Chapter 9

Enter King, Queen, Malateste, Valasco, Lopez, [Roderigo and guards].

KING The presence door be guarded, let none enter On forfeit of your lives, without our knowledge. Oh you are false physicians all unto me, You bring me poison, but no antidotes.

QUEEN Yourself that poison brews.

KING Prithee, no more.

QUEEN I will, I must speak more.

KING Thunder aloud.

QUEEN My child, yet newly quickened in my womb, Is blasted with the fires of bastardy.

KING Who! Who dares once but think so in his dream?

MALATESTE Medina's faction preached it openly.

KING Be cursed he and his faction. Oh how I labour For these preventions! But so cross is fate My ills are ne'r hid from me, but their cures. What's to be done?

QUEEN That which being left undone, Your life lies at the stake. Let them be breathless Both brat and mother.

KING Ha!

MALATESTE She plays true music Sir. The mischiefs you are drenched in are so full, You need not fear to add to them. Since now No way is left to guard thy rest secure, But by a means like this.

LOPEZ All Spain rings forth Medina's name, and his confederates.

RODRIGO All his allies and friends rush into troops Like raging torrents.

VALESCO And loud trumpet forth Your perjuries. Seducing the wild people, And with rebellious faces threatening all.

KING I shall be massacred in this their spleen, Ere I have time to guard myself. I feel The fire already falling. Where's our guard?

MALATESTE Planted at guarded gate, with a strict charge That none shall enter but by your command.

KING Let them be doubled. I am full of thoughts, A thousand wheels toss my incertain fears, There is a storm in my hot boiling brains, Which rises without wind. A horrid one. What clamour's that?

QUEEN Some treason. Guard the King.

Enter Balthazar drawn, [he strikes] one of the guards who falls.

BALTHAZAR Not in?

MALATESTE One of the guards is slain, keep off the murderer.

BALTHAZAR I am none, sir.

VALASCO There's a man dropped down by thee.

KING Thou desperate fellow, thus press in upon us! Is murder all the story we shall read? What King can stand, when thus his subjects bleed? What has thou done?

BALTHAZAR No hurt.

KING Played even the wolf, And from a fold committed to my charge, Stolen and devoured one of the flock.

BALTHAZAR You have sheep enough for all that, Sir. I have killed none though. Or if I have, mine <30> own blood, shed in your quarrels, may beg my pardon. My business was in haste to you.

KING I would not have thy sin scored on my head For all the Indian Treasury. I prithee tell me, Suppose thou had'st our pardon, oh can that cure Thy wounded conscience, can there my pardon help thee? Yet having deserved well both of Spain and us, We will not pay thy worth with loss of life, But banish thee for ever.

BALTHAZAR For a groom's death?

KING No more. We banish thee our court and Kingdom. A King that fosters men so dipped in blood, May be called merciful, but never good. Be gone upon thy life.

BALTHAZAR Well, farewell.

Exit Balthazar.

VALASCO The fellow is not dead, but wounded sir.

QUEEN After him Malateste. In our lodging Stay that rough fellow, he's the man shall do't. Haste or my hopes are lost.

Exit Malateste.

Why are you sad, sir?

KING For thee, Paulina, swell my troubled thoughts Like billows beaten by two warring winds.

QUEEN Be you ruled but ruled by me, I'll make a calm Smooth as the breast of heaven.

KING Instruct me how.

QUEEN You, as your fortunes tie you, are inclined To have the blow given.

KING Where's the instrument?

QUEEN 'Tis found in Balthazar.

KING He's banished.

QUEEN True But stayed by me for this.

KING His spirit is hot And rugged, but so honest that his soul Will never turn devil to do it.

QUEEN Put it to trial. Retire a little, hither I'll send for him, Offer repeal and favours if he do it. But if he deny, you have no finger in't, And then his doom of banishment stands good.

KING Be happy in thy workings, I obey.

Exit King

QUEEN Stay Lopez.

LOPEZ Madam.

QUEEN Step to our lodging, Lopez And instantly bid Malateste bring The banished Balthazar to us.

LOPEZ I shall.

Exit Lopez.

QUEEN Thrive my black plots, the mischiefs I have set Must not so die. Ills must new ills beget.

Enter Malateste and Balthazar.

BALTHAZAR Now! What hot poisoned custard must I put my spoon into now?

QUEEN None, for mine honour is now thy protection.

