He went on to tell, as if it had been a rosary, the names of the ruined women that the holes in his pikehead represented. There was one left by the wayside with her child; there was one hung for stealing cloth to cover her; there was one whipped for her naughty ways. He reached the square mark in the centre as the figure on the road reached the gateway.
'Huzzay, Squahre Tom! Here bay three kennath Kat Howard. Let us three tak part to kick her down.'
Thomas Culpepper like a green cat flew at his throat, clutched him above the steel breastplate, and shook three times, the gatewarden's uncovered, dun-coloured head swaying back and forward as if it were a loose bundle of clouts on a mop. When they parted company, because he could no longer keep his fingers clenched, Hogben fell back; he fell back, and they lay with their heels touching each other and their arms stretched out in the dust.
II
Nicholas Hogben was the first to rise. He felt at his neck, swallowed as though a piece of apple were stuck in his throat, brushed his leather breeches, and picked up his pike.
'Why,' he said, 'you may hold it for main and certain that he have not had Kat Howard down. For, having had her down, a would never have thrown a man by the throat for miscalling of her. Therefore Kat Howard is up for all of he, and I may loosen my feelings.'
He spat gravely at Culpepper's feet. Culpepper lay in the dust, his arms stretched out to form a cross, his face dead white and his beard of brilliant red pointing at the keystone of the arch of Calais gate. Poins lifted his hand, but the pulse still beat, and he dropped it moodily in the dust.
'Not dead,' he muttered.
'Dead!' Hogben laughed at him. 'Hath been in a boosing ken. There they drug the wine with simples, and the women – may pox fall on all women – perfume themselves so that a man goeth stark raving. I warrant he had silver buttons to his Lincoln green, but they be torn off. I warrant he had gold buckles to his shoen, but they be gone. His sword is away, the leather hangers being cut.'
'Wilt not stick him with thy pike, having, as he hath, so mishandled thee?'
'O aye,' the Lincolnshire man shewed his strong teeth. 'Thee wouldst have Kat Howard from him. But he may live for me, being more like to bring her to dismay than ever thee wilt be!'
He looked into the narrow street of the town that the dawn pierced into through the gateway. Two skinny men in jerkins drawn tight with belts were yawning in a hovel's low doorway. Under his eyes, still stretching their arms abroad, they made to slink between the mud walls of the next alley.
'Oh, hi! Arrestez. Vesnez!' he hailed. 'Cestui à comforter!' The thin men made to break away, halted, hesitated, and then with dragging feet made through the pools and filth to the gateway.
'Tombé! Voleurs! Secourez!' Hogben pointed at the prostrate figure in green. They rubbed their shins on their thin calves and appeared bewildered and uncertain.
'Portez à lous maisons!' Hogben commanded.
They stood one on each side and bent down, extending skinny arms to lift him. Thomas Culpepper sat up and spat in their faces – they fled like scared wolves, noiselessly, gazing behind them in trepidation.
'Stay them; thieves ho! Stay them!' Culpepper panted. He scrambled to his feet, and stood reeling, his face like death, when he tried to make after them.
'God!' he said. 'Give me to drink.'
The young Poins mused under his breath because the man had neither sword nor dagger. Therefore it would be impossible to have sword play with him. He had, the young man, no ferocity – but he was set there to stay Thomas Culpepper's going on to England; he was to stay him by word or by deed. Deeds came so much easier than words.
'Squahre Tom!' the Lincolnshire man grunted. 'Reckon you have no money. Without groats and more ye shall get nowt to drink in Calais town, save water. Water you may have in plenty.'
With a sigh the young Poins unbuckled his belt to get his papers.
'Money I have for you,' he said. 'A main of money.' He was engaged now to pass words with this man – and he sighed again.
But Thomas Culpepper disregarded his words and his sigh. He was more in the mood to talk Lincolnshire than Kent, for his fever had given him a touch of homesickness and the young Poins to him was a very foreigner. He shut his eyes to let the Lincolnshire gatewarden's words go down to his brain; then with sudden violence he spat out:
'Give me water! What do ah ask but water! Pig! brood of a sow! gi'e me water and choke!'
Nicholas Hogben fetched a leather bottle as long as his leg, dusty and dinted, but nevertheless bedight with the arms of England, from the stone recess where the guard sheltered at nights. He fitted it on to the crook of his pike by the handle, and, craning over the drawbridge, first smoothed away the leaf-green duck-weed on the moat and then sank the bottle in the black water.
