Allen looked towards his colleague, who answered in a passionless voice:
“Those and little else—the constant burden of his blasphemy. On the pulley, on the rack, wrenched in the ‘Escalero,’ or with the greased soles of his feet frying at the brazier, always that cry or song. He utters it as it were a charm against pain, jubilant, triumphant.”
His Majesty’s eyes frowned.
“Methinks the Holy Office lacks a counter-charm. Has it no hooks to root up speech, no blistering gags to choke it? Bid him construe his words, or suffer worse.”
“It seems that feeling is dead in him,” said the Father adviser, “killed like a bird in the hand. He is own brother to Balthazar Gérard, who, after all, was a martyr. But it is just a trick of the spirit, detaching itself from the matter it makes sensitive. Shall I question the man?”
Philip waved his hand, and Allen crossed the closet and stood before William Donne, an ingratiatory smile on his lips.
“Good seaman,” he said, “what is this same regicidal gnat you chaunt of?”
The prisoner jerked up his battered face, hearing a question in his own tongue.
“The gnat,” he said in a thick voice, faintly rollicking, “that killed the King.”
“Why and how did he kill him?”