'Art too patient with the springald,' the King said.
He thundered 'Body of God!' again when he saw Throckmorton once more fall to his knees.
'Sire,' he said—and for the first time he faltered in his level tones—'a very great treason has come to my ken this day!'
'Holy altar fires!' the King growled, 'let your treasons wait. Here hath this lady been talking to me very reasonably of a golden age.'
'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and he leant one hand on the floor to support him. 'This is a very great treason of men arming to sustain Privy Seal against thee! I have seen it; with mine own eyes I have seen it in thy town of London.'
Katharine cried out, 'Ah!'
The King leapt to his feet.
'Ho, I will arm,' he said, and grew pale. For, with a sword in his hand or where fighting was, this King had middling little fear. But, even as the lion dreads a little mouse, so he feared secret rebellions.
'Sire,' Throckmorton said, and his face was towards Katharine as if he challenged her:
'This is the very truth of the very truth, I call upon what man will to gainsay me. This day I heard in the city of London, at the house of the printer, John Badge——' and he repeated the speech of the saturnine man—'that "he would raise a thousand prentices and a thousand journeymen to shield Privy Seal from peril; that he could raise ten thousand citizens and ten thousand tenned again from the shires!"'