are like to have the nightmare, friend,’ the old knight said pleasantly. ‘It is ill to eat when most of the world sleeps.’
V
Cicely Elliott had indeed sent her old knight to Katharine with those overtures of friendship. Careless, dark, and a madcap, she had flown at Katharine because she had believed her a creature of Cromwell’s, set to spy upon the Lady Mary’s maids. They formed, the seven of them, a little, mutinous, babbling circle. Their lady’s cause they adored, for it was that of an Old Faith, such as women will not let die. The Lady Mary treated them with a hard indifference: it was all one to her whether they loved her or not; so they babbled, and told evil tales of the other side. The Lady Rochford could do little to hold them, for, having come very near death when the Queen Anne fell, she had been timid ever since, and Cicely Elliott was their ringleader.
Thus it was to her that one of Gardiner’s priests had come begging her to deliver to Katharine a copy of the words she was to speak in the masque, and from the priest Cicely had learnt that Katharine loved the Old Faith and hated Privy Seal as much as any of them. She had been struck with a quick remorse, and had suddenly seen Katharine as one that must be helped and made amends to. Thus she had pinned up her sleeve at Privy Seal’s. There, however, it had not been safe to speak with her.
‘Dear child,’ she said to Katharine next morning, ‘we may well be foils one to another, for I am dark and pert, like a pynot. They call me Mag Pie here. You shall be Jenny Dove of the Sun. But I am not afraid of your looks. Men that like the touch of the sloe in me shall never be drawn away by your sweet lips.’
She was, indeed, like a magpie, never still for a minute, fingering Katharine’s hair, lifting the medallion upon her chest, poking her dark eyes close to the embroidery on her stomacher. She had a trick of standing with her side face to you, so that her body seemed very long to her hips, and her dark eyes looked at you askance and roguish, whilst her lips puckered to a smile, a little on one side.
‘It was not your old knight called me Sweetlips,’ Katharine said. ‘I miscalled him foully last night.’
Cicely Elliott threw back her head and laughed.
‘Why, he is worshipful heavy to send on a message; but you may trust his advice when he gives it.’
‘I am come to think the same,’ Katharine said; ‘yet in this one matter I cannot take it.’
Cicely Elliott had taken to herself the largest and highest of the rooms set apart for these maids. The tapestries, which were her own, were worked in fair reds and greens, like flowers. She had a great silver mirror and many glass vases, in which were set flowers worked in silver and enamel, and a large, thin box carved out of an elephant’s tusk, to hold her pins; and all these were presents from the old knight.
‘Why,’ she said, ‘sometimes his advice shall fit a woman’s mood; sometimes he goes astray, as in the case of these gloves. Cheverel is a skin that will stretch so that after one wearing you may not tell the thumbs from stocking-feet. Nevertheless, I would be rid of your cousin.’
‘Not in this quarrel,’ Katharine answered. ‘Find him an honourable errand, and he shall go to Kathay.’
Cicely threw the stretched cheverel glove into the fire.
‘My knight shall give me a dozen pairs of silk, stitched with gold to stiffen them,’ she said. ‘You shall have six; but send your cousin in quest of the Islands of the Blest. They lie well out in the Western Ocean. If you can make him mislay his compass he will never come back to you.’
Katharine laughed.
‘I think he would come without compass or chart. Nevertheless, I will send me my letter by means of your knight to Bishop Gardiner.’
Cicely Elliott hung her head on her chest.
‘I do not ask its contents, but you may give it me.’
Katharine brought it out from the bosom of her dress, and the dark girl passed it up her sleeve.
‘This shall no doubt ruin you,’ she said. ‘But get you to our mistress. I will carry your letter.’
Katharine started back.
‘You!’ she said. ‘It was Sir Nicholas should have it conveyed.’
‘That poor, silly old man shall not be hanged in this matter,’ Cicely answered. ‘It is all one to me. If Crummock would have had my head he could have shortened me by that much a year ago.’
Katharine’s eyes dilated proudly.
‘Give me my letter,’ she said; ‘I will have no woman in trouble for me.’
The dark girl laughed at her.
‘Your letter is in my sleeve. No hands shall touch it before mine deliver it to him it is written to. Get you to our mistress. I thank you for an errand I may laugh over; laughter here is not over mirthful.’
She stood side face to Katharine, her mouth puckered up into her smile, her eyes roguish, her hands clasped behind her back.
‘Why, you see Cicely Elliott,’ she said, ‘whose folk all died after the Marquis of Exeter’s rising, who has neither kith nor kin, nor house nor home. I had a man loved me passing well. He is dead with the rest; so I pass my time in pranks because the hours are heavy. To-day the prank is on thy side; take it as a gift the gods send, for tomorrow I may play thee one, since thou art soft, and fair, and tender. That is why they call me here the Magpie. My old knight will tell you I have tweaked his nose now and again, but I will not have him shortened by the head for thy sake.’
‘Why, you are very bitter,’ Katharine said.
The girl answered, ‘If your head ached as mine does now and again when I remember my men who are dead; if your head ached as mine does. . . . ’ She stopped and gave a peal of laughter. ‘Why, child, your face is like a startled moon. You have not stayed days enough here to have met many like me; but if you tarry here for long you will laugh much as I laugh, or you will have grown blind long since with weeping.’
Katharine said, ‘Poor child, poor child!’
But the girl cried out, ‘Get you gone, I say! In the Lady Mary’s room you shall find my old knight babbling with the maidens. Send him to me, for my head aches scurvily, and he shall dip his handkerchief in vinegar and set it upon my forehead.’
‘Let me comb thy hair,’ Katharine said; ‘my hand is sovereign against a headache.’
‘No, get you gone,’ the girl said harshly; ‘I will have men of war to do these errands for me.’
Katharine answered, ‘Sit thee down. Thou wilt take my letter; I must ease thy pains.’
‘As like as not I shall scratch thy pink face,’ Cicely said. ‘At these times I cannot bear the touch of a woman. It was a woman made my father run with the Marquis of Exeter.’
‘Sweetheart,’ Katharine said softly, ‘I could hold both thy
