But Thomas Culpepper disregarded his words and his sigh. He was more in the mood to talk Lincolnshire than Kent, for his fever had given him a touch of homesickness and the young Poins to him was a very foreigner. He shut his eyes to let the Lincolnshire gatewarden’s words go down to his brain; then with sudden violence he spat out:
“Give me water! What do ah ask but water! Pig! brood of a sow! gi’e me water and choke!”
Nicholas Hogben fetched a leather bottle as long as his leg, dusty and dinted, but nevertheless bedight with the arms of England, from the stone recess where the guard sheltered at nights. He fitted it on to the crook of his pike by the handle, and, craning over the drawbridge, first smoothed away the leaf-green duckweed on the moat and then sank the bottle in the black water.
“I have money: a main of money for ye,” the young Poins said to Thomas Culpepper; but the man, with his red beard and white face, swayed on his legs and had ears only for the gurgling and gulping of the water as it entered the bottle neck. The black jack swayed and jumped below the bridge like a glistening water-beast.
He had little green spangles of duckweed in his orange beard when he took the bottle away, empty, from his mouth. He drew deep gasps of breath, and suddenly sat down upon a squared block of stone that the masons above were waiting to hoist into place over the archway.
“Good water!” he grunted to Hogben—grunting as all the Lincolnshire men did, in those days, like a two-year hog.
“Bean’t but that good in all Calais town!” Hogben grunted back to him. “Curses on the two wurmen that sent me here.” And indeed, to Lincolnshire men the water tasted good, since it reminded them of their dyke water, tasting of marshweed and smelling of eggs.
“Tü wurmen!” Culpepper said lazily. “Hast thou been jigging with tü puticotties to wunst? One is enow to undo seven men. Who be ’hee?”
The young Poins, with a sulky sense of his importance, uttered:
“I have money for thee—a main of money!”
Culpepper looked at him with sleepy blue eyes.
“Thrice y’ ha’ told me that,” he said. “And money is a goodly thing in its place—but not to a man with a bellyful of water. Y’ shall feel my fist when I be rested. Meanwhile wait and, being a cub, hear how men talk.” He slapped his chest and repeated to Hogben: “Who be ’ee?”
Hogben, delighted to be asked at last a question, shewed his formidable teeth and beneath his familiar contortion of the eyelids brought out the words that one of the women who had brought him down was her that had brought Squahre Culpepper to sit on a squared stone before Calais gate.
“Why, I am a made man, for all you see me sit here,” Culpepper answered indolently. “I ha’ done a piece of work for which I am to be seised of seven farms in Kent land. See yo’—they send me messengers with money to Calais gate.” He pointed his thumb at the young Poins.
The boy, to prove that he was no common messenger, drew his right leg up and said:
“Nay, goodman Squire; an ye had slain the Cardinal the farms should have been yours. As it lies, ye are no more than lieutenant of Calais stone barges.”
“Thou liest,” Culpepper answered negligently, not turning his gaze from the gatewarden to whom he addressed a friendly question of, Who was the woman that had brought the two of them down.
“Now, Squahre!” the Lincolnshire man grinned delightedly; “thu hast askëd me tü questions. Answer me one: Did thee lie upon her when thee put her name up in the township of Stamford?”
“Stamford in Lincolnshire was thy townplace?” Culpepper asked. “But who was thy woman? I ha’ had so many women and lied about so many more that I never had!”
The Lincolnshire man threw his leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one who performs his rituals.
“Goodly squahre that thee art!” he said; “thou has harmed a many wenches in truth and in lies.”
Culpepper spied a down feather on his knee.
“Curse the mattress that I lay upon this night,” he said amiably.
He set his head back and blew the feather high into the air so that it floated out towards the tranquil and sunny pasture fields of France.
“Cub!” he said to Hal Poins, “take this as a lesson of the death that lies about the pilgrim’s path. For why am I not a pilgrim? I was sent to rid Paris of a Cardinal Pole, who, being in league with the devil, hath a magic tongue. Mark this story well, cub, who art sent me with money and gifts from the King in his glory to me that sit upon a stone. Now mark—” He extended his white hand. “This hand, o’ yestereen, had a ring with a great green stone. Now no ring is here. It was given me by my seventeenth leman, who had two eyes that looked not together. No twelve robbers had taken it from me by force, since I had made a pact with the devil that these wall eyes should never look across my face whilst that ring was there. Now, God knows, I may find her in Calais. So mark well—” He had been sent to Paris to rid France of the Cardinal Pole; for the Cardinal Pole, being a succubus of the fiend, had a magical tongue and had been inducing the French King to levy arms, in the name of that arch-devil, the Bishop of Rome, against their goodly King Henry, upon whom God shed His peace. Culpepper raised his bonnet at the Deity’s name, stuck it far back on his red head, and continued: Therefore the mouth of Cardinal Pole was to
