The Fifth Queen (70 page)

She ran at the old woman—

‘God forgive me if I have killed my cousin,’ she said. ‘I am certain that now He will forgive me if I slay thee.’ And she had Culpepper’s dagger in her hand.

‘For,’ she said, ‘I stand for Christ His cause: I will not be undone by meddlers. Hold thy peace!’

The Lady Rochford opened her mouth to speak.

‘Hold thy peace!’ the Queen said again, and she lifted up the dagger. ‘Speak not. Do as I bid thee. Answer me when I ask. For this I swear as I am the Queen that, since I have the power to slay whom I will and none question it, I will slay thee if thou do not my bidding.’

The old woman trembled lamentably.

‘Where is the King come to?’ the Queen said.

‘Even to the great gate; he is out of sight,’ was her answer.

‘Come now,’ the Queen commanded. ‘Let us drag my cousin behind my table.’

‘Shall he be hidden there?’ the Lady Rochford cried out. ‘Let us cast him from the window.’

‘Hold your peace,’ the Queen cried out. ‘Speak you never one word more. But come!’

She took her cousin by the arm, the Lady Rochford took him by the other and they dragged him, inert and senseless, into the shadow of the Queen’s mirror table.

‘Pray God the King comes soon,’ the Queen said. She stood above her cousin and looked down upon him. A great pitifulness came into her face.

‘Loosen his shirt,’ she said. ‘Feel if his heart beats!’

The Lady Rochford had a face full of fear and repulsion.

‘Loosen his shirt. Feel if his heart beats,’ the Queen said. ‘And oh!’ she added, ‘woe shall fall upon thee if he be dead.’

She reflected a moment to think upon how long it should be ere the King came to her door. Then she raised her chair, and sat down at her mirror. For one minute she set her face into her hands; then she began to straighten herself, and with her hands behind her to tighten the laces of her dress.

‘For,’ she continued to Lady Rochford, ‘I do hold thee more guilty of his death than himself. He is but a drunkard in his cups, thou a palterer in sobriety.’

She set her cap upon her head and smoothed the hair beneath it. In all her movements there was a great swiftness and decision. She set the jewel in her cap, the pomander at her side, the chain around her neck, the jewel at her breast.

‘His heart beats,’ the Lady Rochford said, from her knees at Culpepper’s side.

‘Then thank the saints,’ Katharine answered, ‘and do up again his shirt.’

She hurried in her attiring, and uttered engrossed commands.

‘Kneel thou there by his side. If he stir or mutter before the King be in and the door closed, put thy hand across his mouth.’

‘But the King—’ the Lady Rochford said. ‘And—’

‘Merciful God!’ Katharine cried out again. ‘I am the Queen. Kneel there.’

The Lady Rochford trembled down upon her knees; she was in fear for her life by the axe if the King came in.

‘I thank God that the King is come,’ the Queen said. ‘If he had not, this man must have gone from hence in the sight of other men. So I will pardon thee for having cried out if now thou hold him silent till the King be in.’

There came from very near a blare of trumpets. Katharine rose up, and went again to gaze upon her cousin. The dagger she laid upon her table.

‘He may hold still yet,’ she said. ‘But I charge you that you muzzle him if he move or squeak.’

There came great blows upon the door, and through the heavy wood, the Ha-ha of many voices. Slowly the Queen moved to the bed, and from it took the key where she had thrown it. There came again the heavy knocking, and she unlocked the door, slowly still.

In the corridor there were many torches, and beneath them the figure of the King in scarlet. Behind him was Norfolk all in black and with his yellow face, and Cranmer in black and
with his anxious eyes, and behind them many other lords. The King came in, and, slow and stately, the Queen went down on her knees to greet him. The torchlight shone upon her jewels and her garments; her fair face was immobile, and her eyes upon the ground. The King raised her up, bent his knee to her, and kissed her on the hands, and so, turning to the men without, he uttered, roundly and fully, and his cheeks were ruddy with joy, and his eyes smiled—

‘My lords, I am beholden to the King o’ Scots. For had he met me I had not yet been here. Get you to your beds; I could wish ye had such wives—’

‘The King! the King!’ a voice muttered.

Henry said—

‘Ha, who spoke?’

There was a faint squeak, a dull rustle.

‘My cousin Kat—’ the voice said.

The King said—

‘Ha!’ again, and incredulous and haughty he raised his brows.

Above the mirror, in the great light of the candles, there showed the pale face, the fishy, wide-open and bewildered eyes of Culpepper. His hair was dishevelled in points; his mouth was open in amazement. He uttered—

‘The King!’ as if that were the most astonishing thing, and, standing behind the table, staggered and clutched the arras to sustain himself.

Henry said—

‘Ha! Treason!’

But Katharine whispered at his ear—

‘No; this my cousin is distraught. Speak on to the lords.’

In the King’s long pause several lords said aloud—

‘The King cried “Treason!” Draw your swords!’

Then the King cast his cap upon the ground.

‘By God!’ he said. ‘What marlocking is this? Is it general joy that emboldens ye to this license? God help me!’ he said,
and he stamped his foot upon the ground—’ Body of God!’ And many other oaths he uttered. Then, with a sudden clutching at his throat, he called out—

‘Well! well! I pardon ye. For no doubt to some that be young—and to some that be old too—it is an occasion for mummeries and japes when a good man cometh home to his dame.’

He looked round upon Culpepper. The Queen’s cousin stood, his jaw still hanging wide, and his body crumpled back against the arras. He was hidden from them all by wall and door, but Henry could not judge how long he would there remain. Riding through the night he had conned a speech that he would have said at the Queen’s door, and at the times of joy and graciousness he loved to deliver great speeches. But there he said only—

‘Why, God keep you. I thank such of you as were with me upon the campaign and journey. Now this campaign and journey is ended—I dissolve you each to his housing and bed. Farewell. Be as content as I be!’

And, with his great hand he swung to the heavy door.

T
HE
L
ADY
R
OCHFORD
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.