She answered: 'Aye!' and her fingers twined round his on the hilt of the dagger, so that his were loosening.
Then the old Lady Rochford screamed out—
'Ha! God's mercy! Guards, swords, come!' The furious blood came into Culpepper's face at the sound. His hand he tore from Katharine's, and with the dagger raised on high he ran back from her and then forward towards the Lady Rochford. With an old trick of fence, that she had learned when she was a child, Katharine Howard set out her foot before him, and, with the speed of his momentum, he pitched over forward. He fell upon his face so that his forehead was upon the Lady Rochford's right foot. His dagger he still grasped, but he lay prone with the drink and the fever.
'Now, by God in His mercy,' Katharine said to her, 'as I am the Queen I charge you——'
'Take his knife and stab him to the heart!' the Lady Rochford cried out. 'This will slay us two.'
'I charge you that you listen to me,' the Queen said, 'or, by God, I will have you in chains!'
'I will call your many,' the Lady Rochford cried out, for terror had stopped up the way from her ears to her brain, and she made towards the door. But Katharine set her hand to the old woman's shoulder.
'Call no man,' she commanded. 'This is a device of mine enemies to have men see this of me.'
'I will not stay here to be slain,' the old woman said.
'Then mine own self will slay you,' the Queen answered. Culpepper moved in his stupor. 'Before Heaven,' the Queen said, 'stay you there, and he shall not again stand up.'