The Story of Katharine Howard. Ford Madox Ford

with confusion, for, when the Queen had been upon the point of setting out from Rochester, the King was said to have been overcome by a new spasm of disgust: she was put by again.

      The young Earl of Surrey, a cousin of Katharine’s, gave Udal contemptuously a couple of crowns towards her nourishment. Udal applied them to bribing Throckmorton, the spy who had been with Privy Seal upon the barge, to inscribe on his lord’s tablets the words: ‘Katharine Howard to be provided for.’ Udal made up his courage sufficiently to speak to the Duke, whom he met in a corridor. The Duke was jaundiced against his niece, because her cousin Culpepper had fallen upon Sir Christopher Aske, the Duke’s captain who had kept the postern. It had needed seven men to master him, and this great tumult had arisen in the King’s own courtyard. Nevertheless, the Duke sent his astrologer to cast Katharine’s horoscope. He signed, too, an order that some girl be found to attend on her.

      Udal filled in the girl’s name as Margot Poins, the granddaughter of old Badge, of Austin Friars. Even among these clamours his tooth watered for her, and he gave the order to young Poins to execute. The young man rode off into Bedfordshire, where his sister had been sent out of the way to the house of their aunt. He presented the order as in the nature of a writ from the Duke, and amongst Lutherans in London a heavy growl of rage went up — against Norfolk, against the Papists of the Privy Council, and, above all, against Katharine Howard, whom they called the New Harlot.

      Katharine, having taken much nightshade juice, was raving upon her bed. The leech became convinced that she was possessed by a demon, because the pupils of her eyes were as large as silver groats, and her hands picked at the coverlets. He ordered that thirteen priests should say an exorcism at the door of her room, and that the potion of nightshade — since it might inconvenience without dislodging the fiend inhabiting her slender body — should be discontinued.

      Udal sought for priests, but having no money, he was disregarded by them. He ran to the chaplain of the Bishop of Winchester. For the clergy upheld or ordained by Archbishop Cranmer were held to be less efficacious in matters of witchcraft and possession. Just then Cromwell had triumphed, and Anne of Cleves was upon the water coming to the palace.

      Bishop Gardiner’s chaplain, a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal’s visit was a pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal, because Privy Seal had set him with the Lady Mary, passed amongst the Papists for one of Cromwell’s informants, and it amused his sardonic and fantastic nature to affect mysterious denials, which made the fiction the more firmly believed and gave to Udal himself a certain hated prestige. The chaplain answered that in the present turmoil no such body as thirteen clergymen could be found.

      ‘But the lady shall be torn in pieces,’ Udal shrieked. Panic had overcome him. Who knew that the fiend, having torn his Katharine asunder, might not enter into the body of his Margot, who was already at her bedside? His lips quivered with terror, his eyes smiled furiously, he wrung his hands. He swore he would penetrate to the King’s Highness’ self. Udal was a man who stuck at nothing to gain a point. He had heard from Katharine that the King had spoken graciously to her, and he swore once more that she was the apple of the King’s eye, as well as a beloved disciple of Privy Seal’s.

      ‘Be sure,’ he foamed, ‘they shall be avenged on a Gardiner and his crew if you let her die.’

      The chaplain said impassively: ‘God forbid that we, who are loyal to his Highness, should listen to these tales you bring us of his lechery!’ They had there a new Queen, their duty was to her, and to no Katharine Howard. The bishop’s clergy were all joyfully setting to welcome the lady from Cleves, they had no time to waste over a leman’s demons. It overjoyed him to refuse Privy Seal’s man a boon on the plea of loyalty to the new Queen. Nevertheless, he went straight to the presence of the bishop, and told him the marvels that Udal had reported.

      ‘The man is incontinent and a babbler,’ the chaplain said. ‘We may believe one tenth.’

      ‘Well, you shall find for once how this wench is housed and where,’ his master answered moodily. ‘God knows what we may believe in these days. Doubtless the Nuntio of Satan hath a new plot in the hatching.’ Making these enquiries, the chaplain came upon the backwash of Udal’s reports that the King loved some leman. Some lady, somewhere — some said a Howard, some a Rochford, some would have it a Spanish woman — was being hidden up, either by the King, by the Duke of Norfolk, or by Privy Seal. God knew the truth of these things: but similar had happened before; and it was certain that the Cleves woman had been for long kept dangling at Rochester. Perhaps that was the reason. His Highness had his own ways in these matters: but where there was smoke, generally fire was to be found. The chaplain brought this budget back to Bishop Gardiner. Gardiner swore a wild oath that, by the bones of the Confessor, they had unmasked a new plot of Satan’s Legate, the Privy Seal. But, by the grace of God, he would counter-plot him.

      Udal, who had started all these rumours, had run to get the help of a Dean of Durham, with whom formerly he had had much converse as to the position of the Islands of the Blest. He never found him; the palace was in confusion, with the doors all open and men running from room to room to ask of each other how far it might be safe to be extravagant in their demonstrations of joy at the coming of the new Queen.

      All night long, from about dusk, the palace rang with salvos of artillery, loud shouts and the blowing of horns: the windows glowed duskily now and again with the light of bonfires that leapt up and subsided. Margot Poins, who was used to rejoicings in the City, set the heavy wooden bar across the door in Katharine Howard’s room, turned the immense key in the rusty lock, and opened to no knocking until the day broke. There were shouts and stumblings in the corridor outside and the magister himself, very intoxicated and shrieking, came hammering at the door with several others towards one in the morning.

      Katharine could walk by noon to the lodging that had at last been assigned to her by Privy Seal’s warrant. The magister, having got himself soundly beaten the night before, was still sleeping away the effects of it, so she and Margot stayed for an hour in solitude. Voices passed the door many times, and at last a Master Viridus entered stealthily. He was one of the Lord Cromwell’s secretaries, and he bore a purse. His name had been Greene but he had translated it to give a more worshipful sound. His eyes were furtive and he moved his lips perpetually in imitation of his master; wore a hooded cap, and made much use of the Italian language.

      ‘Bounty is the sign of the great, and honourable service ensureth its continuance,’ he said in a dry and arrogant voice. ‘This is my Lord Privy Seal’s vails. My lord hath gone to his own house.’

      He presented the purse of gold, and peered round at the room which, following the warrant, had been assigned by a clerk from the Earl Marshal’s office.

      ‘I thank your lord, and shall endeavour to deserve his good bounty,’ Katharine said. The nightshade juice being left two days behind she had the use of her eyes and much of the stiffness had gone out of her wrist.

      ‘Your ladyship had much the wiser,’ he answered. He lifted the hangings and, under pretence of examining into her comfort, peered into the great Flemish press and felt under the heavy black table to see if it had a drawer for papers. Cromwell had been forced, following the King’s command, to give Katharine her place. But he had no love for Howards, and already the maids of the Lady Mary were a mutinous knot. Viridus was instructed to keep an attentive eye upon this girl — for they might hang her very easily since she was outspoken; or, having got her neck into a noose, they could work upon her terror and make her spy upon the Lady Mary herself. None of the Lady Mary’s women were housed very sumptuously, but in this room there were at least an old tapestry, a large Flemish chair, a feather bed in a niche like an arched cell over which the hangings could be drawn, and a cord of wood for the fire. He hummed and hawed that workmen must come to bring her better hangings, and a servitor be found to keep her door. A watch was to be set on her; the women who measured her for clothes would try to discover whom she loved and hated, and the serving man at her door would report her visitors.

      ‘My lord hath you very present in his mind,’ Viridus said.

      She