Читать книгу The King's Favourite - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 3

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Three men sat in a boat on the Thames, proceeding along the rough river towards Chelsea. Two were rowing; the third, whose white beard was blowing in the October wind, sat at ease holding in his hand the figure of a small waxen woman.

The oarsmen proceeded slowly against the fast-running tide, while the old man, comfortably dressed in a furred mantle, busied himself with the small waxen image that he was shaping precisely and delicately to the likeness of a naked woman. Out of his pockets fell the ends of pieces of silk, satin, laces and braid that were intended to clothe the little creature; now and then the old man glanced up at the quickly-changing sky.

"A bold, inspiring day," he remarked to one of his companions, a dwarf. "Fine, intemperate weather, eh, Franklin?"

The other replied on a note of sad complaint:

"You should hire stout watermen, Doctor Forman. Why must your to-ing and fro-ing put us to such labour?"

"Weston can manage alone," replied the old man, nodding towards the sulky manservant. He looked up again at the tumultuous sky; he really felt inspired and stimulated, almost as if with the aid of the bright sunbeams he could peer into those affairs of mankind that amused him, Simon Forman, so much, and from which he drew so comfortable a profit. A fine scattered rain fell, coming like a veil between the three men and the views on either bank.

They passed some villas and pleasure-houses, some old-fashioned with crooked chimneys and ornate gables and turretings, some in the new classic Italian style. The willows stretched their long yellow and green tresses on to the drenched lawns; a stray beam of sunshine picked out the gilt of the weather-cock of a distant church or the golden ball on a summer-house standing amid the tattered flower-beds of a river-side garden. Bright flowers trailed broken petals across the fresh English grass; the muted white of swans showed where they rocked on the reaches of the cloudy river. The wind gathered force and blew away the rain; boughs laden with fluttering leaves bent before its fury and then tossed upwards to the sky.

"The Easterns," remarked Doctor Forman, gazing at the wax figure, "have a name for this wind—the first fierce wind of autumn that strips away all the leaves. But our language is poor in such subtleties."

Franklin, the dwarf, resting on his oars and allowing Weston, the serving-man, to do the work, asked:

"What news, good sir, if I may dare to question you? Of late," he added, half on a whine, half on a grumble, "you hold your secrets."

"That, in a few words, is my profession," replied Doctor Forman with a genial smile. "News? I have seen what all the world sees and noted what all the world notes."

"Mayhap," replied Franklin slyly, "you have drawn different conclusions from those made by the generality."

Simon Forman glanced upward; a watery light showed his peculiar face—pale, placid, touched by ill-health, but by no means weak or sickly; his full white beard concealed his lips, chin and throat, so that his curved nose, wrinkled eyes and smooth brow seemed to peep over the flow of combed hair like a broken mask over a wall.

"The King held a tourney in Whitehall yesterday. There was an accident in the tilt yard—one of Sir James Hay's gentlemen broke his leg." Simon Forman's words became a little blurred in the rush of the changeful wind. "The King was much concerned over this accident. The sweet youth is lovely and well-bred. He has been taken to Master Ryder's house in Charing Cross and Doctor Mayerne has been sent to attend him."

Franklin, bending to the oars again, shouted against the gusts: "How did the accident happen? I heard something of it yesterday, but thought it of no importance."

"Perhaps," said Simon Forman, "it is of no importance. It happened as the young man was endeavouring to present his master's shield to His Majesty, who was seated on the dais, Maybe it was arranged—a piece of stagecraft."

The two men exchanged sly smiles.

"Everyone is waiting," added Doctor Forman. "No one knows what to think—but Philip Herbert sulks in the stables and the King went to see the young Scot to-day. It is said His Majesty intends to teach the boy Latin."

Franklin gave a sour laugh, showing broken teeth.

"Teach him Latin!" he repeated. "Ay, but where's our count in this?"

Simon Forman remarked indifferently: "The wax is hardening, the weather is too cold."

