Delphi Works of Ford Madox Ford (Illustrated) (175 page)

Thomas Culpepper stood in the doorway, his sword drawn, his left hand clutching the throat of the serving man who was guarding her room.

‘God help us!’ Katharine said angrily; ‘will you ruin me?’

‘Cut throats?’ he muttered. ‘Aye, I can cut a throat with any man in Christendom or out.’ He shook the man backwards and forwards to support himself. ‘Kat, this offal would have kept me from thee.’

Katharine said, ‘Hush! it is very late.’

At the sound of her voice his face began to smile.

‘Oh, Kat,’ he stuttered jovially, ‘what law should keep me from thee? Thou’rt better than my wife. Heathen to keep man and wife apart, I say, I.’

‘Be still. It is very late. You will shame me,’ she answered.

‘Why, I would not have thee shamed, Kat of the world,’ he said. He shook the man again and threw him good humouredly against the wall. ‘Bide thou there until I come out,’ he muttered, and sought to replace his sword in the scabbard. He missed the hole and scratched his left wrist with the point. ‘Well, ‘tis good to let blood at times,’ he laughed. He wiped his hand upon his breeches.

‘God help thee, thou’rt very drunk,’ Katharine laughed at him. ‘Let me put up thy sword.’

‘Nay, no woman’s hand shall touch this blade. It was my father’s.’

An old knight with a fat belly, a clipped grey beard and roguish, tranquil eyes was ambling along the gallery, swinging a small pair of cheverel gloves. Culpepper made a jovial lunge at the old man’s chest and suddenly the sword was whistling through the shadows.

The old fellow planted himself on his sturdy legs. He laughed pleasantly at the pair of them.

‘An’ you had not been very drunk I could never have done that,’ he said to Culpepper, ‘for I am passed of sixty, God help me.’

‘God help thee for a gay old cock,’ Culpepper said. ‘You could not have done it without these gloves in your fist.’

‘See you, but the gloves are not cut,’ the knight answered. He held them flat in his fat hands. ‘I learnt that twist forty years ago.’

‘Well, get you to the wench the gloves are for,’ Culpepper retorted. ‘I am not long together of this pleasant mind.’ He went into Katharine’s room and propped himself against the door post.

The old man winked at Katharine.

‘Bid that gallant not draw his sword in these galleries,’ he said. ‘There is a penalty of losing an eye. I am Rochford of Bosworth Hedge.’

‘Get thee to thy wench, for a Rochford,’ Culpepper snarled over his shoulder. ‘I will have no man speak with my coz. You struck a good blow at Bosworth Hedge. But I go to Paris to cut a better throat than thine ever was, Rochford or no Rochford.’

The old man surveyed him sturdily 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 sturdily 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 passed 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 pass 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 Mass.’

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 passed 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 hoarse voice:

‘It were merrier at home now. Thou didst vow. At home now. Of a summer’s night....’

She whispered: ‘Peace. Peace.’

‘At home now. In June, thou didst....’

She said urgently: ‘Be still. Wouldst thou woo me again to the grunting of hogs?’

‘Aye, would I,’ he answered. ‘Thou didst....’

She moved convulsively in her chair. He grasped her more tightly.

‘Thou yieldest, I know thee!’ he cried triumphantly. He staggered to his feet, still holding her hand.

‘Thou shalt come to Paris. Sha’t be lodged like a Princess. Sha’t see great sights.’

She sprang up, tearing herself from him.

‘Get thee gone from here,’ she shivered. ‘I am done with starving with thee. I know thy apple orchard wooings. Get thee gone from here. It is late. I shall be shamed if a man be seen to leave my room so late.’

‘Why, I would not have thee shamed, Kat,’ he muttered, her strenuous tone making him docile as a child.

‘Get thee gone,’ she answered, panting. ‘I will not starve.’

‘Wilt not come with me?’ he asked ruefully. ‘Thou didst yield in my arms.’

‘I do bid thee begone,’ she answered imperiously. ‘Get thee gold if thou would’st have me. I have starved too much with thee.’

‘Why, I will go,’ he muttered. ‘Buss me. For I depart towards Dover to-night, else this springald cardinal will be gone from Paris ere I come.’

I
V

‘Men shall make us cry, in the end, steel our hearts how we will,’ she said to Margot Poins, who found her weeping with her head down upon the table above a piece of paper.

‘I would weep for no man,’ Margot answered.

Large, florid, fair, and slow speaking, she gave way to one of her impulses of daring that covered her afterwards with immense blushes and left her buried in speechless confusion. ‘I could never weep for such an oaf as your cousin. He beats good men.’

‘Once he sold a farm to buy me a gown,’ Katharine said, ‘and he goes to a sure death if I may not stay him.’

