“He is easier cleansed than his namesake,” she resumed, shaking her head. “If my Lord of Winchester win again into power, I count I shall come ill off. As thou wist, Isoult, I have a wit that doth at times outrun my discretion; and when I was last in London, passing by the Tower, I did see Master Doctor Gardiner a-looking from, a little window. And ‘Good morrow, my Lord!’ quoth I, in more haste than wisdom; ‘’tis merry with the lambs, now the wolves be kept close!’ I count he will not forgive me therefor in sharp haste.”
Mr Bertie smiled and shook his head.
“Now, Bertie, leave thine head still!” said her Grace. “I know what thou wouldst say as well as if I had it set in print. I am all indiscreetness, and thou all prudence. He that should bray our souls together in a mortar should make an excellent wit of both.”
“Your Grace is too flattering, methinks,” said Mr Bertie, still smiling.
“Am I so, verily?” answered she. “Isoult, what thinkest thou? ’Twas not I that gave the dog his name; it was Bertie here (who should be ’shamed of his deed, and is not so at all) and I did but take up the name after him. And this last summer what thinkest yon silly maid Lucrece did? (one of the Duchess’s waiting-women, a fictitious person). Why, she set to work and made a rochet in little, and set it on the dog’s back. Heardst thou ever the like? And there was he, a-running about the house with his rochet on him, and all trailing in the mire. I know not whether Annis were wholly free of some knowledge thereof—nor Bertie neither. He said he knew not; I marvel whether he spake truth!”
“That did I, an’t like your Grace,” replied Mr Bertie, laughing. “I saw not the rochet, neither knew of it, afore yourself.”
“Well, I count I must e’en crede thee!” said she.
It struck Isoult that the Duchess and her gentleman usher were uncommonly good friends; rather more so than was usual at that time. She set it down to their mutual Lutheranism; but she might have found for it another and a more personal reason, which they had not yet thought proper to declare openly. The Duchess and Bertie were privately engaged, but they told no one till their marriage astonished the world.
Isoult reached home on the sixteenth of December; and on Twelfth Day, 1550, John returned from Cornwall. He brought word that the repairs needed were more extensive than any one had supposed from the Pendexter epistles. Part of the house required rebuilding; and he was determined not to begin before he could finish. The result was, that they would have to remain in London, probably, for five or six years more.
Shortly after John’s return, a gentleman called to see him. His name was Roger Holland, and he was a merchant tailor in the City, but of gentle birth, and related to the Earl of Derby. Isoult wished to know if he could be any connection of her friend Annis. John thought not: but “thereby hung a tale.”