The Fifth Queen Part 18

The old man surveyed him st.u.r.dily from his head to his heels and winked once more at Katharine.

'I would I had had such manners as a stripling,' he uttered in a round and friendly voice. 'I might have prospered better in love.' Going st.u.r.dily along the corridor he picked up Culpepper's sword and set it against the wall.

Culpepper, leaning against the doorpost, was gazing with ferocious solemnity at the open clothes-press in which some hanging dresses appeared like women standing. He smoothed his red beard and thrust his cap far back on his thatch of yellow hair.

'Mark you,' he addressed the clothes-press harshly, 'that is Rochford of Bosworth Hedge. At the end of that day they found him with seventeen body wounds and the corpses of seventeen Scotsmen round him.

He is famous throughout Christendom. Yet in me you see a greater than he. I am sent to cut such a throat. But that's a secret. Only I am a made man.'

Katharine had closed her door. She knew it would take her twenty minutes to get him into the frame of mind that he would go peaceably away.

'Thou art very pleasant to-night,' she said. 'I have seldom seen thee so pleasant.'

'For joy of seeing thee, Kat. I have not seen thee this six days.' He made a hideous grinding sound with his teeth. 'But I have broken some heads that kept me from thee.'

'Be calm,' Katharine answered; 'thou seest me now.'

He pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes.

'I'll be calm to pleasure thee,' he muttered apologetically. 'You said I was very pleasant, Kat.' He puffed out his chest and strutted to the middle of the room. 'Behold a made man. I could tell you such secrets.

I am sent to slay a traitor at Rome, at Ravenna, at Ratisbon--wherever I find him. But he's in Paris, I'll tell thee that.'

Katharine's knees trembled; she sank down into her tall chair.

'Whom shalt thou slay?'

'Aye, and that's a secret. It's all secrets. I have sworn upon the hilt of my knife. But I am bidden to go by an old-young man, a make of no man at all, with lips that minced and mowed. It was he bade the guards pa.s.s me to thee this night.'

'I would know whom thou shalt slay,' she asked harshly.

'Nay, I tell no secrets. My soul would burn. But I am sent to slay this traitor--a great enemy to the King's Highness, from the Bishop of Rome. Thus I shall slay him as he comes from a Ma.s.s.'

He squatted about the room, stabbing at shadows.

'It is a man with a red hat,' he grunted. 'Filthy for an Englishman to wear a red hat these days!'

'Put up your knife,' Katharine cried, 'I have seen too much of it.'

'Aye, I am a good man,' he boasted, 'but when I come back you shall see me a great one. There shall be patents for farms given me. There shall be gold. There shall be never such another as I. I will give thee such gowns, Kat.'

She sat still, but smoothed back a lock of her fair hair that glowed in the firelight.

'When I am a great man,' he babbled on, 'I will not wed thee, for who art thou to wed with a great man? Thou art more cheaply won. But I will give thee....'

'Thou fool,' she shrieked suddenly at him. 'These men shall slay thee.

Get thee to Paris to murder as thou wilt. Thou shalt never come back and I shall be well rid of thee.'

He gave her a snarling laugh:

'Toy thou with no man when I am gone,' he said with sudden ferocity, so that his blue eyes appeared to start from his head.

'Poor fool, thou shalt never come back,' she answered.

He had an air of cunning and triumph.

'I have settled all this with that man that's no man, Viridus; thou art here as in a cloister amongst the maids of the Court. No man shall see thee; thou shalt speak with none that wears not a petticoat. I have so contracted with that man.'

'I tell thee they have contrived this to be rid of thee,' she said.

His tone became patronising.

'Wherefore should they?' he asked. When there came no answer from her he boasted, 'Aye, thou wouldst not have me go because thou lovest me too well.'

'Stay here,' she said. 'I will give thee money.' He stood gazing at her with his jaw fallen. 'Thou art a drunkard and a foul tongue,' she said, 'but if thou goest to Paris to murder a cardinal thou shalt never come out of that town alive. Be sure thou shalt be rendered up to death.'

He staggered towards her and caught one of her hands.

'Why, it is but cutting of a man's throat,' he said. 'I have cut many throats and have taken no harm. Be not sad! This man is a cardinal.

But 'tis all one. It shall make me a great man.'

She muttered, 'Poor fool.'

'I have sworn to go,' he said. 'I am to have great farms and a great man shall watch over thee to keep thee virtuous. They have promised it or I had not gone.'

'Do you believe their promises?' she asked derisively.

'Why, 'tis a good knave, yon Viridus. He promised or ever I asked it.'

He was on his knees before her as she sat, with his arms about her waist.

'Sha't not cry, dear dove,' he mumbled. 'Sha't go with me to Paris.'

She sighed:

'No, no. Bide here,' and pa.s.sed her hand through his ruffled hair.

'I would slay thee an thou were false to me,' he whispered over her hand. 'Get thee with me.'

She said, 'No, no,' again in a stifled voice.

He cried urgently:

'Come! Come! By all our pacts. By all our secret vows.'

She shook her head, sobbing:

'Poor fool. Poor fool. I am very lonely.'

He clutched her tightly and whispered in a hoa.r.s.e voice: