It was very still in the Queen's room and most shadowy, except before the mirror where the candle flames streamed upwards. The pillars of the great bed were twisted out of dark wood; the hangings of bed and walls were all of a dark blue arras, and the bedspread was of a dark red velvet worked in gold with pomegranates and pomegranate leaves. Only the pillows and the turnover of the sheets were of white linen-lawn, and the bed curtains nearly hid them with shadows. Where the Queen sat there was light like that of an altar in a dim chapel, for the room was so huge.
She sat before her glass, silently taking off her golden things. She took the jewel off the chain round her neck and laid it in a casket of gold and ivory. She took the rings off her fingers and hung them on the lance of a little knight in silver. She took off her waist where it hung to a brooch of feridets, her pomander of enamel and gold; she opened it and marked the time by the watch studded with sable diamonds that it held.
'Past eleven,' she said, 'if my watch goes right.'
'Indeed it is past eleven,' the Lady Rochford sighed behind her.
The Queen sat forward in her chair, looking deep into the shadows of her mirror. A great relaxation was in all her limbs, for she was very tired, so that though she was minded to let down her hair she did not begin to undo her coif, and though she desired to think, she had no thoughts. From far away there came a muffled sound as if a door had been roughly closed, and the Lady Rochford shot out a little sound between a scream and a sigh.
'Why, you are very affrighted,' the Queen said. 'One would think you feared robbers; but my guards are too good.'
She began to unloosen from her hood her jewel, which was a rose fashioned out of pink shell work set with huge dewdrops of diamonds and crowned with a little crown of gold.
'God knows,' she said, 'I ha' trinkets enow for robbers. It takes me too long to undo them. I would the King did not so load me.'
'Your Highness is too humble for a Queen,' the old Lady Rochford grumbled. 'Let me aid you, since the maid is gone. I would not have you speak your maids so humbly. My Cousin Anne that was the Queen----'
She came stiffly and heavily forward from the bed with her hands out to discoif her lady; but the Queen turned her head, caught at her fat hand, put it against her cheek and fondled it.
'I would have your Highness feared by all,' the old lady said.
'I would have myself by all beloved,' Katharine answered. 'What, am I to play the Queen and Highness to such serving-maids as I was once the fellow and companion to?'
'Your Highness should not have sent the wench away,' the old woman said.
'Well, you have taken on a very sour voice,' the Queen said. 'I will study to pleasure you more. Get you now back and rest you, for I know you stand uneasily, and you shall not uncoif me.'
She began to unpin her coif, laying the golden pins in the silver candle-dishes. When her hair was thus set free of a covering, though it was smoothly braided and parted over her forehead, yet it was lightly rebellious, so that little mists of it caught the light, golden and rejoiceful. Her face was serious, her nose a little peaked, her lips rested lightly together, and her blue eyes steadily challenged their counterparts in the mirror with an assured and gentle glance.
'Why,' she said, 'I believe you have the right of it--but for a queen I must be the same make of queen that I am as a woman. A queen gracious rather than a queen regnant; a queen to grant petitions rather than one to brush aside the petitioners.'
She stopped and mused.
'Yet,' she said, 'you will do me the justice to say that in the open and in the light of day, when men are by or the King's presence demands it, I do ape as well as I may the painted queens of galleries and the stately ladies that are to be seen in pictured books.'
'I would not have had you send away the maid,' the old Lady Rochford said.
'God help me,' the Queen answered. 'I stayed her petition till the morrow. Is that not queening it enough?'
The Lady Rochford suddenly wrung her hands.
'I had rather,' she said, 'you had heard her and let her stay. Here there are not people enough to guard you. You should have many scores of people. This is a dreary place.'
'Heaven help me,' the Queen said. 'If I were such a queen as to be affrighted, you would affright me. Tell me of your cousin that was a sinful queen.'
The Lady Rochford raised her hands lamentably and bleated out--
'Ah God, not to-night!'
