Thus, then, presented to you, was the Palace. You have restored the Palace of Westminster. It stands before you, plain and clear. But as yet it is a silent city—a city of the cold daybreak, a city of the sleeping. Fill it again with the living multitude—the thousands who thronged its courts—when it was the Palace of the Second Richard. Look: the men-at-arms and esquires and knights bear the cognizance—a fatal cognizance it proved to many—of the White Hart. It is the Palace of the Second Richard, whose court was the most splendid, and his expenditure the most prodigal, that the country had ever witnessed.
It is the third day of May, 1389. The sun rises before five and the day breaks at three at this season; long before sunrise, before daybreak, the silence of the night is broken by the rolling of the organ and the voices of the monks at Lauds; long before sunrise, even so early as this, there are signs of life about the Court. Stable-boys and grooms are up already, carrying buckets of water; dogs are leaping and barking; when the sun lifts his head above the low Surrey hills and falls upon the wall and towers of the Palace, the narrow lanes are full of men slowly addressing themselves to the work of the day. Clear and bright against the sky stand the buildings; huddled together they are, certainly—it is not yet a time for architectural grouping, except in the design of an abbey, which is generally placed where there is room enough and to spare. Where there is the King there is an army; there is also a place which may be attacked: therefore the smaller the circumference of the wall, the better for the defense. Besides, a Palace is like a walled city: it grows, but it cannot spread; it fills up. This hall needs another beside it; that chamber must have a gallery; this chapel must have cloisters; here let us put up a clock tower; if there are council chambers, there must also be guest chambers; the Court becomes more splendid, the Palace precinct becomes more crowded.
The place is more like a camp than a Palace. The grooms lead out the horses—there are thousands of horses in the place; in both Outer and Inner Bailly the pages,—wards of the King,—boys of eight or nine to sixteen, are exercising already, riding, leaping, fencing, running. In the long chambers, where the archers lie upon beds of rushes and of straw, the men are gathered about the doors passing round the blackjack with the morning draught. At the water gate are crowding already the boats laden with fish caught in the river and brought here daily. The servants are
CLOISTER COURT AS IT APPEARED AFTER THE FIRE.
running to and fro; the fires are lit in kitchen and in bakery: the clerks, pen in hand and ink-bottle hanging from their belts, go round to the offices. Listen to the baying of the hounds; see the falconers bringing out their birds; here are the chained bears rolling on the ground; there go the young nobles hasting to the King’s chamber—it is the time of gorgeous raiment: half a manor is in the blue silk jacket of that young lord, one of the King’s favorites. There is already, from this side or that, the tinkling of a mandolin, the scraping of a crowd; yonder fantastic group, the first to enter when the Palace gates are thrown open, are mummers, jugglers, and minstrels, who come to make sport for the archers and for the Court if the King’s Highness or the Queen’s most excellent Grace so wills. These people can play a mystery if needs be; or they can dress like fearful wild beasts, or dance like wild men of the woods; they have songs from France—love songs, songs for ladies; rougher songs in English for the soldiers; they can dance upon the tight-rope; they can eat fire; they can juggle and play strange tricks which they have brought hither all the way from Constantinople—at the sight of them you cross yourself and whisper that it is sorcery. As for the music of the King’s chamber, that is made by the King’s minstrels, who wear his colors and have bouche of court. See yonder gayly dressed young man: he is a minstrel; none other can touch the harp and sing with skill so sweet; he looks on with contempt at the fantastic crew as they sweep past to the soldiers’ quarters; they, too, carry their minstrel instruments with them, but their music is not his music. In the evening the minstrel will join in the crowd to see the dancing of the girls—the almond-eyed, dark-skinned girls of Syria—who follow the fortunes of the mummers and toss their round arms as they dance with strange gestures and wanton looks, at sight of which the senses swim and the brain reels and the soul yearns for things impossible.
The noise of the Palace grows; it is wide awake: the day has begun.
Outside the Palace, the road—there is now a road where there was once a marsh or shallow with a ford—is covered with an endless procession of those who make their way to the Palace and the Abbey with supplies. Here are drivers with herds of cattle and flocks of sheep; here are long lines of pack horses laden with things; here are men-at-arms, the following of some great lord: this is a procession which never ceases all the year round. And on the river barges are coming down the stream piled up, laden to the level of the water, with farm produce; and at flood tide barges come up the stream from the Port of London, sent by the merchants whom the King despoils,—yet they have their revenge,—boats laden with the things for which this magnificent Court is insatiable: cloth of gold, velvet, and silk; wines of France and Spain and Cyprus and Gaza; spices, perfumes, inlaid armor and arms, jewels and glass and plate, and wares ecclesiastic for the outer glory of St. Peter and St. Stephen—golden cross and chalice silver gilt, and vestments such as can only be matched in the Church of St. Peter at Rome.