it was but a bastard of classical begettings. And for
instruction in the books of the Sieur Macchiavelli, let young Poins go
to a man who had studied them word by word--to the Lord Privy Seal,
Thomas Cromwell.

They both dropped their voices at the name, and, another gentleman of
the guard beginning to talk of rich men who had fallen low by the
block, the stake, and gaming, Udal mentioned that that day he had seen
a strange sight.

'There was in the Northern parts, where I governed in his absence the
Lord Edmund Howard's children, a certain Thomas Culpepper. Main rich
he was, with many pastures and many thousands of sheep. A cousin of my
lady's he was, for ever roaring about the house. A swaggerer he was,
that down there went more richly dressed than earls here.'

That day Udal had seen this Culpepper alone, without any servants,
dressed in uncostly green, and dragging at the bridle of a mule, on
which sat a doxy dressed in ancient and ragged furs. So did men fall
in these difficult days.

'How came he in London town?' the Norroy King-at-Arms asked.

'Nay, I stayed not to ask him,' Udal answered. He sighed a little.
'Yet then, in my Lord Edmund's house I had my best pupil of all, and
fain was I to have news of her.... But he was a braggart; I liked him
not, and would not stay to speak with him.'

'I'll warrant you had dealings with some wench he favoured, and you
feared a drubbing, magister,' Norroy accused him.

The long cabin of the state barge was ablaze with the scarlet and
black of the guards, and with the gold and scarlet of the heralds.
Magister Udal sighed.

'You had good, easy days in Lord Edmund's house?' Norroy asked.

II

The Lord Privy Seal was beneath a tall cresset in the stern of his
barge, looking across the night and the winter river. They were rowing
from Rochester to the palace at Greenwich, where the Court was
awaiting Anne of Cleves. The flare of the King's barge a quarter of a
mile ahead moved in a glowing patch of lights and their reflections,
as though it were some portent creeping in a blaze across the sky.
There was nothing else visible in the world but the darkness and a
dusky tinge of red where a wave caught the flare of light further out.

He stood invisible behind the lights of his cabin; and the thud of
oars, the voluble noises of the water, and the crackling of the
cresset overhead had, too, the quality of impersonal and supernatural
phenomena. His voice said harshly: