day
Throckmorton's barge shot dangerously beneath London Bridge, hastening
to Hampton Court. At noon Thomas Culpepper passed over London Bridge,
because a great crowd pressed across it from the south going to see a
burning at Smithfield; at noon, too, or five minutes later, the young
Poins galloped furiously past the end of the bridge and did not cross
over, but sped through Southwark towards Hampton Court. And at noon or
thereabouts the King, dressed in green as a husbandman, sat on a log
to await a gun-fire, in the forest that was near to Richmond river
path opposite Isleworth. He had given to Katharine a paper that she
was to deliver to the master gunner of Richmond Palace in case the
Queen Anne did satisfy her that the marriage was no marriage. So that,
when among the green glades where the great trees let down their
branches near the sward and shewed little tips of tender green leaves,
he heard three thuds come echoing, he sprang to his feet, and, smiting
his great, green-clothed thigh, he cried out: 'Ha! I be young again!'
He pulled to his lips the mouth of the English horn that was girdled
across his shoulder and under his arm; he set his feet wide apart,
filled his lungs with air, and blew a thin, clear call. At once there
issued from brakes, thickets and glades the figures of men, dressed
like the King in yeoman's green, bearing bows over their shoulders,
horns at their elbows, or having straining dogs in their leashes.

'Ho!' the King said to his chief verderer, a man of sixty with a grey
beard, but so that all others could hear; 'be it well understood that
I will have you shew some ladies what make of thing it is to rule over
jolly Englishmen.' He directed them how he would have them drive the
deer at the end of the glade; he saw to the setting up of white wands
of peeled willows and, taking from his yeoman-companion, that was the
Earl of Surrey, his great bow, he shot a mighty shaft along the glade,
to shew how far away he would have the deer to pass like swift ghosts
between the aisles of the trees.

But the palace of Hampton lay deserted and given up to scullions, who
lay in the sunlight and took their rare ease. For a great many lords
that could shoot well with the bow were gone to play the yeoman with
the King; and a great many that had sumptuous and gallant apparel were
gone to join the ladies riding back from Richmond; and the King's
whole council, together with many lords that were awful or reverend