Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (243 page)

‘Catch me that gentleman.’

He was brought to the doorsill by the panting maid, for he had walked away very fast. He stood there, blinking his eyes and stroking his fox-coloured beard. When the Lady Mary beckoned him into the room he pulled off his cap and fell to his thin knees. He expected her to bid him rise, but she left him there.

‘Wherefore is my secretary gaoled?’ she asked cruelly.

He ran his finger round the rim of his cap where it lay on the floor beside him.

‘That he is gaoled, I know,’ he said; ‘but the wherefore of it, not.’

He looked down at the floor and she down at his drooped eyelids.

‘God help you,’ she uttered scornfully. ‘You are a spy and yet know no more than a Queen’s daughter.’

‘God help me,’ he repeated gravely and touched his eyelid with one finger. ‘What passed, passed between the King and him. I know no more than common report.’

‘Common report?’ she said. ‘I warrant thee thou wast slinking around the terrace. I warrant thee thou heardst words of the King’s mouth. I warrant thee thou followedst here to hear at my doorhole how I might take this adventure.’

One of his eyelids moved delicately, but he said no word. The Lady Mary turned her back on him and he expected her order to be gone. But she turned again —

‘Common report?’ she uttered once more. ‘I do bid you give me the common report upon this, that the Queen sends to me every day this little Prince to be alone with me two hours.’

He winced with his eyebrows again.

‘Out with the common report,’ she said.

‘Madam,’ he uttered, ‘it is usually commended that the Queen should seek to bring sister and Prince-brother together.’

She shrugged her stiff shoulders up to her ears.

‘What a poor liar for a spy,’ she said. ‘It is more usually reported’ — and she turned upon the little Prince—’that the Queen sends thee here that I may work thee a mischief so that thou die and her child reign after the King thy father.’

The little Prince looked at her with pensive eyes. At that moment Katharine Howard came to the room door and looked in.

‘Body of God,’ the Lady Mary said; ‘here you spy out a spy committing treason. For it is still treason to kneel to me. I am of illegal birth and not of the blood royal.’

Katharine essayed her smile upon the black-avised girl.

‘Give me leave,’ she said.

‘Your Grace’s poor room,’ Mary said, ‘is open ever to your Grace’s entry.
Ubi venis ibi tibi.
’

The Queen bade her waiting women go. She entered the room and looked at Lascelles.

‘I think I know thy face,’ she said.

‘I am the Archbishop’s poor gentleman,’ he answered. ‘I think you have seen me.’

‘No. It is not that,’ she said. ‘It was long ago.’

She crossed the room to smell at the pinks in the window.

‘How late the flowers grow,’ she said. ‘It is August, yet here are still vernal perfumes.’

She was unwilling to bid the gentleman rise and go, because this was the Lady Mary’s room.

‘Where your Grace is, there the spring abideth,’ Mary said sardonically. ‘
Ecce miraculum sicut erat, Joshuâ rege.
’

The little Prince came timidly down to beg a flower from the Queen and they all had their backs upon the spy. He ran his hands down his beard and considered the Queen’s words. Then swiftly he was on his feet and through the door. He was more ready to brave the Lady Mary’s after-wrath than let the Queen see him upon his knees. For actually it was a treason to kneel to the Lady Mary. It had been proclaimed so in the old days when the King’s daughter was always subject to new debasements. And who knew whether now the penalty of treason might not still be enacted? It was certain that the Queen had no liking for the Archbishop. Then, what use might she not make of the fact that the Archbishop’s man knelt, seeming to curry favour, though in these days all men knelt to her, even when the King was by? He cursed himself as he hastened away.

The Queen looked over her shoulder and caught the glint of his red heel as it went past the doorpost.

‘In our north parts,’ she said, and she was glad that Lascelles had fled, ‘the seasons come ever tardily.’

‘Well, your Grace has not delayed to blossom,’ Mary said.

It was part of her humour when she was in a taunting mood to call the Queen always ‘your Grace’ or ‘your Majesty’ at every turn of the phrase.

Katharine looked at the pink intently. Her face had no expression, she was determined at once to have a cheerful patience and not to show it in her face.

The little Prince stole his hand into hers.

‘Wherefore did my father —
rex pater meus
— pummel the man in the long cloak?’ he asked.

‘You knew it then?’ Katharine asked of her stepdaughter.

‘I knew it not,’ the Lady Mary answered.

‘I saw it from this window, but my sister would not look,’ the Prince said.

The Queen was going to shut, with her own hand, the door, the little boy trotting behind her, but, purple-clothed and huge, the King was there.

‘Well, I will not be shut out in mine own castle,’ he said pleasantly.

In those, the quiet days of his realm when most things were going well, his face beneath his beard had taken a rounder and a smoother outline. He moved with motions less hasty than those he had had two years before, and when he had cast a task off it was done with and went out of his mind, so that he appeared a very busy man with, between whiles, the leisure to saunter.

