He recovered a little coherence.
'If this were a Protestant land ye might say this wedding was no wedding, for that a friar did it; but I know ye will not suffer that——' His eyes appealed piteously to the Queen.
'Why, then,' he said, 'it is not upon my head that I do not wed this wench. You be my witness that I would wed; it gores my heart to see her look so pale. It tears my vitals to see any woman look pale. As Lucretius says, "Better the sunshine of smiles——"'
A little outputting of impatient breath from Katharine made him stop.
'It is you, your Grace,' he said, 'that make me thus tied. If you would let us be Protestant, or, again, if I could plead pre-contract to void this Paris marriage it would let me wed with this wench—eheu—eheu. Her brother will break my bones——'
He began to cry out so lamentably, invoking Pluto to bear him to the underworld, that the King roared out upon him—
'Why, get you gone, fool.'
The Magister threw himself suddenly upon his knees, his hands clasped, his gown drooping over them down to his wrists. He turned his face to the Queen.
'Before God,' he said, 'before high and omnipotent Jove, I swear that when I made this marriage I thought it was no marriage!' He reflected for a breath and added, at the recollection of the cook's spits that had been turned against him when he had by woman's guile been forced into marriage with the widow in Paris, 'I was driven into it by force, with sharp points at my throat. Is that not enow to void a marriage? Is that not enow? Is that not enow?'
Katharine looked out over the great levels of the view. Her face was rigid, and she swallowed in her throat, her eye being glazed and hard. The King took his cue from a glance at her face.