He held out his model of a naked woman at arm's length against the fantasy of the storm; rain and sun beat on the imperfect little image, then he folded it in a length of saffron-coloured silk that he pulled from his pocket, wrapped his hands in his warm sleeves and, lying back against the padded seat, bade Franklin and Weston row him as quickly as might be towards Chelsea.

Not far away, in Master Ryder's modest house in the village of Charing Cross, the young Scot, unknown yesterday, and to-day the focus of so much wondering and scornful attention, lay propped on his pillows behind curtains of white wool embroidered with russet acorns and red foxes. He looked at the light and the raindrops on the newly polished panes, then he glanced at the Latin Grammar that lay on his coverlet. His expression was one of complete amazement. He had come to Court with hopes of making his fortune, but these had been no brighter than those of any other penniless young man who might contrive to get in the train of a great gentleman. His family was gentle but obscure; he had no influence. He realised, with the complacence of stupidity, that he had no gifts, that he excelled in nothing; yet the King had noticed him, the King had sent his own doctor to him, the King had come to see him and talked of teaching him Latin; and the King was a man ruled by favourites, everything was different from what it had been in the stern old Queen's time. Riotous excess and extravagance and the breaking down of laws and rules and traditions everywhere! A chance for youth, glittering, golden youth! Some minion would rule the King; he would tire of Philip Herbert as he had tired of Esme Stewart and Francis Bothwell; the young man forgot the pain of his leg and the tedium of lying inactive in the thoughts that gradually dawned in his slow mind.

"Is it possible? Why, it is as if the crown of England were put into my hands." Then, smitten with an uneasy sense of his own inadequacy, even in that moment, he murmured to himself: "I should never be able to play the courtier!"

Doctor Mayerne, returning from his visit to the youth at Master Ryder's house, did not proceed direct to Whitehall to make his report to His Majesty, whose anxiety on behalf of the young Scot had been satisfied earlier in the day. Instead, the good physician, riding carefully over the rough roads in the wind, the rain and the sun, paused before the brick facade of Northampton House, and, dismounting cautiously at the splendid yet unfinished gate, gave his reins to his sober-clad attendant.

Doctor Mayerne, a French Huguenot, who had been in attendance on His Majesty King Henry IV of France and Navarre, but who had had to leave the country of his birth after the murder of his patron, was a stout, smiling man of massive proportions and handsome features which displayed a cynical patience and a not ignoble resignation to the vicissitudes of fortune. He too noticed, as Simon Forman had noticed, the tumultuous glories of the sky, and he smiled upwards, as if at some invisible Jove who was not his master but his colleague.

Doctor Mayerne knew himself to be one of the cleverest men of his generation; his deep concern and eternal interest were in his profession; he was a great physician. This fact gave him continual if secret satisfaction. He was also a skilful courtier and a man who had amassed a large fortune. He was perfectly content and always thought of himself as a man who enjoyed the best of two worlds—that of the mind and that of the body; for the realm of the spirit he cared very little, but he did not deny that it existed. Above all things he was tolerant.

Doctor Mayerne was admitted at once to the library at the eastern end of the corridor where the Earl of Northampton sat over a well-scrubbed parchment with a scarlet tassel; the two men greeted each other softly with ease and brevity; then the Earl related, without self-pity, his own gnawing symptoms.

"Old age, I know—but I have been a healthy man, and I would mitigate the pains and disabilities of my last few years. Do not gall me, however, with false intelligence."

Doctor Mayerne listened, smiled, and gave his prescription. The illness was gout, nothing else, and the attacks were not severe ...my lord was in a fair state of health and might live another ten years yet.

Henry Howard peered down at the poem he was writing. The ink was now dry, so he rolled the parchment up and tied the narrow scarlet ribbons together.

"What of the young Scot?" he asked without a change of tone.

"He is mending," replied the Frenchman. "The King is interested."

"It seems then," Henry Howard softly said with a smile, "that my good niece Suffolk has wasted much labour and money. How many charming fellows has she entertained here and set up about the Court in the hopes that one of them might take the eye of His Majesty!"

"The wind bloweth where it listeth. The King is certainly taken by this young countryman of his, Robert Carr. Caro, smiled His Majesty to- day—Caro, it may be."

