'Sha't have a better mate,' he uttered. 'Sha't be a knight's dame! There! there!' and he fondled her great back with his hand. Her eyes screwed tightly up, she opened her mouth wide, but no words came out, and suddenly she shook her head as if she had been an enraged child. Her loud cries, shaken out of her with her tears, died away as she went across the terrace, a loud one and then a little echo, a loud one and then two more.
'Before God!' the King said, 'that knave shall eat ten years of prison bread.'
His wife looked still over the wooded enclosures, the little stone walls, and the copses. A small cloud had come before the sun, and its shadow was moving leisurely across the ridge where stood the roofless abbey.
'The maid shall have the best man I can give her,' the King said.
'Why, no good man would wed her!' Katharine answered dully.
Henry said—
'Anan?' Then he fingered the dagger on the chain before his chest.
'Why,' he added slowly, 'then the Magister shall die by the rope. It is an offence that can be quitted with death. It is time such a thing were done.'
Katharine's dull silence spurred him; he shrugged his shoulders and heaved a deep breath out.
'Why,' he said, 'a man can be found to wed the wench.'