He dropped on to a couch and ran his fingers through his hair like one distraught.
‘It’s too much, Giles,’ he groaned presently. ‘I can’t bear it any more. I can never listen again. Let them come and slaughter me, here, in my sleep if they will. But I’ll listen to no more plots from them and lie awake nights wondering whether I should behead them before they murder me. Who can I trust? Tell me, who?’
The King’s voice rose again to something near a shriek. ‘ Who? —You, my mother, Barbara and Luke. Who else?—No one.’
Giles moved forward to say something. But the King’s voice ran on again brokenly, madly. His hand suddenly shot out pointing to the table.
‘And there lies the trouble, Giles: the shell! It has robbed me of my faith in all. When shall I find peace again? Kill it! Take that battle-axe from off the wall—behind you. Smash it! There’s a curse in it! Smash it into powder, I tell you!’
Giles hesitated a moment, trying to find words to soothe the wildness of his master’s mood. Then in a flash the King leapt up, snatched the shell off the table and hurled it with all his might through the open window of the tower. With a great sigh he dropped down upon the sofa again and a sudden calm came upon him as though he had at last rid himself of something evil.
But the keen ears of the King’s Finder were listening. Listening for a distant crash. The night was still. He knew that if the shell fell into the courtyard from that tremendous height it would be broken in a thousand pieces. If, on the other hand, the King’s raving strength had thrown it farther still, it would fall into the garden where the softness of flower beds, moss or turf might save it from destruction. It would take some seconds to fall, Giles told himself. And as he waited in the silent room he found he was thinking of Agnes. Were the shell destroyed, it would be for the best; if it was saved it would mean its work was not yet done.
And then, still listening for the answer to the question in his mind, he suddenly knew that he had waited over-long—past the time for it to fall. It had dropped into the garden—without a sound.
Giles moved over to the bowed figure sitting on the couch.
‘Your Maj—’ he began; and then checked himself. He laid his arm across the King’s shoulders.