'Queen,' the Lady Mary said, 'I had thought that even in the darkness you had not dared to ask me this.'
'I will ask it you again,' the Queen said, 'in your room where the light of the candles shines upon my face.'
'Why, you shall,' the Lady Mary said. 'Let us presently go there.'
They went down the dark and winding stair. At the foot the procession of the coucher de la royne awaited them, first being two trumpeters in black and gold, then four pikemen with lanthorns, then the marshal of the Queen's household and five or seven lords, then the Queen's ladies, the Lady Rochford that slept with her, the Lady Cicely Rochford; the Queen's tiring-women, leaving a space between them for the Queen and the Lady Mary to walk in, then four young pages in scarlet and with the Queen's favours in their caps, and then the guard of the Queen's door, and four pikemen with torches whose light, falling from behind, illumined the path for the Queen's steps. The trumpeters blew four shrill blasts and then four with their fists in the trumpet mouths to muffle them. The brazen cries wound down the dark corridors, fathoms and fathoms down, to let men know that the Queen had done her prayers and was going to her bed. This great state was especially devised by the King to do honour to the new Queen that he loved better than any he had had. The purpose of it was to let all men know what she did that she might be the more imitated.
But the Queen bade them guide her to the Lady Mary's door, and in the doorway she dismissed them all, save only her women and her door guard and pikemen who awaited her without, some on stools and some against the wall, ladies and men alike.
The Lady Mary looked into the Queen's face very close and laughed at her when they were in the fair room and the light of the candles.
'Now you shall say your litany over again,' she sneered; 'I will sit me down and listen.' And in her chair at the table, with her face averted, she dug with little stabs into the covering rug the stiletto with which she was wont to mend her pens.
Standing by her, her face fully lit by the many candles that were upon the mantel, the Queen, dressed all in black and with the tail of her hood falling down behind to her feet, went patiently through the list of her prayers—that the Lady Mary should be reconciled with her father, that she should show at first favour to the ambassadors that sued for her hand for the Duke of Orleans, and afterwards give a glad consent to her marriage with the Prince Philip, the Emperor's son; and then, having been reinstated as a princess of the royal house of England, she should bear herself as such, and no more cry out upon the memory of Katharine of Aragon that had been put away from the King's side.
The Queen spoke these words with a serious patience and a level voice; but when she came to the end of them she stretched out her hand and her voice grew full.