“Sire,” Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to support him. “This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have seen it in thy town of London.”
Katharine cried out, “Ah!”
The King leapt to his feet.
“Ho, I will arm,” he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But, even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret rebellions.
“Sire,” Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he challenged her:
“This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of the printer, John Badge—” and he repeated the speech of the saturnine man—“that ‘he would raise a thousand prentices and a thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the shires!’ ”
Katharine kept her eyes upon Throckmorton who, knowing her power to sway the King, nodded gravely and looked into her eyes to assure her that these words were true.
But the King, upon his feet, marched towards the door.
“Let us arm my guard,” he said. “I will play Nero to London town.”
Nevertheless Throckmorton kept his knees.
“Majesty,” he said, “I have this man in my keeping.” And indeed, at his passing London Bridge he had sent men to take the printer and bring him to Hampton. “I pray your pardon that I took him lacking your warrant, and Privy Seal’s I dare not ask.”
The King stayed in his pacing.
“Thou art a jewel of a man,” he said. “By Cock, I would I had many like thee.” And at the news that the head of this confederacy was taken his sudden fear fell. “I will see this man. Bring him to me.”
“Sire,” Katharine said, “we spoke even now of Cinna. Remember him!”
“Madam,” Throckmorton dared to speak. “This is the man that hath printed broadsides against you. No man more hateth you in land or hath uttered more lewdnesses of your chastity.”
“The more I will have him pardoned,” Katharine said, “that his Highness and all people may see how little I fear his lyings.”
Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders right up to his ears to signify that this was a very madness of Roman pardoning.
“God send you never rue it,” he said. “Majesty,” he continued to the King, “give me some safe conduct that for half-an-hour I may go about this palace unletted by men of Privy Seal’s. For Privy Seal hath a mighty army of men to do his bidding and I am one man unaided. Give me half-an-hour’s space and I will bring to you this captain of rebellion to your cabinet. And I will bring to you them that shall mightily and to the hilt against all countervail and denial prove that Privy Seal is a false and damnable traitor to thee and this goodly realm. So I swear: Throckmorton who am a trusty knight.”
He was not minded to utter before Katharine Howard the names of his other witnesses. For one of them was the Chancellor of the Augmentations, who was ready to swear that Cromwell, upon the barge when they went in the night from Rochester to Greenwich, had said that he would have the King down if he would not wed with Anne of Cleves. And he had Viridus to swear that Cromwell had said, before his armoury, to the Ambassador of the Schmalkaldners, that ne King, ne Emperor had such another armoury, yet were there twenty score great houses in England that had better, all ready to arm to defend the Protestant faith and Privy Seal. These things he was minded to lay before the King; but before Kat Howard he would not speak them. For, with her mad fury for truth and the letter of Truth that she had gained from reading Seneca till, he thought, her brains were turned, she would begin a wrangle with him. And he had no time to lose; for his ears were pricked up, even as he spoke, to catch any breaking of the silence from the next room where Viridus held Lascelles at the point of his dagger.
The King said:
“Go thou. If any man stay thee in going whithersoever thou wilt, say that thou beest upon my business; and woe betide them that stay thee if thou be not in my cabinet in the half of an hour with them ye speak of.”
Throckmorton rose stiffly to his feet; at the door he staggered for a moment, and closed his eyes. His cause was won; but he leant against the doorpost and gazed at Katharine with a piteous and passionate glance, moving his fingers in his beard, as if he appealed to her in silence as with the eyes of a faithful hound, neither to judge him harshly nor to plead against him. This was the day of the most strain that ever was in his life.
And gazing back at him, Katharine’s eyes were filled with pity, so sick he appeared to be.
“Body of God!” the King said in the silence that fell upon them. “Now I hold Cromwell.”
Katharine cried out, “Let me go; let me go; this is no world for me!”
He caught her masterfully in his arms.
“This is a golden world, and thou a golden Queen,” he said.
She held her head back from his lips, and struggled from him.
“I may not find any straightness here. I can see no clear way. Let me go.”
He took her again to him, and again she tore herself free.
“Listen to me,” she cried, “listen to me! There have been broadsides printed against the truth of my body; there have been witnesses prepared against me. I will have
