'Do ye believe of her cousin and the Lady Katharine?'
Craving a respite for thought and daring to take none for fear Cromwell should read him, Throckmorton answered:
'Ye know I think yes.'
'I have said I think no,' Cromwell answered in turn, but dispassionately as though it were a matter of the courses of stars; 'though it is very certain that her cousin is so mad with love for her that we had much ado to send him from her to Paris.' He paced three times from wall to wall and then spoke again:
'Men enow have said she was too fond with her cousin?'
With despair in his heart Throckmorton answered:
'It is the common talk in Lincolnshire where her home is. I have seen a cub in a cowherd's that was said to be her child by him.'
It was useless to speak otherwise to Privy Seal; if he did not report these things, twenty others would. But, beneath his impassive face and his great beard, despair filled him. He might swear treason against Cromwell to the King; but the King would not hear him alone, and without the King and Katharine he was a sparrow in Cromwell's hawk's talons.
'Why,' Cromwell said, 'since Cleves is true to us we will have this woman down. An he had played us false I would have kept her near the King.'
This saying, that ran so counter to Throckmorton's schemes, caused him such dismay that he cried out: