Each side of him were the seats for the peers who were to be the triers. Great names were whispered, as the servants of the Knight Marshal arranged these in their respective places. There was the chair for the Earl of Kent, and my lord of Sussex, the Earl of Hertford, and Lord Saint John of Basing, and a score of others, for there were twenty-four triers in all.
On a lower form were the seats for the judges, and in a hollow place cut in the scaffold itself, and immediately at the feet of my Lord High Steward, the Clerk of the Crown would sit with his secondary.
And facing the judges and the peers was the bar, where presently the exalted prisoner would stand.
No one was here yet of the greater personages, the servants were still busy putting everything to right, but some gentlemen of the Queen's household had already arrived, and several noble lords who would be mere spectators. His Grace's friends could easily be distinguished by the sombreness of their garb and the air of grief upon their faces. Mr. Thomas Norton, the Queen's printer, was sorting his papers and cutting his pens, and two gentlemen ushers were receiving final instructions from Garter King-at-Arms.
There was indeed plenty for the idlers to see. Great ropes had been drawn across the further portions of the Hall, leaving a wide passage from the main entrance right down the centre and up to the Lord High Steward's seat. Behind these ropes the crowd was forcibly kept back. And the gossip and the noise went on apace. Laughter too and merry jests, for this was a holiday, my masters, presently to be brought to a close—after the death sentence had been passed and every one dispersed—with lively jousts and copious sacks of ale.
But of all this excitement and bustle not a sound penetrated within the precincts of the Lord Chancellor's Court, where His Eminence the Cardinal de Moreno sat patiently waiting.
Desirous above all things of escaping observation, he had driven over from Hampton Court in the early dawn, and wrapped in a flowing black cloak, which effectually hid his purple robes, he had slipped into the Hall and thence into the Inner Court, even before the crowd had begun to collect. Since then he had sat here quietly buried in thoughts, calmly looking forward to the interview, which was destined finally to unravel the tangled skein of his own diplomacy. Once more the destinies of Europe were hanging on a thread: a girl's love for a man.
Well! so be it! His Eminence loved these palpitating situations, these hairbreadth escapes from perilous positions which were the wine and salt of his existence. He was ready to stake his whole future career upon a woman's love! He, who had scoffed all his life at sentimental passions, who had used every emotion of the human heart, aye! and its every suffering, merely as so many assets in the account of his far-reaching policy, he now saw his whole future depending on the strength of a girl's feelings.
That she would certainly come, he never for a moment held in doubt. In these days the commands of a sovereign were akin to the dictates of God; to disobey was a matter of treason. Aye! she would come, sure enough! not only because of her allegiance to the Queen, but because of her intense, vital interest in the great trial of the day.
So His Eminence waited patiently in the Lord Chancellor's Court, which gave straight into the great Hall itself, until the appointed time.