ying to hold her on the
animal. It was backing slowly towards a stone seat in the balustrade,
and man and woman swayed and tottered together.

The King said:

'Let her descend and rest upon the seat.'

His mind was swinging back already to his own heavy sorrows. On the
stone seat the woman's head lay back upon the balustrade, her eyes
were closed and her face livid to the sky. Culpepper, using his teeth
to the finger ends, tore the gloves from his hands.

Henry drew Cromwell towards the gatehouse. He had it dimly in his mind
to send one of his gentlemen to the assistance of that man and woman.

'Aye, teach me to sleep at night,' he said. 'It is you who make me
work.'

'It is for your Highness' dear sake.'

'Aye, for my sake,' the King said angrily. He burst into a sudden
invective: 'Thou hast murdered a many men ... for my sake. Thou hast
found out plots that were no plots: old men hate me, old mothers,
wives, maidens, harlots.... Why, if I be damned at the end thou shalt
escape, for what thou didst thou didst for my sake? Shall it be that?'
He breathed heavily. 'My sins are thy glory.'

They reached the long wall of the gatehouse and turned mechanically. A
barge at the river steps was disgorging musicians with lutes like half
melons set on staves, horns that opened bell mouths to the sky, and
cymbals that clanged in the rushing of the river. With his eyes upon
them Henry said: 'A common man may commonly choose his bedfellow.'
They had reminded him of the Queen for whose welcome they had been
commanded.

Cromwell swept his hand composedly round the half horizon that held
the palace, the grey river and the inlands.

'Your Highness may choose among ten thousand,' he answered.

The sound of a horn blown faintly to test it within the gatehouse, the
tinkle of a lutestring, brought to the King's lips: 'Aye. Bring me
music that shall charm my thoughts. You cannot do it.'

'A Queen is in the nature of a defence, a pledge, a cement, the
keystone of a bulwark,' Cromwell said. 'We know now our friends and
our foes. You may rest from this onwards.'

He spoke earnestly: This was the end of a long struggle. The King
should have his rest.

They moved back along the terrace. The woman's head still lay back,
her chin showed pointed and her neck, long, thin and supple. Culpepper
was bending over her, sprinkling water out of his cap upon her
upturned face.

The King said to Cromwell: 'Who is that wench?' and, in the sa