The saying of these things had pleased her so much that she gained control of her tongue.
“You cannot bribe me,” she said calmly. “You have naught to give that I have need of.”
But the King was so used to his daughter’s speeches that, though he had seldom seen her so mutinous, he could still ignore them.
“Well,” he said, “I think you are angered with me for having set the Magister in gaol—”
“And in addition,” the Lady Mary pursued her own speech, for she deemed that she had thought of a thing to pain both him and the Queen, “how might I with a good conscience tell my cousin that you have a true inclination to him? I do believe you have; it is this lady that has given it you. But how much longer will this lady sway you? No doubt the King o’ Scots hath a new lady for you—and she will be on the French side, for the King o’ Scots is the French King’s man.”
The King opened his mouth convulsively, but Katharine Howard laid her hand right across it.
“You must be riding soon,” she said. “I have had a collation set in my chamber.” She was so used by now to the violent humours of these Tudors. “You have still to direct me,” she added, “what is to be done with these rived cattle.”
As they went through the door, the little Prince holding his father’s hand and she moving him gently by the shoulder, the child said—
“I thought ye wad ha’ little profit speaking to my sister in her then mood.”
The King, in the gallery, looked with a gentle apprehension at his wife.
“I trow ye think I ha’ done wrong,” he said.
She answered—
“Oh nay; she must come to know one day what your Grace had to tell her. Now it is over. But I would not have had you heated. For it is ill to start riding in a sweat. You shall not go for an hour yet.”
That pleased him, for it made him think she was unwilling he should go.
In her own room the Lady Mary sat back in her chair and smiled grimly at the ceiling.
“Body of God,” she said, “I wish he had married this wench or ever he saw my mother.” Nevertheless, upon reflection, she got pleasure from the thought that her mother, with her Aragonia pride, had given the King some ill hours before he had put her away to her death. Katharine of Aragon had been no Katharine Howard to study her lord’s ways and twist him about her finger; and Mary took her rosary from a nail beside her and told her beads for a quarter hour to calm herself.
V
There fell upon the castle a deep peace when the King and most of the men were gone. The Queen had the ordering of all things in the castle and of most in the realm. Beneath her she had the Archbishop and some few of the lords of the council who met most days round a long table in the largest hall, and afterwards brought her many papers to sign or to approve. But they were mostly papers of accounts for the castles that were then building, and some few letters from the King’s envoys in foreign courts. Upon the whole, there was little stirring, though the Emperor Charles V was then about harrying the Protestant Princes of Almain and Germany. That was good enough news, and though the great castle had well-nigh seven hundred souls, for the most part women, in it, yet it appeared to be empty. High up upon the upper battlements the guards kept a lazy watch. Sometimes the Queen rode a-hawking with her ladies and several lords; when it rained she held readings from the learned writers amongst her ladies, to teach them Latin better. For she had set a fashion of good learning among women that did not for many years die out of the land. In that pursuit she missed the Magister Udal, for the ladies listened to him more willingly than to another. They were reading the True History of Lucian, which had been translated into Latin from the Greek about that time.
What occupied her most was the writing of the King’s letter to the Pope. Down in their cellar the Archbishop and Lascelles wrought many days at this very long piece of writing. But they made it too humble to suit her, for she would not have her lord to crawl, as if in the dust upon his belly, so she told the Archbishop. Henry was to show contrition and repentance, desire for pardon and the promise of amendment. But he was a very great King and had wrought greatly. And, having got the draft of it in the vulgar tongue, she set about herself to turn it into Latin, for she esteemed herself the best Latinist that they had there.
But in that again she missed the Magister at last, and in the end she sent for him up from his prison to her antechamber where it pleased her to sit. It was a tall, narrow room, with much such a chair and dais as were in the room of the Lady Mary. It gave on to her bedchamber that was larger, and it had little, bright, deep windows in the thick walls. From them there could be seen nothing but the blue sky, it was so high up. Here she sat, most often with the Lady Rochford, upon a little stool writing, with the parchments upon her knee or setting a maid to sew. The King had lately made her a gift of twenty-four