'I have money: a main of money for ye,' the young Poins said to Thomas Culpepper; but the man, with his red beard and white face, swayed on his legs and had ears only for the gurgling and gulping of the water as it entered the bottle neck. The black jack swayed and jumped below the bridge like a glistening water-beast.
He had little green spangles of duck-weed in his orange beard when he took the bottle away, empty, from his mouth. He drew deep gasps of breath, and suddenly sat down upon a squared block of stone that the masons above were waiting to hoist into place over the archway.
'Good water!' he grunted to Hogben – grunting as all the Lincolnshire men did, in those days, like a two-year hog.
'Bean't but that good in all Calais town!' Hogben grunted back to him. 'Curses on the two wurmen that sent me here.' And indeed, to Lincolnshire men the water tasted good, since it reminded them of their dyke water, tasting of marshweed and smelling of eggs.
'Tü wurmen!' Culpepper said lazily. 'Hast thou been jigging with tü puticotties to wunst? One is enow to undo seven men. Who be 'hee?'
The young Poins, with a sulky sense of his importance, uttered:
'I have money for thee – a main of money!'
Culpepper looked at him with sleepy blue eyes.
'Thrice y' ha' told me that,' he said. 'And money is a goodly thing in its place – but not to a man with a bellyful of water. Y' shall feel my fist when I be rested. Meanwhile wait and, being a cub, hear how men talk.' He slapped his chest and repeated to Hogben: 'Who be 'ee?'
Hogben, delighted to be asked at last a question, shewed his formidable teeth and beneath his familiar contortion of the eyelids brought out the words that one of the women who had brought him down was her that had brought Squahre Culpepper to sit on a squared stone before Calais gate.
'Why, I am a made man, for all you see me sit here,' Culpepper answered indolently. 'I ha' done a piece of work for which I am to be seised of seven farms in Kent land. See yo' – they send me messengers with money to Calais gate.' He pointed his thumb at the young Poins.
The boy, to prove that he was no common messenger, drew his right leg up and said:
'Nay, goodman Squire; an ye had slain the Cardinal the farms should have been yours. As it lies, ye are no more than lieutenant of Calais stone barges.'
'Thou liest,' Culpepper answered negligently, not turning his gaze from the gatewarden to whom he addressed a friendly question of, Who was the woman that had brought the two of them down.
'Now, Squahre!' the Lincolnshire man grinned delightedly; 'thu hast askëd me tü questions. Answer me one: Did thee lie upon her when thee put her name up in the township of Stamford?'
'Stamford in Lincolnshire was thy townplace?' Culpepper asked. 'But who was thy woman? I ha' had so many women and lied about so many more that I never had!'
The Lincolnshire man threw his leather cap to the keystone of the archway, caught it again and set it upon his thatch of hair, having the solemnity of one who performs his rituals.
'Goodly squahre that thee art!' he said; 'thou has harmed a many wenches in truth and in lies.'
Culpepper spied a down feather on his knee.
'Curse the mattress that I lay upon this night,' he said amiably.
He set his head back and blew the feather high into the air so that it floated out towards the tranquil and sunny pasture fields of France.
'Cub!' he said to Hal Poins, 'take this as a lesson of the death that lies about the pilgrim's path. For why am I not a pilgrim? I was sent to rid Paris of a Cardinal Pole, who, being in league with the devil, hath a magic tongue. Mark this story well, cub, who art sent me with money and gifts from the King in his glory to me that sit upon a stone. Now mark – ' He extended his white hand. 'This hand, o' yestereen, had a ring with a great green stone. Now no ring is here. It was given me by my seventeenth leman, who had two eyes that looked not together. No twelve robbers had taken it from me by force, since I had made a pact with the devil that these wall eyes should never look across my face whilst that ring was there. Now, God knows, I may find her in Calais. So mark well – ' He had been sent to Paris to rid France of the Cardinal Pole; for the Cardinal Pole, being a succubus of the fiend, had a magical tongue and had been inducing the French King to levy arms, in the name of that arch-devil, the Bishop of Rome, against their goodly King Henry, upon whom God shed His peace. Culpepper raised his bonnet at the Deity's name, stuck it far back on his red head, and continued: Therefore the mouth of Cardinal Pole was to be stayed in Paris town.
Culpepper smote his breast ferociously and with a black pride.
'And I have stayed it!' he peacocked. 'I and no other. I – T. Culpepper – a made man!'
