rms bared between the loops above. Her eyes roved round
upon the people as if, tall and white, she were a Christian virgin in
the agonies of martyrdom. She tried to pull her sleeve from between
his great fingers, and she whispered in a sort of terror:

'You stay the masque!'

He lay back in his chair, laughing so that his grey beard shook.

'Why, thou art a pert baggage,' he said. 'I could stay their singing
for good an I would.'

He looked her up and down, commanding and good-humouredly malicious.
She put her hand to her throat as if it throbbed, and uttered with a
calmness of desperation:

'That were great pity. They have practised much, and their breaths are
passable sweet.'

The godheads with their beards of tow, their lyres and thunderbolts
all gilt, stood in an awkward crescent, their music having stopped.
Henry laughed at them.

'I know thy face,' he said. 'It would be less than a king to forget
it.'

'I am Katharine Howard,' she faltered, stretching out her hands
beseechingly. 'Let me go back to my place.'

'Oh, aye!' he answered. 'But thou'st shed thy rags since I saw thee on
a mule.' He loosed her sleeve. 'Let the good men sing, 'a God's name.'

In her relief to be free she stumbled on the sweet herbs.

* * * * *

It was a dark night into which they went out from the bishop's palace.
Cressets flared on his river steps, and there were torches down the
long garden for those who went away by road. Because there would be a
great crowd of embarkers at the bishop's landing place, so that there
might be many hours to wait until their barge should come, Katharine,
by the office of old Sir Nicholas, had made a compact with some of
the maids of honour of the Lady Elizabeth; a barge was to wait for
them at the Cross Keys, a common stage some ten minutes down the
river. Katharine, laughing, gay with relief and gladdened with words
of praise, held Margot's hand tight and kept her fingers on Sir
Nicholas' sleeve. It was raining a fine drizzle, so that the air of
the gardens smelt moist even against the odour of the torches. The old
knight pulled the hood of his gown up over his head, for he was hoarse
with a heavy cold. It was pitch black beyond the gate house; in the
open fields before the wall torches here and there appeared to burn in
mid-air, showing beneath them the heads and the hoods of their bearers
hurrying home, and, where they turned to the right along a narrow
lane,