‘It is even the province of men — to die,’ Margot answered. Her voice, gruff with emotion, astonished herself. She covered her mouth with the back of her great white hand as if she wished to wipe the word away.

‘Beseech you, spoil not your eyes with sitting to write at this hour for the sake of this roaring boy.’

Katharine sat to the table: a gentle knocking came at the door. ‘Let no one come, I have told the serving knave as much.’ She sank into a pondering over the wording of her letter to Bishop Gardiner. It was not to be thought of that her cousin should murder a Prince of the Church; therefore the bishop must warn the Catholics in Paris that Cromwell had this in mind. And Bishop Gardiner must stay her cousin on his journey: by a false message if needs were. It would be an easy matter to send him such a message as that she lay dying and must see him, or anything that should delay him until this cardinal had left Paris.

The great maid behind her back was fetching from the clothes-prop a waterglobe upon its stand; she set it down on the table before the rush-light, moving on tiptoe, for to her the writing of a letter was a sort of necromancy, and she was distressed for Katharine’s sake. She had heard that to write at night would make a woman blind before thirty. The light grew immense behind the globe; watery rays flickered broad upon the ceiling and on the hangings, and the paper shone with a mellow radiance. The gentle knocking was repeated, and Katharine frowned. For before she was half way through with the humble words of greeting to the bishop it had come to her that this was a very dangerous matter to meddle in, and she had no one by whom to send the letter. Margot could not go, for it was perilous for her maid to be seen near the bishop’s quarters with all Cromwell’s men spying about.

Behind her was the pleasant and authoritative voice of old Sir Nicholas Rochford talking to Margot Poins. Katharine caught the name of Cicely Elliott, the dark maid of honour who had flouted her a week ago, and had pinned up her sleeve that day in Privy Seal’s house.

The old man stood, grey and sturdy, his hand upon her doorpost. His pleasant keen eyes blinked upon her in the strong light from her globe as if he were before a good fire.

‘Why, you are as fair as a saint with a halo, in front of that jigamaree,’ he said. ‘I am sent to offer you the friendship of Cicely Elliott.’ When he moved, the golden collar of his knighthood shone upon his chest; his cropped grey beard glistened on his chin, and he shaded his eyes with his hand.

‘I was writing of a letter,’ Katharine said. She turned her face towards him: the stray rays from the globe outlined her red curved lips, her swelling chest, her low forehead; and it shone like the moon rising over a hill, yellow and fiery in the hair above her brow. The lines of her face drooped with her perplexities, and her eyes were large and shadowed, because she had been shedding many tears.

‘Cicely Elliott shall make you a good friend,’ he said, with a modest pride of his property; ‘she shall marry me, therefore I do her such services.’

‘You are old for her,’ Katharine said.

He laughed.

‘Since I have neither chick nor child and am main rich for a subject.’

‘Why, she is happy in her servant,’ Katharine said abstractedly. ‘You are a very famous knight.’

‘There are ballads of me,’ he answered complacently. ‘I pray to die in a good tulzie yet.’

‘If Cicely Elliott have her scarf in your helmet,’ Katharine said, ‘I may not give you mine.’ She was considering of her messenger to the bishop. ‘Will you do me a service?’

‘Why,’ he answered, with a gentle mockery, ‘you have one tricksy swordsman to bear your goodly colours.’

Katharine turned clean about to him and looked at him with attention, to make out whether he might be such a man as would carry her letter for her.

He returned her gaze directly, for he was proud of himself and of his fame. He had fought in all the wars that a man might fight in since he had been eighteen, and for fifteen years he had been captain of a troop employed by the Council in keeping back the Scots of the Borders. It was before Flodden Field that he had done his most famous deed, about which there were many ballads. Being fallen upon by a bevy of Scotsmen near a tall hedge, after he had been unhorsed, he had set his back into a thorn bush, and had fought for many hours in the rear of the Scottish troop, alone and with only his sword. The ballad that had been made about him said that seventeen corpses lay in front of the bush after the English won through to him. But since Cromwell had broken up the Northern Councils, and filled them again with his own men of no birth, the old man had come away from the Borders, disdaining to serve at the orders of knaves that had been butchers’ sons and worse. He owned much land and was very wealthy, and, having been very abstemious, because he came of an old time when knighthood had still some of the sacredness and austerity of a religion, he was a man very sound in limb and peaceable of disposition. In his day he had been esteemed the most graceful whiffler in the world: now he used only the heavy sword, because he was himself grown heavy.

Katharine answered his gentle sneer at her cousin:

‘It is true that I have a servant, but he is gone and may not serve me.’ Yet the knight would find it in the books of chivalry that certain occasions or great quests allowed of a knight’s doing the errands of more than one lady: but one lady, as for instance the celebrated Dorinda, might have her claims asserted by an illimitable number of knights, and she begged him to do her a service.

