'Hold thy tongue, cousin Kat. Ye know not that ye shall observe silence in the awful presence of kings.'
Henry threw his head back and laughed, whilst the chair creaked for a minute's space.
'Silence!' he said. 'Before God, silence! Have ye ever heard this lady's tongue?' He grew still and dreadful at the end of his mirth.
'Ye have done well,' he said. 'Give me your sword. I will knight you. I hear you are a poor man. I give you a knight's fee farm of a hundred pounds by the year. I hear you are a rough honest man. I had rather ye were about my nephew's courts than mine. Get you to Edinbro'.' He waved his hand to Throckmorton. 'See him disposed,' he said.
Culpepper uttered a sound of remonstrance. The King leaned forward in his seat and thundered:
'Get you gone. Be you this night thirty miles towards the Northland. I ha' heard ye ha' made brawls and broils here. See you be gone. By God, I am Harry of Windsor!'
He laid the heavy flat of the sword like a blow upon the green shoulders below him.
'Rise up, Sir Thomas Culpepper,' he said. 'Get you gone!'
Dazed and trembling still a little, Culpepper stuttered his way to the door. When he came by her Katharine cast her arms about his shoulder.
'Poor Tom,' she cried. 'Best it is for thee and me that thou goest. Here thou hast no place.' He shook his head like a man in a daze and was gone.