"What do you know of him?" asked Northampton, as if the matter were one of only the most casual interest.

"There is very little to know—he is one of Sir James Hay's gentlemen. He has, I think, very little talent. A good sportsman, pleasant to look at—red golden curls, ruddy lips, a lively blue eye—a Ganymede!"

Northampton repeated with an icy sneer: "A Ganymede! And will the royal eagle carry him to Olympus?"

The doctor nodded his head, bringing his double-chin gently down into his pleated linen ruff.

"I think so."

"What is this youth's capacity?"

"Very little. Indeed, I take him to be a dull fool—a bubble from Fortune's fickle breath."

"A pretty lady noted him—my great-niece, Frances. She was in the ladies' gallery with her mother when the popinjay was tossed."

"She could not, seeing the accident, but choose to notice him," remarked the Frenchman suavely.

"Yes," replied the old Earl, smiling sweetly. "She could not choose."

He glanced out through the wet window-panes at the river, from which all brightness had now faded, and said:

"What would the old Queen have made of this? King James has surely avenged his mother, the blessed fair Mary."

The two men smiled. They were different in much, but alike in their worldly wisdom and the ironic amusement with which they regarded the world.

Henry Howard had lain in wait for prosperity during many lean years, during which he had been secretly faithful to, and served, the ancient faith. A grandson of the Duke of Norfolk and son of the poet Earl of Surrey, Henry Howard had through obscurity and suffering adroitly served his own ends and those of his party, and now his greatness had come—all at once. He was a Privy Councillor, the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, Lord Privy Seal; he had the Garter and was the Steward of the University of Oxford and the Chancellor of Cambridge; he was indulging his fine tastes and his love of magnificence in erecting one of the most opulent buildings in the city. Time had been when he had gone without a meal in order to save money towards buying a book. He was witty and courteous, as well as scholarly and subtle, and though he was secretly a staunch Roman Catholic, he had contrived to keep the favour of the King of Scots who was now King of England, for he had been faithful and kind to his mother, that Queen Mary whom her son had abandoned for a price, but whose memory, for the sake of decency, he was now forced to honour. It was Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, that had in his charge the monument to this Queen in Westminster Abbey, where she was to lie near her ancient rival, Elizabeth, of whom he had just spoken.

He was now a wealthy as well as a powerful man and he had considered his money well laid out in the great brick pleasure-house that he had built in the village of Charing, with fine gardens down to the river and his own landing-bridge and jetty. He had his towers, now, and his wide staircases and his noble halls and his tapestried corridors and his great walled gardens, and men like Bernard Jansen, Gerard Christmas and Moses Glover to work for him with their nimble brains and quick hands.

He smiled across at the physician, that other cunning man of the world who had also been faithful to a creed—Protestantism in his case—and who had also been able to preserve these private loyalties and yet to maintain a sumptuous fortune, deftly transferring his allegiance from France to England when he found that men of his beliefs were no longer tolerated about the Court, where he, in the reign of Henry IV, had been so conspicuous and courted a personage.

Doctor Mayerne knew all the secrets of the Court, perhaps even some things that were obscured from the piercing eye of the Earl of Northampton; these two able men were useful to each other, and admired and even respected each other, and so remained good friends. Now they laughed together over what the old Queen would have thought of these changes could she have foreseen them, what she would have had to say of the odd, ungainly Scotsman with his frivolous Danish wife and his minions and his neglect of statecraft, the riot and scandal and extravagance of the Court where everything was done in excess, where the placemen and the panders struggled together without restraint on their greeds and lusts.

Northampton spread his thin hands and said with a smile that seemed one of satisfaction: "As Salisbury said, he is a sick man—there will be no sparkle of Elizabethan greatness left."

But Doctor Mayerne reminded him gently:

"There are many old-fashioned people still about the Court who yearn and hanker after those days." He mentioned one or two of them—Sir Roger Lake, Sir Ralph Winwood—and perhaps Lord Canterbury who, though he skilfully steered his sail to catch any wind of Court favour that might be blowing, yet was a rigorous Puritan at heart.

