at the assembled company. “I would be alone with the Queen,” he said. “Push me nearer to the bed that I may see the Queen as I speak with her.”
They did this and, bowing low, left Henry and Katharine together.
The King began, not without a note of tenderness in his voice: “How now, Kate? What means this?”
“It is good of Your Grace to visit me thus,” said Katharine.
“You sound as pleased to see us as you would to see a ghost.”
“If I seem ungracious it is on account of the deep melancholy which besets me, my lord.”
The King gazed at her—so small and fragile in the huge and most splendid bed, her hair hanging about her shoulders.
“By my faith,” he said in those tones which she knew so well, “you’re a pretty wench with your hair thus disordered.”
She answered as though repeating a lesson she had at great pains taught herself. “I am glad my looks find favor in Your Majesty’s sight.”
“Looks?” cried the King. “Ah!” He winced as he moved forward in his chair that he might see her better. “Methinks I am too old to sigh because a woman’s hair is black or gold.”
“But Your Majesty is as young in spirit as he ever was. That is constantly proved.”
“H’m,” said the King. “But this poor body, Kate… Ah! There’s the pity of it. When I was twenty… when I was thirty…I was indeed a man.”
“But wisdom walketh hand in hand with our gray hairs, Your Grace. Which would you…youth and its follies, or age with its experience?”
And as she spoke she asked herself: How is it that I can talk thus, as though I cared for his opinion, as though I did not know his thoughts, his plans for me? But I flatter him because I want to live. Thomas came to my apartments at great risk to warn me…to let me know that I must live because he is waiting for me.
“There speaks my wise Queen,” said the King. “Methinks, Kate, that youth should be the right of kingship. Never to grow old! A king should be young for ever.”
“Had your royal father been eternally young, we should never have had his great and clement Majesty King Henry the Eighth upon the throne.”
The King shot her a swift glance, and she knew that she had made a mistake. Her nails hurt the palms of her hands. There must be no mistakes.
“Methinks you jest,” said Henry coldly. “You were ever fond of a jest…overfond.”
“My lord,” said Katharine earnestly, “I never was less in the mood for jokes.”
Henry sighed. “It is doubtless folly to talk of such matters, for when a man would talk of what he has done, he is indeed an old man. It is when he speaks of what he will do that he is in his prime. Doth that not show how we—the most humble among us and the most high—love life?”
“You speak truth, my lord, for love of life is the only love to which men are constant.”
“Why speak ye of constancy in such a sad voice, Kate?”
“Was my voice sad?”
“Indeed it was. Come, come, Kate. I like not this sadness in you.”
Katharine watched him cautiously. “I did not command it to come, my lord. I would I could command it to go.”
“Then we command it!” cried the King. “A wife must obey her husband, Kate.”
Katharine laughed mirthlessly; she felt the hysteria close.
She reminded herself of Thomas, and remembering him, wished above all things to placate her husband. Between the promise of a happy life with Thomas and the threat of death which Henry personified, she must walk carefully.
The King leaned forward; he was able to reach her hand, and he took it and pressed it.
“You and I,” he said musingly, “we suit each other. I am not so young that I must be a gay butterfly, flitting from this flower to that. There is a quiet of evening, Kate, whose coming should bring peace. The peace of God that passeth all understanding; that is what I seek. Oh, I have been a most unhappy man, for those I loved deceived me. I am a simple man, Kate— a man who asks but little from his wife save fidelity…love… obedience. ’tis not much for a man…for a King … to ask.”
Katharine smiled ironically. “Nay, my lord. ’tis not much. ’tis what a husband might well ask of his wife.”
Henry patted the hand over which he had placed his own. “Then we see through the