'Lie down, lie down,' and he set one elbow on to the carpet and lay over
on his side, then on his back. She took his head again on to her lap,
and with soft motions reached to take the dagger from his hand. He
yielded it up and gazed upwards into her face.
'Kat!' he said, and she answered--
'Aye!'
There came from very far the sound of a horn.
'When you can stand,' she said, 'you must get you gone.'
'I have sold farms to get you gowns,' he answered.
'And then we came to Court,' she said, 'to grow great.'
He passed his left hand once more over his eyes with a gesture of
ineffable weariness, but his other arm that was extended, she knelt
upon.
'Now we are great,' she said.
He muttered, 'I wooed thee in an apple orchard. Let us go back to
Lincolnshire.'
'Why, we will talk of it in the morning,' she said. 'It is very late.'
Her brain throbbed with the pulsing blood. She was set to get him gone
before the young Poins could call men to her door. It was maddeningly
strange to think that none hitherto had come. Maybe Culpepper had struck
him dead with his knife, or he lay without fainting. This black enigma,
calling for haste that she dare not show, filled all the shadows of that
shadowy room.
'It is very late,' she said, 'you must get you gone. It was compacted
between us that ever you would get you gone early.'
'Aye, I would not have thee shamed,' he said. He spoke upwards, slowly
and luxuriously, his head so softly pillowed, his eyes gazing at the
ceiling. He had never been so easy in two years past. 'I remember that
was the occasion of our pact. I did wooe thee in an apple orchard to the
grunting of hogs.'
'Get you gone,' she said; 'buy me a favour against the morning.'
'Why,' he said, 'I am a very rich lord. I have lands in Kent now. I will
buy thee such a gown ... such a gown.... The hogs grunted.... There is a
song about it.... Let me go to buy thy gown. Aye, now, presently. I
remember a great many things. As thus ... there is a song of a lady
loved a swine. Honey, said she, and hunc, said he.'
Whilst she listened a great many thoughts came into her mind--of their
youth at home, where indeed, to the grunting of hogs, he had wooed her
when she came out from conning her Plautus with the Magister. And at the
same time it troubled her to consider where the young Poins had bestowed
himself. Maybe he was dead; maybe he lay in a faint.
'It was in our pact,' she said to Culpepper, 'that you should get you
gone ever when I would have it.'
'Aye, sure, it was in our pact,' he said.
He closed his eyes as if he would fall asleep, being very weary and come
to his desired haven. Above his closed eyes Katharine threw the key of
her antechamber on to the bed. She pointed with her hand to that door
that the Lady Rochford should undo. If she could get her cousin through
that door--and now he was in the mood--if she could but get him through
there and out at the door beyond the Big Room into the corridor, before
her guard came back....
But the Lady Rochford was leaning far out beyond the window-sill and did
not see her gesture.