunlight poured down through the high windows. She was a very fair woman then, and many that had seen her there sit had marvelled of the King’s disfavour for her; but she was accounted wondrous still, sitting thus by the hour with the little hounds in the folds of her dress. Only her eyes with their half-closed lids gave to her lost gaze the appearance of a humour and irony that she never was heard to voice.
They turned to the opening door, a flush came into her face, spread slowly down her white neck and was lost in the white opening of her shoulder-pieces, and she greeted Katharine Howard, kneeling at her feet, with an inclination of the head so tiny that you could not see the motion. Her eyes remained motionlessly upon the girl’s face; only the lids moved suddenly when Katharine spoke to her in German.
“You speak my tongue?” the Queen asked, motionless still and speaking very low. Katharine remained upon her knees.
“I learned to read books in German when I was a child,” Katharine said; “and since you came I have spoken an hour a day with a German astronomer that I might give you pleasure if so be it chanced.”
“So it is well,” the Queen said. “Not many have so done.”
“God has endowed me with an ease of tongues,” Katharine answered; “many others would have ventured it for your Grace’s pleasure. But your tongue is a hard tongue.”
“I have needed to learn hard sentences in yours,” the Queen said, “and have had many masters many hours of the day. I will have you stand up upon your feet.”
Katharine remained upon her knees.
“I will have you stand up upon your feet,” the Queen repeated.
“I have a prayer to make,” Katharine answered.
The Queen looked for a minute straight before her, then slowly turned her head to one side. When her gaze rested upon her women they rose and, with a clatter of their feet and a rustle of garments, carrying their white sewings and their spinning-wheels stilled, went away down the gallery. The German lord of Overstein, bearded and immense in the then German fashion, came from behind the retreating women to stand before the Queen signifying that he would offer his interpretership. She dismissed him without speaking, letting her eyes rest upon him. She was the most silent woman in the world, but all people said that no queen had women and men servers that needed fewer words or so discreetly did their devoirs.
The silence and the bright light of the sun swathed these two women’s figures, so that Katharine seemed to hear the flutter against the window-glass of a brown butterfly that, having sheltered in the hall all winter, now sought to take a part in the new brightness of the world. Katharine kept her knees, her eyes upon the floor; the Queen, motionless and soft, let her eyes rest upon Katharine’s hood. From time to time they travelled to her face, to the medallion that hung from her neck, and to her dark green skirt of velvet that lay around her upon the floor. The butterfly sought another window; the Queen spoke at last.
“You seek my queenship”; and in her still voice there was neither passion, nor pity, nor question, nor resignation.
Katharine raised her eyes: they saw the imprisoned butterfly, but she found no words.
“You have more courage than
