“There is the fat fool Chris again, all red with his tilting. I would like to baa at him again, but I dare not with all these foreign folk. There is Leicester, that tall man with a bald forehead in the cap with the red feather, on the white horse behind the carriage—he always keeps close to the Queen. He is the enemy of your prelate, Master Anthony, you know.... That is Oxford, just behind him on the chestnut. Yes, look well at him. He is the prince of the tilt-yard; none can stand against him. You would say he was at his nine-pins, when he rides against them all.... And he can do more than tilt. These sweet-washed gloves”—and she flapped an embroidered pair before Anthony—“these he brought to England. God bless and reward him for it!” she added fervently.... “I do not see Burghley. Eh! but he is old and gouty these days; and loves a cushion and a chair and a bit of flannel better than to kneel before her Grace. You know, she allows him to sit when he confers with her. But then, she is ever prone to show mercy to bearded persons.... Ah! there is dear Sidney; that is a sweet soul. But what does he do here among the stones and mortar when he has the beeches of Penshurst to walk beneath. He is not so wise as I thought him.... But I must say I grow weary of his nymphs and his airs of Olympus. And for myself, I do not see that Flora and Phœbus and Maia and the rest are a great gain, instead of Our Lady and Saint Christopher and the court of heaven. But then I am a Papist and not a heathen, and therefore blind and superstitious. Is that not so, Master Anthony?... And there is Maitland beside him, with the black velvet cap and the white feather, and his cross eyes and mouth. Now I wish he were at Penshurst, or Bath—or better still, at Jericho, for it is further off. I cannot bear that fellow.... Why, Sussex is going on the water, too, I see. Now what brings him here? I should have thought his affairs gave him enough to think of.... There he is, with his groom behind him, on the other chestnut. I am astonished at him. He is all for this French marriage, you know. So you may figure to yourself Mendoza’s love for him! They will be like two cats together on the barge; spitting and snarling softly at one another. Her Grace loves to balance folk like that; first one stretches his claws, and then the other; then one arches his back and snarls, and the other scratches his face for him; and then when all is flying fur and blasphemy, off slips her Grace and does what she will.”
It was an astonishing experience for Anthony. He had stepped out from his workaday life among the grooms and officers and occasional glimpses of his lonely old master, into an enchanted region, where great personages whose very names were luminous with fame, now lived and breathed and looked cheerful or sullen before his very eyes; and one who knew them in their daily life stood by him and commented and interpreted them for him. He listened and stared, dazed with the strangeness of it all.
Mistress Corbet was proceeding to express her views upon the foreign element that formed half the pageant, when the shrill music broke out again in the palace, and the trumpeters on the steps took it up; and a stir and bustle began. Then out of the porch began to stream a procession, like a river of colour and jewels, pouring from the foot of the carved and windowed wall, and eddying in a tumbled pool about the great gilt carriage;—ushers and footmen and nobles and ladies and pages in bewildering succession. Anthony pressed his forehead to the glass as he watched, with little exclamations, and Mary watched him, amused and interested by his enthusiasm.
And last moved the great canopy bending and swaying under the doorway, and beneath it, like two gorgeous butterflies, at the sight of whom all the standing world fell on its knees, came the pale Elizabeth with her auburn hair, and the brown-faced Mendoza, side by side; and entered the carriage with the five plumes atop and the caparisoned horses that stamped and tossed their jingling heads. The yard was already emptying fast, en route for Chelsea Stairs; and as soon as the two were seated, the shrill trumpets blew again, and the halberdiers moved off with the carriage in the midst, the great nobles going before, and the ladies behind. The later comers mounted as quickly as possible, as their horses were brought in from the stable entrance, and clattered away, and in five minutes the yard was empty, except for a few sentries at their posts, and a servant or two lounging at the doorway; and as Anthony still stared at the empty pavement and the carpeted steps, far away from the direction of the Abbey came the clear call of the horns to tell the loyal folk that the Queen was coming.
It was a great inspiration for Anthony. He had seen world-powers incarnate below him in the glittering rustling figure of the Queen, and the dark-eyed courtly Ambassador in his orders and jewels at her side. There they had sat together in one carriage; the huge fiery realm of the south, whose very name was redolent with passion and adventure and boundless wealth; and the little self-contained northern kingdom, now beginning to stretch its hands, and quiver all along its tingling sinews and veins with fresh adolescent life. And Anthony knew that he was one of the cells of this young organism; and that in him as well as in Elizabeth and this sparkling creature at his side ran the fresh red blood of England. They were all one in the possession of a common life; and his heart burned as he thought of it.
After he had parted from Mary he rode back to Westminster, and crossed the river by the horse-ferry that plied there. And even as he landed and got his beast, with a deal of stamping and blowing, off the echoing boards on to the clean gravel again, there came down the reaches of the river the mellow sound of music across a mile of water, mingled with the deep rattle of oars, and sparkles of steel and colour glittered from the far-away royal barges in the autumn sunshine; and the lad thought with wonder how the two great powers so savagely at war upon the salt sea, were at peace here, sitting side by side on silken cushions and listening to the same trumpets of peace upon the flowing river.
SOME NEW LESSONS
The six years that followed Sir Nicholas’ return and Hubert’s departure for the North had passed uneventfully at Great Keynes. The old knight had been profoundly shocked that any Catholic, especially an agent so valuable as Mr. Stewart, should have found his house a death-trap; and although he continued receiving his friends and succouring them, he did so with more real caution and less ostentation of it. His religious zeal and discretion were further increased by the secret return to the “Old Religion” of several of his villagers during the period; and a very fair congregation attended Mass so often as it was said in the cloister wing of the Hall. The new rector, like his predecessor, was content to let the squire alone; and unlike him had no wife to make trouble.
Then, suddenly, in the summer of ’77, catastrophes began, headed by the unexpected return of Hubert, impatient of waiting, and with new plans in his mind.