'Know'st thou not, young ass, that this man was thrown out of his mastership at Eton for his foul living?'
Udal was suddenly on his feet with the long pasty-knife held back among the furs of his gown.
'Ignoble ...' he began, but he lost his words in his trembling rage. The printer snatched at his long measuring stick.
'Down knife,' he grunted, for his fury, too, made his throat catch.
'Have a care, nunkey,' the young man laughed at the pair of them. 'They teach knife-thrusts in his Italian books.'
'I will have thy printer's licence revoked, ignoble man,' the magister said, grinning hideously. 'Thou, a Lutheran, to turn upon me who was undone by Papist lies! They said I lived foully; they said I stole the silver cellars....'
He turned upon the old man, stretching out the hand that held the knife in a passionate gesture:
'Your Papists said that,' he appealed. 'But not a one of them believed it, though you dub me Lutheran.... See you, do I not govern now the chief Papist of you all? Would that be if they believed me filthy in my living. Have I not governed in the house of the Howards, the lord of it being absent? Would that have been if they had believed it of me?... And then....' He turned again upon the printer. 'For the sake of your men ... for the sake of the New Learning, which God prosper, I was cast down.'
The printer grunted surlily:
''Tis known no wench is safe from thy amorousness. How many husbands have broken thy pate?'