'It is very cold; bring me my greatest cloak.'

Throckmorton, the one of Cromwell's seven hundred spies who at that
time was his most constant companion, was hidden in the deep shadow
beside the cabin-door. His bearded and heavy form obscured the light
for a moment as he hurried to fetch the cloak. But merely to be the
Lord Cromwell's gown-bearer was in those days a thing you would run
after; and an old man in a flat cap--the Chancellor of the
Augmentations, who had been listening intently at the door--was
already hurrying out with a heavy cloak of fur. Cromwell let it be
hung about his shoulders.

The Chancellor shivered and said, 'We should be within a quarter-hour
of Greenwich.'

'Get you in if you be cold,' Cromwell answered. But the Chancellor was
quivering with the desire to talk to his master. He had seen the heavy
King rush stumbling down the stairs of the Cleves woman's lodging at
Rochester, and the sight had been for him terrible and prodigious. It
was Cromwell who had made him Chancellor of the Augmentations--who had
even invented the office to deal with the land taken from the
Abbeys--and he was so much the creature of this Lord Privy Seal that
it seemed as if the earth was shivering all the while for the fall of
this minister, and that he himself was within an inch of the ruin,
execration, and death that would come for them all once Cromwell were
down.

Throckmorton, a giant man with an immense golden beard, issued again
from the cabin, and the Privy Seal's voice came leisurely and cold:

'What said Lord Cassilis of this? And the fellow Knighton? I saw them
at the stairs.'

Privy Seal had such eyes that it was delicate work lying to him. But
Throckmorton brought out heavily:

'Cassilis, that this Lady Anne should never be Queen.'

'Aye, but she must,' the Chancellor bleated. He had been bribed by two
of the Cleves lords to get them lands in Kent when the Queen should
be in power. Cromwell's silence made Throckmorton continue against his
will:

'Knighton, that the Queen's breath should turn the King's stomach
against you! Dr. Miley, the Lutheran preacher, that by this evening's
work the Kingdom of God on earth was set trembling, the King having
the nature of a lecher....'

He tried to hold back. After all, it came into his mind, this man was
nearly down. Any one of the men upon whom he now spied might come to
be his master very soon. But Cromwell's voice said, 'And then?' and he
made up his mi