MALATESTE Which, noble soldier, she will pawn for thee But never forfeit.

BALTHAZAR 'Tis a fair gage <31>, keep it.

QUEEN Oh Balthazar! I am thy friend, and marked thee. When the King sentenced thee to banishment Fire sparkled from thine eyes of rage and grief. Rage to be doomed so for a groom so base, And grief to lose thy Country. Thou hast killed none, The milk-sop is but wounded, thou are not banished.

BALTHAZAR If I were, I lose nothing, I can make any country mine. I have a private coat for Italian Stilettos, I can be treacherous with the Walloon, drunk with the Dutch, a chimney-sweeper with the Irish, a gentleman with the Welsh and true arrant thief with the English. What then is my country to me?

QUEEN The King, who rap'd with fury, banished thee, Shall give thee favours, yield but to destroy What him distempers.

BALTHAZAR So. And what is the dish I must dress?

QUEEN Only the cutting off a pair of lives.

BALTHAZAR I love no red-wine healths.

QUEEN The King commands it, you are but executioner.

BALTHAZAR The hang-man? An office that will hold so long as hemp lasts. Why do not you beg the office, Sir?

QUEEN Thy victories in field never did crown thee As this one Act shall.

BALTHAZAR Prove but that, 'tis done.

QUEEN Follow him close, he's yielding.

MALATESTE Thou shalt be called thy Country's Patriot, For quenching out a fire now newly kindling In factious bosoms, and shalt thereby save More Noble Spaniards lives, than thou slew Moors.

QUEEN Art thou yet converted?

BALTHAZAR No point.

QUEEN Read me then: Medina's niece, by a contract from the King, Lays claim to all that's mine, my crown, my bed. A son she has by him must fill the throne, If her great faction can but work that wonder. Now hear me...

BALTHAZAR I do with gaping ears.

QUEEN I swell with hopeful issue to the King.

BALTHAZAR A brave Don call you mother.

MALATESTE Of this danger the fear afflicts the King.

BALATAZAR Cannot much blame him.

QUEEN If therefore by the riddance of this Dame ...

BALTHAZAR Riddance? Oh! The meaning on't is murder.

MALATESTE Stab her, or so, that's all.

QUEEN That Spain be free from frights, the King from fears, And I, now held his infamy, be called Queen, The treasure of the Kingdom shall lie open To pay thy noble darings.

BALTHAZAR Come. I'll do it, provided I hear Jove call to me, though he roars. I must have the King's hand to this warrant, else I dare not serve it upon my conscience.

QUEEN Be firm then. Behold the King is come.

Enter King.

BALTHAZAR Acquaint him.

QUEEN I found the metal hard, but with oft beating He's now so softened, he shall take impression From any seal you give him.

KING Balthazar, Come hither, listen. Whatsoe'er our Queen Has importuned thee to touching Onaelia Niece to the Constable, and her young son, My voice shall second it, and sign her promise.

BALTHAZAR Their riddance?

KING That.

BALTHAZAR What way? By poison?

KING So.

BALTHAZAR Starving? Or strangling, stabbing, smothering?

QUEEN Good.

KING Any way, so 'tis done.

BALTHAZAR But I will have, Sir, This under your own hand, that you desire it, You plot it, set me on to't.

KING Pen, ink and paper.

[King writes and signs document.]

BALTHAZAR And then as large a pardon as law and wit can engross for me.

KING Thou shalt have my pardon.

BALTHAZAR A word more, Sir, pray will you tell me one thing?

KING Yes, any thing dear Balthazar.

BALTHAZAR Suppose I have your strongest pardon, can that cure my wounded conscience? Can there your pardon help me? You not only knock the ewe on the head, but cut the innocent lamb's throat too, yet you are no butcher.

QUEEN Is this thy promised yielding to an act So wholesome for thy country?

KING Chide him not.

BALTHAZAR I would not have this sin scored on my head For all the Indian Treasury.

KING That song no more. Do this and I will make thee a great man.

BALTHAZAR Is there no farther trick in't but my blow, your purse and my pardon?

MALTATESTE No nets upon my life to entrap thee.

BALTHAZAR Then trust me. These knuckles work it.

KING Farewell. Be confident and sudden.

BALTHAZAR Yes. Subjects may stumble, when kings walk astray. Thine Acts shall be a new Apocrypha.

Exeunt.