He answered, remaining kneeling, that he would fain see his sister. But she was very poor, having married an esquire called Hall of these parts, and he was dead, leaving her but one little farm where, too, his old father and mother dwelt.
'I will pay for her visit here,' she said; 'and she shall have lodging.'
'Safe-conduct she must have too,' he answered; 'for none cometh within seven miles of this court without your permit and approval.'
'Well, I will send horses of my own, and men to safeguard her,' the Queen said. 'For, sure, I am beholden to her in many little things. I think she sewed the first round gown that ever I had.'
He remained kneeling, his eyes still upon the floor.
'We are your very good servants, my sister and I,' he said. 'For she did marry one--that Esquire Hall--that was done to death upon the gallows for the old faith's sake. And it was I that wrote the English of most of this letter to his Holiness, the Archbishop being ill and keeping his bed.'
'Well, you have served me very well, it is true,' the Queen answered. 'What would you have of me?'
'Your Highness,' he answered, 'I do well love my sister and she me. I would have her given a place here at the Court. I do not ask a great one; not one so high as about your person. For I am sure that you are well attended, and places few there are to spare about you.'
And then, even as he willed it, she bethought her that Margot Poins was to go to a nunnery. That afternoon she had decided that Mary Trelyon, who was her second maid, should become her first, and others be moved up in a rote.
'Why,' she said, 'it may be that I shall find her an occupation. I will not have it said--nor yet do it--that I have ever recompensed them that did me favours in the old times, for there are a many that have served well in the Court that then I was outside of, and those it is fitting first to reward. Yet, since, as you say you have writ the English of this letter, that is a very great service to the Republic, and if by rewarding her I may recompense thee, I will think how I may come to do it.'
He stood up upon his feet.
'It may be,' he said, 'that my sister is rustic and unsuited. I have not seen her in many years. Therefore, I will not pray too high a place for her, but only that she and I may be near, the one to the other, upon occasions, and that she be housed and fed and clothed.'
'Why, that is very well said,' the Queen answered him. 'I will bid my men to make inquiries into her demeanour and behaviour in the place where she bides, and if she is well fitted and modest, she shall have a place about me. If she be too rustic she shall have another place. Get you gone, gentleman, and a good-night to ye.'
He bent himself half double, in the then newest courtly way, and still bent, pivoted through the door. The Queen stayed a little while musing.
'Why,' she said, 'when I was a little child I fared very ill, if now I think of it; but then it seemed a little thing.'
'Y'had best forget it,' the Lady Mary answered.
'Nay,' the Queen said. 'I have known too well what it was to go supperless to my bed to forget it. A great shadowy place--all shadows, where the night airs crept in under the rafters.'
She was thinking of the maids' dormitory at her grandmother's, the old Duchess.
'I am climbed very high,' she said; 'but to think----'
She was such a poor man's child and held of only the littlest account, herding with the maids and the servingmen's children. At eight by the clock her grandmother locked her and all the maids--at times there were but ten, at times as many as a score--into that great dormitory that was, in fact, nothing but one long attic or grange beneath the bare roof. And sometimes the maids told tales or slept soon, and sometimes their gallants, grooms and others, came climbing through the windows with rope ladders. They would bring pasties and wines and lights, and coarsely they would revel.
'Why,' she said, 'I had a gallant myself. He was a musician, but I have forgot his name. Aye, and then there was another, Dearham, I think; but I have heard he is since dead. He may have been my cousin; we were so many in family, I have a little forgot.'
She stood still, searching her memory, with her eyes distant. The Lady Mary surveyed her face with a curious irony.
'Why, what a simple Queen you are!' she said. 'This is something rustic.'
The Queen joined her hands together before her, as if she caught at a clue.
