'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 expedition--ye did not know he was my messenger; then wherefore did ye not run to raise all the castle for succour?'
The young Poins pointed to the wound above his eye and then to the ground of the corridor. He would signify that Culpepper had struck him, and that there, on the ground, he had lain senseless.
'Ho!' the King said, for he was willing to know how many men in that castle had wind of this mischance. 'You lay not there all this while. When I came here along, you stood here by the door in your place.'
The young Poins fell upon his knees. He shook more violently than a naked man on a frosty day. For here indeed was the centre of his treason, since Lascelles had bidden him stay there, once Culpepper was in the Queen's room, and to say later that there the Queen had bidden him stay whilst she had her lover. And now, before the King's tremendous presence, he had the fear at his heart that the King knew this.
'Wherefore! wherefore!' the King thundered, 'wherefore didst not cry out--cry out--"Treason, Raise the watch!"? Hail out aloud?'
He waited, silent for a long time. The three pikemen leaned upon their pikes; and now Culpepper had fallen against the door-post, where the King held him up. And behind his back the Queen marvelled at the King's ready wit. This was the best stroke that ever she had known him do. And the Lady Rochford lay where she had feigned to faint, straining her ears.
With all these ears listening for his words the young Poins knelt, his teeth chattering like burning wood that crackles.
'Wherefore? wherefore?' the King cried again.
Half inaudibly, his eyes upon the ground, the boy mumbled, 'It was to save the Queen from scandal!'
The King let his jaw fall, in a fine aping of amazement. Then, with the huge swiftness of a bull, he threw Culpepper towards one of the guards, and, leaning over, had the kneeling boy by the throat.
'Scandal!' he said. 'Body of God! Scandal!' And the boy screamed out, and raised his hands to hide the King's intolerable great face that blazed down over his eyes.
The huge man cast him from him, so that he fell over backwards, and lay upon his side.
'Scandal!' the King cried out to his guards. 'Here is a pretty scandal! That a King may not send a messenger to his wife withouten scandal! God help me....'
He stood suddenly again over the boy as if he would trample him to a shapeless pulp. But, trembling there, he stepped back.
'Up, bastard!' he called out. 'Run as ye never ran. Fetch hither the Lord d'Espahn and His Grace of Canterbury, that should have ordered these matters.'
The boy stumbled to his knees, and then, a flash of scarlet, ran, his head down, as if eagles were tearing at his hair.
The King turned upon his guard.
'Ho!' he said, 'you, Jenkins, stay here with this my knight cousin. You, Cale and Richards, run to fetch a launderer that shall set a mattress in the ante-chamber for this my cousin to lie on. For this my cousin is the Queen's chamber-ward, and shall there lie when I am here, if so be I have occasion for a messenger at night.'
The two guards ran off, striking upon the ground before them as they ran the heavy staves of their pikes. This noise was intended to warn all to make way for his Highness' errand-bearers.
'Why,' the King said pleasantly to Jenkins, a guard with a blond and shaven face whom he liked well, 'let us set this gentleman against the wall in the ante-room till his bed be come. He hath earned gentle usage, since he hasted much, bringing my message from Scotland to the Queen, and is very ill.'
So, helping his guard gently to conduct the drunkard into his wife's dark ante-room, the King came out again to his wife.
'Is it well done?' he asked.
'Marvellous well done,' she answered.
'I am the man for these difficult times!' he answered, and was glad.
The Queen sighed a little. For if she admired and wondered at her lord's power skilfully to have his way, it made her sad to think--as she must think--that so devious was man's work.
'I would,' she said, 'that it was not to such an occasion that I spurred thee.'
Her eyes, being cast downwards, fell upon the Lady Rochford, by the table.
'Ho, get up,' she cried. 'You have feigned fainting long enough. But for you all this had been more easy. I would have you relieve mine eyes of the sight of your face.' She moved to aid the old woman to rise, but before she was upon her knees there stood without the door both the Lord d'Espahn and the Archbishop. They had waited just beyond the corridor-end with a great many of the other lords, all afraid of mysteries they knew not what, and thus it was that they came so soon upon the young Poins' summoning.
II
The King thought fit to change his mood, so that it was with uplifted brows and a quizzing smile at the corners of his mouth that for a minute he greeted these frightened lords in the doorway. They stood there silent, the Archbishop very dejected, the Lord d'Espahn, with his grey beard, very erect and ruddy featured.
'Why, God help me,' the King said, 'what make of Court is this of mine where a King may not send a messenger to his wife?'
The Archbishop swallowed in his throat; the Lord d'Espahn did not speak but gazed before him.
'You shall tell me what befell, for I am ignorant,' the King said; 'but first I will tell you what I do know.
'Why, come out with me into the corridor, wife,' he cried over his shoulder. 'For it is not fitting that these lords come into thy apartment. I will walk with them and talk.'
He took the Archbishop by the elbow and the Lord d'Espahn by the upper arm, and, leaning upon them, propelled them gently before him.
'Thus it was,' he said; 'this cousin of my wife's was in the King o' Scots' good town of Edinboro'. And, being there, he was much upon my conscience--for I would not have a cousin of my wife's be there in exile, he being one that formerly much fended for her....'
He spoke out his words and repeated these things for his own purposes, the Queen following behind. When they were come to the corridor-end, there he found, as he had thought, a knot of lords and gentlemen, babbling with their ears pricked up.
'Nay, stay,' he said, 'this is a matter that all may hear.'
There were there the Duke of Norfolk and his son, young Surrey with the vacant mouth, Sir Henry Wriothesley with the great yellow beard, the Lord Dacre of the North, the old knight Sir N. Rochford, Sir Henry Peel of these parts, with a many of their servants, amongst them Lascelles. Most of them were in scarlet or purple, but many were in black. The Earl of Surrey had the Queen's favour of a crowned rose in his bonnet, for he was of her party. The gallery opened out there till it was as big as a large room, broad and low-ceiled, and lit with torches in irons at the angles of it. On rainy days the Queen's maids were here accustomed to play at stool-ball.
'This is a matter that all may hear,' the King said, 'and some shall render account.' He let the Lord d'Espahn and the Archbishop go, so that they faced him. The Queen looked over his shoulder.
'As thus ...' he said.
And he repeated how it had lain upon his conscience and near his heart that the Queen's good cousin languished in the town of Edinburgh.
'And how near we came to Edinboro' those of ye that were with me can make account.'
And, lying there, he had taken occasion to send a messenger with others that went to the King o' Scots--to send a messenger with letters unto this T. Culpepper. One letter was to bid him hasten home unto the Queen, and one was a letter that he should bear.
'For,' said the King, 'we thought thus--as ye wist--that the King o' Scots would come obedient to our summoning and that there we should lie some days awaiting and entertaining him. Thus did I wish to send my Queen swift message of our faring, and I was willing that this, her cousin and mine, should be my postman and messenger. For he should--I bade him--set sail in a swift ship for these coasts and so come quicker than ever a man might by land.'
He paused to observe the effect of his words, but no lord spoke though some whispered amongst themselves.
'Now,' he said, 'what stood within my letter to the Queen was this, after salutations, that she should reward this her cousin that in the aforetime had much fended for her when she was a child. For I was aware how, out of a great delicacy and fear of nepotism, such as was shown by certain of the Popes now dead, she raised up none of her relations and blood, nor none that before had aided her when she was a child and poor. But I was willing that this should be otherwise, and they be much helped that before had helped her since now she helpeth me and assuageth my many and fell labours.'