'I am weary of this talk of the world,' he said. 'Pray you begone and leave me to my prayers.'
'Please it your Grace to let me stay and hearten you,' Lascelles said, and he was aware that the Archbishop was afraid to be alone with the white Christ. 'All your other gentry are in bed. I shall watch your sleep, to wake you if you cry out.'
And in his fear of Cromwell's ghost that came to him in his dreams, the Archbishop sighed--
'Why stay, but speak not. Y'are over bold.'
He turned again to the wall; his beads clicked; he sighed and remained still for a long time, a black shadow, huddled together in a black gown, sighing before the white and lamenting image that hung above him.
'God help me,' he said at last. 'Tell me why you say this is _dies felix_?'
Lascelles, who smiled for ever and without mirth, said--
'For two things: firstly, because this letter and its sending are put off. And secondly, because the Queen is--patently and to all people--proved lewd.'
The Archbishop swung his head round upon his shoulders.
'You dare not say it!' he said.
'Why, the late Queen Katharine from Aragon was accounted a model of piety, yet all men know she was over fond with her confessor,' Lascelles smiled.
'It is an approved lie and slander,' the Archbishop said.
'It served mightily well in pulling down that Katharine,' his confidant answered.
'One day'--the Archbishop shivered within his robes--'the account and retribution for these lies shall be to be paid. For well we know, you, I, and all of us, that these be falsities and cozenings.'
'Marry,' Lascelles said, 'of this Queen it is now sufficiently proved true.'
The Archbishop made as if he washed his hands.
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'what man shall believe it was by chance and accident that she met her cousin on these moors? She is not a compass that pointeth, of miraculous power, true North.'
'No good man shall believe what you do say,' the Archbishop cried out.
'But a multitude of indifferent will,' Lascelles answered.
'God help me,' the Archbishop said, 'what a devil you are that thus hold out and hold out for ever hopes.'
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'I think you were well helped that day that I came into your service. It was the Great Privy Seal that bade me serve you and commended me.'
The Archbishop shivered at that name.
'What an end had Thomas Cromwell!' he said.
'Why, such an end shall not be yours whilst this King lives, so well he loves you,' Lascelles answered.
The Archbishop stood upon his feet; he raised his hands above his head.
'Begone! Begone!' he cried. 'I will not be of your evil schemes.'
'Your Grace shall not,' Lascelles said very softly, 'if they miscarry. But when it is proven to the hilt that this Queen is a very lewd woman--and proven it shall be--your Grace may carry an accusation to the King----'
Cranmer said--
'Never! never! Shall I come between the lion and his food?'
'It were better if your Grace would carry the accusation,' Lascelles uttered nonchalantly, 'for the King will better hearken to you than to any other. But another man will do it too.'
'I will not be of this plotting,' the Archbishop cried out. 'It is a very wicked thing!' He looked round at the white Christ that, upon the dark cross, bent anguished brows upon him. 'Give me strength,' he said.
'Why, your Grace shall not be of it,' Lascelles answered, 'until it is proven in the eyes of your Grace--ay, and in the eyes of some of the Papist Lords--as, for instance, her very uncle--that this Queen was evil in her life before the King took her, and that she hath acted very suspicious in the aftertime.'
'You shall not prove it to the Papist Lords,' Cranmer said. 'It is a folly.'
He added vehemently--
'It is a wicked plot. It is a folly too. I will not be of it.'
'This is a very fortunate day,' Lascelles said. 'I think it is proven to all discerning men that that letter to him of Rome shall never be sent.'
'Why, it is as plain as the truths of the Six Articles,' Cranmer remonstrated, 'that it shall be sent to-morrow or the next day. Get you gone! This King hath but the will of the Queen to guide him, and all her will turns upon that letter. Get you gone!'
'Please it your Grace,' the spy said, 'it is very manifest that with the Queen so it is. But with the King it is otherwise. He will pleasure the Queen if he may. But--mark me well--for this is a subtle matter----'
'I will not mark you,' the Archbishop said. 'Get you gone and find another master. I will not hear you. This is the very end.'
