She did not speak.
He said softly: “It is a folly to be too proud to fight the world with the world’s weapons.”
The heavy darkness seemed to thrill with her silence. He could tell neither whether she were pondering his words nor whether she still scorned him. He could not even hear her breathing.
“God help me!” he said at last, in an angry high note, “I am not such a man as to be played with too long. People fear me.”
She kept silence still, and his voice grew high and shrill: “Madam Howard, I can bend you to my will. I have the power to make such a report of you as will hang you tomorrow.”
Her voice came to him expressionlessly—without any inflexion. In few words, what would he have of her? She played his own darkness off against him, so that he could tell nothing new of her mood.
He answered swiftly: “I will that you tell the men you know what I have told you. You are a very little thing; it were no more to me to cut you short than to drown a kitten. But my own neck I prize. What I have told you I would have come to the ears of my lord of Winchester. I may not be seen to speak with him myself. If you will not tell him, another will; but I would rather it were you.”
“Evil dreams make thy nights hideous!” she cried out so suddenly that his voice choked in his throat. “Thou art such dirt as I would avoid to tread upon; and shall I take thee into my hand?” She was panting with disgust and scorn. “I have listened to thee; listen thou to me. Thou art so filthy that if thou couldst make me a queen by the touch of a finger, I had rather be a goose-girl and eat grass. If by thy forged tales I could cast down Mahound, I had rather be his slave than thy accomplice! Could I lift my head if I had joined myself to thee? thou Judas to the Fiend. Junius Brutus, when he did lay siege to a town, had a citizen come to him that would play the traitor. He accepted his proffered help, and when the town was taken he did flay the betrayer. But thou art so filthy that thou shouldst make me do better than that noble Roman, for I would flay thee, disdaining to be aided by thee; and upon thy skin I would write a message to thy master saying that thou wouldst have betrayed him!”
His laugh rang out discordant and full of black mirth; for a long time his shoulders seemed to shake. He spoke at last quite calmly.
“You will have a very short course in this world,” he said.
A hoarse and hollow shouting reverberated from the gully; the glow of a torch grew bright in the window-space. Katharine had been upon the point of opening the door, but she paused, fearing to meet some night villains in the gully. Throckmorton was now silent, as if he utterly disdained her, and a frightful blow upon the wood of the door—so certain were they that the torch would pass on—made them spring some yards further into the cellar. The splintering blows were repeated; the sound of them was deafening. Glaring light entered suddenly through a great crack, and the smell of smoke. Then the door fell in half, one board of it across the steps, the other smashing back to the wall upon its hinges. Sparks dripped from the torch, smoke eddied down, and upon the cellar steps were the legs of a man who rested a great axe upon the ground and panted for breath.
“Up the steps!” he grunted. “If you ever ran, now run. The guard will not enter here.”
Katharine sped up the steps. It was old Rochford’s face that greeted hers beneath the torch. He grunted again, “Run you; I am spent!” and suddenly dashed the torch to the ground.
At the entry of the tunnel some make of creature caught at her sleeve. She screamed and struck at a gleaming eye with the end of her crucifix. Then nothing held her, and she ran to where, at the mouth of the gully, there were a great many men with torches and swords peering into the darkness of the passage.
In the barge Margot made an outcry of joy and relief, and the other ladies uttered civil speeches. The old man, whose fur near the neck had been slashed by a knife-thrust as he came away, explained pleasantly that he was able to strike good blows still. But he shook his head nevertheless. It was evil, he said, to have such lovers as this new one. Her cousin was bad, but this rapscallion must be worse indeed to harbour her in such a place. … Margot, who knew her London, had caught him at the barge, to which he had hurried.
“Aye,” he said, “I thought you had played me a trick and gone off with some spark. But when I heard to what place, I fetched the guard along with me. … Well for you that it was I, for they had not come for any other man, and then you had been stuck in the street. For, see you, whether you would have had me fetch you away or no it is ten to one that a gallant who would take you there would mean that you should never come away alive—and God help you whilst you lived in that place.”
Katharine said:
“Why, I pray God that you may die on the green grass yet, with time for a priest to shrive you. I was taken there against my will.” She told him no more of the truth, for it was not every man’s matter, and already she had made up her mind that there was