‘I have heard of these Errantry books,’ he said. ‘In my day there were none such, and now I have no letters.’

‘How, then, do you pass the long days of peace,’ Katharine asked, ‘if you neither drink nor dice?’

He answered: ‘In telling of old tales and teaching their paces to the King’s horses.’

He drew himself up a little. He would have her understand that he was not a horse leech: but there was in these four-footed beasts a certain love for him, so that Richmond, the King’s favourite gelding, would stand still to be bled if he but laid his hand on the great creature’s withers to calm him. These animals he loved, since he grew old and might not follow arguments and disputations of
hic
and
hoc
. ‘There were none such in my day. But a good horse is the same from year’s end to year’s end....’

‘Will you carry a letter for me?’ Katharine asked.

‘I would have you let me show you some of his Highness’ beasts,’ he added. ‘I breed them to the manage myself. You shall find none that step more proudly in Christendom or Heathenasse.’

‘Why, I believe you,’ she answered. Suddenly she asked: ‘You have ridden as knight errant?’

He said: ‘For three weeks only. Then the Scots came on too thick and fast to waste time.’ His dark eyes blinked and his broad lips moved humorously with his beard. ‘I swore to do service to any lady; pray you let me serve you.’

‘You can do me a service,’ she said.

He moved his hand to silence her.

‘Pray you take it not amiss. But there is one that hates you.’

She said:

‘Perhaps there are a many; but do me a service if you will.’

‘Look you,’ he said, ‘these times are no times of mine. But I know it is prudent to have servitors that love one. I saw yours shake a fist at your door.’

Katharine said:

‘A man?’ She looked at Margot, who, big, silent and flushed, was devouring the celebrated hero of ballads with adoring eyes. He laughed.

‘That maid would kiss your feet. But, in these days, it is well to make friends with them that keep doors. The fellow at yours would spit upon you if he dared.’

Katharine said carelessly:

‘Let him even spit in his imagination, and I shall whip him.’

The old knight looked out of the door. He left it wide open, so that no man might listen.

‘Why, he is still gone,’ he said. He cleared his throat. ‘See you,’ he began. ‘So I should have said in the old days. These fellows then we could slush open to bathe our feet in their warm blood when we came tired-foot from hunting. Now it is otherwise. Such a loon may be a spy set upon one.’

He turned stiffly and majestically to move back her new hangings that only that day, in her absence at Privy Seal’s, had been set in place. He tapped spots in the wall with his broad and gentle fingers, talking all the time with his broad back to her.

‘See you, you have had here workmen to hang you a new arras. There be tricks of boring ear-holes through walls in hanging these things. So that if you have a cousin who shall catch a scullion by the throat....’

Katharine said hastily:

‘He hath heard little to harm me.’

‘It is what a man swears he hath heard that shall harm one,’ the old knight answered. ‘I meddle in no matters of statecraft, but I am sent to you by certain ladies; one shall wed me and I am her servant; one bears my name and wedded a good cousin of mine, now dead for his treasons.’

Katharine said:

‘I am beholden to Cicely Elliott and the Lady Rochford....’

He silenced her with one of his small gestures of old-fashioned dignity and distinction.

‘I meddle in none of these matters,’ he said again. ‘But these ladies know that you hate one they hate.’

He said suddenly, ‘Ah!’ a little grunt of satisfaction. His fingers tapping gently made what seemed a stone of the wall quiver and let drop small flakes of plaster. He turned gravely upon Katharine:

‘I do not ask what you spoke of with that worshipful swordsman,’ he said. ‘But your servitor is gone to tell upon you. A stone is gone from here and there is his ear-hole, like a drum of canvas.’

Katharine said swiftly:

‘Take, then, a letter for me — to the Bishop of Winchester!’

He started back with a little exaggerated pantomime of horror.

‘Must I go into your plots?’ he asked, blinking and amused, as if he had expected the errand.

She said urgently:

‘I would have you tell me what Englishman now wears a red hat and is like to be in Paris. I am very ignorant in these matters.’

‘Then meddle not in them,’ he said, ‘for that man is even Cardinal Pole; one that the King’s Highness would very willingly know to be dead.’

‘God forbid that my cousin should murder a Prince of the Church, and be slain in that quarrel,’ she answered.

He started back and held his hands over his head.

‘Why, God help you, child! Is that your errand?’ he said, deep from his chest. ‘I meddle not in this matter.’

She answered obstinately:

‘Pray you — by your early vows — consent to carry me my letter.’

He shook his head bodingly.

‘I thought it had been a matter of a masque at the Bishop of Winchester’s; or I had never come nigh you. Cicely Elliott hath copied out the part you should speak. Pray you ask me no more of the other errand.’

She said: