“Queen,” the Lady Mary said, “I had thought that even in the darkness you had not dared to ask me this.”
“I will ask it you again,” the Queen said, “in your room where the light of the candles shines upon my face.”
“Why, you shall,” the Lady Mary said. “Let us presently go there.”
They went down the dark and winding stair. At the foot the procession of the coucher de la royne awaited them, first being two trumpeters in black and gold, then four pikemen with lanthorns, then the marshal of the Queen’s household and five or seven lords, then the Queen’s ladies, the Lady Rochford that slept with her, the Lady Cicely Rochford; the Queen’s tiring-women, leaving a space between them for the Queen and the Lady Mary to walk in, then four young pages in scarlet and with the Queen’s favours in their caps, and then the guard of the Queen’s door, and four pikemen with torches whose light, falling from behind, illumined the path for the Queen’s steps. The trumpeters blew four shrill blasts and then four with their fists in the trumpet mouths to muffle them. The brazen cries wound down the dark corridors, fathoms and fathoms down, to let men know that the Queen had done her prayers and was going to her bed. This great state was especially devised by the King to do honour to the new Queen that he loved better than any he had had. The purpose of it was to let all men know what she did that she might be the more imitated.
But the Queen bade them guide her to the Lady Mary’s door, and in the doorway she dismissed them all, save only her women and her door guard and pikemen who awaited her without, some on stools and some against the wall, ladies and men alike.
The Lady Mary looked into the Queen’s face very close and laughed at her when they were in the fair room and the light of the candles.
“Now you shall say your litany over again,” she sneered; “I will sit me down and listen.” And in her chair at the table, with her face averted, she dug with little stabs into the covering rug the stiletto with which she was wont to mend her pens.
Standing by her, her face fully lit by the many candles that were upon the mantel, the Queen, dressed all in black and with the tail of her hood falling down behind to her feet, went patiently through the list of her prayers—that the Lady Mary should be reconciled with her father, that she should show at first favour to the ambassadors that sued for her hand for the Duke of Orleans, and afterwards give a glad consent to her marriage with the Prince Philip, the Emperor’s son; and then, having been reinstated as a princess of the royal house of England, she should bear herself as such, and no more cry out upon the memory of Katharine of Aragon that had been put away from the King’s side.
The Queen spoke these words with a serious patience and a level voice; but when she came to the end of them she stretched out her hand and her voice grew full.
“And oh,” she said, her face being set and earnest in entreaty towards the girl’s back, “if you have any love for the green and fertile land that gave birth both to you and to me—”
“But to me a bastard,” the Lady Mary said.
“If you would have the dishoused saints to return home to their loved pastures; if you would have the Mother of God and of us all to rejoice again in her dowry; if you would see a great multitude of souls, gentle and simple reconducted again towards Heaven—”
“Well, well!” the Lady Mary said; “grovel! grovel! I had thought you would have been shamed thus to crawl upon your belly before me.”
“I would crawl in the dust,” Katharine said. “I would kiss the mire from the shoon of the vilest man there is if in that way I might win for the Church of God—”
“Well, well!” the Lady Mary said.
“You will not let me finish my speech about our Saviour and His mother,” the Queen said. “You are afraid I should move you.”
The Lady Mary turned suddenly round upon her in her chair. Her face was pallid, the skin upon her hollowed temples trembled—
“Queen,” she called out, “ye blaspheme when ye say that a few paltry speeches of yours about God and souls will make me fail my mother’s memory and the remembrances of the shames I have had.”
She closed her eyes; she swallowed in her throat and then, starting up, she overset her chair.
“To save souls!” she said. “To save a few craven English souls! What are they to me? Let them burn in the eternal fires! Who among them raised a hand or struck a blow for my mother or me? Let them go shivering to hell.”
“Lady,” the Queen said, “ye know well how many have gone to the stake over conspiracies for you in this realm.”
“Then they are dead and wear the martyr’s crown,” the Lady Mary said. “Let the rest that never aided me, nor struck blow for my mother, go rot in their heresies.”
“But the Church of God!” the Queen said. “The King’s Highness has promised me that upon the hour when you shall swear to do these things he will send the letter that ye wot of to our Father in Rome.”
The Lady Mary laughed aloud—
“Here is a fine woman,” she said. “This is ever the woman’s part to gloss over crimes of their men folk. What say you to the death of Lady Salisbury that died by the block a little since?”
She bent her body and poked her head forward into the Queen’s very face. Katharine stood still before her.
“God knows,” she said. “I might not stay it. There was much false witness—or some of it true—against her. I pray
