'So it is,' Wriothesley said. 'I think you, Bishop, would have done it too had you been able to make your account of it.' The Bishop snarled invisibly. But the voice of Norfolk came malignantly upon them. 'This is all of a piece with your silly schemings. Did I come here to hear ye wrangle? It is peril enow to come here. What will ye do?' 'I will make a pact with him of the other side?' the Bishop said. 'Misery!' the Duke said; 'did I come here to hear this madness? You and Cranmer have sought each other's heads this ten years. Will you seek his aid now? What may he do? He is as rotten a reed as thou or Wriothesley.' The Bishop cried suddenly with a loud voice-- 'Ho, there! Come you out!' Norfolk set his hand to his sword and so did Wriothesley. It was in both their minds, as it were one thought, that if this was a treason of the Bishop's he should there die. From the blackness of the wall sides where the grille was there came the sound of a terroring lock and a creaking door. 'God!' Norfolk said; 'who is this?' There came the sound of breathing of one man who walked with noiseless shoes. 'Have you heard enow to make you believe that these lords' hearts are true to the endeavour of casting the Queen down?' 'I have heard enow,' a smooth voice said. 'I never thought it had been otherwise.' 'Who is this?' Wriothesley said. 'I will know who this is that has heard us.' 'You fool,' Gardiner said; 'this man is of the other side.' 'They have come to you!' Norfolk said. 'To whom else should we come,' the voice answered. A subtler silence of agitation and thought was between these two men. At last Gardiner said-- 'Tell these lords what you would have of us?' 'We would have these promises,' the voice said; 'first, of you, my Lord Duke, that if by our endeavours your brother's child be brought to a trial for unchastity you will in no wise aid her at that trial with your voice or your encouragement.' 'A trial!' and 'Unchastity!' the Duke said. 'This is a winter madness. Ye know that my niece--St Kevin curse her for it--is as chaste as the snow.' 'So was your other niece, Anne Boleyn, for all you knew, yet you dogged her to death,' Gardiner said. 'Then you plotted with Papists; now it is the turn of the Lutherans. It is all one, so we are rid of this pest.' 'Well, I will promise it,' the Duke said. 'Ye knew I would. It was not worth while to ask me.' 'Secondly,' the voice said, 'of you, my Lord Duke, we would have this service: that you should swear your niece is a much older woman than she looks. Say, for instance, that she was in truth not the eleventh but the second child of your brother Edmund. Say that, out of vanity, to make herself seem more forward with the learned tongues when she was a child, she would call herself her younger sister that died in childbed.' 'But wherefore?' the Duke said.