stables of mine.'

The door moved noiselessly and heavily back, taking the hangings with
it; as if with the furtive eyes and feathery grace of a blonde fox
Cranmer's spy came round the great boards.

'Ay! I am doing some cleansing,' the King said again. 'Come hither and
mend thy pen to write.'

Against the King's huge bulk--Henry was wearing purple and black upon
that day--and against the Archbishop's black and pillar-like form,
Lascelles, in his scarlet, with his blonde and tender beard had an air
of being quill-like. The bones of his knees through his tight and thin
silken stockings showed almost as those of a skeleton; where the King
had great chains of gilt and green jewels round his neck, and where the
Archbishop had a heavy chain of silver, he had a thin chain of fine gold
and a tiny badge of silver-gilt. He dragged one of his legs a little
when he walked. That was the fashion of that day, because the King
himself dragged his right leg, though the ulcer in it had been cured.

Sitting askew in his chair at the table, the King did not look at this
gentleman, but moved the fingers of his outstretched hand in token that
his crook of the leg was kneeling enough for him.

'Take your tablets and write,' Henry said; 'nay, take a great sheet of
parchment and write----'

'Your Grace,' he added to the Archbishop, 'ye are the greatest penner of
solemn sentences that I have in my realm. What I shall say roughly to
Lascelles you shall ponder upon and set down nobly, at first in the
vulgar tongue and then in fine Latin.' He paused and added--

'Nay; ye shall write it in the vulgar tongue, and the Magister Udal
shall set it into Latin. He is the best Latinist we have--better than
myself, for I have no time----'

Lascelles was going between a great cabinet with iron hinges and the
table. He fetched an inkhorn set into a tripod, a sandarach, and a roll
of clean parchment that was tied around with a green ribbon.

Upon the gold and red of the table he stretched out the parchment as if
it had been a map. He mended his pen with a little knife and kneeled
down upon the rushes beside the table, his chin level with the edge. His
whole mind appeared to be upon keeping the yellowish sheet straight and
true upon the red and gold, and he raised his eyes neither to the
Archbishop's white face nor yet to the King's red one.

Henry stroked the short hairs of his neck below the square grey beard.
He was reflecting that very soon all t