But Northampton brought the conversation round again to the young Scot, Carr, who seemed likely to be the King's new favourite. He laid his white hand, curdled into the soft wrinkles of old age, on the smooth table in front of him, as if he were preparing to play a game with cards or pieces, as he said:

"It might seem that I, having nearly reached my allotted span, would do well to retire from the world and to think on what is beyond the grave. Yet I must confess that I have not lost my zest for amusement in this worldly play, and while I am on the scene I intend to give the players their tune."

He nodded at the famous physician as if he were giving him a hint or a warning, and the doctor, coming with diplomatic bluntness to the point, shrugged his shoulders and said:

"The question is, who will get hold of this golden fool, this Robin Carr? It is more difficult, my lord, to rule the King's favourites than for the favourites to rule the King."

"Because it is more difficult the task pleases me," replied the old Earl. "It is my humour to contrive, even with these new-fangled ills."

"If the King takes this Scot into his friendship," said the Frenchman delicately, "he will give him everything—almost the crown. With what, then, shall another man bribe him?"

"A lure might be found," smiled the Earl. "The boy has, you say, a light inconstant mind—base, too, no doubt. Such a one could be managed."

The two men fell to gossiping about the Court; who might rule there and gain from the extravagant follies and fantastic vices both power and money, both of which the Earl and the doctor knew well how to employ in refined and handsome living. The English Court with its Scots King was wanton and decadent, but, without too much soiling, the gold might be snatched from the dung-heap.

Men and women all over London were discussing the accident in the tilt yard and the pretty youth with the broken leg to whom the King proposed to teach Latin. The newsmongers and the gossipers and the placemen walking up and down St. Paul's, and all the hungry hangers-on who crowded about the palaces and mansions picking up scandal, the servants and jobbers, began to whisper his name—Robert Carr—till it seemed as if the winds that blew round London stirring the red and gold standards on the turrets, lifting the rubbish from the gutters, the marshes and the stagnant reaches of the river, were full of these two words.

Robert Cecil, Marquis of Salisbury, lonely in his sumptuous house, the dwarf whose genius governed England, heard the name and winced. He saw at once what this new favourite might mean; but he faced the prospect of his possible humiliation with that ironic acceptance of the littleness of others which is one of the attributes of greatness. He grieved, thinking of dead Elizabeth and what England might be, and went his way, a sick man.

Frances Howard, seated in an upper room in Northampton House, also heard the name. She had been married the year before, when she was thirteen years of age, to Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, recently restored in blood and honour to his title; he was the son of the man whom the old Queen had loved and whose head she had taken off for a wanton rebellion she dared not pardon. Since then, she had not seen her husband, Robin; he had been sent abroad to finish his education. She had almost forgotten him, though she was proud of being Countess of Essex. She gazed into the fire and mused on Robert Carr, who had been thrown from his restive horse below the gallery where she had sat in the tilt yard. Her thoughts were pleasant and confused; she smiled to herself.

Simon Forman returned to his house in Chelsea, and went up to a long gallery that looked on the river. He had in his hand the waxen woman, and now she was malleable enough he formed her any way he wanted, making her now stand, now sit, now kneel, now raise her arms in supplication, now drop them in submission at her side. He asked his wife to help him dress the puppet, and she, dark-browed and black-haired, sat sullen the other side of the hearth and gave her assistance unwillingly, snipping and stitching ungraciously.

At the end of the gallery Weston, the servant, and the shallow-faced dwarf, Franklin, were grinding roots with pestles in mortars and dissolving powders in a limbec; an acrid smell filled the gallery, now and then vapours and fumes rose, mounted, disappeared.

The light faded, and darkness came up slowly over the city, which was soon no more than a sprawling blackness on the marshes, clusters of irregular buildings either side of the river that surged and tugged at the banks, the bent willows, the broken alders. A lamp was lit in the library of Lord Northampton; candles were lit in the closet of the Countess of Essex. Forman's wife went to fetch a taper that her husband need not cease his work. A lamp was brought to the bedside of Robert Carr, where he lay dazzled, turning over excited thoughts in his slow mind. The little Princes were lit to their bedchambers and the King to his retiring room, his dwarfs and dogs and fools ambling after him, and in the wardrobe-room Anne Turner, the pretty mistress of the theatrical wardrobe, sat bending over a garment of sea-green on which she was sewing leaves of silver tissue, bending forward to catch the full light of the wax candles in the branched stick.

