Privy Seal quotes

He gasped with the strength of her thrust, and she said:

“Greedy dogs getten them hard cuffs,” and rearranged her neckercher.

When he tried to come nearer her she laughed and thrust him aback.

“I am even trapped?” he asked.

“So it comes to all foxes that too long seek for capons,” she answered.

“But consider,” he said. He sat himself by the fireside upon a stool, being minded to avoid temptation.

“It is the place of a wife to be subject to her lord,” he said.

“It is the place of a husband that he fendeth for ’s wife,” she answered him.

She tapped her fingers determinedly upon her elbows.

“No woman again!” Katharine repeated.

“Blood was tasted when first a queen fell on Tower Hill.” Cicely pointed her little finger at her. “And the taste of blood, even as the taste of wine, ensureth a certain oblivion.”

“You miscall your King,” Katharine said.

Are you for having the Lady Mary called bastard—God pardon me the word!—or would you defend her with your life?—I do not know. I have spoken with you many times—but I do not know.”

“I have saved my head and my lands in these perilous times by letting no man know,” he said.

“Aye,” Katharine met his words with scorn and appeal. “You have kept your head on your shoulders and the rent from your lands in your poke. But oh, sir, it is certain that, being a man, you love either the new ways or the old;

“Words there must be that will move thee,” she said, “if God will give them to me.”

“God hath withdrawn Himself from this world,” Cicely answered. “All mankind goeth a-mumming.”

“It was another thing that Polycrates said.” Katharine, in spite of her emotion, was quick to catch the misquotation.

“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.

“Ye speak no word of God,” she said pitifully.

“God is very far away,” he answered.

“Sir, my lord,” she cried, and brushed again the tress from her forehead. “Ye have made this King rich with gear of the Church: if ye will be friends with me ye shall make this King a pauper to repay;

“You have a very great sight into men’s minds,” she uttered, and he laughed noiselessly once again.

“I am as God made me,” he said.

Then he spoke once more. “I will read your mind if you will. Ye came to me in this crisis, thinking with yourself: Liars go unto the King saying, ‘This Cromwell is a traitor; cast him down, for he seeks your ill.’

Helping the King is no treason. I should be advanced, not threatened with a halter. Letters between the King and Kat Howard!” He even attempted to himself a clumsy joke, polishing it and repolishing it till it came out:

“A King may write to a Kat. A Kat may write to a King. But my neck’s in danger!”

Beside him, whitened by the dust that fell from above, the gatewarden wandered in speech round his grievance.

The old lady leaned forward and stroked her hands.

“Dearie,” she said, “dandling piece, sweet bit, there are no true men.”

She had an entreaty in her tone, and her large blue eyes gazed fixedly. “Say that my cousin Anne was a heretic.

The old woman answered bitterly:

“The throne of God is a long way from here.”

“Please it Mary and the saints,” Katharine said, “the ten years to come shall bring Heaven a thousand leagues nearer to this land.” But her words died away because the Lady Rochford’s mouth fell open.

“Knight,” she answered; “for the truth of the last, ask, with thumbscrews, the witnesses ye found in Lincolnshire, and believe them as ye list.

Or ask at the mouth of a draw-well if fishes be below in the water before ye ask a woman if she be chaste.

For the other, consider of my actions hereafter if I do love the King’s person.”

The printer shook his dark beard with an air of heavy pleasure.

“Ye have a great organisation of spies,” he said, “but better is the whisper of God among the faithful.”

“Why,” Throckmorton answered, “the magister Udal hath to his sweetheart thy niece Margot Poins.”

I had as soon see England linked again with the Papists as the Schmalkaldners; I had as lief see the King married to you as another;

I had as lief all men do what they will so they leave me to go my ways and feed me well.

”

And, pondering upon the wonderful destiny that had brought him up from a trooper in Italy to these high places, he saluted the moon with his crooked forefinger—for the moon was the president at his birth.

“Why,” he uttered aloud, “I have survived four queens’ days.”

For Katharine of Aragon he had seen die; and Anne Boleyn had died on the scaffold; and Jane Seymour was dead in childbed; and now, with the news from Cleves, Anne’s reign was over and done with.

“

Both your hands are upon the table; if you move one my dagger pierces your eye to the brain. So also if you speak in the English language.

”