Katharine said:

'Belike I am enamoured of the King: belike the King of me, I do not know. But this I know: he and I are minded to right the wrongs of G.o.d.'

Cicely Elliott opened her eyes wide.

'Why, thou art a very infectious fanatic!' she said. 'You may well do these things. But you must shed much blood. You must widow many men's wives. Body of G.o.d! I believe thou wouldst.'

'G.o.d forbid it!' Katharine said. 'But if He so willeth it, _fiat voluntas_.'

'Why, spare no man,' Cicely answered. 'Thou shalt not very easily escape.'

It was at this point that the magister was moved to keep no longer silence.

'Now, by all the G.o.ds of high Olympus!' he cried out, 'such things shall not be alleged against me. For I do swear, before Venus and all the saints, that I am your man.'

Nevertheless, it was Margot Poins, wavering between her love for her magister and her love for her mistress, that most truly was carried away by Katharine's eloquence.

'Mistress,' she said, and she indicated both the magister and his tall and bearded companion, 'these two have made up a pretty plot upon the stairs. There are in it papers from Cleves and a matter of deceiving Privy Seal and thou shouldst be kept in ignorance asking to--to----'

Her gruff voice failed and her blushes overcame her, so that she wanted for a word. But upon the mention of papers and Privy Seal the old knight fidgeted and faltered:

'Why, let us begone.' Cicely Elliott glanced from one to the other of them with a malicious glee, and Throckmorton's eyes blinked sardonically above his beard.

It had been actually upon the stairs that he had come upon the magister, newly down from his horse, and both stiff and bruised, with Margot Poins hanging about his neck and begging him to spare her a moment. Throckmorton crept up the dark stairway with his shoes soled with velvet. The magister was seeking to disengage himself from the girl with the words that he had a treaty form of the Duke of Cleves in his bosom and must hasten on the minute to give it to her mistress.

'Before G.o.d!' Throckmorton had said behind his back, 'ye will do no such thing,' and Udal had shrieked out like a rabbit caught by a ferret in its bury. For here he had seemed to find himself caught by the chief spy of Privy Seal upon a direct treason against Privy Seal's self.

But, dragging alike the terrified magister and the heavy, blonde girl who clung to him out from the dark stairhead into the corridor, where, since no one could come upon them unseen or unheard, it was the safest place in the palace to speak, Throckmorton had whispered into his ear a long, swift speech in which he minced no matters at all.

The time, he said, was ripe to bring down Privy Seal. He himself--Throckmorton himself--loved Kat Howard with a love compared to which the magister's was a rushlight such as you bought fifty for a halfpenny. Privy Seal was ravening for a report of that treaty. They must, before all things, bring him a report that was false. For, for sure, upon that report Privy Seal would act, and, if they brought him a false report, Privy Seal would act falsely.

Udal stood perfectly still, looking at nothing, his thin brown hand clasped round his thin brown chin.

'But, above all,' Throckmorton had concluded, 'show ye no papers to Kat Howard. For it is very certain that she will have no falsehoods employed to bring down Privy Seal, though she hate him as the a.s.syrian c.o.c.katrice hateth the symbol of the Cross.'

'Sir Throckmorton,' Margot Poins had uttered, 'though ye be a paid spy, ye speak true words there.'

He pulled his beard and blinked at her.

'I am minded to reform,' he said. 'Your mistress hath worked a miracle of conversion in me.'

She shrugged her great fair shoulders at this, and spoke to the magister:

'It is very true,' she said, 'that this spying knight affects my mistress. But whether it be for the love of virtue, or for the love of her body, or because the cat jumps that way and there he observeth fortune to rise, I leave to G.o.d who reads all hearts.'

'There speaks a wench brought up and taught by Protestants,'

Throckmorton gibed pleasantly at her; 'or ye have caught the trick of Kat Howard, who, though she be a Papist as good as I, yet prates virtue like a Lutheran.'

'Ye lie!' Margot said; 'my mistress getteth her virtue from good letters.'

Throckmorton smiled at her again.

'Wench,' he said, 'in all save doctrine, this Kat Howard and her learning are nearer Lutheran than of the old faith.'

With his malice he set himself to bewilder Margot. They made a little, shadowy knot in the long corridor. For he wished to give Udal, who in his long gown stood deaf-faced, like a statue of contemplation, the time to come to a conclusion.

'Why, you are a very mean wag,' Margot said. 'I have heard my uncle--who is, as ye wot, a Protestant and a printer--I have heard him speak of Luther and of Bucer and of the word of G.o.d and suchlike canting books, but never once of Seneca and Tully, that my mistress loves.'

'Why, ye are learning the trick of tongues,' Throckmorton mocked.

'Please G.o.d, when your mistress cometh to be Queen--may He send it soon!--there shall be such a fashion and contagion of talking----'

Having his eyes on Udal, he broke off suddenly, and said with a harsh sharpness:

'I have given you time to make a resolution. Speak quickly. Will you come into our boat with us that will bring down Privy Seal?'

Udal winced, but Throckmorton held him by the wrist.

'Then unpouch quickly thy Cleves papers,' he said; 'we have but a little time to turn them round.'

Udal's thin hand sought nervously the opening of his jerkin beneath his gown: he drew it back, moved it forward again, and stood quivering with doubt.

Throckmorton stood vaingloriously back upon his feet and combed his great beard with his white fingers.

'Magister,' he uttered triumphantly, 'well you wot that such a man as you cannot plot for himself alone; you will make naught of your treasure trove save a cleft neck!'

And, furtively, cringing back into the dark hangings, a bent, broken figure like a miser unpouching his gold, Udal undid his breast lacings.

It was hot from this colloquy that Margot Poins had led the two men in upon her mistress in her large dim room. Because she hated the great spy, since he loved Kat Howard and had undone many good men with false tales, she had not been able to keep her tongue from seeking to wound him.

'Ye are too true to mix in plots,' she brought out gruffly.

Cicely Rochford came close to Katharine and measured her neck with the span of her small hand.

'There is room!' she said. 'Hast a long and a straight neck.'

Her husband muttered that he liked not these talkings. By diligent avoidance of such, he had kept his own hair and neck uncut in troublesome times.

'I will take thee to another place,' Cicely threw at him over her shoulder. 'Shalt kiss me in a dark room. It is very certain maids'

talk is no fit hearing for thy jolly old ears.'

She took him delicately at the end of his short white beard between her long finger and thumb, and, with her high and mincing step, led him through the door.

'G.o.d save this room, where all the virtues bide!' she cried out, and drew her overskirt closer to her as she pa.s.sed near the great, bearded spy.