and, against the steely grey of the river, her face in its whiteness had the tint of mother of pearl and an expression of engrossed and grievous absence.
‘I have fared on foul ways this journey,’ she said.
‘Thy father’s barns we will build again,’ the King answered. ‘You shall have twice the sheep to your dower. Show me your eyes.’
‘I had not thought to have seen the King so stern,’ she answered.
Culpepper caught at the mule’s bridle.
‘Y’ are mad,’ he muttered. ‘Let us begone.’
‘Nay, in my day,’ the King answered, ‘y’ad found me more than kind.’
She raised her eyes to his face, steadfast, enquiring and unconcerned. He bent his great bulk downwards and kissed her upon the temple.
‘Be welcome to this place.’ He smiled with a pleasure in his own affability and because, since his beard had pricked her, she rubbed her cheek. Culpepper said:
‘Come away. We stay the King’s Highness.’
Henry said: ‘Bide ye here.’ He wished to hear what Cromwell might say of these Howards, and he took him down the terrace.
Culpepper bent over her with his mouth opened to whisper.
‘I am weary,’ she said. ‘Set me a saddle cushion behind my shoulders.’
He whispered hurriedly:
‘I do not like this place.’
‘I like it well. Shall we not see brave shews?’
‘The mule did stumble on the threshold.’
‘I marked it not. The King did bid us bide here.’
She had once more laid her head back on the stone balustrade.
‘If thou lovest me. . . . ’ he whispered. It enraged and confused him to have to speak low. He could not think of any words.
She answered unconcernedly:
‘If thou lovest my bones . . . they ache and they ache.’
‘I have sold farms to buy thee gowns,’ he said desperately.
‘I never asked it,’ she answered coldly.
Henry was saying:
‘Ah, Princes take as is brought them by others. Poor men be commonly at their own choice.’ His voice had a sort of patient regret. ‘Why brought ye not such a wench?’
Cromwell answered that in Lincoln, they said, she had been a coin that would not bear ringing.
‘You do not love her house,’ the King said. ‘Y’ had better have brought me such a one.’
Cromwell answered that his meaning was she had been won by others. The King’s Highness should have her for a wink.
Henry raised his shoulders with a haughty and angry shrug. Such a quarry was below his stooping. He craved no light loves.
‘I do not miscall the wench,’ Cromwell answered. She was as her kind. The King’s Highness should find them all of a make in England.
‘Y’ are foul-mouthed,’ Henry said negligently. ”Tis a well-spoken wench. You shall find her a place in the Lady Mary’s house.’
Cromwell smiled, and made a note upon a piece of paper that he pulled from his pocket.
Culpepper, his arms jerking angularly, was creaking out:
‘Come away, a’ God’s name. By all our pacts. By all our secret vows.’
‘Ay thou didst vow and didst vow,’ she said with a bitter weariness. ‘What hast to shew? I have slept in filthy beds all this journey. Speak the King well. He shall make thee at a word.’
He spat out at her.
‘Is thine eye cocked up to that level? . . . I am very hot, very choleric. Thou hast seen me. Thou shalt not live. I will slay thee. I shall do such things as make the moon turn bloody red.’
‘Aye art thou there?’ she answered coldly. ‘Ye have me no longer upon lone heaths and moors. Mend thy tongue. Here I have good friends.’
Suddenly he began to entreat:
‘Thy mule did stumble — an evil omen. Come away, come away. I know well thou lovest me.’
‘I know well I love thee too well,’ she answered, as if in scorn of herself.
‘Come away to thy father.’
‘Why what a bother is this,’ she said. ‘Thou wouldst to the wars to get thee gold? Thou wouldst trail a pike? Thou canst do little without the ear of some captain. Here is the great captain of them all.’
‘I dare not speak here,’ he muttered huskily. ‘But this King. . . . ’ He paused and added swiftly: ‘He is of an ill omen to all Katharines.’
‘Why, he shall give me his old gloves to darn,’ she laughed. ‘Fond knave, this King standeth on a mountain a league high. A King shall take notice of one for the duration of a raindrop’s fall. Then it is done. One may make oneself ere it reach the ground, or never. Besides, ’tis a well-spoken elder. ’Tis the spit of our grandfather Culpepper.’
When Henry came hurrying back, engrossed, to send Culpepper and the mule to the gatehouse for a guide, she laughed gently for pleasure.
Culpepper said tremulously: ‘She hath her father’s commands to hasten to Dover.’
‘Her father taketh and giveth commands from me,’ Henry answered, and his glove flicked once more towards the gate. He had turned his face away before Culpepper’s hand grasped convulsively at his dagger and he had Katharine Howard at his side sweeping back towards Cromwell.
She asked, confidingly and curiously: ‘Who is that lord?’ and, after his answer, she mused, ‘He is no friend to Howards.’
‘Nay, that man taketh his friends among mine,’ he answered. He stopped to regard her, his face one heavy and indulgent smile. The garter on his knee, broad and golden, showed her the words: ‘Y pense’; the collars moved up and down on his immense chest, the needlework of roses was so fine that she wondered how many women had sat up how many nights to finish it: but the man was grey and homely.
‘I know none of your ways here,’ she said.
‘Never let fear blanch thy cheeks till we are no more thy friend,’ he reassured her. He composed one of his gallant speeches:
‘Here lives for thee nothing but joy.’ Pleasurable hopes should be her comrades while the jolly sun shone, and sweet content at night her bedfellow. . . .
He handed her to the care of the Lord Cromwell to take her to the Lady Mary’s lodgings.
