“Aye. But Bishop Gardiner, Cecil and Edward, my brother, are with him now. Behind that door … the priest, the scribe, and the—”

He did not finish the words.

Katherine swept past him, set a foot on the stair.

“I’m going up. Oh Tom—you did ill to send for me. But I’m his wife, and I must know the truth, however much they connive to keep it secret.”

Another sound set him swinging about sharply. His face darkened.

“The secret’s none so secret,” he said grimly through almost closed lips. “Here comes another lady.”

A young woman was advancing from the dim passage in such haste that she bore down upon them like a storm. Her vehement hurry was queerly at odds with her appearance. The Princess, Mary Tudor, was in sweeping black velvet from winged cap to shoes, but the somber robe was edged and girdled with jewels, the cross and heavy chain about her neck were of gold, the rosary clutched in one hand was wrought with pearls. Her smooth oval face with the big, myopic eyes and the compressed lips, the upper lip deeply grooved, was a sight to startle and shock in this moment, twisted with grief, wet with tears which came to her in such overwhelming floods, but above all pulsing with fury… Mary Tudor had been a girl with something of her mother’s look, sedate, smooth and rounded. She had a very fair, delicate skin and a wealth of fair hair, the “Spanish gold” hair. When she was a child, her father had once in his fond, boisterous fashion twitched the small pearl-sewn cap from her little head at a court ball, so that the cascade of a child’s silken gold hair could tumble onto her shoulders to the admiration of all who saw it. Now, years of unhappiness and bitterness had undermined her health and left her pallid, with muddy skin and lackluster hair and big pale eyes often swimming in tears.

… But Katherine saw her with the same love and pity she had always felt.

“Mary!” she said, and went to her, both hands held out. Mary halted, rigid and erect, the tears streaming down her distorted face.

“Don’t touch me!” Her voice, thick with tears, rose in a harsh, strangled cry. “So! They send for you, but not for me.” She spoke vehemently, shutting her tight, thin lips with almost a snap between the sentences, breathing audibly as though she were suffocating. “It’s for me to hear it from the whispers of the women: They’ve sent for the Queen… He’s dying! … The Queen, yes. But the Princess, the daughter of his one true marriage, no! … Well, they shall not keep me from him. I am going to him—”

Katherine’s arms fell limply by her side. Then, for the first time, Mary perceived Thomas Seymour, who had moved a little apart and stood by the wall. She threw him a look of hatred, and shot at him hoarsely:

“Oh … you might at least wait till he is dead!” Katherine’s eyes widened, aghast, before the insulting contempt in the words; then the pity swept back into her face.

Her ears were attuned to catch the wail of desolation through the distraught challenge.

“Your Highness,” Thomas Seymour said gravely, “I am waiting for my brother.”

“Then why not wait elsewhere?” Mary demanded sharply.

“Because he is here.” Thomas’ temper was rising. His tone gave thrust for thrust.

Mary gave a wild, curt laugh.

“I’ll warrant he is! Keeping a death watch. Working evilly to the last—to turn my father from the one true faith—”

“When last I heard,” Thomas observed coolly, “Bishop Gardiner was at the King’s bedside.”

“Aye!” she came back at him, “and would not have been had you and your like had your way. Think you I do not know that? But Gardiner will bide—” her voice was hysterical in triumph—“and keep his everlasting soul from hell, for all that you can do. Now—let me by! ”

“Mary,” Katherine appealed, “he is too ill, believe it!”

“Let … me … by!” Mary sobbed, gritting the words between her set teeth.

She stretched a hand to push Katherine aside; and Thomas took a swift step forward. When the door above them opened and once again the light from within pierced the shadows, it fell on the lifted faces and the figures struck suddenly still and frozen to silence.

William Cecil descended the stairs slowly. A man no more than twenty-six, but already in some fashion ageless, neither old nor young. A slight man of no more than average height with the fine-drawn face of an ascetic and eyes deep-set in their sockets. He came down the stairs with bent head. The pomander ball which was the accustomed precaution for persons lingering in a sickroom hung round his neck on a silver chain, and his long fingers toyed with it, as though absently, but holding it, unobtrusively, close to his nose. When Cecil lifted his head, his eyes fell first on Mary. The pomander dropped from his fingers and dangled. He bowed low before her.

“Cecil—” she whispered; and Katherine's whisper was an echo: “Cecil—” Both voices were putting the supreme question in the slight utterance.

“Your Majesty,” was all that he answered, with another bow.