'Not so,' Poins answered stubbornly. 'Thou wast sent to Paris to slay, and thou hast not slain!'
'Thou liest!' Culpepper asseverated. 'I was sent to purge Paris town, and I ha' purged un. No pothicary had done it better nor Hercules that was a stall groom and cleaned stables in antick days.' For, at the first breath of news that Culpepper was in the town, at the first rumour that the king's assassin was in Paris, Cardinal Pole had gathered his purple skirts about his knees; at the second sound he had cast them off altogether and, arrayed as a woman or a barber's leech, had fled hot foot to Brescia and thence to Rome.
'That was a nothing!' Culpepper asseverated. 'Though I ha' heard said that Hercules was made a god for cleaning stables that he found no easy task. But I will grant that it was no task for me to cleanse a whole town. For I needed no besoms, nor even no dagger, but the mere shadow of my beard upon the cobbly stones of Paris sufficed. I say nothing of that which befel in the day's journey; but mark this! mark what follows!' He had set out from Paris upon a high horse, with a high heart; he had frighted off all robbers and all sturdy rogues upon the road; he had slept at good inns as became a made man, and had bought himself a goodly pair of embroidered gloves which he could well pay for out of his superfluity. Being in haste to reach England, where he had that that called for him, he had ridden through the town of Ardres at nightfall, being minded to ride his horse dead, reach Calais gates in the hour, and beat down the gate if the warder would not suffer him to enter, it being dark. But outside the town of Ardres upon a make of no man's ground, being neither French nor English, he had espied a hut, and in the dark hut a lighted window hole that sparkled bravely, and, within, a big, fair woman drinking wine between candles with the light in her hair and a white tablecloth. And, feeling goodly, and Calais gate being shut, whether he broke it down one hour or three hours later was all one to him. He had gone into the hut to take by force or for payment a glass of wine from the black jacks, a kiss from the woman's mouth, and what else of ease the place afforded.
'Now I will have you mark, cub,' he said – 'cub that shall have to learn many wiles if thy throat be not cut by me within the next two hours. Mark this, cub: these were no Egyptians!' They were not Bohemians, not swearers, not subtle cozeners, not even black a-vised, or he would have been on his guard against them; but they were plain, fair folks of Normandy. So he had drunk his wine, and cast a main or two at dice with the woman and two men, losing no more and no less than was decent. And he had drunk more wine and had taken his kisses – since it was all one whether he came three hours or four hours later to Calais gate. And there had been candles on the table and stuffs upon the wall, and a crock on the fire for mulling the wine, and a sheet upon the feather bed. But when he awoke in the morning he had lain upon the hard earth, between the bare walls. And all that was his was gone that was worth the taking.
'Now mark, cub,' he said. 'It was a simple thing this flitting with the hangings and the clothes and the pot rolled in bales and hung upon my horse. Upon my horse! But what is not simple is that simple folk of Normandy should have learned the arts of subtlety and drugging of wines. Mark that!' He pointed a finger at Poins.
'Had God been good to you you might have been as good a warring boy as Thomas Culpepper, who with the shadow of his hand held back the galleons of France and France's knights from the goodly realm of England. For this I have done by frighting from Paris, Cardinal Pole that was moving the French King to war on us. Had God been good to you you might have been as brave. But marvel and consider and humble you in the dust to think that a man with my brain pan and all it holds could have been so cozened. For sure, a dolt like you would have been stripped more clean till you had neither nails to your toes nor hair to your eyebrows.'
Hal Poins snarled that Culpepper would have been shaved too but that red hair stunk in the nostrils even of cozeners and thieves.
Culpepper wagged his head from side to side.
'This is a main soft stone,' he said; 'I am main weary. When the stone grows hard, which is a sign that I shall no longer be minded to rest, I will break thy back with a cudgel.'
Poins stamped his foot with rage and tears filled his eyes.
'An thou had a sword!' he said. 'An only thou had a sword!'
'A year-old carrot to baste thee with!' Culpepper answered. 'Swords are for men!' He turned to Hogben, who was sitting on the ground furbishing his pikehead. 'Heard you the like of my tale?' he asked lazily.
'Oh aye!' the Lincolnshire man answered. 'The simple folk of Normandy are simple only because they have no suitors. But they ha' learned that marlock from the sailors of Rye town. For in Rye town, which is the sinkhole of Sussex, you will meet every morning ten travellers travelling to France in the livery of Father Adam. Normans can learn,' he added sententiously, 'as the beasts of the field can learn from a man. My father had a ewe lamb that danced a pavane to my pipe on the farm of Sallowford that you sold to buy a woman the third part of a gown.'
