The Fifth Queen Crowned

“The Bishop of Rome⁠—”

Thomas Cranmer began a hesitating speech. In the pause after the words the King himself hesitated, as if he poised between a heavy rage and a sardonic humour. He deemed, however, that the humour could the more terrify the Archbishop⁠—and, indeed, he was so much upon the joyous side in those summer days that he had forgotten how to browbeat.

“Our holy father,” he corrected the Archbishop. “Or I will say my holy father, since thou art a heretic⁠—”

Cranmer’s eyes had always the expression of a man’s who looked at approaching calamity, but at the King’s words his whole face, his closed lips, his brows, the lines from his round nose, all drooped suddenly downwards.

“Your Grace will have me write a letter to the⁠—to his⁠—to him⁠—”

The downward lines fixed themselves, and from amongst them the panic-stricken eyes made a dumb appeal to the griffins and crowns of his dark green hangings, for they were afraid to turn to the King. Henry retained his heavy look of jocularity: he jumped at a weighty gibe⁠—

“My Grace will have thy Grace write a letter to his Holiness.”

He dropped into a heavy impassivity, rolled his eyes, fluttered his swollen fingers on the red and gilded table, and then said clearly, “My. Thy. His.”

“We advance thee,” Henry said, “to be Chancellier de la Royne, with an hundred pounds by the year from my purse. Do homage for thine office.”

Udal fell upon one knee before Katharine, and dropping both cap and book, took her hand to raise to his lips. But Margot caught her hand when he had done with it and set upon it a huge pressure.

“But, Sir Chancellor,” the King said, “it is evident that so grave an office must have a grave fulfiller. And, to ballast thee the better, the Queen of her graciousness hath found thee a weighty helpmeet. So that, before you shall touch the duties and emoluments of this charge you shall, and that even tonight, wed this Madam Margot that here kneels.”

Udal’s face had been of a coppery green pallor ever since he had heard the title of Chancellor.

“Eheu!” he said, “this is the torture of Tantalus that might never drink.”

In its turn the face of Margot Poins grew pale, pushed forward towards him; but her eyes appeared to blaze, for all they were a mild blue, and the Queen felt the pressure upon her hand grow so hard that it pained her.

The King uttered the one word, “Magister!”

Udal’s fingers picked at the fur of his moth-eaten gown.

“God be favourable to me,” he said. “If it were anything but Chancellor!”

The King grew more rigid.

“Body of God,” he said, “will you wed with this maid?”

But there was one man, Thomas Culpepper, in the town of Edinburgh to whom this return was grievous. He had been in these outlandish parts now for more than nineteen months. The Scots were odious to him, the town was odious; he had no stomach for his food, and such clothes as he had were ragged, for he would wear nothing that had there been woven. He was even a sort of prisoner. For he had been appointed to wait on the King’s Ambassador to the King of Scots, and the last thing that Throckmorton, the notable spy, had done before he had left the Court had been to write to Edinburgh that T. Culpepper, the Queen’s cousin, who was a dangerous man, was to be kept very close and given no leave of absence.

And one thing very much had aided this: for, upon receiving news, or the rumour of news, that his cousin Katharine Howard⁠—he was her mother’s brother’s son⁠—had wedded the King, or had been shown for Queen at Hampton Court, he had suddenly become seized with such a rage that, incontinently, he had run his sword through an old fishwife in the fishmarket where he was who had given him the news, newly come by sea, thinking that because he was an Englishman this marriage of his King might gladden him. The fishwife died among her fish, and Culpepper with his sword fell upon all that were near him in the market, till, his heel slipping upon a haddock, he fell, and was fallen upon by a great many men.

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 sleepwalker, 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.

He screamed out words like: “Bawd,” and “Ilcock,” and “Hecate,” and the Lady Rochford screamed⁠—

“The King comes! the King comes!”

Then Katharine said within herself⁠—

“Is it this to be a Queen?”

She set both her hands upon his neck and pressed down the whole weight of her frame, till the voice died in his throat. His body stirred beneath her knee, convulsively, so that it was as if she rode a horse. His eyes, as slowly he strangled, glared hideously at the ceiling, from which the carven face of a Queen looked down into them. At last he lay still, and Katharine Howard rose up.

She ran at the old woman⁠—

“God forgive me if I have killed my cousin,” she said. “I am certain that now He will forgive me if I slay thee.” And she had Culpepper’s dagger in her hand.

“For,” she said, “I stand for Christ His cause: I will not be undone by meddlers. Hold thy peace!”

The Lady Rochford opened her mouth to speak.

“Hold thy peace!” the Queen said again, and she lifted up the dagger. “Speak not. Do as I bid thee. Answer me when I ask. For this I swear as I am the Queen that, since I have the power to slay whom I will and none question it, I will slay thee if thou do not my bidding.”