be less
efficacious in matters of witchcraft and possession. Just then
Cromwell had triumphed, and Anne of Cleves was upon the water coming
to the palace.

Bishop Gardiner's chaplain, a fat man, with beady and guileless eyes
sunk in under an immense forehead, imagined that Udal's visit was a
pretext for overhearing the words of rage and discomfiture that in
that Papist centre might be let drop about the new Queen. For Udal,
because Privy Seal had set him with the Lady Mary, passed amongst the
Papists for one of Cromwell's informants, and it amused his sardonic
and fantastic nature to affect mysterious denials, which made the
fiction the more firmly believed and gave to Udal himself a certain
hated prestige. The chaplain answered that in the present turmoil no
such body as thirteen clergymen could be found.

'But the lady shall be torn in pieces,' Udal shrieked. Panic had
overcome him. Who knew that the fiend, having torn his Katharine
asunder, might not enter into the body of his Margot, who was already
at her bedside? His lips quivered with terror, his eyes smiled
furiously, he wrung his hands. He swore he would penetrate to the
King's Highness' self. Udal was a man who stuck at nothing to gain a
point. He had heard from Katharine that the King had spoken graciously
to her, and he swore once more that she was the apple of the King's
eye, as well as a beloved disciple of Privy Seal's.

'Be sure,' he foamed, 'they shall be avenged on a Gardiner and his
crew if you let her die.'

The chaplain said impassively: 'God forbid that we, who are loyal to
his Highness, should listen to these tales you bring us of his
lechery!' They had there a new Queen, their duty was to her, and to no
Katharine Howard. The bishop's clergy were all joyfully setting to
welcome the lady from Cleves, they had no time to waste over a leman's
demons. It overjoyed him to refuse Privy Seal's man a boon on the plea
of loyalty to the new Queen. Nevertheless, he went straight to the
presence of the bishop, and told him the marvels that Udal had
reported.

'The man is incontinent and a babbler,' the chaplain said. 'We may
believe one tenth.'

'Well, you shall find for once how this wench is housed and where,'
his master answered moodily. 'God knows what we may believe in these
days. Doubtless the Nuntio of Satan hath a new plot in the hatching.'
Making these enquiries, the chaplain came upon the backwash of Udal's
reports that the King loved some