'Why! Art Nick Hogben?' Culpepper said.
'Hast that question answered,' Hogben said. 'Now answer me one. Liedst thou when saidst what thou saidst of that wurman?'
Culpepper on the stone swung his legs vaingloriously:
'I sold three farms to buy her a gown,' he said.
'Aye!' Nick Hogben answered. 'So thou saidst in Stamford town three years gone by. And thou saidst more and the manner of it. But betwixt the buying the gowns and the more of it lie many things. As this: Did she take the gown of thee? Or as this: Having taken the gown of thee, did she pay thee in the kind payment should be made in?'
Culpepper looked up at him with a sharp snarl.
'For – ' and Nick Hogben shook his head sagaciously, 'Stamford town believed the more and the manner of it, and Kat Howard's name is up in the town of Stamford. But I have not yet chiselled out the great piece that shall come from my pike when certain sure I am that Kat Howard is down under a man's foot.'
Culpepper rose suddenly to his feet and wagged a finger at Hogben.
'Now I am minded to wed Kat Howard!' he said. 'Therefore I will say I lied then. But as for what you shall think, consider that I had her alone many days and nights; consider that though she be over learned in the Latin tongues that set a woman against joyment, I have a proper person and a strong wrist, a pleasant tongue but a hot and virulent purpose. Consider that she welly starved in her father, the Lord Edmund's, house and I had pies and gowns for her. Consider these things and make a hole or no hole as thou wilt – '
Nicholas Hogben considered with his eyes on the ground; he scratched his head with a black finger.
'I can make nowt out,' he said. 'But I will curse thee for a lily-livered hoggit an thou marry Kat Howard.'
'Why, I am minded to marry her,' Culpepper answered, 'over here in France,' and he stretched a hand towards the long white road where in the distance the French peasants were driving lean beasts for a true Englishman's provender in Calais. 'Over here in France. Body of God! – Body of God! – ' He wavered, being still fevered. 'In England it had been otherwise. But here, shivering across plains and seas – why, I will wed with her.'
'Talkest like a Blind God Boy,' Hogben said sarcastically. 'How knowest she be thine to take?' He pointed at the young Poins. 'Here be another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well discern if she be thine or whose.'
Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was from its scabbard and warring in the air.
'Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee – Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!' he cried.
'Ass!' Culpepper answered. 'In God's time I will break thy back across my knee. But God's time is not yet.'
He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had seen.
'Squahre Thomas,' Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, 'that young man of Kent saith e'ennow: "Kat Howard is like to – " and then he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat Howard is like to do or be done by?'
With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think rapidly – nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could think rapidly always.
'Goodman Thomas Culpepper,' he said in a high voice, 'the mistress Katharine Howard I spoke of is thin and dark and small, and married to Edward Howard of Biggleswade. She is like to die of a quinsy.'
For well he knew that his advancement depended on his keeping Thomas Culpepper on the hither side of the water; and if it muddled his brain to have been so usefully mishandled for carrying letters betwixt the King's Grace and the Lady Katharine Howard, he knew enough of a jealous man to know that that was no news to keep Thomas Culpepper in Calais.
Culpepper's animation dropped like the light of a torch that is dowsed.
'Put up thy pot skewer,' he said; 'my Kat is tall and fairish and unwed. Ha' ye not seen her with the Lady Mary of England's women?'
The young Poins, zealous to be rid of the matter, answered fervently:
'Never. She is not talked of in the Court.'
'That is the best hearing,' Thomas Culpepper said. 'I do absolve thee of five kicks for being the messenger of that.'
III
They were a-walking in the little garden below the windows of the late Cardinal's house at Hampton; the April sun shone, for May came on apace, and in that sheltered spot the light lay warm and no breezes came. They took great pleasure there beneath the windows. One girl kept three golden balls flying in the air, whilst three others and two lords sought to distract her by inducing her little hound to bark shrilly below her hands up at the flying balls that caught in them the light of the sun, the blue of the sky, and the red and grey of the warm palace walls. Down the nut walk, where the trees that the dead Cardinal had set were already fifteen years old and dark with young green leaves as bright as little flowers, they had set up archery targets. Cicely Elliott, in black and white, flashing like a magpie in the alleys, ran races with the Earl of Surrey beneath the blinking eyes of her old knight; the Lady Mary, herself habited all in black, moved like a dark shadow upon a dial between the little beds upon paths of red brick between box hedges as high as your ankles. She spoke to none save once when she asked the name of a flower. But laughter went up, and it seemed as if, in this first day out of doors, all the Court opened its lungs to drink the new air; and they were making plans for May Day already.
