As Catherine entered, she perceived her enemies, and feared that something might be wrong, but an appearance of unwonted good-humor in the king deceived her. As she advanced and made a lowly obeisance, Wriothesley offered to raise her, but she haughtily declined the offer.
“How fares your Majesty this morning?” she inquired.
“Marry, well enough,” Henry replied. “We have slept somewhat better than usual, and Butts thinks we are mending apace.”
“Not too quickly, my gracious liege—but slowly and surely, as I trust,” observed the physician, hazarding a glance of caution at the queen, which unluckily passed unnoticed.
“Heaven grant it be so!” exclaimed Catherine.
“Come and sit by us, Kate,” pursued Henry; adding as she placed herself on a fauteuil near him, “You spoke so well and so convincingly yesterday, that we would fain have the Lord Chancellor and my Lord of Winchester hear you.”
“We cannot fail to profit by her Majesty’s discourse,” remarked Gardiner, inclining his head.
“I would what I shall say might profit you, and the Lord Chancellor likewise, for ye have both need of improvement,” replied Catherine, sharply. “If his Highness will listen to me, ye shall neither of you have much more influence with him, for ye give him pernicious counsel. As to you, my Lord Chancellor, a circumstance hath been told me which, if it be true, proves the hardness of your heart, and must call down upon you his Majesty’s displeasure. It is said that when Anne Askew underwent the torture in the Tower, and the sworn tormentor desisted and would not further pursue his hateful office, you yourself turned the wheel of the rack, and stretched it to the uttermost. And this upon a woman—a gentle, beautiful woman. Oh, my Lord, fie upon you!”
“I will not deny the fact,” Wriothesley replied, “and I acted only in accordance with my duty in striving to wrest an avowal of her guilt from a mischievous and stubborn heretic, who was justly convicted under his Majesty’s statute of the Six Articles, wherein it is enacted that whosoever shall declare, dispute, or argue that in the blessed sacrament of the altar, under the form of bread and wine, there is not present really the natural body and blood of our Saviour, or that after the consecration there remaineth any substance of bread or wine, such person shall be adjudged a heretic, and shall suffer death by way of burning, without any abjuration, clergy, or sanctuary permitted. Yet, had Anne Askew recanted her errors, and submitted herself to the king’s clemency, she would doubtless have been spared.”
“Ay, marry would she!” cried Henry. “The Lord Chancellor acted somewhat roughly, but I see not that he was to blame. You have no particular feeling for Anne Askew, I trust, Kate?”
“I have much sorrow for her, my liege,” Catherine replied. “She died for her faith.”
“Sorrow for a sacramentarian, Kate!” exclaimed the king. “Now, by holy Mary! you will next avouch that you are a sacramentarian yourself.”
“Nay, my gracious liege,” interposed Gardiner. “Her Majesty may feel pity for the misguided, but she can never uphold perverse doctrines.”
“I know not that,” replied the king. “No longer than yesterday we discussed certain points of theology together, and she denied the doctrine of transubstantiation.”
“Your Majesty supposed so,” observed Gardiner, lifting up his hands. “It could not be.”
“But I say it was,” cried the king. “Whence she derived her arguments I cannot tell, but she stoutly maintained them. Are ye a heretic, Kate? Confess at once!”
“This sounds like an accusation, my liege,” replied the queen, rising; “and I know whence it comes,” she added, glancing at her enemies. “I will answer it at once. As the Bishop of Winchester well knows, I am of the orthodox Church, of which your Majesty is the supreme head and high minister.”
“And yet you deny the real presence in the Eucharist, Kate?” interrupted the king.
“I cannot believe that which I do not understand, sire,” she replied.
“Ha! you equivocate exclaimed Henry. “It is true! You are infected—infected to the core—by these perverse and heretical doctrines. Since you pity Anne Askew, and deem her a martyr, you shall share her fate. My statute of the Six Articles spares none—however high in degree. Quit my presence, and enter it not again. Not a word! Begone!”