unted.... There is a
song about it.... Let me go to buy thy gown. Aye, now, presently. I
remember a great many things. As thus ... there is a song of a lady
loved a swine. Honey, said she, and hunc, said he.'

Whilst she listened a great many thoughts came into her mind--of their
youth at home, where indeed, to the grunting of hogs, he had wooed her
when she came out from conning her Plautus with the Magister. And at the
same time it troubled her to consider where the young Poins had bestowed
himself. Maybe he was dead; maybe he lay in a faint.

'It was in our pact,' she said to Culpepper, 'that you should get you
gone ever when I would have it.'

'Aye, sure, it was in our pact,' he said.

He closed his eyes as if he would fall asleep, being very weary and come
to his desired haven. Above his closed eyes Katharine threw the key of
her antechamber on to the bed. She pointed with her hand to that door
that the Lady Rochford should undo. If she could get her cousin through
that door--and now he was in the mood--if she could but get him through
there and out at the door beyond the Big Room into the corridor, before
her guard came back....

But the Lady Rochford was leaning far out beyond the window-sill and did
not see her gesture.

Culpepper muttered--

'Ah; well; aye; even so----' And from the window came a scream that
tore the air--

'The King! the King!'

And immediately it was as if the life of a demon had possessed Culpepper
in all his limbs.

'Merciful God!' the Queen cried out. 'I am patient.'

Culpepper had writhed from her till he sat up, but she hollowed her hand
around his throat. His head she forced back till she held it upon the
floor, and whilst he writhed with his legs she knelt upon his chest with
one knee. He screamed out words like: 'Bawd,' and 'Ilcock,' and
'Hecate,' and the Lady Rochford screamed--

'The King comes! the King comes!'

Then Katharine said within herself--

'Is it this to be a Queen?'

She set both her hands upon his neck and pressed down the whole weight
of her frame, till the voice died in his throat. His body stirred
beneath her knee, convulsively, so that it was as if she rode a horse.
His eyes, as slowly he strangled, glared hideously at the ceiling, from
which the carven face of a Queen looked down into them. At last he lay
still, and Katharine Howard rose up.

She ran at the old woman--

'God forgive me if I have killed my cousin,' she said. 'I am certain
tha