re valiant to go to a doom knowingly than
blindfold, so I do show myself more valiant than thou. For well I
know--since I saw my mother die--that virtue is a thing profitless, and
impracticable in this world. But you--you think it shall set up temporal
monarchies and rule peoples. Therefore, what you do you do for profit. I
do it for none.'

'Now, by the Mother of God,' Katharine Howard said, 'this is the
gladdest day of my life.'

'Pray you,' Mary said, 'get you gone from my sight and hearing, for I
endure ill the appearance and sound of joy. And, Queen, again I bid you
beware of calling any day fortunate till its close. For, before midnight
you may be ruined utterly. I have known more Queens than thou. Thou art
the fifth I have known.'

She added--

'For the rest, what you will I will do: submission to the King and such
cozening as he will ask of me. God keep you, for you stand in need of
it.'

* * * * *

At supper that night there sat all such knights and lordlings as ate at
the King's expense in the great hall that was in the midmost of the
castle, looking on to the courtyard. There were not such a many of them,
maybe forty; from the keeper of the Queen's records, the Lord d'Espahn,
who sat at the table head, down to the lowest of all, the young Poins,
who sat far below the salt-cellar. The greater lords of the Queen's
household, like the Lord Dacre of the North, did not eat at this common
table, or only when the Queen herself there ate, which she did at midday
when there was a feast.

Nevertheless, this eating was conducted with gravity, the Lord d'Espahn
keeping a vigilant eye down the table, which was laid with a fair white
cloth. It cost a man a fine to be drunk before the white meats were
eaten--unless, indeed, a man came drunk to the board--and the
salt-cellar of state stood a-midmost of the cloth. It was of silver from
Holland, and represented a globe of the earth, opened at the top, and
supported by knights' bannerets.

The hall was all of stone, with creamy walls, only marked above the iron
torch-holds with brandons of soot. A scutcheon of the King's arms was
above one end-door, with the Queen's above the other. Over each window
were notable deers' antlers, and over each side-door, that let in the
servers from the courtyard, was a scutcheon with the arms of a king
deceased that had visited the castle. The roof was all gilded and
coloured, and showed knaves' faces le