The Fifth Queen Crowned. Ford Ford Madox
she said, 'listen! I know that each day ye do things to pleasure me, things prodigal or such little things as giving me pouncet boxes. But you will find – and a woman, quean or queen, knows it well – that to take the full pleasure of her lover's surprises well, she must have an easy mind. And to have an easy mind she must have granted her the little, little boons she asketh.'
He reflected ponderously upon this point and at last, with a sort of peasant's gravity, nodded his head.
'For,' she said, 'if a woman is to take pleasure she must guess at what you men have done for her. And if she be to guess pleasurably, she must have a clear mind. And if I am to have a clear mind I must have a maiden consoled with a husband.'
Henry seated himself carefully in the great chair of the small pavilion. He spread out his knees, blinked at the view and when, having cast a look round to see that Norfolk was gone – for it did not suit her that he should see on what terms she was with the King – she seated herself on a little foot-pillow at his feet, he set a great hand upon her head. She leaned her arms across over his knees, and looked up at him appealingly.
'I do take it,' he said, 'that I must make some man rich to wed some poor maid.'
'Oh, Solomon!' she said.
'And I do take it,' he continued with gravity, 'that this maid is thy maid Margot.'
'How know you that?' she said.
'I have observed her,' he maintained gravely.
'Why, you could not well miss her,' she answered. 'She is as big as a plough-ox.'
'I have observed,' he said – and he blinked his little eyes as if, pleasurably, she were, with her words, whispering around his head. 'I have observed that ye affected her.'
'Why, she likes me well. She is a good wench – and to-day she tore my hair.'
'Then that is along of a man?' he asked. 'Didst not stick thy needle in her arm? Or wilto be quit of her?'
She rubbed her chin.
'Why, if she wed, I mun be quit of her,' she said, as if she had never thought of that thing.
He answered —
'Assuredly; for ye may not part man and lawful wife were you seven times Queen.'
'Why,' she said, 'I have little pleasure in Margot as she is.'
'Then let her go,' he answered.
'But I am a very lonely Queen,' she said, 'for you are much absent.'
He reflected pleasurably.
'Thee wouldst have about thee a little company of well-wishers?'
'So that they be those thou lovest well,' she said.
'Why, thy maid contents me,' he answered. He reflected slowly. 'We must give her man a post about thee,' he uttered triumphantly.
'Why, trust thee to pleasure me,' she said. 'You will find out a way always.'
He scrubbed her nose gently with his heavy finger.
'Who is the man?' he said. 'What ruffler?'
'I think it is the Magister Udal,' she answered.
Henry said —
'Oh ho! oh ho!' And after a moment he slapped his thigh and laughed like a child. She laughed with him, silverly upon a little sound between 'ah' and 'e.' He stopped his laugh to listen to hers, and then he said gravely —
'I think your laugh is the prettiest sound I ever heard. I would give thy maid Margot a score of husbands to make thee laugh.'
'One is enough to make her weep,' she said; 'and I may laugh at thee.'
He said —
'Let us finish this business within the hour. Sit you upon your chair that I may call one to send this ruffler here.'
She rose, with one sinuous motion that pleased him well, half to her feet and, feeling behind her with one hand for the chair, aided herself with the other upon his shoulder because she knew that it gave him joy to be her prop.
'Call the maid, too,' she said, 'for I would come to the secret soon.'
That pleased him too, and, having shouted for a knave he once more shook with laughter.
'Oh ho,' he said, 'you will net this old fox, will you?'
And, having sent his messenger off to summon the Magister from the Lady Mary's room, and the maid from the Queen's, he continued for a while to soliloquise as to Udal's predicament. For he had heard the Magister rail against matrimony in Latin hexameters and doggerel Greek. He knew that the Magister was an incorrigible fumbler after petticoats. And now, he said, this old fox was to be bagged and tied up.
He said —
'Well, well, well; well, well!'
For, if a Queen commanded a marriage, a marriage there must be; there was no more hope for the Magister than for any slave of Cato's. He was cabined, ginned, trapped, shut in from the herd of bachelors. It pleased the King very well.
The King grasped the gilded arms of his great chair, Katharine sat beside him, her hands laid one within another upon her lap. She did not say one single word during the King's interview with Magister Udal.
The Magister fell upon his knees before them and, seeing the laughing wrinkles round the King's little eyes, made sure that he was sent for – as had often been the case – to turn into Latin some jest the King had made. His gown fell about his kneeling shins, his cap was at his side, his lean, brown, and sly face, with the long nose and crafty eyes, was like a woodpecker's.
'Goodman Magister,' Henry said. 'Stand up. We have sent for thee to advance thee.' Without moving his head he rolled his eyes to one side. He loved his dramatic effects and wished to await the coming of the Queen's maid, Margot, before he gave the weight of his message.
Udal picked up his cap and came up to his feet before them; he had beneath his gown a little book, and one long finger between its leaves to keep his place where he had been reading. For he had forgotten a saying of Thales, and was reading through Cæsar's Commentaries to find it.
'As Seneca said,' he uttered in his throat, 'advancement is doubly sweet to them that deserve it not.'
'Why,' the King said, 'we advance thee on the deserts of one that finds thee sweet, and is sweet to one doubly sweet to us, Henry of Windsor that speak sweet words to thee.'
The lines on Udal's face drooped all a little downwards.
'Y'are reader in Latin to the Lady Mary,' the King said.
'I have little deserved in that office,' Udal answered; 'the lady reads Latin better than even I.'
'Why, you lie in that,' Henry said, ''a readeth well for she's my daughter; but not so well as thee.'
Udal ducked his head; he was not minded to carry modesty further than in reason.
'The Lady Mary – the Lady Mary of England – ' the King said weightily – and these last two words of his had a weight all their own, so that he added, 'of England' again, and then, 'will have little longer need of thee. She shall wed with a puissant Prince.'
'I hail, I felicitate, I bless the day I hear those words,' the Magister said.
'Therefore,' the King said – and his ears had caught the rustle of Margot's grey gown – 'we will let thee no more be reader to that my daughter.'
Margot came round the green silk curtains that were looped on the corner posts of the pavilion. When she saw the Magister her great, fair face became slowly of a fiery red; slowly and silently she fell, with motions as if bovine, to her knees at the Queen's side. Her gown was all grey, but it had roses of red and white silk round the upper edges of the square neck-place, and white lawn showed beneath her grey cap.
'We advance thee,' Henry said, 'to be Chancellier de la Royne, with an hundred pounds by the year from my purse. Do homage for thine office.'
Udal fell upon one knee before Katharine, and dropping both cap and book, took her hand to raise to his lips.