Poins, however, could hold but one thing of a time in his head. And, by that striving, dangerous servant of Lord Privy Seal, Throckmorton, it had been firmly enjoined upon him that he must not fail to meet Thomas Culpepper and stay him upon his road to England. Throckmorton, with his great beard and cruel snake's eyes, had said: 'I hold thy head in fee. If ye would save it, meet Thomas Culpepper in Calais and give him this letter.' The letter he had in his poke. It carried with it a deed making Culpepper lieutenant of the stone barges in Calais. But he had it too, by word of mouth, that if Thomas Culpepper would not be stayed by the letter, he, Hal Poins, must stay him—with the sword, with a stab in the back, or by being stabbed himself and calling in the guard to lay Thomas Culpepper's self by the heels.
'You will enjoin upon him,' Throckmorton had said, 'how goodly a thing is the lieutenancy of stone lighters that in this letter is proffered him. You will tell him that, if a barge of stone go astray, it is yet a fair way to London, and stone fetches good money from townsmen building in Calais. If he will gainsay this you will pick a quarrel with him, as by saying he gives you the lie. In short,' Throckmorton had finished, earnestly and with a sinuous grace of gesture in his long and narrow hands, 'you will stay him.'
It was a desperate measure, yet it was the best he could compass. If Culpepper came to London, if he came to the King, Katharine's fortunes were not worth a rushlight such as were sold at twenty for a farthing. He knew, too, that Viridus had Cromwell's earnest injunctions to send a messenger that should hasten Culpepper's return; and, though he had seven hundred of Cromwell's spies that he could trust to do Privy Seal's errand, he had not one that he could trust to do his own. There was no one of them that he could trust. If he took a spy and said: 'At all costs stay Culpepper, but observe very strict secrecy from Privy Seal's men all,' the spy would very certainly let the news come to Privy Seal.
It was in this pass that the thought of the young Poins had come to him. Here was a fellow absolutely stupid. He was a brother of Katharine Howard's tiring maid who had already come near to losing his head in a former intrigue in the Court. He had, at the instigation of his sister, carried two Papist letters of Katharine Howard. And, if it was the King who pardoned him, it was Throckmorton who first had taken him prisoner; it was Throckmorton who had advised him to lie hidden in his grandfather's house for a month or two. At the time Throckmorton had had no immediate reason to give the boy this counsel. Poins had been so small a tool in the past embroilment of Katharine's letter that, had he gone straight back to his post in the yeomanry of the King's guard, no man would have noticed him. But it had always been part of the devious and great bearded man's policy—it had been part of his very nature—to play upon people's fears, to trouble them with apprehensions. It was part of the tradition that Cromwell had given all his men. He ruled England by such fears.
Thus Throckmorton had sent Poins trembling to hide in the old printer's his grandfather's house in the wilds of Austin Friars. And Throckmorton had impressed upon him that he alone had really saved him. It was in his grandfather's mean house that Poins had remained for a brace of months, grumbled at by his Protestant uncle and sneered at by his malicious Papist grandfather. And it was here that Throckmorton had found him, dressed in grey, humbled from his pride and raging for things to do.
The boy would be of little service—yet he was all that Throckmorton had. If he could hardly be expected to trick Culpepper with his tongue, he might wound him with his sword; if he could not kill him he might at least scotch him, cause a brawl in Calais town, where, because the place was an outpost, brawling was treason, and Culpepper might be had by the heels for long enough to let Cromwell fall. Therefore, in the low room with the black presses, in the very shadow of Cromwell's own walls, Throckmorton—who was given the privacy of the place by the Lutheran printer because he was Cromwell's man—large, golden-bearded and speaking in meaning whispers, with lifting of his eyebrows, had held a long conference with the lad.
His dangerous and terrifying presence seemed to dominate, for the young Poins, even the dusty archway of the Calais gate—and, even though he saw the flat, green and sunny levels of the French marshland, with the town of Ardres rising grey and turreted six miles away, the young Poins felt that he was still beneath the eyes of Throckmorton, the spy who had sought him out in his grandfather's house in Austin Friars to send him here across the seas to Calais. Up above in the archway the stonemasons who came from Lydd sang their Kentish songs as hammers clinked on chisels and the fine dust filtered through the scaffold boards. But the young Poins kept his eyes upon the dusty and winding road that threaded the dykes from Ardres, and thought only that when Thomas Culpepper came he must be stayed. He had oiled his sword that had been his father's so that it would slip smoothly from the scabbard; he had filed his dagger so that it would pierce through thin coat of mail. It was well to be armed, though he could not see why Thomas Culpepper should not stay willingly at Calais to be lieutenant of the stone lighters and steal stone to fill his pockets, since such were the privileges of the post that Throckmorton offered him.
'Mayhap, if I stay him, it will get me advancement,' he grumbled between his teeth. He was enraged in his slow, fierce way. For Throckmorton had promised him only to save his neck if he succeeded. There had been no hint of further rewards. He did not speculate upon why Thomas Culpepper was to be held in Calais; he did not speculate upon why he should wish to come to England; but again and again he muttered between his teeth, 'A curst business! a curst business!'
In the mysterious embroilment in which formerly he had taken part, his sister had told him that he was carrying letters between the King and Kat Howard. Yes; his large, slow sister had promised him great advancement for carrying certain letters. And still, in spite of the fact that he had been told it was a treason, he believed that the letters he had carried for Kat Howard were love letters to the King. Nevertheless, for his services he had received no advancement; he had, on the contrary, been bidden to leave his comrades of the guard and to hide himself. Throckmorton had bidden him do this. And instead of advancement, he had received kicks, curses, cords on his wrists, an interview with the Lord Privy Seal that still in the remembrance set him shivering, and this chance, offered him by Throckmorton, that if he stayed Thomas Culpepper he might save his neck.