Enter a Messenger.

Mes.

  Health to your Majesty.

Arb.

  From Gobrias?

Mes.

  Yes Sir.

Arb.

  How does he, is he well?

Mes.

  In perfect health.

Arb.

  Take that for thy good news.  A trustier servant to his Prince
  there lives not, than is good Gobrias.

1 Gent.

  The King starts back.

Mar.

  His blood goes back as fast.

2 Gent.  And now it comes again.

Mar.

  He alters strangely.

Arb.

The hand of Heaven is on me, be it far from me to struggle, if my secret sins have pull’d this curse upon me, lend me tears now to wash me white, that I may feel a child-like innocence within my breast; which once perform’d, O give me leave to stand as fix’d as constancy her self, my eyes set here unmov’d, regardless of the world though thousand miseries incompass me.

Mar.

  This is strange, Sir, how do you?

Arb.

  Mardonius, my mother.

Mar.

  Is she dead?

Arb.

Alas she’s not so happy, thou dost know how she hath laboured since my Father died to take by treason hence this loathed life, that would but be to serve her, I have pardoned, and pardoned, and by that have made her fit to practise new sins, not repent the old:  she now had stirr’d a slave to come from thence, and strike me here, whom Gobrias sifting out, took and condemn’d and executed there, the carefulst servant:  Heaven let me but live to pay that man; Nature is poor to me, that will not let me have as many deaths as are the times that he hath say’d my life, that I might dye ’em over all for him.

Mar.

  Sir let her bear her sins on her own head,
  Vex not your self.

Arb.

  What will the world
  Conceive of me? with what unnatural sins
  Will they suppose me loaden, when my life
  Is sought by her that gave it to the world? 
  But yet he writes me comfort here, my Sister,
  He saies, is grown in beauty and in grace. 
  In all the innocent vertues that become
  A tender spotless maid:  she stains her cheeks
  With morning tears to purge her mothers ill,
  And ’mongst that sacred dew she mingles Prayers
  Her pure Oblations for my safe return: 
  If I have lost the duty of a Son,
  If any pomp or vanity of state
  Made me forget my natural offices,
  Nay farther, if I have not every night
  Expostulated with my wandring thoughts,
  If ought unto my parent they have err’d,
  And call’d ’em back:  do you direct her arm
  Unto this foul dissembling heart of mine: 
  But if I have been just to her, send out
  Your power to compass me, and hold me safe
  From searching treason; I will use no means
  But prayer:  for rather suffer me to see
  From mine own veins issue a deadly flood,
  Than wash my danger off with mothers blood.