But this
I know, that I have him in my safe keeping.'

'Belike,' the King said, 'these swordsmen were friends of Pole.'

'Belike,' Throckmorton answered.

He fingered nonchalantly the rim of his cap that lay beside his knees.

'For his sake,' he said, 'it were well if your Grace, having rewarded
him princely for this deed, should send him to a distant part, or to
Edinbro' in the Kingdom of Scots, where need for men is to lie and
observe.'

'Belike,' the King said. 'Get you gone.' But Throckmorton stayed there
on his knees and the King uttered: 'Anan?'

'Majesty,' Throckmorton said, 'I would ye would see this man who is a
poor, simple swordsman. He being ill made for courts I would have you
reward him and send him from hence ere worse befall him.'

The King raised his brows.

'Ye love this man well,' he said.

'Here is too much beating about the bush,' burst from Katharine's
lips. She stood, tall, winding her hands together, swaying a little
and pale in the half light of the two candles. 'This cousin of mine
loves me well or over well. This gentleman feareth that this cousin of
mine shall cause disorders--for indeed he is of disordered intervals.
Therefore, he will have you send him from this Court to a far land.'

'Why, this is a monstrous sensible gentleman,' Henry said. 'Let us see
this yokel.' He had indeed a certain satisfaction at the interrupting,
for with Katharine in her begging moods he was never certain that he
must not grant her his shirt and go a penance to St Thomas' shrine.

Katharine stayed with her hand upon her heart, but when her cousin
came his green figure in the doorway was stiff; he trembled to pass
the sill, and looking never at her but at the King's shoes, he knelt
him down in the centre of the floor. The words coming to her in the
midst of anguishes and hot emotions, she said:

'Sire, this is my much-loved cousin, who hath bought me food and
dress in my days of poverty, selling his very farms.'

Culpepper grunted over his shoulder:

'Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe
silence in the awful presence of kings.'

Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a
minute's space.

'Silence!' he said. 'Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this
lady's tongue?' He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.

'Ye have done well,' he said. 'Give me your sword. I will knight you.
I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight's fee