The Fifth Queen Crowned Part 28

'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 n.o.bles 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.'

'G.o.d help me,' Cranmer said. 'What a h.e.l.lish 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 n.o.ble.'

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 d.a.m.ned, 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?

a.s.suredly 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 G.o.d, to punish him, would have of him his dearest and best.

And when the Queen urged him, therefore, to make his peace with G.o.d, he would cry out that it was too late. G.o.d would make no peace with him.

For if G.o.d were minded to have him at peace, wherefore would He not smoothe the way to this reconciliation with His vicegerent that sat at Rome in Peter's chair? There was no smoothing of that way--for every day there arose new difficulties and torments.

The King o' Scots would come into no alliance with him; the King of France would make no bid for the hand of his daughter Mary; it went ill with the Emperor in his fighting with the Princes of Almain and the Schmalkaldners, so that the Emperor would be of the less use as an ally against France and the Scots.

'Why!' he would cry to the Queen, 'if G.o.d in His Heaven would have me make a peace with Rome, wherefore will He not give victory over a parcel of Lutheran knaves and swine? Wherefore will He not deliver into my hands these beggarly Scots and these atheists of France?'

At night the Queen would bring him round to vowing that first he would make peace with G.o.d and trust in His great mercy for a prosperous issue.

But each morning he would be afraid for his sovereignty; a new letter would come from Norfolk, who had gone on an emba.s.sy to his French friends, believing fully that the King was minded to marry to one of them his daughter. But the French King was not ready to believe this.

And the King's eyes grew red and enraged; he looked no man in the face, not even the Queen, but glanced aside into corners, uttered blasphemies, and said that he--he!--was the head of the Church and would have no overlord.

The Bishop Gardiner came up from his See in Winchester. But though he was the head of the Papist party in the realm, the Queen had little comfort in him. For he was a dark and masterful prelate, and never ceased to urge her to cast out Cranmer from his archbishopric and to give it to him. And with him the Lady Mary sided, for she would have Cranmer's head before all things, since Cranmer it was that most had injured her mother. Moreover, he was so incessant in his urging the King to make an alliance with the Catholic Emperor that at last, about the time that Norfolk came back from France, the King was mightily enraged, so that he struck the Bishop of Winchester in the face, and swore that his friend the Kaiser was a rotten plank, since he could not rid himself of a few small knaves of Lutheran princes.

Thus for long the Queen was sad; the little Prince very sick; and the King ate no food, but sat gazing at the victuals, though the Queen cooked some messes for him with her own hand.

One Sunday after evensong, at which Cranmer himself had read prayers, the King came nearly merrily to his supper.

'Ho, chuck,' he said, 'you have your enemies. Here hath been Cranmer weeping to me with a parcel of tales writ on paper.'

He offered it to her to read, but she would not; for, she said, she knew well that she had many enemies, only, very safely she could trust her fame in her Lord's hands.

'Why, you may,' he said, and sat him down at the table to eat, with the paper stuck in his belt. 'Body o' G.o.d!' he said. 'If it had been any but Cranmer he had eaten bread in h.e.l.l this night. 'A wept and trembled!

Body o' G.o.d! Body o' G.o.d!'

And that night he was more merry before the fire than he had been for many weeks. He had in the music to play a song of his own writing, and afterwards he swore that next day he would ride to London, and then at his council send that which she would have sent to Rome.

'For, for sure,' he said, 'there is no peace in this world for me save when I hear you pray. And how shall you pray well for me save in the old form and fashion?'

He lolled back in his chair and gazed at her.

'Why,' he said, 'it is a proof of the great mercy of the Saviour that He sent you on earth in so fair a guise. For if you had not been so fair, a.s.suredly I had not noticed you. Then would my soul have gone straightway to h.e.l.l.'

And he called that the letter to Rome might be brought to him, and read it over in the firelight. He set it in his belt alongside the other paper, that next day when he came to London he might lay it in the hands of Sir Thomas Carter, that should carry it to Rome.

The Queen said: 'Praise G.o.d!'

For though she was not set to believe that next day that letter would be sent, or for many days more, yet it seemed to her that by little and little she was winning him to her will.

II