'God help me, I cannot well pray,' the Archbishop said. 'The peril that we have been in stays with me still.'
'Why, thank God that we are come out of it very well,' Lascelles said. 'You may pray and then sleep more calm than ever you have done this sennight.'
He leant back against the reading-pulpit, and had his arm across the Bible as if it had been the shoulder of a friend.
'Why,' the Archbishop said, 'this is the worst day ever I have been through since Cromwell fell.'
'Please it your Grace,' his confidant said, 'it shall yet turn out the best.'
The Archbishop faced round upon his knees; he had taken off the jewel from before his breast, and, with his chain of Chaplain of the George, it dangled across the corner of the fald-stool. His coat was unbuttoned at the neck, his robe open, and it was manifest that his sleeves of lawn were but sleeves, for in the opening was visible, harsh and grey, the shirt of hair that night and day he wore.
'I am weary of this talk of the world,' he said. 'Pray you begone and leave me to my prayers.'
'Please it your Grace to let me stay and hearten you,' Lascelles said, and he was aware that the Archbishop was afraid to be alone with the white Christ. 'All your other gentry are in bed. I shall watch your sleep, to wake you if you cry out.'
And in his fear of Cromwell's ghost that came to him in his dreams, the Archbishop sighed--
'Why stay, but speak not. Y'are over bold.'
He turned again to the wall; his beads clicked; he sighed and remained still for a long time, a black shadow, huddled together in a black gown, sighing before the white and lamenting image that hung above him.
'God help me,' he said at last. 'Tell me why you say this is _dies felix_?'
Lascelles, who smiled for ever and without mirth, said--
'For two things: firstly, because this letter and its sending are put off. And secondly, because the Queen is--patently and to all people--proved lewd.'
The Archbishop swung his head round upon his shoulders.
'Why, the late Queen Katharine from Aragon was accounted a model of piety, yet all men know she was over fond with her confessor,' Lascelles smiled.
'It is an approved lie and slander,' the Archbishop said.
'It served mightily well in pulling down that Katharine,' his confidant answered.