e musicians back that night at four. He had
breakfasted with the Lady Mary's women at six off warm small beer and
fresh meat, but it was eleven already, and he had spent all his money
upon good letters.

He muttered: '_Pauper sum, pateor, fateor, quod Di dant fero_,' but it
did not warm him.

The magister had been put in the Lady Mary's household by the Lord
Privy Seal, and he had a piece of news as to the Lady's means of
treasonable correspondence with the Emperor her uncle. He had imagined
that the news--which would hurt no one because it was imaginary--might
be worth some crowns to him. But the Lord Privy Seal and all his
secretaries had gone to Greenwich before it was light, and there was
nothing there for the magister.

'You might have known as much, a learned man,' the porter had snarled
at him. 'Isn't the new Queen at Rochester? Would our lord bide here?
Didn't your magistership pass his barge on the river?'

'Nay, it was still dark,' the magister answered. The porter sniffed
and slammed to the grating in the wicket. Being of the Old Faith he
hated those Lutherans--or those men of the New Learning--that it
pleased his master to employ.

Udal hesitated before the closed door; he hesitated in the lane beyond
the corner of the house. Perhaps there would be no barges at the
steps--no King's barges. The men of the Earl Marshal's service, being
Papists, would pelt him with mud if he asked for a passage; even the
Protestant lords' men would jeer at him if he had no pence for
them--and he had none. He would do best to wait for the musicians'
barge at four.

Then he must eat and shelter--and find a wench. He stood in the mud:
long, thin, brown in his doctor's gown of fur, with his black flapped
cap that buttoned well under his chin and let out his brown, lean,
shaven and humorous face like a woodpecker's peering out of a hole in
a tree.

The volumes beneath his arms were heavy: they poked out his gown on
each side, and the bitter cold pinched his finger ends as if they had
been caught in a door. The weight of the books pleased him for there
was much good letters there--a book of Tully's epistles for himself
and two volumes of Plautus' comedies for the Lady Mary. But what among
his day's purchases pleased him most was a medallion in silver he had
bought in Cheapside. It showed on the one side Cupid in his sleep and
on the other Venus fondling a peacock. It was a heart-compelling gift
to any wench or lady of degre