“It was the King my cousin Kate did marry. This then is the Queen; I had pacted with myself to forget this Queen.” He spoke straight out before him with the echo of thoughts that he had had during his exile.
“Ho!” the King said and smote his thigh. “It is plain what to do,” and in spite of his scarlet and his bulk he had the air of a heavy but very cunning peasant. He reflected for a little more.
“It fits very well,” he brought out. “This man must be richly rewarded.”
“Why,” Katharine said; “I had nigh strangled him. It makes me tremble to think how nigh I had strangled him. I would well he were rewarded.”
The King considered his wife’s cousin.
“Sirrah,” he said, “we believe that thou canst not kneel, or kneeling, couldst not well again arise.”
Culpepper regarded him with wide, blue, and uncomprehending eyes.
“So, thou standing as thou makest shift to do, we do make thee the keeper of this our Queen’s anteroom.”
He spoke with a pleasant and ironical glee, since it joyed him thus to gibe at one that had loved his wife. He—with his own prowess—had carried her off.
“Master Culpepper,” he said—“or Sir Thomas—for I remember to have knighted you—if you can walk, now walk.”
Culpepper muttered—
“The King! Why the King did wed my cousin Kat!”
And again—
“I must be circumspect. Oh aye, I must be circumspect or all is lost.” For that was one of the things which in Scotland he had again and again impressed upon himself. “But in Lincoln, in bygone times, of a summer’s night—”
“Poor Tom!” the Queen said; “once this fellow did wooe me.”
Great tears gathered in Culpepper’s eyes. They overflowed and rolled down his cheeks.
“In the apple-orchard,” he said, “to the grunting of hogs … for the hogs were below the orchard wall. …”
The King was pleased to think that it had been in his power to raise this lady an infinite distance above the wooing of this poor lout. It gave him an interlude of comedy. But though he set his hands on his hips and chuckled, he was a man too ready for action to leave much time for enjoyment.
“Why weep?” he said to Culpepper. “We have advanced thee to the Queen’s antechamber. Come up thither.”
He approached to Culpepper behind the mirror table and caught him by the arm. The poor drunkard, his face pallid, shrank away from this great bulk of shining scarlet. His eyes moved lamentably round the chamber and rested first upon Katharine, then upon the King.
“Which of us was it you would ha’ killed?” the King said, to show the Queen how brave he was in thus handling a madman. And, being very strong, he dragged the swaying drunkard, who held back and whose head wagged on his shoulders, towards the door.
“Guard ho!” he called out, and before the door there stood three of his own men in scarlet and with pikes.
“Ho, where is the Queen’s door-ward?” he called with a great voice. Before him, from the door side, there came the young Poins; his face was like chalk; he had a bruise above his eyes; his knees trembled beneath him.
“Ho thou!” the King said, “who art thou that would hinder my messenger from coming to the Queen?”
He stood back upon his feet; he clutched the drunkard in his great fist; his eyes started dreadfully.
The young Poins’ lips moved, but no sound came out.
“This was my messenger,” the King said, “and you hindered him. Body of God! Body of God!” and he made his voice to tremble as if with rage, whilst he told this lie to save his wife’s fair fame. “Where have you been? Where have you tarried? What treason is this? For either you knew this was my messenger—as well I would have you know that he is—and it was treason and death to stay him. Or, if because he was drunk and speechless—as well he might be having travelled far and with expedition—ye did not know he was my messenger; then wherefore did ye not run to raise all the castle for succour?”
The young Poins pointed to the wound above his eye and then to the ground of the corridor. He would signify that Culpepper had struck him, and that there, on the ground, he had lain senseless.
“Ho!” the King said, for he was willing to know how many men in that castle had wind of this mischance. “You lay not there all this while. When I came here along, you stood here by the door in your place.”
The young Poins fell upon his knees. He shook more violently than a naked man on a frosty day. For here indeed was the centre of his treason, since Lascelles had bidden him stay there, once Culpepper was in the Queen’s room, and to say later that there the Queen had bidden him stay whilst she had her lover. And now, before the King’s tremendous presence, he had the fear at his heart that the King knew this.
“Wherefore! wherefore!” the King thundered, “wherefore didst not cry out—cry out—‘Treason, Raise the watch!’? Hail out aloud?”
He waited, silent for a long time. The three pikemen leaned upon their pikes; and now Culpepper had fallen against the doorpost, where the King held him up. And behind his back the Queen marvelled at the King’s ready wit. This was the best stroke that ever she had known him do. And the Lady Rochford lay where she had feigned to faint, straining her ears.
With all these ears listening for his words the young Poins knelt, his teeth chattering like burning wood that crackles.
“Wherefore? wherefore?” the King cried again.
Half inaudibly, his eyes upon the ground, the boy mumbled, “It was to save the Queen from scandal!”
The King let his jaw fall, in a fine aping of amazement. Then, with the huge swiftness of a bull, he threw Culpepper towards one of the guards, and, leaning over, had the kneeling boy by the throat.
“Scandal!” he said. “Body of God! Scandal!” And the
