Suddenly she made a single gesture with her hands, as if she swept something from her lap: some invisible dust—and that was all. Still Katharine did not move nor speak; she had prepared speeches—speeches against the Queen’s being disdainful, enraged, or dissolved in tears. She had read in books all night from Aulus Gellius to Cicero to get wisdom. But here there were no speeches called for; no speeches could be made. The significance of the Queen’s gesture of sweeping dust from her lap slowly overwhelmed her.
“You have more courage than I,” the Queen repeated, as though slowly she were making a catalogue of Katharine’s qualities to set dispassionately against her own; and again her eyes moved over Katharine. With her first swift gesture she drew from the stool-top a pamphlet of writing, upon which she had sat. Her face grew slowly red.
“It did not need this long writing against my person,” she said. “I take it grievously.”
Katharine moved upon her knees as if she had been stung by an intolerable accusation.
“Before God!—” she began to say.
“Well, I believe you had no part in the writing,” the Queen interrupted her. “Yet the more I say you have courage: to wed a man that will write lies of another woman’s body and powers.”
Katharine sat still; the Queen’s slow anger faded slowly away.
“I do not see why this King thinks you more fair than I be,” she said dispassionately; “but what draweth the love of man to woman is not yet known.”
Again she repeated:
“There was no need of this writing against me. The King has never played the husband’s part to me; I would have you tell him, if I go in danger from him, that, for me, he may go his ways. I have no mind to stay him, nor to be a queen in this country. Here, it is said, they slay queens.”
“If I will be Queen, it is that God may bless this realm and King with the old faith again,” Katharine said. Anne’s eyelids narrowed.
“It is best known to yourself why you will be Queen,” she said. “It is best known to God what faith he will have in this your realm. I know not what faith he liketh best, nor yet what side of a queen’s functions most commendeth itself unto you.”
She seemed to withdraw herself more and more from any struggle, as if she were a novice that took an invisible veil—and she uttered only requests as to the world into which she would withdraw from this one.
“I am not minded to go back to Cleves,” she stipulated; for she had thought much and long in her stillnesses of what she would have; “the Duke, my brother, is to blame for having brought me to this pass. Moreover, he is not able to defend his lands; so that if, with a proper establishing and revenue, I go back to Cleves, the Emperor Charles, who hath a tooth for gold, may too easily undo me. I would have a castle here in England; for England is an island, and well defended in all its avenues, and its King a man of honour and his word to such as never cross him, as never will I.”
She spoke slowly, as if in her mind she were ticking off little notes pencilled on her tablets; for since she could not read she had a memory that she could trust to. “I will have a castle built me not strong enough to withstand the King’s forces, since those I make no call to withstand, but strong enough to guard me against robber bands and the insurrections that are ordinary. Upon a slope that shall take the sun in winter, with trees about beneath which I may sit in the heat of summertime. I will have a good show of servants, because I am a princess of noble lineage; I will have most of them Germans that I may speak easily with them, but some English, understanding German, so that the King may be advised I work no treasons against him. From time to time I will have the King to visit and to talk with me courteously and fairly as well he can: this in order to counterpart and destroy the report that I smell foul and am so ill to see that it makes a man ill—”
Her eyes, resting upon Katharine, closed slightly again with a tiny malice.
“I will have you not to fear that, upon such visits, I will use wiles to entrap the King. I do not favour him. I am not content to be queen of this country. It is as fair as my own country. In summer it is more cool, in the winter time more temperate. Meats here are good; cooks are better than with us. What a woman and a princess in this world would have is here all at the best, save only its men, and the most dangerous of all its men is the King.”
Katharine’s ready anger rose at her words, though before the Queen’s speeches had flowed above her head and left her speechless and ashamed.
“The King is known throughout Christendom,” she said, “for the royallest prince, the noblest speaker, the most princely horseman, the most munificent and the most learned in the law.”
“That he may be,” the Queen smiled faintly, “to them that have never crossed him. It has been my ill-destiny so to do.”
“Madam,” Katharine cried out, “never man was so crossed, ill-served, evilly-led, or betrayed. Ye may not mislike him if at times he be petulant. I do the more praise him for it.”
“Why, you do love him,” the Queen said. “I have no cause so to do.”
Katharine caught at one of her hands.
“Your Grace,” she said, “Queen and high potentate, this realm calleth out that some one person do lead the King aright. Before God, I think I do not seek powers or temporal crowns. Maybe it is sweet to sit in a painted
