Sydney breathed hard. "You called it once the Chariot of the Sun."
"The Chariot of the Sun. Yes. Heaven send I may never have to use etheric power for war."
III
OUR LADY THE QUEEN
In the wondrous romance of our Island history the reigns of three English Queens stand out with singular splendour. First came Elizabeth the Great, then Victoria the Good, and now in the fulness of time reigns Margaret the Fair.
At the end of his long reign the old King built on the site of Buckingham House, a great white palace for Margaret. Above the marble walls terrace upon terrace the hanging gardens bloomed, and tier on tier of gleaming colonnades; then pearl-white domes broke the long lines above, and gemmed pavilions flanked the central towers. Not that Margaret cared for palaces. Her mind ran upon lighting, and she showed the old King books about the Varangian Guard of Greek Byzantium, the Grand Musketeers of Muscovy, the Mousquetaires of France. For her sake he took liberties with the Ancient and Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms, a nice piece of antique frippery which he changed into a standing regiment generally to be known as the Queen's Blackguards. This force he quartered in the palace and made it a very good nursery to train young officers for the Imperial Army.
To enlist, a lad must undergo the severest tests of mind and body, then pass the school of arms. Then the Queen granted to him chain mail and helmet of silver, a black cloak charged with the royal arms, the sword and the spurs. For officers the armour was of gold, the cloak scarlet; for undress, a suit of woven gold or silver. Quarters were given in the palace, but the trooper must provide his own sustenance, and for his servant a trained man who rode in the rear rank of his squadron. The discipline was rigid, and what with training for the Imperial army, there was little time for mischief. They were the last cavalry of the civilized world.
Such were the Queen's toys, palace and guard, beyond all jurisdiction save her will.
The Plutocracy ruled, the Imperial court only remained in the realm on sufferance as a venerable fiction, and nobody ever dreamed that Margaret's playthings, accepted by the nation as a joke, were destined to prove a most momentous fact. For the present it was pretty to see the fair maid, ruddy, sunburnt, wilful, playing with her glittering pageantry of state in the white palace. So the rose of England bloomed in a garden of swords, and on the eve of the Coronation no little cloud had risen as yet in warning. Looking back through a score of years it seems a wonder passing belief that June, 1980, dawned with a cloudless heaven, and the earth at peace.
One glance at the calendar brings it all to mind. Only last Friday Sharon won the Derby, Jim Carrington up, wearing Tom of Lancaster's colours—rose red, and how the people cheered the young prince afterwards! On Saturday Her Majesty was at the Colosseum to close the Pan-Anglican games, and with her own hands crowned the victors with wreaths. The Maharajah of Gwalior gave a Nautch at his palace in Kensington. On Sunday the great Dignitaries assembled in town for the Coronation, attended a special service at St. Paul's. On the 2nd of June, Monday morning, the Gigantic arrived—one of Mr. Brand's etheric liners—with a contingent from the army of the United States in honour of the Coronation.