The Fifth Queen Crowned
weathering, approached the colour of his that shewed the pink and white
of indoors. She came very slowly near him, for she was dazed. But when
she was almost at the sill he caught her hand and drew it beneath his
elbow.
'Tell me truly,' she said, 'shall I see the Court or a prison?... But
you cannot speak truth, nor ever could when we were tiny twins. God help
me: last Sunday I had the mind to wed my yard-man. I would become such a
liar as thou to come away from here.'
'Sister,' he said, 'this I tell you most truly: that this shall fall out
according as you obey me and inform me'; and, because he was a little
the taller, he leaned over her as they walked away together.
* * * * *
On the fourth day from then they were come to the great wood that is to
south and east of the castle of Pontefract. Here Lascelles, who had
ridden much with his sister, forsook her and went ahead of the slow and
heavy horses of that troop of men. The road was broadened out to forty
yards of green turf between the trees, for this was a precaution against
ambushes of robbers. Across the road, after he had ridden alone for an
hour and a half, there was a guard of four men placed. And here, whilst
he searched for his pass to come within the limits of the Court, he
asked what news, and where the King was.
It was told him that the King lay still at the Fivefold Vents, two days'
progress from the castle, and as it chanced that a verderer's pricker
came out of the wood where he had been to mark where the deer lay for
to-morrow's killing, Lascelles bade this man come along with him for a
guide.
'Sir, ye cannot miss the way,' the pricker said surlily. 'I have my deer
to watch.'
'I will have you to guide me,' Lascelles said, 'for I little know these
parts.'
'Well,' the pricker answered him, 'it is true that I have not often seen
you ride a-hawking.'
Whilst they went along the straight road, Lascelles, who unloosened the
woodman's tongue with a great drink of sherry-sack, learned that it was
said that only very unwillingly did the King lie so long at the Fivefold
Vents. For on the morrow there was to be driven by, up there, a great
herd of moor stags and maybe a wolf or two. The King would be home with
his wife, it was reported, but the younger lords had been so importunate
with him to stay and abide this gallant chase and great slaughter that,
they having ridden loyally with him, he had yielded to their prayers and
stayed there--twenty-four hours, it was said.
'Why, you know a great deal,' Lascelles answered.
'We who stand and wait had needs have knowledge,' the woodman said, 'for
we have little else.'
'Aye, 'tis a hard service,' Lascelles said. 'Did you see the Queen's
Highness o' Thursday week borrow a handkerchief of Sir Roger Pelham to
lure her falcon back?'
'That did not I,' the woodman answered, 'for o' Thursday week it was a
frost and the Queen rode not out.'
'Well, it was o' Saturday,' Lascelles said.
'Nor was it yet o' Saturday,' the woodman cried; 'I will swear it. For
o' Saturday the Queen's Highness shot with the bow, and Sir Roger
Pelham, as all men know, fell with his horse on Friday, and lies up
still.'
'Then it was Sir Nicholas Rochford,' Lascelles persisted.
'Sir,' the woodman said, 'you have a very wrong tale, and patent it is
that little you ride a-hunting.'
'Well, I mind my book,' Lascelles said. 'But wherefore?'
'Sir,' the woodman answered, 'it is thus: The Queen when she rides
a-hawking has always behind her her page Toussaint, a little boy. And
this little boy holdeth ever the separate lures for each hawk that the
Queen setteth up. And the falcon or hawk or genette or tiercel having
stooped, the Queen will call upon that eyass for the lure appropriated
to each bird as it chances. And very carefully the Queen's Highness
observeth the laws of the chase, of venery and hawking. For the which I
honour her.'
Lascelles said, 'Well, well!'
'As for the borrowing of a handkerchief,' the woodman pursued, 'that is
a very idle tale. For, let me tell you, a lady might borrow a jewelled
feather or a scarlet pouch or what not that is bright and shall take a
bird's eye--a little mirror upon a cord were a good thing. But a
handkerchief! Why, Sir Bookman, that a lady can only do if she will
signify to all the world: "This knight is my servant and I his
mistress." Those very words it signifieth--and that the better for it
showeth that that lady is minded to let her hawk go, luring the
gentleman to her with that favour of his.'
'Well, well,' Lascelles said, 'I am not so ignorant that I did not know
that. Therefore I asked you, for it seemed a very strange thing.'
'It is a very foolish tale and very evil,' the man answered. 'For this I
will swear: that the Queen's Highness--and I and her honour for
it--observeth very jealously the laws of wood and moorland and chase.'
'So I have heard,' Lascelles said. 'But I see the castle. I will not
take you farther, but will let you go back to the goodly deer.'
'Pray God they be not wandered fore,' the woodman said. 'You could have
found this way without me.'
* * * * *
There was but one road into the castle, and that from the south, up a
steep green bank. Up the roadway Lascelles must ride his horse past four
men that bore a litter made of two pikes wattled with green boughs and
covered with a horse-cloth. As Lascelles passed by the very head of it,
the man that lay there sprang off it to his feet, and cried out--
'I be the Queen's cousin and servant. I brought her to the Court.'
Lascelles' horse sprang sideways, a great bound up the bank. He galloped
ten paces ahead before the rider could stay him and turn round. The man,
all rags and with a black face, had fallen into the dust of the road,
and still cried out outrageously. The bearers set down the litter, wiped
their brows, and then, falling all four upon Culpepper, made to carry
him by his legs and arms, for they were weary of laying him upon the
litter from which incessantly he sprang.
