ed stairs. The
voice sounded more faintly:

'Now you have naught further to think of than the goodly words of
Ecclesiastes: "_Et cognovi quod non esset melius, nisi laetare
et...._"' The voice died dead away with the closing of the door. And
as a torch passed, Throckmorton knew that the King had waited there
whilst light was being made in Katharine's room. He said softly to
Viridus:

'Whilst I go unto them you shall hold this dagger against this fool's
throat. We gain as many hours as we may hold him from blabbing to
Privy Seal. And consider that we must bring to the King Rich and Udal
and many other witnesses this night.'

'Throckmorton,' Viridus said, 'before thou goest thou shalt satisfy me
of many things. I have not yet given myself into thy hands.'

II

A weary sadness had beset Katharine Howard ever since she had knelt
before Anne of Cleves at Richmond, and it was of this the King had
spoken outside the door whilst they had waited for light to be made.

All Anne's protesting that willingly she rendered up a distasteful
crown could not make Katharine hugely glad with the manner of her own
taking it. And, when a messenger, dressed as a yeoman in green, had
come into the bright gallery to beg the Queen and that fair lady the
Lady Katharine Howard to come a-riding side by side and witness the
sports that certain poor yeomen made in the woods upon Thames-side,
she felt a sinking in her heart that no Rhenish of the Queen's could
relieve. She desired to be alone and to pray--or to be alone with
Henry and speak out her heart and devise how they might atone to the
Queen. But she must ride at the Queen's right hand with the Duke of
Suffolk at her left. It was so between their captives that the Caesars
had ridden into Rome after the taking of barbaric kings. But she had
waged no war.

She did not, in her heart, call shame upon the King; she knew him to
be a heavy man with bitter sorrows who must in these violentnesses and
brave shows find refuge and surcease; it was her province to endure
and to find excuse for him. But to herself she quoted that phrase of
Lucretius that the King again repeated: there was a hidden destiny
that tamed the shows of the great; and she was the mutest of that
throng that upon white horses, all with little flags flying and horns
blowing, cantered to see the yeomen shoot. For the ladies and knights,
avid of these things, loved above all good bowmanry and wagered with
out-stretched hand