Throckmorton kept his head turned towards Lascelles as if he were still addressing him, and spoke in the same level voice, still in Italian.
“Viridus, to thee I speak. This is a very great matter.” Unconsciously he used the set form of words of Privy Seal. “Consider well these things. The day of our master is nigh at an end. Rich, Chancellor of the Augmentations, thy crony and master, and my ally, hath made a plan to go with me to the King this night with witnesses and papers accusing Privy Seal of raising the land against his Highness. Will you join with us, or will you be lost with Privy Seal?”
Viridus kept his eyes upon the same spot of the table.
“Tell me more,” he said. “This matter is very weighty.” His tone was level, monotonous and still. He too might have been saying that the sunshine that day had been long.
“A fad to talk Latin of ye courtiers,” Culpepper said with uninterested scorn. “Ye will forget God’s language of English.” He slapped Throckmorton on the sleeve. “See, what a fine farm I have for my deserts,” he said.
“Ye shall have better,” Throckmorton said. “I have moved the King in your behalf.” But he kept his eyes on Lascelles.
Culpepper cast back his cap from his eyes and leant away the better to slap Throckmorton on the back.
“Ye ha’ heard o’ my deeds,” he said.
“All England rings with them,” Throckmorton said. He interjected, “Still! hound!” to Lascelles in Italian, and went on to Culpepper: “I ha’ moved the King to come this night to thy cousin’s room hard by for I knew ye would go to her. The King is hot to speak with thee. Comport thyself as I do bid thee and art a made man indeed.”
Culpepper laughed with hysterical delight.
“By Cock!” he shouted. “Master Viridus, thou art naught to this. Three farms shall not content me nor yet ten.”
Throckmorton’s eyes shot a glance at Viridus and back again to Lascelles’ face.
“If you speak I slay you,” he said. Lascelles’ eyes started from his head, his mouth worked, and on the table his hands jerked convulsively. But Throckmorton had seen that Viridus still sat motionless.
“By Cock!” Culpepper cried. “By Guy and Cock! let me kiss thee.”
“Sir,” Throckmorton said, “I pray you speak no more words, not at all till I bid you speak. I am a very great lord here; you shall observe gravity and decorum or never will I bring you to the King. You are not made for Courts.”
“Oh, I kiss your hands,” Culpepper answered him. “But wherefore have you a dagger?”
“Sir,” Throckmorton said again, “I will have you silent, for if the King should pass the door he will be offended by your babble.” He interjected to Viridus, speaking in Italian, “Speak thou to this fool and engage him to think. I can give you no more grounds, but you must quickly decide either to go with Rich the Chancellor and myself or to remain the liege of the Privy Seal.”
Never once did he take his eyes from Lascelles, and the sweat stood upon his forehead. Once when Lascelles moved he slid the dagger along the table with a sharp motion and a gasping of breath, as a pincer pressed to the death will make a faint. Yet his voice neither raised itself nor fell one shade.
“And if I will aid you in this, what reward do I get?” Viridus asked. He too spoke low and unmovedly, keeping his eyes upon the table.
“The one-half of my enrichments for five years, the one-half of those of the Chancellor, and my voice for you with the King and with the new Queen.”
“And if I will not go with you?”
“Then when the King passeth this door I do cry out ‘Treason! treason!’ and you, I, and this man, and this shall tonight sleep in the King’s prison, not in Privy Seal’s. And I will have you think that I am sib and rib with Kat Howard who shall sway the King if her cousin be induced not to play the beast.”
Viridus spoke no word; but when Culpepper, idle and gaping, reached out his hand to take the black flagon of wine that was between them under the candles on the table, Viridus stretched forth his hand and clasped the bottle.
“It is not expedient that you drink,” he said.
“Why somever then?” Culpepper asked.
“That neither do you make a beast of yourself if you come before the King’s great majesty this night,” Viridus said in his cold and minatory voice, “not yet smell beastly of liquors when you kiss the King his hand.”
Culpepper said:
“By Cock! I had forgot the King’s highness.”
“See that you kneel before him and speak not; see that you raise your eyes not from the floor nor breathe loudly; see that when the King’s high and awful majesty dismisses you you go quietly.” Throckmorton spoke. “See that you speak not with nor of your cousin. For so dreadful is a king, and this King more than others; and so terrible his wrath and desire of worship—and this King’s more than others—that if ye speak above a whisper’s sound, if ye act other than as a babe before its preceptor’s rod, you are cast out utterly and undone. You shall never more have farms nor lands; you shall never more have joyance nor gladness; you shall rot forgotten in a hole as you had never done brave things for the King’s grace.”
“By Cock!” Culpepper said, “it seems it is easier to talk of a king than with one.”
“See that you remember it,” Throckmorton said, “for with great trouble have I brought this King so far to talk with you!”
He moved his dagger yet nearer to Lascelles’ form and held his finger to his lip. Viridus had never once moved; he stayed now as still as
