"I am a fair white page," he said to himself, "on which nothing is writ, I have ever been that. To-night comes Master Scrivener. 'I have a mind to write upon thee,' he saith, and needs be that I submit."
He sighed.
The music came to him, sweet and gracious. The long orange-litten windows of the Palace spoke of the splendours within.
But he thought of a man—whose name he had never heard until that morning—lying in some dark room, waiting for those who were to come for him, the man whom he would watch burning before the sun had set again.
It had been an evening of incomparable splendour.
The King and Queen had been served with all the panoply of state. The Duke of Norfolk, the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, Lord Paget and Lord Rochester, had been in close attendance.
The Duke had held the ewer of water, Paget and Rochester the bason and napkin. After the ablutions the Bishop of London said grace.
The Queen blazed with jewels. The life of seclusion she had led before her accession had by no means dulled the love of splendour inherent in her family. Even the French ambassador, well used to pomp and display, leaves his own astonishment on record.
She wore raised cloth of gold, and round her thin throat was a partlet or collar of emeralds. Her stomacher was of diamonds, an almost barbaric display of twinkling fire, and over her gold caul was a cap of black velvet sewn with pearls.
During the whole of supper it was remarked that Her Grace was merry. The gay lords and ladies who surrounded her and the King—for all alike, young maids and grey-haired dames of sixty must blaze and sparkle too—nodded and whispered to each other, wondering at this high good-humour.