“These be the glories that I crave,” she said. “I would have the glory of advising thee to this. Before God I would escape from being thy Queen if escape I might. I would live as the Sibyls that gave good counsel and lived in rocky cells in sackcloth. So would I fainer. But if you will have me, upon your oaths to me of this our affiancing, I beseech you to give me no jewels, neither the revenue of provinces for my dower. But grant it to me that in after ages men may conceive of me as of such a noble woman of Rome.”
Henry leaned forward and stroked first one knee and then the other.
“Why, I will pardon some,” he said. “It had not need of so many words of thine. I am sick of slaughterings when you speak.” A haughty and challenging frown came into his face; his brows wrinkled furiously; he gazed at the opening door that moved half imperceptibly, slowly, in the half light, after the accustomed manner, so that one within might have time to cry out if a visitor was not welcome. For, for the most part, in those days, ladies set bolts across their doors.
Throckmorton stood there, blinking his eyes in the candlelight, and, slowly, he fell upon his knees.
“Majesty,” he said, “I knew not.”
The King maintained a forbidding silence, his green bulk inert and dangerous.
“This lady’s cousin,” Throckmorton pronounced his words slowly, “is new come from France whence he hath driven out from Paris town the Cardinal Pole.”
The King lifted one hand from his thigh, and, heavily, let it fall again.
Throckmorton felt his way still further.
“This lady’s cousin would speak with this lady in cousin-ship. He was set in my care by my lord Privy Seal. I have brought him thus far in safety. For some have made attacks upon him with swords.”
Katharine’s hand went to her throat where she stood, tall and half turning from the King to Throckmorton. The word “Wherefore?” came from her lips.
“Wherefore, I know not,” Throckmorton answered her steadily. His eyes shifted for a moment from the King and rested upon her face. “But this I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.”
“Belike,” the King said, “these swordsmen were friends of Pole.”
“Belike,” Throckmorton answered.
He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.
“For his sake,” he said, “it were well if your Grace, having rewarded him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to Edinbro’ in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and observe.”
“Belike,” the King said. “Get you gone.” But Throckmorton stayed there on his knees and the King uttered: “Anan?”
“Majesty,” Throckmorton said, “I would ye would see this man who is a poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you reward him and send him from hence ere worse befall him.”
The King raised his brows.
“Ye love this man well,” he said.
“Here is too much beating about the bush,” burst from Katharine’s lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little and pale in the half light of the two candles. “This cousin of mine loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of mine shall cause disorders—for indeed he is of disordered intervals. Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.”
“Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,” Henry said. “Let us see this yokel.” He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting, for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St. Thomas’ shrine.
Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass the sill, and looking never at her but at the King’s shoes, he knelt him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:
“Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought me food and dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.”
Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:
“Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe silence in the awful presence of kings.”
Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a minute’s space.
“Silence!” he said. “Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this lady’s tongue?” He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.
“Ye have done well,” he said. “Give me your sword. I will knight you. I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight’s fee farm of a hundred pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye were about my nephew’s courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro’.” He waved his hand to Throckmorton. “See him disposed,” he said.
Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in his seat and thundered:
“Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I ha’ heard ye ha’ made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By God, I am Harry of Windsor!”
He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green shoulders below him.
“Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,” he said. “Get you gone!”
Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.
“Poor Tom,” she cried. “Best it is for thee and me that thou goest. Here thou hast no place.” He shook his head like a man in a daze and was gone.
“Art too patient with the springald,” the King said.
He thundered “Body of God!” again when he saw Throckmorton once more fall to his knees.
“Sire,” he said—and for the first time he faltered in his level tones—“a very great treason has come to my ken this day!”
“Holy altar fires!” the
