"Oh, please your grace, don't have my head cut off!" cried Lady Katrine, seeing, notwithstanding the king's threat, that he was in one of his happier moods. "I never told a lie in my life, except one day when I said I did not love your highness, and that was when you put off the pageant of the Castle Dolorous till after pentecost, and I wanted it directly. But on my word, as I hope to be married in a year, and a widow in God's good time, I know no more of where Constance de Grey is, or whither she went, or when, or how, than the child unborn."
"Did she never speak to you thereof, my saucy mistress?" demanded Henry. "You consorted with her much: 'twere strange if she did not let something fall concerning her purposes, and she a woman, too."
"I wish I had a secret," said Lady Katrine, half-apart, half-aloud, "just to show how a woman can keep counsel, if it were but in spite. Good, your grace," she continued, "you do not think that Constance would trust her private thoughts to such a light-headed thing as I am. But, to set your highness's mind at ease, I vow and protest, by the love and duty I bear to you and my royal mistress; by my conscience, which is tender; and by my honour, which is strong; that I know nothing of Lady Constance de Grey, and that even in my very best imaginings I cannot divine whither she is gone."
"Your highness may believe her," said the queen; "wild as she is, she would not stain her lips with the touch of falsehood, I am sure. Get ye gone, Kate, and hasten your sempstresses, for we shall set out a day before it was intended; and mind you plume up your brightest feathers, for we must outdo the Frenchwomen."
"Oh, good, your grace! I shall never be ready in time," replied the young lady. "Besides, they tell me I must put on mourning for my fiftieth cousin by the side of Adam, old Lord Orham the miser. If I do, it shall be gold crape trimmed with cobwebs, I declare; and so I humbly take my leave of both your graces."
Thus saying, she rose from the cushion, dropped a low curtsey to the king and queen, and tripped away to her own apartments.
Common bustle and ordinary preparation may be easily imagined. All can, without difficulty, figure to themselves the turmoil preparatory to a ball where there are six daughters to marry, with much blood and very little money: the lady-mother scolding the housekeeper in her room, and the housekeeper scolding all the servants in hers; a reasonable number of upholsterers, decorators, floor-chalkers, confectioners, milliners; much talking to very little purpose; scheming, drilling, and dressing; agitation on the part of the young ladies, and calculation on the part of their mamma. And at the end of a few weeks the matter is done and over. But no mind, however vast may be its powers of conceiving a bustle, can imagine anything like the court of Westminster for the three days prior to the king's departure for Canterbury.
So continual were the demands upon every kind of artisan, that the impossibility of executing them threw several into despair. One tailor, who is reported to have undertaken to furnish fifty embroidered suits in three days, on beholding the mountain of gold and velvet that cumbered his shop-board, saw, like Brutus, the impossibility of victory, and, with Roman fortitude, fell on his own shears. Three armourers are said to have been completely melted with the heat of their furnaces; and an unfortunate goldsmith swallowed molten silver to escape the persecutions of the day.
The road from London to Canterbury was covered during one whole week with carts and waggons, mules, horses, and soldiers; and so great was the confusion, that marshals were at length stationed to keep the whole in order, which of course increased the said confusion a hundred fold. So many were the ships passing between Dover and Calais, that the historians affirm they jostled each other on the sea, like a herd of great black porkers; and it is known as a fact, that the number of persons collected in the good town of Calais was more than it could lodge; so that not only the city itself, but all the villages round about, were full to the overflowing.
At length the king set out, accompanied by an immense train, and left London comparatively a desert; while, as he went from station to station, he seemed like a shepherd driving all the better classes of the country before him, and leaving not a single straggler behind. His farther progress, however, was stayed for a time at Canterbury, by the news that the emperor Charles, his wife's nephew, was on the sea before Dover, furnished with the excuse of relationship for visiting the English king, though in reality conducted thither solely by the wish to break the good understanding of the English and French monarchs; or rather to ensure that no treaty contrary to his interest should be negotiated at the approaching meeting.