"The luckiest accident for you in the world has just happened!" cried Lord Darby, entering Sir Osborne Maurice's apartment two full hours before the time he had appointed. "Order your men to choose your best suit of harness, to pack it on a strong horse, to lead your own courser by the bridle, and to make all speed to the foot of the hill at Greenwich, there to wait till they be sent for; and you come with me: my barge waits at the duke's stairs."
"But what is the matter, my lord?" demanded Sir Osborne; "at least, tell me if my horse must be barded."
"No, no; I think not," replied the earl; "at all events, we shall find bards,[[12]] if we want them. But be quick, we have not a moment to lose, though the tide be running down as quick as a tankard of bastard over the throat of a thirsty serving-man; I will tell you the whole as we go."
"Longpole," cried the knight to his follower, who, at the moment the Earl entered, was in the room, putting the last adjustment to his master's garments; "Longpole, quick! you hear what Lord Darby says. Take the fluted suit----"
"Oh! the fluted, the fluted, by all means," interrupted the earl, "it shows noble and knightly. So shall we go along as in a Roman triumph, with flutes before, and flutes behind. The fluted by all means, good Longpole, and lose no time on the road: for every flagon you do not drink, you shall have two at Greenwich. Now, Maurice, are you ready? By heaven! you make a gallant figure of it; your tailor deserves immortality. 'Tis well! 'tis mighty well! But, to my taste, the cuts in your blue velvet had been better lined with a soft yellow than a white; the hue of a young primrose. The feather might have been the same, but 'tis all a taste: white does marvellous well; the silver girdle and scabbard too! But come; we waste our moments: let two of your men come with us."
Lord Darby conducted his new friend to the barge, and as they proceeded towards Greenwich with a quick tide, he informed him that some knights, Sir Henry Poynings, Sir Thomas Neville, and several others--having agreed to meet, for the purpose of trying some newly-invented arms, the king had been seized with a desire of going unknown to break a lance with them on Blackheath, and had privately commanded the Earl of Devonshire to accompany him as his aid: but that very morning, at his house in Westminster, the earl had slipped, and had so much injured his leg, that his surgeon forbade his riding for a month. "As soon as I heard it," continued Lord Darby, "I flew to his lodging, and prayed him to let me be his messenger to the king, to which petition he easily assented, provided I set off with all speed, for his grace expects him early. Now, the moment that the king hears that the earl cannot ride, he chooses him another aid, and I so hope to manage, that the choice may fall upon you. If you break a lance to his mind, you shall be well beloved for the next week at least; and during that time you must manage to fix his favour. But first, let me give you some small portraiture of his mind, so that by knowing his humour, you may find means to find it."
The character which Lord Darby gave of Henry the Eighth shall here be put in fewer words. He was then a very, very different being from the bloated despot which he afterwards appeared. All his life had hitherto been prosperity and gladness; no care, no sorrow, had called into action any of the latent evil of his character, and he showed himself to those around him as an affable and magnificent prince; proud without haughtiness, and luxurious without vice. Endowed with great personal strength, blessed with robust health, and flourishing in the prime of his years, he loved with a degree of ostentation all those manly and chivalrous exercises which were then at their height in Europe; and placed, as it were, between the age of chivalry and the age of learning, he in his own person combined many of the attributes of each. In temper and in manner he was hasty but frank, and had much of the generosity of youth unchilled by adversity. Yet he was ever wilful and irritable, and in his history even at that time may be traced the yet unsated luxurist, and the incipient tyrant, beginning a career in splendour and pride that was sure to end in despotism and blood.
It may well be supposed that the knight's heart beat quickly as the boat came in sight of the palace at Greenwich. It had nothing, however, to do with that agitation which men often weakly feel on approaching earthly greatness. Accustomed to a court, though a small one, if Sir Osborne had ever experienced those sensations, they had long left him; but he felt that on what was to follow from the present interview, perhaps on that interview itself, depended his father's fortune and his own; more: his own happiness for ever.
Lord Darby's rowers had plied their oars to some purpose, and before ten o'clock the barge was alongside the king's stairs at Greenwich. "Come, Sir Osborne," cried the earl; "bearing a message which his grace will think one of great consequence, I shall abridge all ceremony, and find my way as quickly to his presence as I can."
The two young men sprang to the shore, followed by their attendants, and passed the parade, which was quite empty, the king having taken care to disperse the principal part of his court in various directions, that his private expedition might pass unnoticed, feeling a sort of romantic interest in the concealment and mystery of his proceedings. The earl led the way across the vacant space to one of the doors of the palace, which opened into a sort of waiting hall, called the "Hall of Lost Steps," where the two friends left their servants; and proceeding up a staircase that seemed well known to Lord Darby, they came into a magnificent saloon, wherein an idle page was gazing listlessly from one of the windows.