It was because of this that Throckmorton dreaded to await Culpepper at Hampton; there he was sure enow to find him, sooner or later, but there would be the many spies of Privy Seal’s around all the avenues to the palace. He might himself send away the spies, but it was too dangerous; for, say what he would, if he held Culpepper from Katharine Howard, Cromwell would visit it mercilessly upon him.
He turned the nose of his barge down the broadening, shining grey stream towards Greenwich. The wind blew freshly up from the sea; the tide ran down, and Throckmorton pulled his bonnet over his eyes to shade them from sea and breeze, and the wind that the rowers made. For it was the swiftest barge of the kingdom: long, black, and narrow, with eight watermen rowing, eight to relieve them, and always eight held in reserve at all landing stages for that barge’s crew. So well Privy Seal had organised even the mutinous men of the river that his service might be swift and sudden. Throckmorton had set down the bower at the stern, that the wind might have less hold.
Nevertheless it blew cold, and he borrowed a cloak and a pottle of sack to warm the young Poins, who had run with him capless and without a coat. For, listening to the boy’s disjointed tale out in the broad reaches below London, Throckmorton recognised that if the young man were incredibly a fool he was incredibly steadfast too, and a steadfast fool is a good tool to retain for simple work. He had, too—the boy—a valuable hatred for Culpepper that he allowed to transfer itself to Katharine herself: a brooding hatred that hung in his blue eyes as he gazed downwards at the barge floor or spat at the planks of the side. Its ferocity was augmented by the patches of plaster that stretched over his skull and dropped over one blonde eyebrow.
“Cod!” he ejaculated. “Cod! Cod! Cod!” and waved a fist ferociously at the rushes that spiked the waters of the river in their new green. “They waited till I was too sick of the sickness of the sea, too sick to stand—more mortal sick than ever man was. I hung to a rope and might not let go. And Cod! Cod! Cod! Culpepper lay under the sterncastle in a hole and set his Lincolnshire beast to baste my ribs.”
He spat again with gloomy quiescence into the bottom of the boat.
“In the mid of the sea,” he said, “where the ship pointed at heaven and then at the fiend his home, I hung to a rope and was basted! And that whore’s son lay in his hole and laughed. For I was a cub, says he, and not fit for a man’s converse or striking.”
Throckmorton’s eyes glimmered a little.
“You have been used as befits no gentleman’s son,” he said. “I will see to the righting of your wrongs.”
Poins swore with an amazing obscenity.
“Shall right ’em myself,” he said, “so I meet T. Culpepper in this flesh as a man.”
Throckmorton leaned gently forward and touched his arm.
“I will right thy wrongs,” he said, “and see to thine advancement; for if in this service you ha’ failed, yet ha’ you been persistent and feal.” He dabbled one white hand in the water, “Nevertheless,” he said slowly, “I would have you consider that your service in this ends here.” He spoke still more slowly: “I would have you to understand this. Aforetime I gave you certain instructions as to using your sword upon this Culpepper if you might not otherwise stay him.” He held up one finger. “Now mark; your commission is ceased. You shall no longer for my service draw sword, knife or dagger, stave nor club, upon this man.”
Poins looked at him with gloomy surprise that was changing swiftly to hot rage.
“I am under oath to a certain one to use no violence upon this man,” Throckmorton said, “and to encourage no other to do violence.”
Poins thrust his round, brick-red brow out like a turkey cock’s from the boat cloak into Throckmorton’s face.
“I am under no oath of yourn!” he shouted. Throckmorton shrugged his shoulders and wagged one finger at him. “No oath o’ yourn!” the boy repeated. “God knows who ye be or why it is so. But I ha’ heard ye ha’ my neck in a noose; I ha’ heard ye be dangerous. Yet, before God, I swear in your teeth that if I meet this man to his face, or come upon his filthy back, drunk, awake, asleep, I will run him through the belly and send his soul to hell. He had me, a gentleman’s son, basted by a hind!”
This long speech exhausted his breath, and he fell back panting.
“I had as soon ye had my head as not,” he muttered desperately, “since I have been basted.”
“Why,” Throckmorton answered, “for your private troubles, I know naught of them. There may be some that will thank ye or advance ye for spitting of this gallant. But I am not one of them. Nevertheless will I be your friend, whom ye would have served better an ye could.”
He smiled in his inward manner and went to polishing of his nails. A little later he felt the bruises on the boy’s arms, and stayed the barge for a moment the stage where, swiftly, eight oarsmen took the places of the eight that had rowed two shifts out of three—stayed the barge for time enough to purchase for the boy a ham, a