‘In a half hour,’ he said, ‘I go north to meet the King o’ Scots. I would I had not the long journey to make but could stay with ye. It is pleasant here; the air is livening.’ He caught his little son by the armpits and hoisted him on to his purple shoulders. ‘Hey, princekin,’ he said, ‘what news ha’ you o’ the day?’

The little Edward pulled his father’s bonnet off that he might the better see the huge brows and the little eyes.

‘I told my sister that you did pummel a man in a long gown. What is even “long gown” in the learned tongue?’ He played daintily and languidly with the hair of the King’s temples, and when the King had said that he might call it ‘
doctorum toga
,’ he added, ‘But my sister would not come to look.’

‘Well, thy sister is a monstrous learned wench,’ the King said with a heavy benignity. ‘She could not leave her book.’

The Lady Mary stood rigid, with a mock humility. She had her hands clasped before her, the folds of her black skirt fell stiffly just to the ground. She pursed her lips and strove with herself to speak, for she was minded to exhibit disdain, but her black mood was too strong for her.

‘I did not read in my book, because I could not,’ she said numbly. ‘Your son disturbed my reading. But I did not come to look, because I would not.’

With one arm round the boy’s little waist as he sat on high, and one hand on the little feet, the King looked at his daughter in a sudden hot rage; for to speak contemptuously of his son was a thing that filled him with anger and surprise. He opened his mouth to shout. Katharine Howard was gently turning a brass sphere with the constellations upon it that stood upon the table. She moved her fair face round towards the King and set her finger upon her lips. He shrugged his shoulders, prince and all moving up together, and his face took on the expression, half abashed and half resigned, of a man who is reminded by his womankind that he is near to a passionate folly.

Katharine by that time had schooled him how to act when Mary was in that humour, and he let out no word.

‘I do not like that this Prince should play in my room,’ the Lady Mary pursued him relentlessly, and he was so well lessoned that he answered only —

‘Ye must fight that cock with Kat. It is Kat that sends him, not I.’

Nevertheless he was too masterful a man to keep his silence altogether; he was, besides, so content upon the whole that he was sure he could hold his temper in check, and the better to take breath for a long speech, he took the little boy from his shoulder and planted his feet abroad on the carpet.

‘See now, Moll,’ he said, ‘make friends!’ and he stretched out a large hand. She shrugged her shoulders half invisibly.

‘I will kneel down to the King of this country and to the Supreme Head of the Church as it is here set up by law. What more would you have of me?’

‘See now, Moll!’ he said.

He fingered the medal upon his chest and cast about for words.

‘Let us have peace in this realm,’ he said. ‘We are very near it.’

She raised her eyelids with a tiny contempt.

‘It hangs much around you,’ he went on. ‘Listen! I will tell ye the whole matter.’

Slowly and sagaciously he disentangled all his coil of policies. His letter to the Holy Father was all drafted and ready to be put into fine words. But, before he sent it, he must be sure of peace abroad. It was like this —

‘Ye know,’ he said, ‘though great wrangles have been in the past betwixt him and thee and mine own self, how my heart has ever been well inclined to my nephew, thy cousin the Emperor. There are in Christendom now only he and France that are anyways strong to stand against me or to invade me. But France I ha’ never loved, and him much.’

‘Ye are grown gentle then,’ Mary said, ‘and forgiving in your old age, for ye know I ha’ plotted against you with my cousin and my cousin with me.’

‘It is a very ancient tale,’ the King said. ‘Forget it, as do I and he.’

‘Why, you live in the sun where the dial face moves. I in the shadow where Time stays still. To me it is every day a new tale,’ the Lady Mary answered.

His face took on an expression of patience and resignation that angered her, for she knew that when her father looked so it was always very difficult to move him.

‘Why, all the world forgets,’ he said.

‘Save only I,’ she answered. ‘I had only one parent — a mother. She is dead: she was done to death.’

‘I have pardoned your cousin that he plotted against me,’ he stuck to his tale, ‘and he me what I did against your mother.’

‘Well, he was ever a popinjay,’ the Lady Mary said.

‘Lately,’ Henry continued, ‘as ye wiz he had grown very thick with Francis of France. He went across the French country into the Netherlands, so strict was their alliance. It is more than I would do to trust myself to France’s word. All Holland marvelled.’

‘What is this to me?’ the Lady Mary said. ‘Will you send me across France to the Netherlands?’

He left her gibe alone.

‘But in these latter months,’ he said, ‘Kat and I ha’ weakened with true messages and loyal conceits this unholy alliance.’

‘Why, I ha’ heard,’ Mary said, ‘ye did send the Duke of Norfolk to tell the King o’ France that my cousin had said in private that he was the greater King of the twain. These be princely princes!’

‘An unholy alliance it was,’ Henry went on his way, ‘for the Emperor is a very good Christian and a loyal son of the Church. But Francis worships the devil — I have heard it said and I believe it — or, at least, he believes not in God and our Saviour; and he pays allegiance to the Church only when it serves his turn, now holding on, now letting go. I am glad this alliance is dissolving.’

‘Why, I am glad to hear you speak like this,’ Mary said bitterly. ‘You are a goodly son to Mother Church.’