She was glad to work even after the hired women had left, for she enjoyed making a success of any pageant with which she was concerned, for here she met all the noble ladies of the Court, the lint-haired Queen who spent sixty thousand pounds a year on pleasures such as these, and noble Countesses, the ladies of Arundel, Derby and Bedford, of Suffolk, and that lovely girl, Frances Howard, who flattered Anne Turner and gave her costly presents as a reward for designing such becoming attire.

Into Anne Turner's empty head flickered the image of Robert Carr—a fine young man with his wide shoulders, slender waist and long hair. No doubt, she would soon be making a dress for him to appear before His Majesty in one of the masques at Whitehall that were planned for, that winter.

A young man, plainly dressed but with an air of assurance, entered the medley of buildings that was the Palace of Whitehall; after asking his way several times from the loafers and servants who lounged about the courtyards he reached a door in one of the pavilions that gave directly on to the river above the stairs, and there found a man in the Carr livery who took him at once to the presence of the King's favourite.

Before he crossed the threshold into the pleasant gallery looking on the Thames where Robert Carr awaited him, he paused for a second and uttered a quick, appealing prayer to Madame Fortune. Much depended on this interview for Thomas Overbury; he was only the son of a country gentleman, and though his patron was the Marquis of Salisbury, this statesman had done little more for him than to send him to France with good advice and a few not too enthusiastic letters of introduction.

Thomas Overbury had come from Paris with one great hope, that the King's favourite, whom he had met some years before when Robert Carr was no more than a lad, at the house of a Mr. Edward Bruce on the banks of Loch Leven, would remember him favourably. Robin Carr had been a wild, rough beautiful boy who had attached himself to the grave young student (Overbury had been noted at the Queen's College, Oxford, and at the Middle Temple where he had continued his studies, for his gravity, his scholarship, his industry and his fastidious avoidance of all the pleasures that usually distract youth from work and learning). But that was eight years ago, and it might be that Robert Carr, who was now Gentleman of the Bedchamber and also the King's shadow, had forgotten the quiet young man who had condescended to Carr in a casual way as they had wandered together under the cherry-trees by the heathery banks of Loch Leven.

But Tom Overbury only hesitated for a second; he made an ironic grimace to himself and went into the room.

A young man sprang from the cushioned window-stool, ran to the newcomer and embraced him heartily. Relief flooded through Tom; the favourite, then, did remember him! They exchanged hurried, and, on the part of Overbury, sugared courtesies. Then Carr set his new-found friend opposite him in the window-seat and prattled of his good fortune like the simple, honest, hearty fellow he was.

Shrewd Tom Overbury was glad of this idle talk; it gave him time in which to make his observations and his deductions. The rude, rough boy of Loch Leven had changed into a golden cockerel—Robin Carr, tall, strong, graceful, had acquired a courtly polish while in the train of Lord Hay in France, though he had not lost the thick Scotch accent that the fastidious Overbury found very irritating. His face had the beauty of youth, good health and high spirits, and his comeliness was lent a peculiar distinction by his masses of ruddy gold hair. He was curiously and splendidly attired, and he told Overbury with a mischievous laugh that every suit he had was a matter of consultation between himself, the King, and the royal tailors, while some of the designs were conceived by the Mistress of the Pageant Robes, Madame Anne Turner, who designed the costumes for the masques.

Whilst Overbury listened to this nonsense he had made up his mind that underneath this triumphantly glittering exterior was a simple mind, perhaps a foolish one. Carr was delighted with his extraordinary fortune. He told Overbury that all the courtiers' petitions had to go through his hands and that the King never entered the audience chamber without leaning on his shoulder, that even whilst he was receiving noblemen and ambassadors he would play with his new favourite's ruffles or braidings. He had sent him a table of gold set with diamonds only two days before, and it was worth at least three hundred pounds; Carr had his rents and his manors, too—yes, he had all he wished for; he was "Caro" to the King—the King was "old Dad" to him.

