shall be queen?' Udal's wife asked.

The fall of a great dish in the rear of the tall kitchen gave the
scholar time to collect his suspicions--for he took it for an easy
thing that this woman, if she were Udal's leman, might be, she too, a
spy in the service of Privy Seal.

'Forbid it, God,' he said, 'that ye take my words as other than
allegorical. The lady Katharine may be spoken of as a king's mistress
since in truth she were a fit mistress for a king, being fair, devout,
learned, courteous, tall and sweet-voiced. But that she hath been kind
to the King, God forbid that I should say it.'

'Aye,' Udal said, 'but if she hath sent this mission?'

Panic rose in the heart of the doctor; he beheld himself there, in
what seemed a spy's kitchen, asked disastrous questions by a man and
woman and pinned into a window-seat. For there was no doubt that the
rumour ran in England that this mission had been sent by the King
because Katharine Howard so wished it sent. In that age of spies and
treacheries no man's head was safe on his shoulders--and here were
Cromwell's spies asking news of Cromwell's chief enemy.

He stretched out a calm hand and spoke slowly:

'Madam hostess,' he said, 'if ye be jealous of the magister ye may
well be jealous, for great beauty and worship hath this lady.' Yet she
need be little jealous, for this lady was nowadays prized so high that
she might marry any man in the land--and learned men were little
prized. Any man in the land of England she might wed--saving only such
as were wed, amongst whom was their lord the King, who was happily
wed to the gracious lady whom my Lord Privy Seal did bring from Cleves
to be their very virtuous Queen.

Here, it seemed to him, he had cleared himself very handsomely of
suspicion of ill will to Privy Seal or of wishing ill to Anne of
Cleves.

'For the rest,' he said, sighing with relief to be away from dangerous
grounds, 'your magister is safe from the toils of marriage with the
Lady Katharine.' Still it might be held that jealousy is aroused by
the loving and not by the returning of that love; for it was very
certain that the magister much had loved this lady. Many did hold it a
treachery in him, till now, to the Privy Seal whom he served. But now
he might love her duteously, since our lord the King had commanded the
Lady Katharine to join hands with Privy Seal, and Privy Seal to cement
a friendly edifice in his heart towards the lady. Thus it was no
treason