HUBERT
Who’s there? Speak, ho! Speak quickly, or I shoot.
BASTARD
A friend. What art ?
HUBERT
Of the part of England.
BASTARD
go?
HUBERT
What’s that to ? Why may I not demand
Of affairs, as well as of mine?
BASTARD
Hubert, I think.
HUBERT
a perfect thought.
I will, upon all hazards, well believe
art my friend, that know’st my tongue so well.
Who art ?
BASTARD
Who wilt. And if please,
mayst befriend me so much as to think
I come one way of the Plantagenets.
HUBERT
Unkind remembrance! and eyeless night
Have done me shame. Brave soldier, pardon me,
That any accent breaking from tongue
Should ’scape the true acquaintance of mine ear.
BASTARD
Come, come; sans compliment, what news abroad?
HUBERT
Why, here walk I in the black brow of night,
To find you out.
BASTARD
Brief, then; and what’s the news?
HUBERT
O, my sweet sir, news fitting to the night,
Black, fearful, comfortless, and horrible.
BASTARD
Show me the very wound of this ill news.
I am no woman, I’ll not swoon at it.
HUBERT
The King, I fear, is poison’d by a monk.
I left him almost speechless, and broke out
To acquaint you with this evil, that you might
The better arm you to the sudden time,
Than if you had at leisure known of this.
BASTARD
How did he take it? Who did taste to him?
HUBERT
A monk, I tell you, a resolved villain,
Whose bowels suddenly burst out. The King
Yet speaks, and peradventure may recover.
BASTARD
Who leave to tend his majesty?
HUBERT
Why, know you not? The lords are all come back,
And brought Prince Henry in their company;
At whose request the King pardon’d them,
And they are all about his majesty.
BASTARD
Withhold indignation, mighty heaven,
And tempt us not to bear above our power!
I’ll tell , Hubert, half my power this night,
Passing these flats, are taken by the tide;
These Lincoln Washes have devoured them;
Myself, well mounted, hardly have escap’d.
Away, before. Conduct me to the King;
I doubt he will be dead or I come.