Now she sat on a seat, and watched her young attendants playing, while she turned over the pages of her prayer book. One pair especially her eyes followed with pleasure—the uncommonly beautiful Anna of Norfolk and young Henry Algernon Percy of Northumberland, Hotspur’s descendant. The pair were playing with roses; the youth had an armful of white and the girl an armful of red roses, which they threw at each other, singing as they lid so.
It was a beautiful sight, but the Queen became sad: “Don’t play like that, children,” she said; “it awakens memories which ought to sleep in the Tower, where Only the dead can sleep quietly. Besides, the King, and consequently the Cardinal, will be vexed; they sit there in the library. Play something else!”
The two young people seemed not to understand. Accordingly the Queen continued: “The Wars of the Roses, children, did not end altogether at Bosworth but—in the Tower happened much that is best forgotten. Take a book and read something.”
“We have been reading all the morning,” answered Anne surnamed Boleyn or Bullen.
“What are you reading then?
“Chaucer.”
“The Canterbury Tales? Those are not for children: Chaucer was a jester. You had better take my book. It has beautiful pictures.” The young Percy took the little breviary, and, going down the path as though they sought the shade, they both quietly disappeared from the Queen’s eyes.
But from the library four eyes had followed them, those of the King and the Cardinal, while they turned over the folios.
The King was uneasy, and spoke more for the sake of speaking than because he had something to say, and so did the Cardinal.
“You ought to aim at the Papacy, Cardinal, as Hadrian’s successor.”