'Talkest like a Blind God Boy,' Hogben said sarcastically. 'How knowest she be thine to take?' He pointed at the young Poins. 'Here be another hath had doings with a Kat Howard, though I cannot well discern if she be thine or whose.'
Culpepper sprang, a flash of green, straight at the callow boy. But Poins had sprung too, back and to the left, and his oiled sword was from its scabbard and warring in the air.
'Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee—Holy Sepulchre! I will spit thee!' he cried.
'Ass!' Culpepper answered. 'In God's time I will break thy back across my knee. But God's time is not yet.'
He poured out a flood of questions about the Kat Howard Poins had seen.
'Squahre Thomas,' Nicholas Hogben interrupted him maliciously, 'that young man of Kent saith e'ennow: "Kat Howard is like to——" and then he chokes upon his words. Now even what make of thing is it that Kat Howard is like to do or be done by?'
With his sword whiffling before him the young Poins could think rapidly—nay, upon any matter that concerned his advancement he could think rapidly always.
'Goodman Thomas Culpepper,' he said in a high voice, 'the mistress Katharine Howard I spoke of is thin and dark and small, and married to Edward Howard of Biggleswade. She is like to die of a quinsy.'
For well he knew that his advancement depended on his keeping Thomas Culpepper on the hither side of the water; and if it muddled his brain to have been so usefully mishandled for carrying letters betwixt the King's Grace and the Lady Katharine Howard, he knew enough of a jealous man to know that that was no news to keep Thomas Culpepper in Calais.
Culpepper's animation dropped like the light of a torch that is dowsed.