It was in the great hall at Eltham--that splendid hall which still remains, attesting, like many other monuments, the magnificent ideas of an age which we, perhaps justly, term barbarous, but which displayed, amongst many rude and uncivilized things, a grasp of conception and a power of execution in some of the arts, that we seldom if ever can attain even in these more generally cultivated times.
In the great hall at Eltham, about an hour after sunset, was laid out a banquet, which in profuse luxury and splendour as far exceeded any, even of our state repasts, in the present day as the hall that overhung it excelled the lumbering architecture of the eighteenth century. The table actually groaned under masses of quaint and curious plate,--many of the cups and dishes blazing with jewels, and an immense emerald, in the shape of a cross surrounded by wax tapers, surmounting and ornamenting the centre of the board. The dresses of the guests were of all those bright and glittering colours so universally affected by rich and poor in those days; and gold and precious stones were seen sparkling all around, not alone ornamenting the persons of the fairer sex, but decorating also the garments of the men.
Though the guests themselves only amounted to seventy, and the broad table at which they sat looked small in the centre of the hall, yet the number of attendants, carvers, cup-bearers, butlers, and sewers, was not less than two hundred, without including the harps, the trumpets, the minstrels and the spectators, who were admitted within certain limits.
Various and curious were the dishes set upon the table; the wine was of the choicest vintages of France and Spain: and one may conceive how recklessly it was suffered to flow in those times, when we know that the consumption of a private nobleman's house was upon one occasion, three hundred and seventy pipes in the year, besides ale, metheglin, and hypocras.
The banquet was somewhat strangely ordered, according to our present notions, for there was but one large silver plate assigned to each two persons; but as, with scrupulous exactness, the male and female guests had been restricted to an equal number, this arrangement permitted a display of the courteous gallantry of the times, each gentleman carving for his fair companion, and taking care that she was supplied with all she wished for before himself.
Opportunity was also thus offered for all those little signs and tokens of chivalrous love which but too often, it must be confessed, deviated into vice and folly. But of all the hearts at that table--and there were some which fluttered with gaiety and excitement, some that beat with calm satisfaction, some that palpitated with eager and not over-holy joy,--none throbbed with higher and purer delight than those of Hugh de Monthermer and Lucy de Ashby, as, sitting by side, they bent together over the same board and drank from the same cup. Many a sweet-whispered word was there, while all was laughter and merriment around, and many an avowal of unchanged attachment, many a promise of future affection was spoken by the eyes when any pause in the general conversation might have betrayed the secret had it been intrusted to the lips.
Happy indeed was the young lover, happy indeed was she whom he loved, thus to commune with each other after so long a separation. But if anything could have added to Lucy's joy in thus meeting Hugh again, and sitting by his side, it would have been the terms with which Edward had that night brought him forward to the king.
"Let me beseech you, sire," he had said, "for your favour towards the friend of my youth, who, though for some time separated from me by unhappy feuds, now at an end for ever, forgot not, in a time of need, our early regard."
"His house have shown no great love for our throne," replied the King, looking coldly upon him; "but we welcome him for your sake, Edward."
"Do so, my lord," answered the Prince, "for while I was in prison he ever advocated my release, and when I was escaping, and he might have stayed me, he bade God speed me on my way."