Act Three Scene Three
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.