“What king?” she asked.
“Who but King Harry?” he said. “King Harry and his new Queen, that but of late was the Lady Anna Boleyn.”
“I say, Dick,” said Edred across his sister, “I am jolly glad to see you again. We——”
“Not now,” said Dick earnestly; “not a word now. It is not safe. And besides—here comes the King!”
CHAPTER XIII
MAY-BLOSSOM AND PEARLS
The King came slowly on a great black horse, riding between the green trees. He himself wore white and green like the May-bushes, and so did the gracious lady who rode beside him on a white horse, whose long tail almost swept the ground and whose long mane fluttered in the breeze like a tattered banner.
The lady had a fine face—proud and smiling—and as her brave eyes met the King’s even the children could see that, for the time at least, she and the King were all the world to each other. They saw that in the brief moment when, in the whirl of the ringed dance, their eyes were turned the way by which the King came with his Queen.
“I wish I didn’t know so much history,” gasped Elfrida through the quick music. “It’s dreadful to know that her head——” She broke off in obedience to an imperative twitch of Richard’s hand on hers.
“Don’t!” he said. “I have not to think. And I’ve heard that history’s all lies. Perhaps they’ll always be happy like they are now. The only way to enjoy the past is not to think of the future—the past’s future, I mean—and I’ve got something else to say to you presently,” he added rather sternly.
The ring broke up into an elaborate figure. The children found themselves fingering the coloured ribbons that hung from the Maypole that was the centre of their dance, twining, intertwining, handing on the streamers to other small, competent fingers. In and out, in and out—a most complicated dance. It was pleasant to find that one’s feet knew it, though one’s brain could not have foreseen, any more than it could have remembered, how the figures went. There were two rings round the Maypole—the inner ring, where Edred and Elfrida were, of noble children in very fine clothes, and the outer ring, of village children in clothes less fine but quite as pretty. Music from a band of musicians on a raised platform decked with May-boughs and swinging cowslip balls inspired the dancers. The King and Queen had reined up their horses and watched the play, well pleased.