is not one that shall be easily slain. He is like to have in his pay the defter spadassins of the two. I have known him since he was a child till when he fled abroad.’
‘But my cousin!’ Katharine pleaded.
‘For the sake of your own little neck, let that gallant be hanged,’ he said smartly. ‘You have need of many friends; I can see it in your complexion, which is of a hasty loyalty. But I tell you, I had never come near you, so your cousin miscalled me, a man of worth and credit, had these ladies not prayed me to come to you.’
She raised herself to her full height.
‘It is not in the books of your knight-errantry,’ she cried, ‘that one should leave one’s friends to the hangman of Paris.’
The large figure of Margot Poins thrust itself upon them.
‘A’ God’s name,’ said her gruff voice of great emotion, ‘hear the words of this valiant soldier. Your cousin shall ruin you. It is true that he will drive from you all your good friends. . . . ’ She faltered, and her impulse carried her no further. Rochford tapped her flushed cheek gently with his glove, but a light and hushing step in the corridor made them all silent.
The Magister Udal stood before the door blinking his eyes at the light; Katharine addressed him imperiously—
‘You will carry a letter for me to save my cousin from death.’
He started, and leered at Margot, who was ready to sink into the ground.
‘Why, I had rather carry a bull to the temple of Jupiter, as Macrobius has it,’ he said, ‘meaning that. . . . ’
‘Yet you have drunk with him,’ Katharine interrupted him hotly, ‘you have gone hurling through the night with him. You have shamed me together.’
‘Yet I cannot forget Tully,’ he answered sardonically, ‘who warns me that a prudent man should be able to moderate the course of his friendship, even as he reins his horse. Est prudentis sustinere ut cursum. . . . ’
‘Mark you that!’ the old knight said to Katharine. ‘I will get my boy to read to me out of Tully, for that is excellent wisdom.’
‘God help me, this is Christendom!’ Katharine said, bitterly. ‘Shall one abandon one that lay in the same cradle with one?’
‘Your ladyship hath borne with him a day too long,’ Udal said. ‘He beat me like a dog five days since. Have you heard of the city called Ponceropolis, founded by the King Philip? Your good cousin should be ruler of that city, for the Great King peopled it with all the brawlers, cut-throats, and roaring boys of his dominions, to be rid of them.’ She became aware that he was very angry, for his whisper shook like the neigh of a horse.
The old knight winked at Margot.
‘Why this is a monstrous wise man,’ he said, ‘who yet speaks some sense.’
‘In short,’ the magister said, ‘If you will stick to this man, you shall lose me. For I have taken beatings and borne no malice — as in the case of men with whose loves or wives I have prospered better than themselves. But that this man should miscall me and beat me for the pure frenzy of his mind, causelessly, and for the love of blows! That is unbearable. To-night I walk for the first time after five days since he did beat me. And I ask you whom you shall here find the better servant?’
His thin figure was suddenly shaking with rage.
‘Why, this is conspiracy!’ Katharine cried.
‘A conspiracy!’ Udal’s voice rose up into a shriek. ‘If your ladyship were a Queen I would not be a Queen’s cousin’s whipping post.’ His arms jerked with the spasms of his rage like those of a marionette.
‘A shame that learned men should be so beaten!’ Margot’s gruff voice uttered.
Katharine turned upon her.
‘That is what made you speak e’ennow. You have been with this flibbertigibbet.’
‘This is a free land,’ the girl mumbled, her mild eyes sparkling with the contagious anger of her lover.
The old knight stood blinking upon Katharine.
‘You are like to lose all your servants in this quarrel,’ he said.
Katharine wrung her hands, and then turned her back upon them and drummed upon the table with her fingers. Udal caught Margot’s large hand and fumbled it beneath the furs of his robe: the old knight kept his smiling eyes upon Katharine’s back. Her voice came at last:
‘Why, I will not have Tom killed upon this occasion into which I brought him.’
Rochford shrugged his shoulders up to his ears.
‘Oh marvellous infatuation,’ he said.
Katharine spoke, still with her back turned and her shoulders heaving:
‘A marvellous infatuation!’ she said, her voice coming softly and deeply in her chest. ‘Why, after his fashion this man loved me. God help us, what other men have I seen here that would strike a straight blow? Here it is moving in the dark, listening at pierced walls, swearing of false treasons ——’
She swept round upon the old man, her face moved, her eyes tender and angry. She stretched out her hand, and her voice was pitiful and urgent.
‘Sir! Sir! What counsel do you give me, who are a knight of honour? Would you let a man who lay in the cradle with you go to a shameful death in an errand you had made for him?’
She leaned back upon the table with her eyes upon his face. ‘No you would not. How then could you give me such counsel?’
He said: ‘Well, well. You are in the right.’
‘Nearly I went with him to another place,’ she answered, ‘but half an hour ago. Would to God I had! for here it is all treacheries.’
‘Write your letter, child,’ he answered. ‘You shall give it to Cicely Elliott tomorrow in the morning. I will have it conveyed, but I will not be seen to handle it, for I am too young to be hanged.’
‘Why, God help you, knight,’ Udal whispered urgently from the doorway, ‘carry no letter in this affair — if you escape, assuredly this mad pupil of mine shall die. For the King ——?’ Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw’s: ‘That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates’ Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going whither so many great men have already passed, and to be subtracted from the way of so many judges that be iniquitous and corrupt.’
‘Why, what a plague. . . . ’ Katharine began.
He interrupted her quickly.
‘Here is your serving man back at last if you would rate him for leaving your door unkept.’
The man stood in the doorway, his lanthorn dangling in his hand, his cudgel stuck through his belt, his shock of hair rough like an old thatch, and his
