The Fifth Queen Crowned
'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 torch-light 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.
PART THREE
THE DWINDLING MELODY
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.'
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