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"Lady Rochford, I regret to say," Culpeper responded stiffly, "has all the morality of a London Bridge bawd ingrained into her soul. It matters to me not a single whit what she said to you. I will admit to nothing that would harm a hair upon the queen's head, my lords. You are, I fear, wasting your time questioning me further." He stared defiantly at them.

Thomas Culpeper was immediately removed from the hearing, for it was obvious that for now they would not get what they wanted from him.

"A little torture would wring the truth from him," said Lord Sadler sternly. "We need his confession."

"You can torture him to the point of death," Lord Russell remarked, "but you will not get him to say he committed adultery with the queen."

"His very silence, this arrogant refusal to admit to it, is in itself an admission of his guilt," Lord Audley noted.

"Aye," the Earl of Southampton replied. "He is in love with her, poor fellow, and men in love are more often the fools than not."

"May God have mercy on both their souls," Bishop Gardiner said piously.

"We might interrogate the queen again," the archbishop said.

"What good will that do?" Norfolk growled. "Catherine does not have two beans worth of sense in her pretty head. She refuses to accept the seriousness of any of this. She believes the king will forgive her."

"We could try," Suffolk said slowly. "What harm would it do to try? If we fail, they are still condemned by the testimony of the others. Culpeper is attempting to protect her, but she need not know that. What if she thinks he turned king's evidence to save his own miserable skin? She might tell us what we need to know in an attempt to revenge herself on him, and in an effort to save herself."

"We need not all go," Norfolk said, "but I should like to be among the party that does. I have to accept responsibility for her as a family member."

"Very well," Suffolk replied. "I will, of course, go. Gardiner, I will want you, and Southampton, and will you come also, Richard Sampson?"

Richard Sampson was Dean of the Chapel Royal. He had never been known to miss a single Privy Council meeting. He held the bishopric of Chichester, and was considered a fair man.

"Aye, I will come, my lord," he now answered.

The five members of the Privy Council were rowed upriver to Syon House. There they found Catherine Howard among her women, strumming her lute and singing sweetly, a song the king had once written for her ill-fated cousin, Anne Boleyn.

"Alas, my love, ye do me wrong, to cast me off so

"discourteously; for I have love-ed you so long,

"delighting in your company. Green Sleeves was my

"delight, and Green Sleeves was all my joy.

"Green Sleeves was my heart of gold, and who

"but my Lady Green Sleeves?"

Catherine Howard looked up at them as they entered, smiled and continued on.

"Thou couldst desire no earthly thing, but that I gave

"it willingly. Thy music to play and sing, and yet,

"thou wouldst not love me. Green Sleeves was my delight,

"and Green Sleeves was all my joy. Green Sleeves was my

"heart of gold, and who but my Lady Green Sleeves?"

They listened to her, entranced, and when finally the last note of the plaintive ballad had died and the spell was broken, Suffolk bowed politely to the young woman and said, "We have come to examine you further, Mistress Howard, based upon the testimony of the others that we have heard."

"Who has spoken ill of me? Lady Rochford? She is not important," Catherine Howard said imperiously. "You could not believe her over me."

"Master Thomas Culpeper has testified that he is in love with you, and has had intimate relations with you since last April," Suffolk, Lord President of the Privy Council, told her. "Lady Rochford confirms this."