“God’s death! ye lazy wenches! hear ye not the man without, that I must rive my throat with clamoring? Up, hussies, up—or, by the soul of my father, ye shall sleep for ever!” The frightened girls sprang from their couches at the raised voice of their angry queen, like a covey of partridges at the yelp of the springer, and for a moment all was confusion.
“What now, ye fools!” she cried again, in harsh and excited accents, that reached the ears of the old earl without—“hear ye not that my chamberlain awaits an audience? Fling yonder robe of velvet o’er our person, and rid us of this night-gear—so!—the mirror now! my ruff and curch! and now—admit him!”
“Admit him! an’ it list your grace, it were scarce seemly in ladies to appear thus disarrayed—”
“Heard ye, or heard ye not? I say, admit him! Think ye old Hunsdon cares to look upon such trumpery as ye, or must I wait upon my wenches’ pleasure? God’s head, but ye grow malapert!”
The old queen’s voice had not yet ceased, before the door was opened; and although the ladies had taken the precaution of extinguishing the light, and seeking such concealment as the angles of the chamber afforded, the sturdy old earl—who, notwithstanding the queen’s assertion, had as quick an eye for beauty as many a younger gallant—could easily discover that the modesty which had demurred to the admission of a man was not by any means uncalled for or even squeamish. Had he been, however, much more inclined to linger by the way than his old-fashioned courtesy permitted, he must have been a bold man to delay; for twice, ere he could cross the floor to her chamber, did his name reach his ears in the impatient accents of Elizabeth: “Hunsdon! I say—Hunsdon! ’s death! art thou crippled, man?”
There was little of the neatness or taste of modern days displayed in the decorations of the royal chamber. Tapestries there were, and velvet hangings, carpets from Turkey, and huge mirrors of Venetian steel; but a plentiful lack of linen, and of those thousand nameless comforts, which a peasant’s dame would miss to-day, uncared for in those rude times by princesses. Huge waxen torches flared in the wind, which found its way through the ill-constructed lattice; and a greater proportion of the smoke, from the logs smouldering in the jams of a chimney wider than that of a modern kitchen, reeked upward to the blackened rafters of the unceiled roof.
Rigid and haughty, in the midst of this strange medley of negligence and splendor, sat the dreaded monarch, approached by none even of her most favored ministers save with fear and trembling. Her person, tall and slender from her earliest years, and now emaciated to almost superhuman leanness by the workings of her own restless spirit, even more than by her years, presented an aspect terrible, yet magnificent withal. It seemed as though the dauntless firmness of a more than masculine soul had won the power to support and animate a frame which it had rescued from the grave; it seemed as though the years which had blighted had failed in their efforts to destroy; it seemed as though that faded tenement of clay might yet endure, like the blasted oak, for countless years, although the summer foliage, which rendered it so beautiful of yore, had long since been scattered by the wild autumnal hurricane, or seared by the nipping frosts of winter. Her eye alone, in the general decay of her person, retained its wonted brilliancy, shining forth from her pale and withered features with a lustre so remarkable as to appear almost supernatural.
“So! give us the letter—there! Pause not for thy knee, man; give us the letter!”—and tearing the frail band by which it was secured asunder, she was in a moment entirely engrossed, as it would seem, in its contents. Her countenance waxed paler and paler as she read; and the shadows of an autumn morning flit not more changefully across the landscape, as cloud after cloud is driven over the sun’s disk, than did the varying expressions of anxiety, doubt, and sorrow, chase one another from the speaking lineaments of Elizabeth.
“Ha!” she exclaimed, after a long pause, “this must be looked to. See that our barge be manned forthwith, and tarry not for aught of state or ceremony. Thyself will go with us, and stop not thou to don thy newest-fashioned doublet: this is no matter that brooks ruffling!—’Sdeath, man! ’tis life or death! And now begone, sir! we lack our tirewoman’s service!”
An hour had not elapsed before a barge—easily distinguished as one belonging to the royal household, by its decorations, and the garb of the rowers—shot through a side arch of Westminster bridge, and passed rapidly, under sail and oar, down the swift current of the river, now almost at ebb tide. It was not, however, the barge of state, in which the progresses of the sovereign were usually made; nor was it followed by the long train of vessels, freighted with ladies of the court, guards, and musicians, which were wont to follow in its wake. In the stern-sheets sat two persons: a man advanced in years, and remarkable for an air of nobility, which could not be disguised even by the thick boat-cloak he had wrapped about him, as much perhaps to afford protection against the eyes of the inquisitive as against the dense mists of the Thames; and a lady, whose tall person was folded in wrappings so voluminous as to defy the closest scrutiny. At a short distance in the rear, another boat came sweeping along, in the crew and passengers of which it would have required a penetrating glance to discover a dozen or two of the yeomen of the guard, in their undress liveries of gray and black, without either badge or cognizance, and their carbines concealed beneath a pile of cloaks.