Lascelles moved his arm from the Bible. He bent his form to a bow--he moved till his hand was on the latch of the door.
'Why, continue,' the Archbishop said. 'If you have awakened my fears, you shall slake them if you can--for this night I shall not sleep.'
And so, very lengthily, Lascelles unfolded his view of the King's nature. For, said he, if this alliance with the Pope should come, it must be an alliance with the Pope and the Emperor Charles. For the King of France was an atheist, as all men knew. And an alliance with the Pope and the Emperor must be an alliance against France. But the King o' Scots was the closest ally that Francis had, and never should the King dare to wage war upon Francis till the King o' Scots was placated or wooed by treachery to be a prisoner, as the King would have made him if James had come into England to the meeting. Well would the King, to save his soul, placate and cosset his wife. But that he never dare do whilst James was potent at his back.
And again, Lascelles said, well knew the Archbishop that the Duke of Norfolk and his following were the ancient friends of France. If the Queen should force the King to this Imperial League, it must turn Norfolk and the Bishop of Winchester for ever to her bitter foes in that land. And along with them all the Protestant nobles and all the Papists too that had lands of the Church.
The Archbishop had been marking his words very eagerly. But suddenly he cried out--
'But the King! The King! What shall it boot if all these be against her so the King be but for her?'
'Why,' Lascelles said, 'this King is not a very stable man. Still, man he is, a man very jealous and afraid of fleers and flouts. If we can show him--I do accede to it that after what he hath done to-night it shall not be easy, but we may accomplish it--if before this letter is sent we may show him that all his land cries out at him and mocks him with a great laughter because of his wife's evil ways--why then, though in his heart he may believe her as innocent as you or I do now, it shall not be long before he shall put her away from him. Maybe he shall send her to the block.'
'God help me,' Cranmer said. 'What a hellish scheme is this.'
He pondered for a while, standing upright and frailly thrusting his hand into his bosom.
'You shall never get the King so to believe,' he said; 'this is an idle invention. I will none of it.'
'Why, it may be done, I do believe,' Lascelles said, 'and greatly it shall help us.'
'No, I will none of it,' the Archbishop said. 'It is a foul scheme. Besides, you must have many witnesses.'
'I have some already,' Lascelles said, 'and when we come to London Town I shall have many more. It was not for nothing that the Great Privy Seal commended me.'
'But to make the King,' Cranmer uttered, as if he were aghast and amazed, 'to make the King--this King who knoweth that his wife hath done no wrong--who knoweth it so well as to-night he hath proven--to make _him_, him, to put her away ... why, the tiger is not so fell, nor the Egyptian worm preyeth not on its kind. This is an imagination so horrible----'
'Please it your Grace,' Lascelles said softly, 'what beast or brute hath your Grace ever seen to betray its kind as man will betray brother, son, father, or consort?'
The Archbishop raised his hands above his head.
'What lesser bull of the herd, or lesser ram, ever so played traitor to his leader as Brutus played to Caesar Julius? And these be times less noble.'
PART FOUR
THE END OF THE SONG
I
The Queen was at Hampton, and it was the late autumn. She had been sad since they came from Pontefract, for it had seemed more than ever apparent that the King's letter to Rome must be ever delayed in the sending. Daily, at night, the King swore with great oaths that the letter must be sent and his soul saved. He trembled to think that if then he died in his bed he must be eternally damned, and she added her persuasions, such as that each soul that died in his realms before that letter was sent went before the Throne of Mercy unshriven and unhouselled, so that their burden of souls grew very great. And in the midnights, the King would start up and cry that all was lost and himself accursed.
And it appeared that he and his house were accursed in these days, for when they were come back to Hampton, they found the small Prince Edward was very ill. He was swollen all over his little body, so that the doctors said it was a dropsy. But how, the King cried, could it be a dropsy in so young a child and one so grave and so nurtured and tended? Assuredly it must be some marvel wrought by the saints to punish him, or by the Fiend to tempt him. And so he would rave, and cast tremulous hands above his head. And he would say that God, to punish him, would have of him his dearest and best.