The Fifth Queen by Ford Madox Ford Read Free Book Online Page A

screamed and struck his dagger through the butcher’s throat.
    His motions were those of a mad beast; he stabbed the mule in the shoulder to force it to plunge in the direction of the soldiers who kept the little gate, before in the throng the butcher had reached the ground. The woman was flogging at the mule with her reins. ‘I have killed ‘un,’ he shrieked.
    He dived under the pikes of the soldiers and gripped thecaptain by both shoulders. ‘We be the cousins of the Duke of Norfolk,’ he cried. His square red beard trembled beneath his pallid face, and suddenly he became speechless with rage.
    Hands were already pulling the woman from her saddle, but the guards held their pikes transversely against the faces of the nearest, crushing in noses and sending sudden streaks of blood from jaws. The uproar was like a hurricane and the woman’s body, on high, swayed into the little space that the soldiers held. She was crying with the pain of her arm that she held with her other hand. Her cousin ran to her and mumbled words of inarticulate tenderness, ending again in ‘I have killed ’un.’
    The mob raged round them, but the soldiers stood firm enough. A continual cry of ‘Harlot, harlot,’ went up. Stones were scarce on the sward of the park, but a case bottle aimed at the woman alighted on the ear of one of the guards. It burst in a foam of red, and he fell beneath the belly of the mule with a dry grunt and the clang of iron. The soldiers put down the points of their pikes and cleared more ground. Men lay wallowing there when they retreated.
    The man shouted at the captain: ‘Can you clear us a way to yon stairs?’ and, at a shake of the head, ‘Then let us enter this gate.’
    The captain shook his head again.
    ‘I am Thomas Culpepper. This is the Duke’s niece, Kat,’ the other shouted.
    The captain observed him stoically from over his thick and black beard.
    ‘The King’s Highness is within this garden,’ he said. He spoke to the porter through the little niche at the wicket. A company of the City soldiers, their wands beating like flails, cleared for a moment the space in front of the guards.
    Culpepper with the hilt of his sword was hammering at the studded door. The captain caught him by the shoulder and sent him to stagger against the mule’s side. He was gaspingand snatched at his hilt. His bonnet had fallen off, his yellow hair was like a shock of wheat, and his red beard flecked with foam that spattered from his mouth.
    ‘I have killed one. I will kill thee,’ he stuttered at the captain. The woman caught him round the neck.
    ‘Oh, be still,’ she shrieked. ‘Still. Calm. Y’ kill me.’ She clutched him so closely that he was half throttled. The captain paced stoically up and down before the gate.
    ‘Madam,’ he said, ‘I have sent one hastening to his dukeship. Doubtless you shall enter.’ He bent to pull the soldier from beneath the mule’s belly by one foot, and picking up his pike, leaned it against the wall.
    With his face pressed against his cousin’s furred side, Thomas Culpepper swore he would cut the man’s throat.
    ‘Aye, come back again,’ he answered. ‘They call me Sir Christopher Aske.’
    The red jerkins of the King’s own guards came in a heavy mass round the end of the wall amid shrieks and curses. Their pike-staves rose rhythmically and fell with dull thuds; with their clumsy gloved hands they caught at throats, and they threw dazed men and women into the space that they had cleared before the wall. There armourers were ready, with handcuffs and leg-chains hanging like necklaces round their shoulders.
    The door in the wall opened silently, the porter called through his niche: ‘These have leave to enter.’ Thomas Culpepper shouted ‘Coneycatcher’ at the captain before he pulled the mule’s head round. The beast hung back on his hand, and he struck it on its closed eyes in a tumult of violent rage. It stumbled heavily on the threshold, and then darted