'You might have saved your journey,' she answered. 'I could speak no otherwise if he loved me.'
He gazed involuntarily round at the hangings as if he suspected a listener.
'Your Most Reverence does ill to doubt me,' Katharine said submissively. 'I am of a true house.'
'No house is true save where it finds its account,' he answered moodily. He could not believe that she spoke the truth—for he was unable to believe that any man could speak the truth—but it was true she was poorly housed, raggedly dressed and hidden up in a corner. Nevertheless, these might be artifices. He made ostentatiously and disdainfully towards the door.
'Why, God keep you,'—he moved his fingers in a negligent blessing—'I believe you are true, though you are of little use.' Suddenly he shot out:
'If you would stay here in peace your cousin Culpepper must begone.'
Katharine put her hand to her heart in sudden fear of these men who surrounded her and knew everything.
'What hath Tom done?' she asked.
'He hath put a shame upon thee,' the bishop answered. He had fallen upon Sir Christopher Aske: he had been set in chains for it, in the Duke's ward room. But upon the coming of the Queen the night before, all misdemeanants had been cast loose again. Culpepper had been kept by the guards from entering the palace, where he had no place. But he had fallen in with the Magister Udal in the courtyard. Being maudlin and friendly at the time, he had cast his arms round the magister's neck claiming him for a loved acquaintance. They had drunk together and had started, towards midnight, to find the chamber of Katharine Howard, Culpepper seeking his cousin, and the magister, Margot Poins. On the way they had enlisted other jovial souls, and the tumult in the corridor had arisen. 'These scandals are best avoided,' the bishop finished. 'I have known women lose their lives through them when they came to have husbands.'
'I could have calmed him,' Katharine said. 'He is always silent at a word from me.'