They asked, too, a riddle: 'An a nutshell from Candlemas loved a merry bud in March, how should it come to pleasure and content?' and men who had the answer looked wise and shook their sides at guessing faces.
In a bower at the south end of the small garden Katharine Howard sat to play cat's-cradle with the old lady of Rochford. This foolish game and this foolish old woman, with her unceasing tales of the Queen Anne Boleyn – who had been her cousin – gave to Katharine a great feeling of ease. With her troubled eyes and weary expression, her occasional groans as the rheumatism gnawed at her joints, the old lady minded her of the mother she had so seldom seen. She had always been somewhere away, all through Katharine's young years, planning and helping her father to advancement that never came, and hopeless to control her wild children. Thus Katharine had come to love this poor old woman and consorted much with her, for she was utterly bewildered to control the Lady Mary's maids that were beneath her care.
Katharine held out her hands, parallel, as if she were praying, with the strand of blue wool and silver cord criss-cross and diagonal betwixt her fingers. The old lady bent above them, silent and puzzled, to get the key to the strings. Twice she protruded her gouty fingers, with swollen ends; and twice she drew them back to stroke her brows.
'I mind,' she said suddenly, 'that I played cat's-cradle with my cousin Anne, that was a sinful queen.' She bent again and puzzled about the strings. 'In those days I had a great skill, I mind. We revised it to the eleventh change many times before her death.' Again she leant forward and again back. 'I did come near my death, too,' she added.
Katharine's eyes had been gazing past her; suddenly she asked:
'Was Anne Boleyn loved after she grew to be Queen?'
The old woman's face took on a palsied and haunted look.
'God help you!' she said; 'do you ask that?' and she glanced round her furtively in an agony of apprehension. Something had drawn all the gay gowns and embroidered stomachers towards the higher terrace. They were all alone in the arbour.
'Why,' Katharine said, 'so many innocent creatures have been done to death since Cromwell came, that, though she was lewd before and a heretic all her days, I think doubts may be.'
The old lady pressed her hand upon her bosom where her heart beat.
'Madam Howard,' she said, 'for my life I know not the truth of the matter. There was much trickery; God knoweth the truth.'
Katharine mused for a moment above the cat's-cradle on her fingers. Near the joint at the end of the little one there was a small mole.
'Take you the fifth and third strings,' she said. 'The king string holds your wrist,' and whilst the old face was still intent upon the problem she said:
'I think that if a woman come to be Queen it is odds that she will live chastely, how lewd soever she ha' been aforetime.'
Lady Rochford set her fingers in between Katharine's, but when she drew them back with the strings upon them, they wavered, lost their straightness, knotted and then resolved themselves into a single loop as in a swift wind a cloud dies away beneath the eyes of the beholder.
'Why, 'tis pity,' Katharine said.
All the lords and all the ladies were now upon the terrace above. The old lady had the string in her broad lap. Suddenly she bent forward, her eyes opened.
'She was the enemy of your Church,' she said. 'But this I will tell you: upon occasions when men swore she had been with other men o' nights, the Queen was in my bed with me!'
Katharine nodded silently.
'Who was I that I dare speak?' the old woman sobbed; and Katharine nodded again.
Lady Rochford rubbed together her fat hands as she were ringing them.
'Before God,' she moaned, 'and by the blessed blood of Hailes that cured ever my pains, if a soul know a soul I knew Anne. If she was a woman like other women before she wedded the King, she was minded to be chaste after. Madam Howard,' – and she rocked her fat body to and fro upon the seat – 'they came to me from both sides, your Papists and her heretics; they threatened me to keep silence of what I knew. I was to keep silence. I name no names. But they came o' both sides, Papists and heretics; though she was middling true to the heretics they could not be true to her.'
Katharine answered her own thoughts with:
'Ay; but my cause is the good cause. Men shall be true to it.'
The old lady leaned forward and stroked her hands.
