“You’ve got to be kidding.” Foster shook his head slowly. “I just told you, we’ve spent the bulk of the last fortnight in the saddle; now you want me to undertake a round trip of better than a hundred and fifty miles, simply because you’ve got a cold? Doesn’t King Arthur have a doctor or two about?”
‘They’re all ignorant quacks,” croaked Collier. “All they know is bleeding and purging and compounding foul, witch’s-brew concoctions of unmentionable ingredients. I need a real doctor, some penicillin, some vitamins. I seem to recall you having a big jar of vitamins somewhere in the kitchen of your house? Well, I want them. I command you to bring them back to me. My continued health and well-being is of vast importance to the kingdom.”
“You don’t just have a cold, Collier, you’ve come down with severe megalomania, d’you know that? You’ve gone nutty as a frigging fruitcake, and hell will freeze over solid before I saddle-pound my tired ass up to the Cheviots and back, just to pump your overinflated ego up a little more. Have you got that?”
The armchair crashed over backward as Collier sprang to his feet, empurpled with outrage. “No one addresses the Earl of Sussex in that tone, Foster! The well-deserved loss of half your ear apparently taught you nothing. I think you need a bodkin through your insubordinate tongue. Perhaps a flogging would teach you how to speak to and behave in the presence of your betters. You’d best get started for Whyffler Hall, before I call my Legion and—”
“Go fuck yourself, Collier,” snarled Foster. “You want I doctor, go to one of these you call ‘quacks’; as full of shit as you’ve become, a purge would do you good.”
He had spun on his heel and started out of the chamber when Collier struck a small gong and shouted, “Guards! Guards, to me!”
A dozen Sussex Legionnaires poured into the chamber, blocking Foster’s exit, led by the Legionary captain, his long sword bared.
“Seize Captain Foster! Take him outside and flog him, thirty … no, fifty lashes. Put a blunt brass pin through his tongue. Let—”
“Nowl you jest hoi’ on there, Perfesser,” put in Webster. 1 don’t give a gol’-plated fuck if you play-ack big dog all you wants to, but when you gets to where you gonna whip folks
and stick pins in ’em ’cause they won’ do crazy things ‘long with you, this ole boy’s done had hisself enough.”
“Stay out of this affair, Webster,” warned Collier, smiling cruelly. “This is between Foster and me. You already know your place; he must learn his own.”
Webster said no more; he acted, instead. His long, powerful arm shot out and the huge hand closed with the fingers under the backplate of the soldier who held Foster’s right arm. He jerked the man off his feet and flung him full into the Sussex captain; both men went down in a heap.
“Help! Guards! Mutiny! Murder!” Collier had time to scream but the four words before the soldier who had had Foster’s left arm came flying, to crash onto the tabletop and skid full into his master, his helmeted head taking the Earl in the pit of the stomach, both crashing back onto the overturned chair.
Shaking with laughter, the captain of the King’s Own, who had accompanied them and heard everything, partially unwrapped the bundle of weapons and extended them toward Foster. “You can keep your hands off me, Captain Webster; I’ve no part in this sorry affair. I shall say as much at your trial, but if you’re to live to have one, you’d best take these swords and defend yourselves ere the damned Sussex pigs chop you into gobbets.”
But it was not to be. With Foster and Webster backed against the wall, their blue-shimmering Irish swords and daggers confronting a triple rank of Collier’s guardmen, the chamber was suddenly filled with royal-liveried infantry, their knife-bladed pikes threatening every man in the tent. Then Arthur, himself, strode in, flanked by Reichsherzog Wolfgang and Harold, Archbishop of York.
When the King had heard Captain Cromwell’s terse report, dismissed the Sussexers, and had his pikemen right the overturned chair and place the wheezing, gasping, red-faced Earl of Sussex into it, he spoke to him sternly.