He sighed that she had grown so stern, and she was glad to be rid of him. But he had not been gone a minute into the other room when there arose such a clamour of harsh voices and shrieks and laughter that she threw her door open, coming to it herself before the other ladies could close their mouths, which had opened in amazement.
The young Poins was beating the Magister, so that the fur gown made a greyish whirl about his scarlet suit in the midst of a tangle of spun wool; spinning wheels were overset, Margot Poins crashed around upon them, wailing; the girls with their distaffs were crouching against the window-places and in corners, crying out each one of them.
The Queen had a single little gesture of the hand with which she dismissed all her waiting-women. She stood alone in the inner doorway with the Lady Cicely and the Lady Rochford behind her. The Lady Rochford wrung her gouty hands; the Lady Cicely set back her head and laughed.
The Queen spoke no word, but in the new silence it was as if the Magister fell out of the boy’s hands. He staggered amidst the trails of wool, nearly fell, and then made stiff zigzags towards the open outer door, where his prison guards awaited him, since they had no warrant to enter the antechamber. He dragged after him a little trail of fragments of spinning wheels and spindles.
“Well, there’s a fine roister-doister!” the Lady Cicely laughed behind the Queen’s back. The Queen stood very still and frowned. To her the disturbance was monstrous and distasteful, for she was minded to have things very orderly and quiet. The boy, in his scarlet, pulled off his bonnet and panted, but he was not still more than a second, and suddenly he called out to the Queen—
“Make that pynot to marry my sister!”
Margot Poins hung round him and cried out—
“Oh no! Oh no!”
He shook her roughly loose.
“An’ you do not wed with him how shall I get advancement?” he said. “ ’A promised me that when ’a should come to be Chancellor ’a would advance me.”
He pushed her from him again with his elbow when she came near.
“Y’ve grown over familiar,” the Queen said, “with being too much near me. Y’are grown over familiar. For seven days you shall no longer keep my door.”
Margot Poins raised her arms over her head, then she leant against a windowpane and sobbed into the crook of her elbow. The boy’s slender face was convulsed with rage; his blue eyes started from his head; his callow hair was crushed up.
“Shall a man—” he began to protest.
“I say nothing against that you did beat this Magister,” the Queen said. “Such passions cannot be controlled, and I pass it by.”
“But will ye not make this man to wed with my sister?” the boy said harshly.
“I cannot. He hath a wedded wife!”
He dropped his hands to his side.
“Alack; then my father’s house is down,” he cried out.
“Gentleman Guard,” Katharine said, “get you for seven days away from my door. I will have another sentry whilst you bethink you of a worthier way to advancement.”
He gazed at her stupidly.
“You will not make this wedding?” he asked.
“Gentleman Guard,” Katharine said, “you have your answer. Get you gone.”
A sudden rage came into his eyes; he swallowed in his throat and made a gesture of despair with his hand. The Queen turned back into her room and busied herself with her task, which was the writing into a little vellum book of seven prayers to the Virgin that the Lady Elizabeth, Queen Anne Boleyn’s daughter, a child then in London, was to turn each one into seven languages, written fair in the volume as a gift, against Christmas, for the King.
“I would not have that boy to guard my door,” the Lady Cicely said to the Queen.
“Why, ’tis a good boy,” Katharine answered; “and his sister loves me very well.”
“Get your Highness another,” the Lady Cicely persisted. “I do not like his looks.”
The Queen gazed up from her writing to where the dark girl, her figure raked very much back in her stiff bodice, played daintily with the tassels of the curtain next the window.
“My Lady,” Katharine said, “my Highness must get me a new maid in place of Margot Poins, that shall away into a nunnery. Is not that grief enough for poor Margot? Shall she think in truth that she has undone her father’s house?”
“Then advance the springald to some post away from you,” the Lady Cicely said.
“Nay,” the Queen answered; “he hath done nothing to merit advancement.”
She continued, with her head bent down over the writing on her knee, her lips moving a little as, sedulously, she drew large and plain letters with her pen.
“By Heaven,” the Lady Cicely said, “you have too tickle a conscience to be a Queen of this world and day. In the time of Caesar you might have lived more easily.”
The Queen looked up at her from her writing; her clear eyes were untroubled.
“Aye,” she said. “Lucio Domitio, Appio Claudio consulibus—”
Cicely Rochford set back her head and laughed at the ceiling.
“Aye, your Highness is a Roman,” she tittered like a magpie.
“In the day of Caesar it was simple to do well,” the Queen said.
“Why, I do not believe it,” Cicely answered her.
“Cousin! Cousin!” The old Lady Rochford warned her that this was the Queen, not her old playmate.
“But now,” the Queen said, “with such a coming together and a concourse of peoples about us; with such holes and corners in a great Court—” She paused and sighed.
“Well, if I may not speak my mind,” Cicely Rochford said to the old lady, “what good am I?”
“I did even what I might to keep this lamb Margot from the teeth of that wolf Magister,” the Queen said. “I take
