“A snivelling girl! Thunder of heaven, if we could but have the sire back in his stead! Why, look you, if these rebels can but get him into their hands, they’ll have no more to do but to pull ugly faces. He will run and hide his face in his mother’s bosom, and let them hang every gentleman and friend in the kingdom.” Salisbury nodded his head. “Weak King—no kingdom. I am wondering how many of us will keep our heads on our shoulders.” “Hallo, who’s this?” Footsteps came towards them. The curtain was plucked aside, jerked back again, and a third man stood with them in the window recess. It was Robert Knollys, with the face of a ship’s captain, looking straight into the thick of a storm. He laid a hand on Salisbury’s shoulder, and spoke in a harsh whisper. “Look in yonder; it is enough to make the heart of a strong man sick.” He drew the curtain slightly to one side, so that they could see into the great council chamber lit by the candles set in sconces upon the walls. Half a dozen knights and gentlemen had withdrawn to the far end of the chamber and were standing there like men discomfited, knowing not whether to stay or to go. At the lower end of the council table sat Simon of Sudbury, clad in a plain violet-coloured cassock with a small gold cross at his breast. He had a richly-bound missal open on the table before him, and he made a pretence of turning the pages. Now and again he raised his eyes from the book with binding of scarlet and gold, and looked at the Princess, who sat in a great carved chair set upon a low daïs in the centre of the chamber. For this woman’s face was a tragedy in itself, struggling to mask pity, shame, anger, and a kind of incredulous scorn. She was dressed in some golden stuff that caught the light of the candles, so that her figure seemed to draw the light to it from every corner of the great room. A cap of silver tissue covered her black hair, and her face had a fine and spirited comeliness that strove not to be humiliated by the thing that lay upon her knees. For on her knees lay the head of a King—her son. Her hands covered it, hands wearing many rings that sent out from their whiteness sparkles of red and of blue, of green and of purple. Richard was kneeling before her, his hands clasping the arms of the chair—frail, delicate hands, tapering towards the nails. Two thin ankles and feet shod in shoes of gilded leather were thrust out from under the folds of a robe of blue and white silk. His shoulders were twitching, and as they twitched the heels of his gilden shoes smote together. Knollys dropped the curtain and blotted out the room. “God help the lad; he should have been born a girl.” They stood close together, morose, grim, baffled. “How can one put blood into the boy?” “Ask me some other riddle, my friend! He has been like that ever since Newtown came to him to-day from the mob upon Blackheath. Newtown babbled too much—a pity they did not hang him.”