And, making inquiries, she had found that there was also an old priest there served the chapel, doing it rather secretly for the well-disposed of the castle’s own guards. This old man had fled, at the approach of the King’s many, into the hidden valleys of that countryside, where still the faith lingered and lingers now. For, so barbarous and remote those north parts were, that a great many people had never heard that the King was married again, and fewer still, or none, knew that he and his wife were well inclined again towards Rome.
This old priest she had had brought to her. And he was so well loved that along with him came a cluster of weather-battered moorsmen, right with him into her presence. They kneeled down, being clothed with skins, and several of them having bows of a great size, to beg her not to harm this old man, for he was reputed a saint. The Queen could not understand their jargon but, when their suit was interpreted to her by the Lord Dacre of the North, and when she had had a little converse with the old priest, she answered that, so touched was her heart by his simplicity and gentleness, that she would pray the good King, her lord and master, to let this priest be made her confessor whilst there they stayed. And afterwards, if it were convenient, in reward for his faithfulness, he should be made a prior or a bishop in those parts. So the moorsmen, blessing her uncouthly for her fairness and kind words, went back with their furs and bows into their fastnesses. One of them was a great lord of that countryside, and each day he sent into the castle bucks and moor fowl, and once or twice a wolf. His name was Sir John Peel, and Sir John Peel, too, the priest was called.
So the priest served that little altar, and of a night, when the Queen was minded next day to partake of the host, he heard her confession. On other nights he left them there alone to say their prayers. It was always very dark with the little red light burning before the altar and two tapers that they lit beneath a statue of the Virgin, old and black and ill-carved by antique hands centuries before. And, in that blackness, they knelt, invisible almost, and still in the black gowns that they put on for prayers, beside a low pillar that gloomed out at their sides and vanished up into the darkness of the roof.
Having done their prayers, sometimes they stayed to converse and to meditate, for there they could be very private. On the night when the letter to Rome was redrafted, the Queen prayed much longer than the Lady Mary, who sat back upon a stool, silently, to await her finishing—for it seemed that the Queen was more zealous for the converting of those realms again to the old faith than was ever the Lady Mary. The tapers burned with a steady, invisible glow in the little side chapel behind the pillar; the altar gleamed duskily before them, and it was so still that through the unglassed windows they could hear, from far below in the black countryside, a tenuous bleating of late-dropped lambs. Katharine Howard’s beads clicked and her dress rustled as she came up from her knees.
“It rests more with thee than with any other in this land,” her voice reverberated amongst the distant shadows. A bat that had been drawn in by the light flittered invisibly near them.
“Even what?” the Lady Mary asked.
“Well you know,” the Queen answered; “and may the God to whom you have prayed, that softened the heart of Paul, soften thine in this hour!”
The Lady Mary maintained a long silence. The bat flittered, with a leathern rustle, invisible, between their very faces. At last Mary uttered, and her voice was taunting and malicious—
“If you will soften my heart much you must beseech me.”
“Why, I will kneel to you,” the Queen said.
“Aye, you shall,” Mary answered. “Tell me what you would have of me.”
“Well you know!” Katharine said again.
In the darkness the lady’s voice maintained its bitter mirth, as it were the broken laughter of a soul in anguish.
“I will have you tell me, for it is a shameful tale that will shame you in the telling.”
The Queen paused to consider of her words.
“First, you shall be reconciled with, and speak pleasantly with, the King your father and my lord.”
“And is it not a shameful thing you bid me do, to bid me speak pleasant words to him that slew my mother and called me bastard?”
The Queen answered that she asked it in the name of Christ, His pitiful sake, and for the good of this suffering land.
“None the less, Queen, thou askest it in the darkness that thy face may not be seen. And what more askest thou?”
“That when the Duke of Orleans his ambassadors come asking your hand in marriage, you do show them a pleasant and acquiescent countenance.”
The sacredness of that dark place kept Mary from laughing aloud.
“That, too, you dare not ask in the light of day, Queen,” she said. “Ask on!”
“That when the Emperor’s ambassadors shall ask for your hand you shall profess yourself glad indeed.”
“Well, here is more shame, that I should be prayed to feign this gladness. I think the angels do laugh that hear you. Ask even more.”
Katharine said patiently—
“That, having in reward of these favours, been set again on high, having honours shown you and a Court appointed round you, you shall gladly play the part of a princess royal to these realms, never gibing, nor sneering upon this King your father, nor calling upon the memory of the wronged Queen your
