The Fifth Queen Crowned Part 22

'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 G.o.d, 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 lackl.u.s.tre; 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 ba.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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! G.o.d'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 p.r.o.ne with the drink and the fever.

'Now, by G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 cas.e.m.e.nt. 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 pa.s.sed 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.'