'Would he have slain me?' he asked instead, as if it were a little thing.
'I do not think so,' Katharine said. 'Maybe it was me he would have slain.'
'Body of God!' the King said sardonically. 'He cometh for no cheap goods.'
He had so often questioned his wife of this cousin of hers that he had his measure indifferent well.
'Why,' the Queen said, 'I do not know that he would have slain me. Maybe it was to save me from dragons that he came with his knife. He was, I think, with the Archbishop's men and came here very drunk. I would pray your Highness' Grace to punish him not over much for he is my mother's nephew and the only friend I had when I was very poor and a young child.'
The King hung his head on his chest, and his rustic eyes surveyed the ground.
'I would have you to think,' she said, 'that he has been among evil men that advised and prompted him thus to assault my door. They would ruin and undo him and me.'
'Well I know it,' Henry said. He rubbed his hand up his left side, opened it and dropped it again—a trick he had when he thought deeply.
'The Archbishop,' he said, 'babbled somewhat—I know not what—of a cousin of thine that was come from the Scots, he thought, without leave or license.'
'But how to get him hence, that my foes triumph not?' the Queen said, 'for I would not have them triumph.'