The Lady Rochford lay back upon the floor in a great faint.
'Heaven help me!' the Queen said. 'I had rather she had played the villain than been such a palterer.' She glided to the table and picked up the dagger that shone there beneath Culpepper's nose. 'Take even this,' she said to the King. 'It is an ill thing to bestow. Sword he hath none.'
Having had such an estimation of his good wife's wit that, since he would not have her think him a dullard, he passed over the first question that he would have asked, such as, 'I think this be thy cousin and how came he here?'
'Would he have slain me?' he asked instead, as if it were a little thing.
'I do not think so,' Katharine said. 'Maybe it was me he would have slain.'
'Body of God!' the King said sardonically. 'He cometh for no cheap goods.'
He had so often questioned his wife of this cousin of hers that he had his measure indifferent well.
'Why,' the Queen said, 'I do not know that he would have slain me. Maybe it was to save me from dragons that he came with his knife. He was, I think, with the Archbishop's men and came here very drunk. I would pray your Highness' Grace to punish him not over much for he is my mother's nephew and the only friend I had when I was very poor and a young child.'
The King hung his head on his chest, and his rustic eyes surveyed the ground.
'I would have you to think,' she said, 'that he has been among evil men that advised and prompted him thus to assault my door. They would ruin and undo him and me.'
'Well I know it,' Henry said. He rubbed his hand up his left side, opened it and dropped it again--a trick he had when he thought deeply.
'The Archbishop,' he said, 'babbled somewhat--I know not what--of a cousin of thine that was come from the Scots, he thought, without leave or license.'
'But how to get him hence, that my foes triumph not?' the Queen said, 'for I would not have them triumph.'
'I do think upon it,' the King said.
'You are better at it than I,' she answered.
Culpepper stood there at gaze, as if he were a corpse about which they talked. But the speaking of the Queen to another man excited him to gurgle and snarl in his throat like an ape. Then another mood coming into the channels of his brain--
'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 ante-room.'
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 ante-chamber. 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 door-post, 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 boy screamed out, and raised his hands to hide the King's intolerable great face that blazed down over his eyes.
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 ante-chamber 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 ante-room 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 ante-room, 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.
