“Why! Art Nick Hogben?” Culpepper said.
“Hast that question answered,” Hogben said. “Now answer me one. Liedst thou when saidst what thou saidst of that wurman?”
Culpepper on the stone swung his legs vaingloriously:
“I sold three farms to buy her a gown,” he said.
“Aye!” Nick Hogben answered. “So thou saidst in Stamford town three years gone by. And thou saidst more and the manner of it. But betwixt the buying the gowns and the more of it lie many things. As this: Did she take the gown of thee? Or as this: Having taken the gown of thee, did she pay thee in the kind payment should be made in?”
Culpepper looked up at him with a sharp snarl.
“For—” and Nick Hogben shook his head sagaciously, “Stamford town believed the more and the manner of it, and Kat Howard’s name is up in the town of Stamford. But I have not yet chiselled out the great piece that shall come from my pike when certain sure I am that Kat Howard is down under a man’s foot.”
Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.
“Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!” he said. “Therefore I will say I lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord Edmund’s, house and I had pies and gowns for her. Consider these things and make a hole or no hole as thou wilt—”
Nicholas Hogben considered with his eyes on the ground; he scratched his head with a black finger.
“I can make nowt out,” he said. “But I will curse thee for a lily-livered hoggit an thou marry Kat Howard.”
“Why, I am minded to marry her,” Culpepper answered, “over here in France,” and he stretched a hand towards the long white road where in the distance the French peasants were driving lean beasts for a true Englishman’s provender in Calais. “Over here in France. Body of God!—Body of God!—” He wavered, being still fevered. “In England it had been otherwise. But here, shivering across plains and seas—why, I will wed with her.”
“Talkest like a Blind God Boy,” Hogben said sarcastically. “How knowest she be thine to take?” He pointed at the young Poins. “Here be another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well discern if she be thine or whose.”
Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was from its scabbard and warring in the air.
“Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee—Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!” he cried.
“Ass!” Culpepper answered. “In God’s time I will break thy back across my knee. But God’s time is not yet.”
He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had seen.
“Squahre Thomas,” Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, “that young man of Kent saith e’ennow: ‘Kat Howard is like to—’ and then he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat Howard is like to do or be done by?”
With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think rapidly—nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could think rapidly always.
“Goodman Thomas Culpepper,” he said in a high voice, “the mistress Katharine Howard I spoke of is thin and dark and small, and married to Edward Howard of Biggleswade. She is like to die of a quinsy.”
For well he knew that his advancement depended on his keeping Thomas Culpepper on the hither side of the water; and if it muddled his brain to have been so usefully mishandled for carrying letters betwixt the King’s Grace and the Lady Katharine Howard, he knew enough of a jealous man to know that that was no news to keep Thomas Culpepper in Calais.
Culpepper’s animation dropped like the light of a torch that is dowsed.
“Put up thy pot skewer,” he said; “my Kat is tall and fairish and unwed. Ha’ ye not seen her with the Lady Mary of England’s women?”
The young Poins, zealous to be rid of the matter, answered fervently:
“Never. She is not talked of in the Court.”
“That is the best hearing,” Thomas Culpepper said. “I do absolve thee of five kicks for being the messenger of that.”
III
They were a-walking in the little garden below the windows of the late Cardinal’s house at Hampton; the April sun shone, for May came on apace, and in that sheltered spot the light lay warm and no breezes came. They took great pleasure there beneath the windows. One girl kept three golden balls flying in the air, whilst three others and two lords sought to distract her by inducing her little hound to bark shrilly below her hands up at the flying balls that caught in them the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, and the red and grey of the warm palace walls. Down the nut walk, where the trees that the dead Cardinal had set were already fifteen years old and dark with young green leaves as bright as little flowers, they had set up archery targets. Cicely Elliott, in black and white, flashing like a magpie in the alleys, ran races with the Earl of Surrey beneath the blinking eyes of her old knight; the Lady Mary, herself habited all in black, moved like a dark shadow upon a dial between the little beds upon paths of red brick between box hedges as
