He said: 'Well, well. You are in the right.'
'Nearly I went with him to another place,' she answered, 'but half an hour ago. Would to God I had! for here it is all treacheries.'
'Write your letter, child,' he answered. 'You shall give it to Cicely Elliott to-morrow in the morning. I will have it conveyed, but I will not be seen to handle it, for I am too young to be hanged.'
'Why, God help you, knight,' Udal whispered urgently from the doorway, 'carry no letter in this affair—if you escape, assuredly this mad pupil of mine shall die. For the King——?' Suddenly he raised his voice to a high nasal drawl that rang out like a jackdaw's: 'That is very true; and, in this matter of Death you may read in Socrates' Apology. Nevertheless we may believe that if Death be a transmigration from one place into another, there is certainly amendment in going whither so many great men have already passed, and to be subtracted from the way of so many judges that be iniquitous and corrupt.'
'Why, what a plague....' Katharine began.
He interrupted her quickly.
'Here is your serving man back at last if you would rate him for leaving your door unkept.'
The man stood in the doorway, his lanthorn dangling in his hand, his cudgel stuck through his belt, his shock of hair rough like an old thatch, and his eyes upon the ground. He mumbled, feeling at his throat:
'A man must eat. I was gone to my supper.'
'You are like to have the nightmare, friend,' the old knight said pleasantly. 'It is ill to eat when most of the world sleeps.'