“Before God!” Lascelles cried out, “would I were a king to have so masterful and devising a minister as Privy Seal!”
“Get you gone,” Privy Seal said to Viridus. “I ha’ no need to tell you that if ye do faithfully and to a good issue carry out this play, you shall be greatly rewarded so that few shall hold their heads higher than you in the land. Ye know how I befriend my friends. But know too this: that if this scheme miscarry, either of your fault or another’s, either through inattention or ill chance, either through treason or dullness of the brain of man, down to the least pin of it, ye shall not this night sleep in your bed, nor ever more shall you be seen in daylight above the earth.” He pointed suddenly from the window to the low sun. “Have a care that ye so act as ye shall see that disc again!”
Viridus spoke no word, but having waited a minute to hear if Privy Seal had more to enjoin, noiselessly and with his hands folded before him as they had been when he came, moved away over the shining floor. He went to tell the old, shivering Chancellor of the Augmentations that he must absent himself upon their common master’s errands. “I misdoubt some heads will fall tonight,” he added as he went; “our lord’s nose for treasons is sharpened again.” And that creature of Privy Seal’s shook beneath the furs that he wore, though it was already April; for the Chancellor had his private reasons to dread Privy Seal’s outbursts of suspicion.
In the gallery, Privy Seal still spoke earnestly with Lascelles.
“I give this part of honour and privilege to thee,” he said; “for though I was well prepared in all things, I trow I may trust thee better than another person.”
Lascelles was to watch for Culpepper, to hasten to Viridus, to attend upon the pair of them as the pilot-fish attendeth upon the ghostly and silent shark, not to leave them till the work was accomplished, or, upon the least sign of treason in Viridus or another, to come hastening as never man hastened, to Privy Seal.
“For,” Cromwell ended, “ye have felt like me how, if this realm is to be saved, saved it shall be by this thing alone.”
Lascelles, who had had no opening to speak, opened now his lips. Great ferreter as he was, he had discovered former servants of the Duchess of Norfolk, that were ready, for consideration of threats, to swear that they had seen the Lady Katharine when a child in her grandmother’s house to be over familiar with one Francis Dearham. He himself had these witnesses earmarked and attainable, and he was upon the point of offering them to Privy Seal. But he recollected that Privy Seal had witnesses enow of his own. Tomorrow was also a day; and the King, if he would not now listen to tales against Kat Howard, might be brought to give ear to those and others added in a year’s time, or when he began to tire of his woman as all men tire of women. Therefore he once more closed his lips. And Cromwell spoke as if his thoughts of a truth jumped together with Lascelles’.
“Sir,” he said, “I would willingly bribe you from the service of his Grace of Canterbury to come into mine. But it may be that I shall not long outlive these days. Therefore I enjoin upon you these things: Serve well your master; guide him, for he needeth guidance, subtly as today ye would have guided him. I will not take you from him for this cause, that there is little need in one house of two that think alike. One sufficeth. For two houses with like minds are stronger than one that is bicephalous. Therefore serve you well Cranmer as in my day I served well the great Cardinal; so at his death, even as I at Wolsey’s, ye may rise very high.”
He went swiftly into his little cabinet, and returning, had in his hand a little book.
“Read well in this,” he said, “where much I have read. You shall see in it mine own annotations. This is Il Principe of Macchiavelli; there is none other book like it in the world. Study of it well: read it upon your walks. I am a simple man, yet hath it made me.”
Shadows were falling into the gallery, for the descending sun had come behind the dark, tall elms beyond the river.
“Upon my faith,” Cromwell said, “and as I hope to enter into Paradise by the aid of Christ the King that commended faithful servants, I tell you I had great joy when you told me this woman’s cousin had come into these parts. But greater joy than any were mine could I discern in this land a disciple that could carry on my work. As yet I have seen none; yet ponder well upon this book. God may work in thee, as in me, great changes by its study. … Get you gone.”
He continued long to pace the gallery, his hands behind his back, his cap pulled over his narrow eyes; it grew dusk so that his figure could scarce be seen where it was at the further end. He looked from the casement up into the moon, small and tenuous in the pale western skies. He had been