Now a second figure was behind him, tall, gaunt, bearded in frost, robed in black and white, and scorning pomander or handkerchief for his aquiline nose. (Had not his battle skirted the line between heaven and hell? What putrid fumes of earth could assail him?) Ignoring the Queen as though she were not present, Bishop Gardiner came down to his Princess. He bowed; but Mary’s trembling hands were stretched to him, and he took them in his.

“Daughter,” spoke the sonorous voice, “he is gone, in the faith of Christ and of his minister on earth—the Pope of Rome. You need have no fear for him. He has returned, a child of the true church, into the faith that cradled him.”

Mary strove to speak, but she was drowned in tears. She clung to Gardiner, piteously, her head sunk on his hands, which clasped hers bracingly.

Katherine turned from them and went to the stairs. But Cecil stepped before her.

“Your Majesty—” his voice was lowered but forceful—“remember him as w hen you saw him last. Believe me, it is best.”

Katherine shuddered involuntarily. She, who had tended him and been wife to him while disease corroded the fearful bulk of his once-splendid body, knew what horror in death lay behind that door. The simple, deep-rooted faithfulness which had guided all her life drove her to mount the stairs. Sheer relief made her almost giddy, as she accepted Cecil’s wise and kindly admonition.

“I know! Poor Hal! God give him rest,” Katherine sighed and bent her head, and her fingers made the sign of the cross at her breast.

Thomas, standing apart, pointedly and deliberately ignored both by Gardiner and Cecil, felt that sharp twinge of melting warmth assail him again, in the turmoil of his scorn and anger. Poor Hal! … God’s precious soul! Kate, there’s none like you! Those fat, swollen hands of his have grasped whatever he fancied: from the treasures of the monasteries to every woman his little eye lit on, trampling and destroying what’s sacrificed to him—but he hasn’t been able to destroy the compassionate heart that’s in you… It’s live and warm and beating, and free — at last.

He realized that Katherine was speaking to Cecil.

“Who is with him?”

Cecil glanced obliquely into the shadows where Thomas stood.

“Lord Hertford is still there.”

“So?” Thomas murmured. “I see the worm had a hole in the coffin — and is inside.”

“What is he doing there?” Katherine asked, perplexed and bewildered.

“There are many matters to attend to,” Cecil answered sedately.

“Aye! …” The Queen rallied herself. “Who is to take word to Edward?”

“Lord Hertford rides tomorrow to fetch him,” Cecil told her in the same level, colorless tone.

Thomas’ soft “So! …” went unheeded; though assuredly not unheard.

“Poor child!” Katherine said wistfully. “I would he might have lived his childhood out before being King.”

“A young King indeed,” Thomas said as though speaking to himself. “Most surely in need of a Protector!”

His glance went quizzically to the door at the head of the stairs where Lord Edward Seymour was still shut in the room where the dead King lay.

“And Elizabeth! ” Katherine exclaimed. “What’s to be done with her?”

“That I know not,” Cecil answered soberly.

Mary had lifted her head swiftly at the sound of her sister’s name.

“She shall be brought here to court and be in my care,” Mary pronounced. “Is she not my sister!”

“Mary,” Katherine said gently, appealingly, “I know you love her well. And I love her too. I love you both—”

Mary put a hand to her forehead.

“Would God I could be sure of you,” she said. And a baffled note broke through the resonant hardness of her hoarse voice. “Of you—or of anything in this world!”

“Have faith, then, child,” Katherine said, very softly. She knew well enough the bitter vicissitudes of experience which lay behind that cry of the heart.

“In what? In the world? No! there’s naught but change in it. I can trust none but God. …”

“Mary,” Katherine spoke winningly, as to a bewildered child, “will you retire with me to Chelsea?”

Mary looked at the Queen, her pale eyes suddenly flintlike.

“Do you go there alone?” she demanded bluntly as a blow on the cheek.

“I would wish to have Elizabeth there with me,” Katherine persisted evenly, but the color rose in her face.

The men stood silent, their eyes fixed on the two faces.

“So!” Mary broke out fiercely. “You would take even her from me! Are you not satisfied to have cozened my father till he turned from me?”

“Child—that’s not true! Oh Mary, were we not happy together—you, and Elizabeth, and little Edward — and the King smiling on us all?”

It was the simple truth. And the distraught young woman standing tense with bitterness before her knew it. The only happy hours Mary Tudor had known since her own childhood were in these last short years when Katherine Parr had brought household warmth and fondness into the cruel network of life at court, had gathered Henry’s motherless children together, and made a palace into a home…