“He is not very approachable this morning,” thought Cromwell; “but never mind, he will not escape us for all that.”
“We come,” replied Cromwell, “to congratulate your majesty on the clemency and magnanimity you displayed yesterday evening towards that daughter of Kent; and Dr. Cranmer has come to lay at your feet the assurance of his gratitude and his entire devotion.”
“Yes,” replied the king, happy to attribute his anger to something he could confess; “you are clever men, and richly deserve to be driven from my presence for having risked compromising me with that fool to whom you have made me listen! I am beginning to get tired of your fooleries; Sir Cromwell, understand that well!” And he emphasized the last words with a
marked intention and an expression of anger and scorn.
“The marriage has not improved matters much, it would seem,” said Cromwell to himself; but he considered it proper to display a little dignity. “I understand,” he replied immediately, “that your majesty may have at first taken some offence at the insolent audacity of that woman of Kent; but I am astonished that you should be so unjust as to think ill of your servants on account of it, and especially since nothing could have been more fortunate in putting us on the track of the infamous intrigues of the queen and her partisans.”
“Infamous intrigues! infamous intrigues!” cried the king. “That is a word which may be very readily applied, and often it is not to those who most deserve it.”
An angry flush mounted to Cromwell’s pale visage; he felt that it was time to calm the storm about to burst upon him.
“I implore your majesty to believe,” he replied in an extremely mortified tone, “that I advance nothing without proof; and I ask now what he will say when he shall know that the queen, Thomas More, and the Bishop of Rochester, concealed in the church, assisted with us at the examination of the holy daughter of Kent, in order to assure themselves that their instrument resounded loudly in the ears of your majesty.”
“What do you say, Cromwell? The queen was in the Abbey last night? And how did she gain admittance there? What! she has heard all? She has enjoyed my humiliation? Why have I not known it? I would have punished her audacity and wickedness on the spot; but I will surely have my revenge.”
“Sire,” replied Cromwell, “the