I
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.'