At the top there was--light! and the passage ended in a window. A great way off, a pine torch was stuck in a wall, a knave in armour sat on the floor beneath it--the heavy breathing was coming up the stairway. She crept on tiptoe across the passage to the curtains beside the casement.
Then a man was within touch of her hand, panting hard, and he stood still as if he were out of breath. His voice called in gasps to the knave at the end of the gallery:
'Ho ... There ... Simon!... Peter!... Hath one passed that way?'
He moved a step down the corridor and, as he was lifting the arras a little way away, she moved to peep through a crack in the curtain.
It was Throckmorton! The distant light glinted along his beard. At the slight movement she made he was agog to listen, so that his ears appeared to be pricked up. He moved swiftly back to cover the stairhead. In the distance, beneath the light, the groom was laying cards upon the floor between his parted legs.
'I can hear thee breathe. Art near! Listen!'
She leant back against the wall and trembled.
'This seems like a treachery,' he whispered. 'It is none. Listen? There is little time! Do you hear me?'
'Do you hear me?' he asked. 'Before God, I am true to you.'
When still she did not speak he hissed with vexation and raised one hand above his head. He sank his forehead in swift meditation.
'Listen,' he said again. 'To take you I have only to tear down this arras. Do you hear?'
He bared his head once more and said aloud to himself,
He stepped across the corridor, lifted a latch and looked in at double doors that were just beside her. Then, swiftly, he moved back once more to cover the stairhead.
'God! God! God!' she heard him mutter between his teeth.
'Listen!' he said again. 'Listen! listen! listen!' The words seemed to form part of an eager, hissed refrain. He was trembling with haste.
He began to press the arras, along the wall towards her, with his finger tips. Her breast sank with a sickening fall. Then, suddenly, he started back again; she could not understand why he did not come further--then she noticed that he was afraid, still, to leave the stairhead.
But why did he not call his men to him? He had a whole army at his back.
He was peering into the shadows--and something familiar in the poise of his head, his intent gaze, the line of his shoulders, as you may see a cat's outlined against a lighted doorway, filled her with an intense lust for revenge. This man had wormed himself into her presence: he was a traitor over and over again. And he had fooled her! He had made her believe that he was lover to her. He had made her believe, and he had fooled her. He had shown her letter to Privy Seal.