knight would find it in the books of chivalry that certain occasions or great quests allowed of a knight’s doing the errands of more than one lady: but one lady, as for instance the celebrated Dorinda, might have her claims asserted by an illimitable number of knights, and she begged him to do her a service.
‘I have heard of these Errantry books,’ he said. ‘In my day there were none such, and now I have no letters.’
‘How, then, do you pass the long days of peace,’ Katharine asked, ‘if you neither drink nor dice?’
He answered: ‘In telling of old tales and teaching their paces to the King’s horses.’
He drew himself up a little. He would have her understand that he was not a horse leech: but there was in these four-footed beasts a certain love for him, so that Richmond, the King’s favourite gelding, would stand still to be bled if he but laid his hand on the great creature’s withers to calm him. These animals he loved, since he grew old and might not follow arguments and disputations of hic and hoc. ‘There were none such in my day. But a good horse is the same from year’s end to year’s end. . . . ’
‘Will you carry a letter for me?’ Katharine asked.
‘I would have you let me show you some of his Highness’ beasts,’ he added. ‘I breed them to the manage myself. You shall find none that step more proudly in Christendom or Heathenasse.’
‘Why, I believe you,’ she answered. Suddenly she asked: ‘You have ridden as knight errant?’
He said: ‘For three weeks only. Then the Scots came on too thick and fast to waste time.’ His dark eyes blinked and his broad lips moved humorously with his beard. ‘I swore to do service to any lady; pray you let me serve you.’
‘You can do me a service,’ she said.
He moved his hand to silence her.
‘Pray you take it not amiss. But there is one that hates you.’
She said:
‘Perhaps there are a many; but do me a service if you will.’
‘Look you,’ he said, ‘these times are no times of mine. But I know it is prudent to have servitors that love one. I saw yours shake a fist at your door.’
Katharine said:
‘A man?’ She looked at Margot, who, big, silent and flushed, was devouring the celebrated hero of ballads with adoring eyes. He laughed.
‘That maid would kiss your feet. But, in these days, it is well to make friends with them that keep doors. The fellow at yours would spit upon you if he dared.’
Katharine said carelessly:
‘Let him even spit in his imagination, and I shall whip him.’
The old knight looked out of the door. He left it wide open, so that no man might listen.
‘Why, he is still gone,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘See you,’ he began. ‘So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy set upon one.’
He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal’s, had been set in place. He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking all the time with his broad back to her.
‘See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the throat. . . . ’
Katharine said hastily:
‘He hath heard little to harm me.’
‘It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,’ the old knight answered. ‘I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his treasons.’
Katharine said:
‘I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford. . . . ’
He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned dignity and distinction.
‘I meddle in none of these matters,’ he said again. ‘But these ladies know that you hate one they hate.’
He said suddenly, ‘Ah!’ a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:
‘I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,’ he said. ‘But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.’
Katharine said swiftly:
‘Take, then, a letter for me — to the Bishop of Winchester!’
He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.
‘Must I go into your plots?’ he asked, blinking and amused, as if he had expected the errand.
She said urgently:
‘I would have you tell me what Englishman now wears a red hat and is like to be in Paris. I am very ignorant in these matters.’
‘Then meddle not in them,’ he said, ‘for that man is even Cardinal Pole; one that the King’s Highness would very willingly know to be dead.’
‘God forbid that my cousin should murder a Prince of the Church, and be slain in that quarrel,’ she answered.
He started back and held his hands over his head.
‘Why, God help you, child! Is that your errand?’ he said, deep from his chest. ‘I meddle not in this matter.’
She answered obstinately:
‘Pray you — by your early vows — consent to carry me my letter.’
He shook his head bodingly.
‘I thought it had been a matter of a masque at the Bishop of Winchester’s; or I had never come nigh you. Cicely Elliott hath copied out the part you should speak. Pray you ask me no more of the other errand.’
She said:
‘For a great knight you are a friend only in little matters!’
He uttered reproachfully:
‘Child: it is no little matter to act as go-between for the Bishop of Winchester, even if it be for no more than a masque. How otherwise does he not send to you direct? So much I was ready to do for you, a stranger, who am a man that has no party.’
She uttered maliciously:
‘Well, well. I thought you came of the better times before our day.’
