Loud and long was the merriment, increasing even until the roofs rung with the din, and the revellers themselves grew weary of the tumult.
Alice was standing by the oaken screen during a temporary cessation on her part from the labours incident to royalty, when there came from behind it a tawny Moor, wearing a rich shawl turban, with a beard of comely aspect. His arms were bare and hung with massive bracelets, and he wore a tight jacket of crimson and gold. His figure was tall and commanding; but his face was concealed by a visor of black crape, which hindered not his speech from being clearly apprehended, though the sound came forth in a muffled tone, as if feigned for the occasion. Immediately there followed an Arabic or Turkish doctor, clad in a long dark robe, and his head surmounted by a four-cornered fur cap. In one hand he held a glass phial, and a box under his left arm. Of an erect and majestic stature, he stood for a moment apparently surveying the scene ere he mingled in the busy crowd. His face also was covered with black crape, and through the "eyelet-holes" a bright and burning glance shot forth, hardly repressed by the shadow from his disguise. Alice, being unattended, shunned these unknown intruders, and mingled again with a merry group who were pelting one another with comfits and candied almonds. The stately Elizabeth beckoned to her maidens; but they merely curtsied to their royal mistress, without discontinuing their boisterous hilarity. Indeed, the mumming hitherto had been more in dress than manners, so little restraint had their outward disguise occasioned, or their behaviour been altered thereby. The two late comers, however, produced a change. It appeared that their business was to enact a play or cunning device for the amusement of the company who, regarding them with a curious eye, one by one left off their several sports to gaze upon the strangers.
The rest were generally known to each other; but whispers and inquiries now went round, from which it appeared that the new visitants were strictly concealed, and their presence unexpected.
"Now, o' my faith," said Harry Cheetham, whose skill in dancing and drollery had been conspicuous throughout the evening, "yon barbarians be come from the Grand Turk, with his kerchief, recruiting for the seraglio."
"Out upon thee!" said a jingling Morisco, enacted by young Hellawell of Pike House; "the Grand Signior loveth not maidens such as ours for his pavilion. They be too frosty to melt, even in Afric's sunny clime." This was said with a malicious glance at Alice, whose queen-like dignity and haughty bearing had kept many an ardent admirer at bay through the evening.
"Sure the master of the feast hath withheld this precious delectation until now," said Essex; "for they, doubtless, be of his providing."
"And give promise of more novel but less savoury entertainment," said Hamer of Hamer. But Holt either knew them not, or his look of surprise, not unmixed with curiosity and expectation, showed that he was playing the masker too, without other disguise than his own proper features—the kind hospitable face of an honest north-country squire, ruddy with health and conviviality.
At the farther end of the hall the bride and her bride-maidens were standing, with the bridegroom at her side, whispering soft gallantries in her ear. The strangers, on their entrance, rendered neither token nor obeisance, as courtesy required, to the bride and her train, but followed Alice, who had joined her brother in the merry crowd, now watching the motions of these unexpected visitants. They approached with stately and solemn steps; and, without once deigning to notice the rest of the company, the gaudy Moor bowed himself in a most dignified salaam before the queen. Alice, apparently with some trepidation at being thus singled out from the rest, clung to her brother, she hardly knew why.
"My sublime master, emperor of the world, lord of the sun, and ruler of the seven celestial configurations, sendeth his slave unto the most high and mighty Queen—whose beauty, as a girdle, doth encompass the whole earth—with greeting."
"And who is he?" said Alice, timidly enough.