Katharine fought a battle within herself. Here was treason to the King--but that was a little thing to her. Yet the King was a father whom she would bring back to this daughter, and the traitor was a daughter whom she was sworn to serve and pledged to bring back to this father. If then she conveyed this letter.... 'Tell me,' she asked of the intent figure above the paper, 'when, if ever, this plot shall burst?' 'Madam Howard,' the other answered, 'I heard thee not.' 'I say I will convey your Highness' letter if the plot shall not burst for many days. If it be to come soon I will forswear myself and be no longer your woman.' 'Why, what a pax is here?' her mistress faced round on her. 'What muddles thy clear head? I doubt, knowing the craven kings that are of my party, no plot shall burst for ten years. And so?' 'Before then thou mayest be brought back to thy father,' Katharine said. Mary of England burst into a hoarse laughter. 'As God's my life,' she cried, 'that may well be. And you may find a chaste whore before either.' Whilst she was finishing her letter, Katharine Howard prayed that Mary the Mother of Mercy might soften the hatred of this daughter, even as, of old times, she had turned the heart of Lucius the Syracusan. Then there should be an end to plotting and this letter might work no ill. Having waved the sheet of paper in the air to dry it, Mary crumpled it into a ball. 'See you,' she said, 'if this miscarry I run a scant risk. For, if this be a treason, this treason is well enough known already to them you wot of. They might have had my head this six years on one shift or another had they so dared. So to me it matters little.--But for thee--and for thy maid Margot and this maid's brother and his house and his father and his leman--death may fall on ye all if this ball of paper miscarry.' Katharine made no answer and her mistress spoke on. 'Take now this paper ball, give it to thy maid Margot, bid thy maid Margot bear it to her brother Ned.' Her brother Ned should place it in his sleeve and walk with it to Herring Lane at Hampton. There, over against the house of the Sieur Chapuys, who was the Emperor's ambassador to this Christian nation--over against that house there was a cookshop to which resorted the servants of the ambassador. Passing it by, Katharine's maid's brother should thrust his hand in at the door and cry 'a pox on all stinking Kaiserliks and Papists,'--and he should cast the paper at that cook's head. Then out would come master cook to his door and claim reparation. And for reparation Margot's brother Ned should buy such viands as the cook should offer him. These viands he was to bring, as a good brother should, to his hungry sister, and these viands his sister should take to her room--which was Katharine's room. 'And, of an evening,' she finished, 'I shall come to thy room to commune with thee of the writers that be dead and yet beloved. Hast thou the lesson by heart? I will say it again.' III