Christmas morning came and went as if on swallow-wings, in a gale of royal merriment. Four hundred sat to dinner that day in Greenwich halls, and all the palace streamed with banners and green garlands.
Within the courtyard two hundred horses neighed and stamped around a water-fountain playing in a bowl of ice and evergreen. Grooms and pages, hostlers and dames, went hurry-scurrying to and fro; cooks, bakers, and scullions steamed about, leaving hot, mouth-watering streaks of fragrance in the air; bluff men-at-arms went whistling here and there; and serving-maids with rosy cheeks ran breathlessly up and down the winding stairways.
The palace stirred like a mighty pot that boils to its utmost verge, for the hour of the revelries was come.
Over the beech-wood and far across the black heath where Jack Cade marshaled the men of Kent, the wind trembled with the boom of the castle bell. Within the walls of the palace its clang was muffled by a sound of voices that rose and fell like the wind upon the sea.
The ambassadors of Venice and France were there, with their courtly trains. The Lord High Constable of England was come to sit below the Queen. The earls, too, of Southampton, Montgomery, Pembroke, and Huntington were there; and William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, the Queen’s High Treasurer, to smooth his care-lined forehead with a Yuletide jest.
Up from the entry ports came shouts of “Room! room! room for my Lord Strange! Room for the Duke of Devonshire!” and about the outer gates there was a tumult like the cheering of a great crowd.
The palace corridors were lined with guards. Gentlemen pensioners under arms went flashing to and fro. Now and then through the inner throng some handsome page with wind-blown hair and rainbow-colored cloak pushed to the great door, calling: “Way, sirs, way for my Lord—way for my Lady of Alderstone!” and one by one, or in blithe groups, the courtiers, clad in silks and satins, velvets, jewels, and lace of gold, came up through the lofty folding-doors to their places in the hall.
There, where the Usher of the Black Rod stood, and the gentlemen of the chamber came and went with golden chains about their necks, was bowing and scraping without stint, and reverent civility; for men that were wise and noble were passing by, men that were handsome and brave; and ladies sweet as a summer day, and as fair to see as spring, laughed by their sides and chatted behind their fans, or daintily nibbled comfits, lacking anything to say.
The windows were all curtained in, making a night-time in midday; and from the walls and galleries flaring links and great bouquets of candles threw an eddying flood of yellow light across the stirring scene. From clump to clump of banner-staves and burnished arms, spiked above the wainscot, garlands of red-berried holly, spruce, and mistletoe were twined across the tapestry, till all the room was bound about with a chain of living green.
There were sweet odors floating through the air, and hazy threads of fragrant smoke from perfumes burning in rich braziers; and under foot was the crisp, clean rustle of new rushes.