CHAPTER XXII
Our sovereign lord the king,
Whose word no man relies on;
He never said a foolish thing,
And never did a wise one.
The king's private apartments in his ramshackle, patched-together, wandering old hunting-lodge, presented a vastly different scene from the like sacred precincts by courtesy misnamed "private" at Whitehall. There up to his bed-rails all was buzz and bustle; here in Newmarket his love of ease, and his good-will and pleasure, were so far consulted and respected that the swarm of courtly hangers-on was kept at bay by those velvet hangings; and Lee heard not a sound in the corridor they had entered but the rustling of the ladies' gowns and the echo of his own footfall.
Pausing before a door about midway along the right-hand wall of the corridor, and which bore on its heavy ebony panels the gilded royal cognizance and initials, the queen pushed it open with her own hand, and, followed by her companions, entered the apartment beyond. It was an oblong chamber, sparsely lighted at its further end by a couple of tall windows, in whose deep recesses some half-dozen lackeys were yawningly watching what might be going on in the courtyard below. At sight, however, of the queen they hurried into rank, and proceeded to throw open with much ceremony another double door, which brought them into a room, or rather vestibule of circular form, panelled with looking-glass deeply sunken in heavy gilded scrollwork, and which reflected in ghastly distorted fashion the gaudy elephantine ugliness of the crimson silk and ormolu furniture of the latest French fashion, ranged formally round the windowless walls; for the light of heaven only found its way into this dreary apartment through the blue and orange-coloured panes of a skylight let into the centre of its painted domed roof.
The King's chambers.
Here the queen paused; and having with a gesture dismissed the lackeys, and desired her ladies to await her return, she passed on alone with Lawrence Lee into a long straight corridor, richly carpeted and lighted by bull's-eye windows of coloured glass not larger than those of a ship's cabin. The silence and tortuous ways of the place oppressed Lee's senses like a nightmare dream; and he began to think that a guide through its dim passages was not altogether a mere courtly superfluity, but rather a thing of absolute necessity. "I'd sooner undertake to be finding my way for the first time through our hornbeam maze at home than in and out of all these crinkum-crankums," thought he; "and if this be your King Charles's merry court, give me the Nether Hall kitchen."
Under the royal eye.
A silvery peal of merriment, that rippled like dancing water on the sonorous laughter of men's voices, dispelled Lee's too hastily formed conclusions. He glanced at the queen. Was it his fancy? or did a shadow momentarily darken the composure of her face as she lifted the gorgeously embroidered Indian silk hangings before which they now stood, and with a sign to Lee to keep close, stepped over the threshold of a low-ceiled but spacious chamber, whose wainscot of ebonized wood was enriched with paintings, and gilded carved reliefs of fruit and flowers entwining emblems of the chase. Here at all events was no lack of life; for the apartment was thronged with persons of both sexes, and all so engrossed in talk and merriment that they did not observe the entrance of the queen, until it was marked by the quick glance of one pair of eyes, which all the others had a trick of following, despite their seeming carelessness. The expression in the face of the owner of these eyes, who was seated near the fire which burned upon the hearth curiously built into one of the corners of the room, soon brought to their senses the merry company nearest the door; and, subsiding into a decorous gravity, they fell apart into a sort of double thickset hedgeway of feathers and furbelows reaching clear up to the stone-canopied fireplace, whose logs, burning brilliantly between the brazen dogs, cast their light upon the swarthy countenance of King Charles the Second, where he sat leaning carelessly back in a tall carved elbow-chair, attired in a hunting suit of darkest olive velvet.
"Your majesty is astir betimes this morning," he said, rising a little hurriedly, and addressing the queen in tones which were not wanting in courtesy, if they might be in cordiality. "You have been to church?" he added, glancing at the little book in her hand.
The queen bowed her head. "'Tis the feast of my patron saint, Catharine, your majesty will remember," she said.