ill. 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 duke-ship.
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 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. S