But before them upon his horse was Lascelles and impeded their way.
Culpepper drew in and pushed out his legs and arms, so that they all
four staggered, and--
'For God's sake, master,' one of them grunted out, 'stand aside that we
may pass. We have toil enow in bearing him.'
'Why, set the poor gentleman down upon the litter,' Lascelles said, 'and
let us talk a little.'
The men set Culpepper on the horse-cloth, and one of them knelt down to
hold him there.
'If you will lend us your horse to lay him across, we may come more
easily up,' one said. In these days the position and trade of a spy was
so little esteemed--it had been far other with the great informers of
Privy Seal's day--that these men, being of the Queen's guard, would talk
roughly to Lascelles, who was a mere poor gentleman of the Archbishop's
if his other vocation could be neglected. Lascelles sat, his hand upon
his chin.
'You use him very roughly if this be the Queen's cousin,' he said.
The bearer set back his beard and laughed at the sky.
'This is a coif--a poor rag of a merchant,' he cried out. 'If this were
the Queen's cousin should we bear him thus on a clout?'
'I am the Queen's cousin, T. Culpepper,' Culpepper shouted at the sky.
'Who be you that stay me from her?'
'Why, you may hear plainly,' the bearer said. 'He is mazed, doited,
starved, thirsted, and a seer of visions.'
Lascelles pondered, his elbow upon his saddle-peak, his chin caught in
his hand.
'How came ye by him?' he asked.
One with another they told him the tale, how, the Queen being ridden
towards the north parts, at the extreme end of her ride had seen the
man, at a distance, among the heather, flogging a dead horse with a
moorland kern beside him. He was a robbed, parched, fevered, and amazed
traveller. The Queen's Highness, compassionating, had bidden bear him to
the castle and comfort and cure him, not having looked upon his face or
heard his tongue. For, for sure then, she had let him die where he was;
since, no sooner were these four, his new bearers, nearly come up among
the knee-deep heather, than this man had started up, his eyes upon the
Queen's cavalcade and many at a distance. And, with his sword drawn and
screaming, he had cried out that, if that was the Queen, he was the
Queen's cousin. They had tripped up his heels in a bed of ling and
quieted him with a clout on the poll from an axe end.
'But now we have him here,' the eldest said; 'where we shall bestow him
we know not.'
Lascelles had his eyes upon the sick man's face as if it fascinated him,
and, slowly, he got down from his horse. Culpepper then lay very still
with his eyes closed, but his breast heaved as though against tight and
strong ropes that bound him.
'I think I do know this gentleman for one John Robb,' he said. 'Are you
very certain the Queen's Highness did not know his face?'
'Why, she came not ever within a quarter mile of him,' the bearer said.
'Then it is a great charity of the Queen to show mercy to a man she hath
never seen,' Lascelles answered absently. He was closely casting his
eyes over Culpepper. Culpepper lay very still, his begrimed face to the
sky, his hands abroad above his head. But when Lascelles bent over him
it was as if he shuddered, and then he wept.
Lascelles bent down, his hands upon his knees. He was afraid--he was
very afraid. Thomas Culpepper, the Queen's cousin, he had never seen in
his life. But he had heard it reported that he had red hair and beard,
and went always dressed in green with stockings of red. And this man's
hair was red, and his beard, beneath coal grime, was a curly red, and
his coat, beneath a crust of black filth, was Lincoln green and of a
good cloth. And, beneath the black, his stockings were of red silk. He
reflected slowly, whilst the bearers laughed amongst themselves at this
Queen's kinsman in rags and filth.
Lascelles gave them his bottle of sack to drink empty among them, that
he might have the longer time to think.
If this were indeed the Queen's cousin, come unknown to the Queen and
mazed and muddled in himself to Pontefract, what might not Lascelles
make of him? For all the world knew that he loved her with a mad
love--he had sold farms to buy her gowns. It was he that had brought her
to Court, upon an ass, at Greenwich, when her mule--as all men knew--had
stumbled upon the threshold. Once before, it was said, Culpepper had
burst in with his sword drawn upon the King and Kate Howard when they
sat together. And Lascelles trembled with eagerness at the thought of
what use he might not make of this mad and insolent lover of the
Queen's!
But did he dare?
Culpepper had been sent into Scotland to secure him up, away at the
farthest limits of the realm. Then, if he was come back? This grime was
the grime of a sea-coal ship! He knew that men without passports,
outlaws and the like, escaped from Scotland on the Durham ships that
went to Leith with coal. And this man came on the Durham road. Then....
If it were Culpepper he had come unpermitted. He was an outlaw. Dare
Lascelles have trade with--dare he harbour--an outlaw? It would be
unbeknown to the Queen's Highness! He kicked his heels with impatience
to come to a resolution.
He reflected swiftly:
What hitherto he had were: some tales spread abroad about the Queen's
lewd Court--tales in London Town. He had, too, the keeper of the Queen's
door bribed and talked into his service and interest. And he had his
sister....
His sister would, with threatening, tell tales of the Queen before
marriage. And she would find him other maids and grooms, some no doubt
more willing still than Mary Hall. But the keeper of the Queen's door!