Outside, a gloomy November drizzle enveloped London with its clammy shroud. Ladies and gentlemen arrived in their chairs or their glass coaches, wrapped to the eyes in mantles and hoods of fur. There was a goodly array of musketeers guarding the approach to the Hall, and a small company of the trained bands of London lined the way from Whitehall to Westminster, for it was pretty well known that His Majesty would come—in strict incognito—to see the last of his nine days' favourite, who during the last few months had made Mistress Gwynne sigh very significantly, and caused Lady Castlemaine to make invidious comparisons between the gallant bearing of the romantic adventurer and the mincing manners of the gentlemen of the Court.
The less exalted spectators of to-day's pageant were being kept outside and pushed well out of the way by the soldiery; nevertheless, they stood about patiently—ankle deep in the mud of the roadway, their sad-coloured doublets getting soaked beneath the persistent drizzle and exhaling a fetid odour which made the street and the open place seem more dismal and humid than usual.
The men pressed to the front, leaving the women to shift for themselves, to see as best they could. It was pre-eminently a spectacle for men, since it carried with it its own element of danger. For, look you, the Papists would be mightily rampant on this occasion, and who knows but that a gigantic conspiracy was afoot to blow up the Lord's House of Parliament, which would sit this day to try the arch-conspirator.
Recollections of the Gunpowder Plot caused men to curse loudly, and to grasp with firm hand the useful flail safely hid inside the doublet: a good protection against personal attack, but alas, useless if the whole of Westminster was really undermined with powder.
The 'prentices, ever to the fore, had taken French leave to-day. At certain risk of castigation to-morrow they deserted work with one accord and were at the best posts of observation, long before the more sober folk had thought to leave their beds. They wriggled their meagre bodies between the very legs of the soldiery, like so many lizards in search of sunshine, until they had conquered their places of vantage in the foreground whence they would presently see the prisoner when he stepped out of the vehicle which would bring him from the Tower.
In the meanwhile the crowd wiled away the time by watching the arrival of the grand folk, and noting their names and quality as they descended from coach and chaise.
"That's my lord of Rochester."
"And this my lady Evelyn."
"I vow 'tis Master Pepys himself."
"And his lady, too."