Throckmorton paused, held his head down, fingered his beard, and said:
'When left ye him at Greenwich?'
'This day at dawn,' Poins answered, and cursed again.
'Drunk as a channel codfish.'
The old woman came, a sheaf of jack-knives in her arms, muttering along the table.
'Get you to bed,' she croaked. 'I will not ha' warmed new sheets for thee, and thee not use them. Get thee to bed.'
Throckmorton pushed her back, and caught the boy by the jacket near the throat.
'Ye shall tell me the tale as we go,' he said, and punctuated his words by shakes. 'But, oaf that I trusted to do a man's work, ye swing beneath a tree this night an we find not the man ye failed to stay.'
The young Poins—he panted out the story as he trotted, wofully keeping pace to Throckmorton's great strides between the hedges—had stuck to Culpepper as to his shadow, in Calais town. At each turn he had showed the warrant to be master of the lighters; he had handed over the gold that Throckmorton had given him. But Culpepper had turned a deaf ear to him, and, setting up a violent friendship with the Lincolnshire gatewarden over pots of beer in a brewhouse, had insisted on buying Hogben out of his company and taking him over the sea to be witness of his wedding with Katharine Howard. Dogged, and thrusting his word and his papers in at every turn, the young Poins had pursued them aboard a ship bound for the Thames.