"All in all or not at all," Mistress Bertram added brightly.
I murmured my thanks.
"Then, first to tell you who we are. For myself I am plain Richard Bertie of Lincolnshire, at your service. My wife is something more than appears from this, or"--with a smile--"from her present not too graceful dress. She is----"
"Stop, Richard! This is not sufficiently formal," my lady cried prettily. "I have the honor to present to you, young gentleman," she went on, laughing merrily and making a very grand courtesy before me, "Katherine, Duchess of Suffolk."
I made shift to get to my feet, and bowed respectfully, but she forced me to sit down again. "Enough of that," she said lightly, "until we go back to England. Here and for the future we are Master Bertram and his wife. And this young lady, my distant kinswoman, Anne Brandon, must pass as Mistress Anne. You wonder how we came to be straying in the streets alone and unattended when you found us?"
I did wonder, for the name of the gay and brilliant Duchess of Suffolk was well known even to me, a country lad. Her former husband, Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, had been not only the one trusted and constant friend of King Henry the Eighth, but the king's brother-in-law, his first wife having been Mary, Princess of England and Queen Dowager of France. Late in his splendid and prosperous career the Duke had married Katherine, the heiress of Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and she it was who stood before me, still young and handsome. After her husband's death she had made England ring with her name, first by a love match with a Lincolnshire squire, and secondly by her fearless and outspoken defense of the reformers. I did wonder indeed how she had come to be wandering in the streets at daybreak, an object of a chance passer's chivalry and pity.
"It is simple enough," she said dryly; "I am rich, I am a Protestant, and I have an enemy. When I do not like a person I speak out. Do I not, Richard?"
"You do indeed, my dear," he answered smiling.
"And once I spoke out to Bishop Gardiner. What! Do you know Stephen Gardiner?"
For I had started at the name, after which I could scarcely have concealed my knowledge if I would. So I answered simply, "Yes, I have seen him." I was thinking how wonderful this was. These people had been utter strangers to me until a day or two before, yet now we were all looking out together from the deck of a Dutch boat on the low Dutch landscape, united by one tie, the enmity of the same man.