e asked.

'Why, these are very evil times,' Cranmer answered. 'And if the Bishop
of Rome will give way to us, why may we not give pence to the Bishop
of Rome?'

'Goodman,' Cromwell answered, 'these are evil times because we men are
evil.' He pulled a paper from his belt. 'Sirs,' he said, 'will ye know
what manner of woman this Katharine Howard is?' and to their murmurs
of assent: 'This lady hath asked to speak with me. Will ye hear her
speak? Then bide ye here. Throckmorton is gone to seek her.'

V

Katharine Howard sat in her own room; it had in it little of
sumptuousness, for all the King so much affected her. It was the room
she had first had at Hampton after coming to be maid to the King's
daughter, and it had the old, green hangings that had always been
round the walls, the long oak table, the box-bed set in the wall, the
high chair and the three stools round the fire. The only thing she had
taken of the King was a curtain in red cloth to hang on a rod before
the door where was a great draught, the leading of the windows being
rotted. She had lived so poor a life, her father having been a very
poor lord with many children--she was so attuned to flaws of the wind,
ill-feeding and harsh clothes, that such a tall room as she there had
seemed goodly enough for her. Barely three months ago she had come to
the palace of Greenwich riding upon a mule. Now accident, or maybe the
design of the dear saints, had set her so high in the King's esteem
that she might well try a fall with Privy Seal.

She sat there dressed, awaiting the summons to go to him. She wore a
long dress of red velvet, worked around the breast-lines with little
silver anchors and hearts, and her hood was of black lawn and fell
near to her hips behind. And she had read and learned by heart
passages from Plutarch, from Tacitus, from Diodorus Siculus, from
Seneca and from Tully, each one inculcating how salutary a thing in a
man was the love of justice. Therefore she felt herself well prepared
to try a fall with the chief enemy of her faith, and awaited with
impatience his summons to speak with him. For she was anxious, now at
last, to speak out her mind, and Privy Seal's agents had worked upon
the religious of a poor little convent near her father's house a wrong
so baleful that she could no longer contain herself. Either Privy Seal
must redress or she must go to the King for justice to these poor
women that had taught her the very elements of virt