'Four queens,' he repeated.

And, turning swiftly to the door, he commanded that Throckmorton be
sent him at once when he came to the archway.

PART THREE

THE SUNBURST

I

In the great place of Smithfield, towards noon, Thomas Culpepper sat
his horse on the outskirts of the crowd. By his side Hogben, the
gatewarden, had much ado to hold his pikestaff across his horse's
crupper in the thick of the people.

The pavement of heads filled the place--bare some of them, some of
them covered, according as their owners had cast their caps on high
for joy at the Bishop of Worcester's words against the Papist that was
to be burned, or as they pressed their thumbs harder down in disfavour
and waited to shew their joy at the hanging of the three Protestants
that should follow. In the centre towered on high a great gallows from
which depended a chain; and at the end of the chain, half-hidden by
the people, but shewing his shoulders and his head, a man in a friar's
cowl. And, towering as high as the gallows, painted green as to its
coat and limbs, but gilt in the helmet and brandishing a great spear,
was the image called David Darvel Gatheren that the Papist Welsh
adored. This image had been brought there that, in its burning, it
might consume the friar Forest. It gazed, red-cheeked and wooden,
across the sunlight space at the pulpit of the Bishop of Worcester in
his white cassock and black hat, waving his white arms and exhorting
the man in the gallows to repent at the last moment. Some words of
Latimer might now and again be heard; the chained friar stood upon the
rungs of a ladder set against the gallows post; he hung down his head
and shook it, but no word could be heard to come from his lips.

'Damnable heretic and foul traitor!' Latimer's urgings came across the
sea of heads. 'Here sitteth his Majesty's council----' At these words
went up a little buzz of question, but sufficient from all that great
crowd to send as it were a wind that blew away the Bishop's words. For
the style 'his Majesty' was so new to the land that people were
questioning what new council this might be, or what lord's whose style
they did not know. Latimer waved his arm behind him, half turning, to
indicate the King's men. These ministers, bravely bonneted so that the
jewels sparkled, habited in brown so that the red cloth covering their
tiers of seats shewed between their arms and shoulders, sat, like a
gay bank of flowers above the lak