When little hot flashes lightened among the far-off hills, and a distant rumble sounded occasionally, the Queen was pacing to and fro on the top of the great keep. It was not the safest place to be in case of a storm, for the castle was the highest building in the neighborhood. Philippa, working sedately at a tapestry emblem of a tower in flames, looked up the stairway and shivered as if she were cold.
“Mary,” she queried, as the still-room maid came through the bower, “where is Master Tomaso?”
“In his study, I think,” Mary answered. “Shall I call him?”
“Nay—I thought——” Philippa left the sentence unfinished and folded her work; then she climbed the narrow stair. When the Queen turned and saw her she was standing with her slim hands resting on the battlement.
“What are you doing away from your tapestry-frame, wench?” demanded her mistress. “Are you spying on me again?”
“Your Grace,” Philippa answered gently, “I could never spy on you—not even if my own father wished it. I—I was talking with Master Tomaso last night, and he said strange things about the stars. I would you could have heard him.”
The Queen laughed scornfully. “As if it were not enough to be prisoned in four walls, the girl wants to believe herself the puppet of the heavens! Look you, silly pigeon, if there be a Plantagenet star you may well fear it, for brother hates brother and all hate their father—and belike will hate their children. Were you asking him the day of my death?”
“I was but asking what flowers belonged to the figures of the zodiac in my tapestry,” answered Philippa. “He says that a man may rule the stars.”
“I wish that a woman could,” mocked the Queen. “How you silly creatures can go on, sticking the needle in and out, in and out, day after day, I cannot see. One would think that you were weavers of Fate. I had rather cast myself over the battlements than look forward to thirty years of stitchery!” She swept her trailing robes about her and vanished down the stairs. Philippa, following, saw with a certain relief that she turned toward the rooms occupied by old Tomaso. The physician was equal to most situations. Yet in the Queen’s present mood anything might arouse her anger.
The study was of a quaint, bare simplicity in furnishing. It had a chair, a stool, a bench under the window, a table piled with leather-bound books, a large chest and a small one, an old worm-eaten oaken dresser with some flasks and dishes. A door led into the laboratory, and another into the cell where the philosopher slept. As the Queen entered he rose and with grave courtesy offered her his chair, which she did not take. She stood looking out across the quiet hills, and pressed one hand and then the other against her cheeks—then she turned, a dark figure against the stormy sky.