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

forward so swiftly that he did not hear the direction of the porter that they should turn only at the third alley.
    Tall and frosted trees reached up into the dim skies, the deserted avenues were shrouded in mist, and there was a dead and dripping silence.
    ‘Seven brawls y’ have brought me into,’ the woman’s voice came from under her hood, ‘this weary journey.’
    He ran to her stirrup and clutched her glove to his forehead. ‘Y’ave calmed me,’ he said. ‘Your voice shall ever calm me.’
    She uttered a hopeless ‘Oh, aye,’ and then, ‘Where be we?’
    They had entered a desolate region of clipped yews, frozen fountains, and high, trimmed hedges. He dragged the mule after him. Suddenly there opened up a very broad path, tiled for a width of many feet. On the left it ran to a high tower’s gaping arch. On the right it sloped nobly into a grey stretch of water.
    ‘The river is even there,’ he muttered. ‘We shall find the stairs.’
    ‘I would find my uncle in this palace,’ she said. But he muttered, ‘Nay, nay,’ and began to beat the mule with his fist. It swerved, and she became sick and dizzy with the sudden jar on her hurt arm. She swayed in her saddle and, in a sudden flaw of wind, her old and torn furs ruffled jaggedly all over her body.
IV
    T HE K ING WAS PACING the long terrace on the river front. He had been there since very early, for he could not sleep at nights, and had no appetite for his breakfast. When a gentleman from the postern gate asked permission for Culpepper and the mule to pass to the private stairs, he said heavily:
    ‘Let me not be elbowed by cripples,’ and then: ‘A’ God’s name let them come,’ changing his mind, as was his custom after a bad night, before his first words had left his thick, heavy lips. His great brow was furrowed, his enormous bulk of scarlet, with the great double dog-rose embroidered across the broad chest, limped a little over his right knee and the foot dragged. His eyes were bloodshot and heavy, his head hungforward as though he were about to charge the world with his forehead. From time to time his eyebrows lifted painfully, and he swallowed with an effort as if he were choking.
    Behind him the three hundred windows of the palace Placentia seemed to peer at him like eyes, curious, hostile, lugubrious or amazed. He tore violently at his collar and muttered: ‘I stifle.’ His great hand was swollen by its glove, sewn with pearls, to an immense size.
    The gentleman told him of the riot in the park, and narrated the blasphemy of the German Lutheran, who had held up a putrid dog in parody of the Holy Mass.
    The face of the King grew suffused with purple blood.
    ‘Let those men be cut down,’ he said, and he conceived a sorting out of all heresy, a cleansing of his land with blood. He looked swiftly at the low sky as if a thunderbolt or a leprosy must descend upon his head. He commanded swiftly, ‘Let them be taken in scores. Bid the gentlemen of my guard go, and armourers with shackles.’
    The sharp pain of the ulcer in his leg gnawed up to his thigh, and he stood, dejected, like a hunted man, with his head hanging on his chest, so that his great bonnet pointed at the ground. He commanded that both Privy Seal and the Duke of Norfolk should come to him there upon the instant.
    This grey and heavy King, who had been a great scholar, dreaded to read in Latin now, for it brought the language of the Mass into his mind; he had been a composer of music and a skilful player on the lute, but no music and no voices could any more tickle his ears.
    Women he had loved well in his day. Now, when he desired rest, music, good converse and the love of women, he was forced to wed with a creature whose face resembled that of a pig stuck with cloves. He had raged overnight, but, with the morning, he had seen himself growing old, on a tottering throne, assailed by all the forces of the Old Faith in Christendom. Rebellions burst out like fires every day in