The huge man cast him from him, so that he fell over backwards, and lay upon his side.
“Scandal!” the King cried out to his guards. “Here is a pretty scandal! That a King may not send a messenger to his wife withouten scandal! God help me. …”
He stood suddenly again over the boy as if he would trample him to a shapeless pulp. But, trembling there, he stepped back.
“Up, bastard!” he called out. “Run as ye never ran. Fetch hither the Lord d’Espahn and His Grace of Canterbury, that should have ordered these matters.”
The boy stumbled to his knees, and then, a flash of scarlet, ran, his head down, as if eagles were tearing at his hair.
The King turned upon his guard.
“Ho!” he said, “you, Jenkins, stay here with this my knight cousin. You, Cale and Richards, run to fetch a launderer that shall set a mattress in the antechamber for this my cousin to lie on. For this my cousin is the Queen’s chamber-ward, and shall there lie when I am here, if so be I have occasion for a messenger at night.”
The two guards ran off, striking upon the ground before them as they ran the heavy staves of their pikes. This noise was intended to warn all to make way for his Highness’ errand-bearers.
“Why,” the King said pleasantly to Jenkins, a guard with a blond and shaven face whom he liked well, “let us set this gentleman against the wall in the anteroom till his bed be come. He hath earned gentle usage, since he hasted much, bringing my message from Scotland to the Queen, and is very ill.”
So, helping his guard gently to conduct the drunkard into his wife’s dark anteroom, the King came out again to his wife.
“Is it well done?” he asked.
“Marvellous well done,” she answered.
“I am the man for these difficult times!” he answered, and was glad.
The Queen sighed a little. For if she admired and wondered at her lord’s power skilfully to have his way, it made her sad to think—as she must think—that so devious was man’s work.
“I would,” she said, “that it was not to such an occasion that I spurred thee.”
Her eyes, being cast downwards, fell upon the Lady Rochford, by the table.
“Ho, get up,” she cried. “You have feigned fainting long enough. But for you all this had been more easy. I would have you relieve mine eyes of the sight of your face.” She moved to aid the old woman to rise, but before she was upon her knees there stood without the door both the Lord d’Espahn and the Archbishop. They had waited just beyond the corridor-end with a great many of the other lords, all afraid of mysteries they knew not what, and thus it was that they came so soon upon the young Poins’ summoning.
II
The King thought fit to change his mood, so that it was with uplifted brows and a quizzing smile at the corners of his mouth that for a minute he greeted these frightened lords in the doorway. They stood there silent, the Archbishop very dejected, the Lord d’Espahn, with his grey beard, very erect and ruddy featured.
“Why, God help me,” the King said, “what make of Court is this of mine where a King may not send a messenger to his wife?”
The Archbishop swallowed in his throat; the Lord d’Espahn did not speak but gazed before him.
“You shall tell me what befell, for I am ignorant,” the King said; “but first I will tell you what I do know.
“Why, come out with me into the corridor, wife,” he cried over his shoulder. “For it is not fitting that these lords come into thy apartment. I will walk with them and talk.”
He took the Archbishop by the elbow and the Lord d’Espahn by the upper arm, and, leaning upon them, propelled them gently before him.
“Thus it was,” he said; “this cousin of my wife’s was in the King o’ Scots’ good town of Edinboro’. And, being there, he was much upon my conscience—for I would not have a cousin of my wife’s be there in exile, he being one that formerly much fended for her. …”
He spoke out his words and repeated these things for his own purposes, the Queen following behind. When they were come to the corridor-end, there he found, as he had thought, a knot of lords and gentlemen, babbling with their ears pricked up.
“Nay, stay,” he said, “this is a matter that all may hear.”
There were there the Duke of Norfolk and his son, young Surrey with the vacant mouth, Sir Henry Wriothesley with the great yellow beard, the Lord Dacre of the North, the old knight Sir N. Rochford, Sir Henry Peel of these parts, with a many of their servants, amongst them Lascelles. Most of them were in scarlet or purple, but many were in black. The Earl of Surrey had the Queen’s favour of a crowned rose in his bonnet, for he was of her party. The gallery opened out there till it was as big as a large room, broad and low-ceiled, and lit with torches in irons at the angles of it. On rainy days the Queen’s maids were here accustomed to play at stool-ball.
“This is a matter that all may hear,” the King said, “and some shall render account.” He let the Lord d’Espahn and the Archbishop go, so that they faced him. The Queen looked over his shoulder.
“As thus …” he said.
And he repeated how it had lain upon his conscience and near his heart that the Queen’s good cousin languished in the town of Edinburgh.
“And how near we came to Edinboro’ those of ye that were with me can make account.”
And, lying there, he had taken occasion to send a messenger with others that went to the King o’ Scots—to send a messenger with letters unto this T. Culpepper.
