The Fifth Queen Crowned
_'When all the little hills are hid in snow,_
_And all the small brown birds by frost are slain,_
_And sad and slow_
_The silly sheep do go,_
_All seeking shelter to and fro--_
_Come once again_
_To these familiar, silent, misty lands----'_
And--
'Aye,' she said; 'to these ancient and familiar lands of the dear
saints, please God, when the winter snows are upon them, once again
shall come the feet of God's messenger, for this is the joyfullest day
this land hath known since my namesake was cast down and died.'
Suddenly there were muffled cries from beyond the thick door in the
corridor, and on the door itself resounding blows. The Lady Rochford
gave out great shrieks, more than her feeble body could have been deemed
to hold.
'Body of God!' the Queen said, 'what is this?'
'Your cousin!' the Lady Rochford cried out. She came running to the
Queen, who, in standing up, had overset her heavy chair, and, falling to
her knees, she babbled out--'Your cousin! Oh, let it not all come again.
Call your guard. Let it not all come again'; and she clawed into the
Queen's skirt, uttering incomprehensible clamours.
'What? What? What?' Katharine said.
'He was with the Archbishop. Your cousin with the Archbishop. I heard
it. I sent to stay him if it were so'; and the old woman's teeth
crackled within her jaws. 'O God, it is come again!' she cried.
The door flung open heavily, but slowly, because it was so heavy. And,
in the archway, whilst a great scream from the old woman wailed out down
the corridors, Katharine was aware of a man in scarlet, locked in a
struggle with a raging swirl of green manhood. The man in scarlet fell
back, and then, crying out, ran away. The man in green, his bonnet off,
his red hair sticking all up, his face pallid, and his eyes staring like
those of a sleep-walker, entered the room. In his right hand he had a
dagger. He walked very slowly.
The Queen thought fast: the old Lady Rochford had her mouth open; her
eyes were upon the dagger in Culpepper's hand.
'I seek the Queen,' he said, but his eyes were lacklustre; they fell
upon Katharine's face as if they had no recognition, or could not see.
She turned her body round to the old Lady Rochford, bending from the
hips so as not to move her feet. She set her fingers upon her lips.
'I seek--I seek----' he said, and always he came closer to her. His
eyes were upon her face, and the lids moved.
'I seek the Queen,' he said, and beneath his husky voice there were bass
notes of quivering anger, as if, just as he had been by chance calmed by
throwing down the guard, so by chance his anger might arise again.
The Queen never moved, but stood up full and fair; one strand of her
hair, loosened, fell low over her left ear. When he was so close to her
that his protruded hips touched her skirt, she stole her hand slowly
round him till it closed upon his wrist above the dagger. His mouth
opened, his eyes distended.
'I seek----' he said, and then--'Kat!' as if the touch of her cool and
firm fingers rather than the sight of her had told to his bruised senses
who she was.
'Get you gone!' she said. 'Give me your dagger.' She uttered each word
roundly and fully as if she were pondering the next move over a
chequer-board.
'Well, I will kill the Queen,' he said. 'How may I do it without my
knife?'
'Get you gone!' she said again. 'I will direct you to the Queen.'
He passed the back of his left hand wearily over his brow.
'Well, I have found thee, Kat!' he said.
She answered: 'Aye!' and her fingers twined round his on the hilt of the
dagger, so that his were loosening.
Then the old Lady Rochford screamed out--
'Ha! God's mercy! Guards, swords, come!' The furious blood came into
Culpepper's face at the sound. His hand he tore from Katharine's, and
with the dagger raised on high he ran back from her and then forward
towards the Lady Rochford. With an old trick of fence, that she had
learned when she was a child, Katharine Howard set out her foot before
him, and, with the speed of his momentum, he pitched over forward. He
fell upon his face so that his forehead was upon the Lady Rochford's
right foot. His dagger he still grasped, but he lay prone with the drink
and the fever.
'Now, by God in His mercy,' Katharine said to her, 'as I am the Queen I
charge you----'
'Take his knife and stab him to the heart!' the Lady Rochford cried out.
'This will slay us two.'
'I charge you that you listen to me,' the Queen said, 'or, by God, I
will have you in chains!'
'I will call your many,' the Lady Rochford cried out, for terror had
stopped up the way from her ears to her brain, and she made towards the
door. But Katharine set her hand to the old woman's shoulder.
'Call no man,' she commanded. 'This is a device of mine enemies to have
men see this of me.'
'I will not stay here to be slain,' the old woman said.
'Then mine own self will slay you,' the Queen answered. Culpepper moved
in his stupor. 'Before Heaven,' the Queen said, 'stay you there, and he
shall not again stand up.'
'I will go call----' the old woman besought her, and again Culpepper
moved. The Queen stood right up against her; her breast heaved, her face
was rigid. Suddenly she turned and ran to the door. That key she
wrenched round and out, and then to the other door beside it, and that
key too she wrenched round and out.
'I will not stay alone with my cousin,' she said, 'for that is what mine
enemies would have. And this I vow, that if again you squeak I will have
you tried as being an abettor of this treason.' She went and knelt down
at her cousin's head; she moved his face round till it was upon her lap.
'Poor Tom,' she said; he opened his eyes and muttered stupid words.
She looked again at Lady Rochford.
'All this is nothing,' she said, 'if you will hide in the shadow of the
bed and keep still. I have seen my cousin a hundred times thus muddied
with drink, and do not fear him. He shall not stand up till he is ready
to go through the door; but I will not be alone with him and tend him.'
The Lady Rochford waddled and quaked like a jelly to the shadow of the
bed curtains. She pulled back the curtain over the window, and, as if
the contact with the world without would help her, threw back the
casement. Below, in the black night, a row of torches shook and
trembled, like little planets, in the distance.
Katharine Howard held her cousin's head upon her knees. She had seen him
thus a hundred times and had no fear of him. For thus in his cups, and
fevered as he was with ague that he had had since a child, he was always
amenable to her voice though all else in the world enraged him. So that,
if she could keep the Lady Rochford still, she might well win him out
through the door at which he came in.
And, first, when he moved to come to his knees, she whispered--
'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.
Culpepper muttered--
'Ah; well; aye; even so----' And from the window came a scream that
tore the air--
'The King! the King!'
And immediately it was as if the life of a demon had possessed Culpepper
in all his limbs.
'Merciful God!' the Queen cried out. 'I am patient.'
Culpepper had writhed from her till he sat up, but she hollowed her hand
around his throat. His head she forced back till she held it upon the
floor, and whilst he writhed with his legs she knelt upon his chest with
one knee. He screamed out words like: 'Bawd,' and 'Ilcock,' and
'Hecate,' and the Lady Rochford screamed--
'The King comes! the King comes!'
Then Katharine said within herself--
'Is it this to be a Queen?'
She set both her hands upon his neck and pressed down the whole weight
of her frame, till the voice died in his throat. His body stirred
beneath her knee, convulsively, so that it was as if she rode a horse.
His eyes, as slowly he strangled, glared hideously at the ceiling, from
which the carven face of a Queen looked down into them. At last he lay
still, and Katharine Howard rose up.
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.