'I do remember me,' she said. 'It was a make of a comedy. This Dearham, calling himself my cousin, beat this music musician for calling himself my gallant. Then goes the musicker to my grandam, bidding the old Duchess rise up again one hour after she had sought her bed. So comes my grandam and turns the key in the padlock and looketh in over all the gallimaufrey of lights and pasties and revels.
'Why,' she continued. 'I think I was beaten upon that occasion, but I could not well tell why. And I was put to sleep in another room. And later came my father home from some war. And he was angry that I had consorted so with false minions, and had me away to his own poor house. And there I had Udal for my Magister and evil fare and many beatings. But this Mary Lascelles was my bed-fellow.'
'Why, forget it,' the Lady Mary said again.
'Other teachers would bid me remember it that I might remain humble,' Katharine answered.
'Y'are humble enow and to spare,' the Lady Mary said. 'And these are not good memories for such a place as this. Y'had best keep this Mary Lascelles at a great distance.'
Katharine said--
'No; for I have passed my word.'
'Then reward her very fully,' the Lady Mary commended, and the Queen answered--
'No, for that is against my conscience. What have I to fear now that I be Queen?'
Mary shrugged her squared shoulders.
'Where is your Latin,' she said, 'with its _nulla dies felix_--call no day fortunate till it be ended.'
'I will set another text against that,' she said, 'and that from holy sayings--that _justus ab aestimatione non timebit_.'
'Well,' Mary answered, 'you will make your bed how you will. But I think you would better have learned of these maids how to steer a course than of your Magister and the Signor Plutarchus.'
The Queen did not answer her, save by begging her to read the King's letter to his Holiness.
'And surely,' she said, 'if I had never read in the noble Romans I had never had the trick of tongue to gar the King do so much of what I will.'
'Why, God help you,' her step-daughter said. 'Pray you may never come to repent it.'
PART TWO
THE THREATENED RIFT
I
In these summer days there was much faring abroad in the broad lands to north and to south of the Pontefract Castle. The sunlight lay across moors and uplands. The King was come with all his many to Newcastle; but no Scots King was there to meet him. So he went farther to northwards. His butchers drove before him herds of cattle that they slew some of each night: their hooves made a broad and beaten way before the King's horses. Behind came an army of tent men: cooks, servers, and sutlers. For, since they went where new castles were few, at times they must sleep on moorsides, and they had tents all of gold cloth and black, with gilded tent-poles and cords of silk and silver wire. The lords and principal men of those parts came out to meet him with green boughs, and music, and slain deer, and fair wooden kegs filled with milk. But when he was come near to Berwick there was still no Scots King to meet him, and it became manifest that the King's nephew would fail that tryst. Henry, riding among his people, swore a mighty oath that he would take way even into Edinburgh town and there act as he listed, for he had with him nigh on seven thousand men of all arms and some cannon which he had been minded to display for the instruction of his nephew. But he had, in real truth, little stomach for this feat. For, if he would go into Scotland armed, he must wait till he got together all the men that the Council of the North had under arms. These were scattered over the whole of the Border country, and it must be many days before he had them all there together. And already the summer was well advanced, and if he delayed much longer his return, the after progress from Pontefract to London must draw them to late in the winter. And he was little minded that either Katharine or his son should bear the winter travel. Indeed, he sent a messenger back to Pontefract with orders that the Prince should be sent forthwith with a great guard to Hampton Court, so that he should reach that place before the nights grew cold.
And, having stayed in camp four days near the Scots border--for he loved well to live in a tent, since it re-awoke in him the ardour of his youth and made him think himself not so old a man--he delivered over to the Earl Marshal forty Scots borderers and cattle thieves that had been taken that summer. These men he had meant to have handed, pardoned, to the Scots King when he met him. But the Earl Marshal set up, along the road into Scotland, from where the stone marks the border, a row of forty gallows, all high, but some higher than others; for some of the prisoners were men of condition. And, within sight of a waiting crowd of Scots that had come down to the boundaries of their land to view the King of England, Norfolk hanged on these trees the forty men.