'Dearie,' she said, 'dandling piece, sweet bit, there are no true men.' She had an entreaty in her tone, and her large blue eyes gazed fixedly. 'Say that my cousin Anne was a heretic. I know naught of it save that my bones have ached always since the holy blood of Hailes was done away with that was wont to cure me. But the Queen Anne was hard driven because of a plotting; and no man stood her friend.' With her large and tear-filled eyes she gazed at the palace, where the pear trees upon the walls shewed new, pale leaves in the sunlight. 'The great Cardinal was hard driven because of a plot, and no man was true to him. There is no true man. Hope not for one. Hope not for any one. The great Cardinal builded those walls and that palace – and where is he?'
'Yet,' Katharine said, 'Privy Seal that is was true to him and profited exceedingly.'
Lady Rochford shook her head.
'For a little while truth may help you,' she said; 'but your name in the end shall be but a stink.'
'Ay,' Katharine answered her; 'but ye shall gain at the end of all. For I hold it for certain that because, to the uttermost dregs of his cup, Cromwell was true to his master Wolsey, before the throne of God much shall be pardoned him.'
The old woman answered bitterly:
'The throne of God is a long way from here.'
'Please it Mary and the saints,' Katharine said, 'the ten years to come shall bring Heaven a thousand leagues nearer to this land.' But her words died away because the Lady Rochford's mouth fell open.
From the terrace a great square man led down a tiny, small man, giving the child his finger to help him down the steps. It clung to him, the little, squared replica of himself, sturdily and with a blonde, small face laughing up into his father's that laughed down past a huge shoulder. Henry was dressed all in black, and his son too; the boy's callow head shone in the sunshine, and they came dallying down the little path, many faces and shoulders peering over the terrace wall at them. Once the child stumbled, loosed his hold of his father's finger and came down upon all fours. He crawled to the pathside, filled his little hands with leaves, and held them up towards his sire; and they could hear the King say:
'Who-hoop, Ned! Princes walk not like quadrumanes,' as he bent to take the leaves. The child twisted himself, gripping his little fingers into Henry's garter, and, catching again at his finger, pulled his father towards their bower.
The Lady Rochford rose, but Katharine sat where she was to smile upon the child and brush his head with a pink tassel of her sleeve. The little prince hid his face in the voluminous velvet of his father's vast thighs. The King, diffusing a great and embracing pride, laughed to Lady Rochford.
'Ye played cat's-cradle,' he said. 'I warrant ye brought it not beyond seven changes. Time was when I have done fourteen with a lady if her hands were white enough.'
He threw away the green leaves of the clove pinks that his son had given him, and took the blue and silver loop from the old woman's hands. He sat himself heavily on the bench facing Katharine, and crying, 'See you, silly Ned,' held his son's hands apart and fitted the cord over the little wrists.
Suddenly he bent clumsily forward and picked up again the carnation leaves that lay in green strands upon the floor of the arbour, grunting a little with the effort.
'This is the first offering my son ever made me,' he said, and he drew a pocket purse from his breast to lay them in. 'Please God he shall yet lay at my feet a province or two of our heritage of France.' He touched his cap at the Deity's name, and called gruffly at his son: 'See you, forget not ever that we be Kings of France too, you and I,' and the little boy with his cropped head uttered:
'Rex Angliae, Galliae, Franciae et Hiberniae!'
'Aye, I ha' learned ye that,' the King said, and roared with laughter. Of a sudden he turned his head, without moving his body, towards Katharine.
'I ha' news from Norfolk in France,' he said, and, as the Lady Rochford made to move, he uttered good-naturedly: 'Aye, avoid. But ye may buss my son.'
He stretched back his head, laid an arm along the back of his seat, put out his feet and pushed at the child, who played with his shoe-tags.
'The boy grows,' he said, and motioned for Katharine to sit beside him. Then his face shewed a quick dissatisfaction. 'A brave boy, but a should be braver,' and looking down, 'see you not blue lines about 's gills?' He caught at her hand with a masterful grip.
'Here we're a picture,' he said: 'a lusty husbandman, his lusty son, his lusty wife, resting all beneath his goodly vine.' His face clouded again. 'I – I am not lusty; my son, he is not lusty.' He touched her cheek. 'Thou art lusty enow – hast such pink cheeks.'
'Aye, we were always lusty at home when we had enow to eat,' Katharine said. She took the child upon her knee and blew lightly in his face. 'I will wager you I will guess his weight within a pound,' she added, and began to play a game with the tiny fingers. 'Wherefore do ye habit little children in black?'