'You have been ready enough on other nights,' the Queen said. And, indeed, it was so much the practice of this lady to talk always of her cousin, whose death had affrighted her, that often the Queen had begged her to cease. But to-night she was willing to hear, for she felt afraid of no omens, and, being joyful, was full of pity for the dead unfortunate. She began with slow, long motions to withdraw the great pins from her hair. The deep silence settled down again, and she hummed the melancholy and stately tune that goes with the words--
_'When all the little hills are hid in snow,_ _And all the small brown birds by frost are slain,_ _And sad and slow_ _The silly sheep do go,_ _All seeking shelter to and fro--_ _Come once again_ _To these familiar, silent, misty lands----'_
And--
'Aye,' she said; 'to these ancient and familiar lands of the dear saints, please God, when the winter snows are upon them, once again shall come the feet of God's messenger, for this is the joyfullest day this land hath known since my namesake was cast down and died.'
Suddenly there were muffled cries from beyond the thick door in the corridor, and on the door itself resounding blows. The Lady Rochford gave out great shrieks, more than her feeble body could have been deemed to hold.
'Body of God!' the Queen said, 'what is this?'
'Your cousin!' the Lady Rochford cried out. She came running to the Queen, who, in standing up, had overset her heavy chair, and, falling to her knees, she babbled out--'Your cousin! Oh, let it not all come again. Call your guard. Let it not all come again'; and she clawed into the Queen's skirt, uttering incomprehensible clamours.
'What? What? What?' Katharine said.
'He was with the Archbishop. Your cousin with the Archbishop. I heard it. I sent to stay him if it were so'; and the old woman's teeth crackled within her jaws. 'O God, it is come again!' she cried.
The door flung open heavily, but slowly, because it was so heavy. And, in the archway, whilst a great scream from the old woman wailed out down the corridors, Katharine was aware of a man in scarlet, locked in a struggle with a raging swirl of green manhood. The man in scarlet fell back, and then, crying out, ran away. The man in green, his bonnet off, his red hair sticking all up, his face pallid, and his eyes staring like those of a sleep-walker, entered the room. In his right hand he had a dagger. He walked very slowly.
The Queen thought fast: the old Lady Rochford had her mouth open; her eyes were upon the dagger in Culpepper's hand.
'I seek the Queen,' he said, but his eyes were lacklustre; they fell upon Katharine's face as if they had no recognition, or could not see. She turned her body round to the old Lady Rochford, bending from the hips so as not to move her feet. She set her fingers upon her lips.
'I seek--I seek----' he said, and always he came closer to her. His eyes were upon her face, and the lids moved.
'I seek the Queen,' he said, and beneath his husky voice there were bass notes of quivering anger, as if, just as he had been by chance calmed by throwing down the guard, so by chance his anger might arise again.
The Queen never moved, but stood up full and fair; one strand of her hair, loosened, fell low over her left ear. When he was so close to her that his protruded hips touched her skirt, she stole her hand slowly round him till it closed upon his wrist above the dagger. His mouth opened, his eyes distended.
'I seek----' he said, and then--'Kat!' as if the touch of her cool and firm fingers rather than the sight of her had told to his bruised senses who she was.
'Get you gone!' she said. 'Give me your dagger.' She uttered each word roundly and fully as if she were pondering the next move over a chequer-board.
'Well, I will kill the Queen,' he said. 'How may I do it without my knife?'
'Get you gone!' she said again. 'I will direct you to the Queen.'
He passed the back of his left hand wearily over his brow.
'Well, I have found thee, Kat!' he said.
She answered: 'Aye!' and her fingers twined round his on the hilt of the dagger, so that his were loosening.
Then the old Lady Rochford screamed out--
'Ha! God's mercy! Guards, swords, come!' The furious blood came into Culpepper's face at the sound. His hand he tore from Katharine's, and with the dagger raised on high he ran back from her and then forward towards the Lady Rochford. With an old trick of fence, that she had learned when she was a child, Katharine Howard set out her foot before him, and, with the speed of his momentum, he pitched over forward. He fell upon his face so that his forehead was upon the Lady Rochford's right foot. His dagger he still grasped, but he lay prone with the drink and the fever.