At half-past one the Council was over, and Their Majesties went to dinner, as did also Johnnie in the Common Room.
At half-past three of the clock the Esquire was standing in the Royal box behind the King and Queen, among a group of other courtiers, and looking down on the great tilting yard, where he longed himself to be.
The Royal Gallery was at one end of the yard, a great stage-box, as it were, into which two carved chairs were set, and which was designated, as a somewhat fervent chronicler records, "the gallery, or place at the end of the tilting yard adjoining to Her Grace's Palace of the Tower, whereat her person should be placed. It was called, and with good cause, the Castle, or Fortress of Perfect Beauty, forasmuch as Her Highness should be there included."
Johnnie stood and watched it all with eyes in which there was but little animation. A few days before nothing would have gladdened him more than such a spectacle as this. To-day it was as nothing to him.
Down below was a device of painted canvas, imitating a rolling-trench, which was supposed to be the besieging works of those who attempted the "Fortress of Perfect Beauty."
"Upon the top of it were set two cannons wrought of wood, and coloured so passing well, as, indeed, they seemed to be two fair field-pieces of ordnance. And by them were placed two men for gunners in cloth and crimson sarcanet, with baskets of earth for defence of their bodies withal."
At the far end of the lists there came a clanking and hammering of the farriers' and armourers' forges.
Grooms in mandilions—the loose, sleeveless jacket of their calling—were running about everywhere, leading the chargers trapped with velvet and gold in their harness. Gentlemen in short cloaks and Venetian hose bustled about among the knights, and here and there from the stables, and withdrawing sheds outside the lists, great armoured figures came, the sun shining upon their plates—russet-coloured, fluted, damascened with gold in a hundred points of fire.
Nothing could be more splendid, as the trumpeters advanced into the lists, and the fierce fanfaronade snarled up to the sky. The Garter King-at-arms in his tabard, mounted on a white horse with gold housings, rode out into the centre of the yard, and behind him, though on foot, were Blue-mantle and Rouge-dragon.
The afternoon air was full of martial noise, the clank of metal, the brazen notes of horns, the stir and murmur of a great company.