"I could dip my arms up to the elbows into the royal treasury," he boasted. Yet with all his arrogance and his laughing acceptance of this somewhat dubious good fortune there was nothing offensive in the rejoicing of Robin Carr at his good luck.

"He is only," thought Thomas Overbury shrewdly, "like a child whose hands have been thrust full of toys." And while Robin was walking about the gallery and continuing to boast and chatter of his greatness and his prospects and how all the honours of the land might yet be his, Thomas Overbury was turning over in his shrewd, well-trained mind the prospects that Robin Carr's fortune opened to himself.

At first he felt rather bitter about it, for he knew his own abilities and he had worked hard to improve them. He was diligent, able, with a quick, well-stored brain, he had observed his fellows with much shrewdness, and, in his case, logic had supplied the wisdom usually given by experience; he could observe, he could deduce; he knew his world. Yet of what use to him had been all his gifts, his industry, his perseverance? What reward had those long hours of toil at Oxford and in the Temple brought him? He had surpassed all his fellows in learning, he had forgone all the pleasures in which the others had indulged, he had avoided all the temptations to which so many had succumbed, and because he had a pale face, thin hair and insignificant features, he was nothing—no one had looked at him twice. Lord Salisbury had given him clerk's work to do; he had no friends, no influence. Of what use were all those sacrifices of youth and health and leisure, of what use the patience with which he had taught himself the arts of flattery, that he detested, toleration of vices and follies that he despised?

This stupid youth, silly Robin, because he had yellow hair and a handsome face, because he was bold and pleasant, had blundered into all that was good fortune which should by rights have been his, Tom Overbury's, who very likely now would live and die unnoticed, the son of a Cotswold gentleman who had three girls to marry and dower and two other boys to place.

But Overbury, whose reason was always able to control his emotions, eventually dismissed these thoughts and reflected instead how he might enjoy all the fortune that had fallen to Robin Carr; he soon learnt from that youth's excited chatter that a certain uneasiness lay behind the amazement at his own good luck. He did not, in fact, quite know what to do with the golden ball that lay at his feet.

"You know, Thomas," he said, pausing by the window-seat and looking down at the elder man with much admiration, "how I always envied your learning and how I never could get the Latin or the Greek myself—nay, nor much of the English either. Even now that I have learnt the outward ways of Court I feel at a loss—and I wish, Tom," he added impulsively, "you would stay with me and put me in the way of what I should do in my newly taken up braveries. I cannot write a sonnet, nor even a letter with any grace—nor can I follow the ways of Whitehall with much skill."

Thomas Overbury gave his thin smile. "I have come to you for your help and protection, Robin, hoping you would remember those old days at Loch Leven when we seemed to take a friendship to one another—for I have found no sudden fortune and my purse is lean."

"I always admired you, Tom," said Robin warmly. "Would you help me in my sport and my business? I can do a lot for you in return."

Tom Overbury turned aside his pale face and stared up the river beyond the palace steps to York House and Durham House set against the rising fields beyond the Strand.

Would he help Robert Carr? Could any offer have pleased him more? The two of them together would be like two halves that make a perfect whole—Robin had the looks, the graces, the favour, perhaps the love of the King, while he had the wit, the learning and the subtlety, a knowledge of human nature and enough cunning to match the great Salisbury himself. As he sat there gazing out at the grey Thames and the grey palaces, he felt quite prepared to match his wits against those of a Cecil or a Howard.

"You see, Tom," continued Robin with his engaging air of candour, "there are many about me to give me good advice, but I mistrust them, I do not want to be any man's puppet. The Howards hate me—you know they want to rule the country. Old Northampton sits in his great mansion like a spider in a web. I've been warned against him—he's a secret Papist, they say, and works subtly for his own ends. Then there is his nephew, Suffolk, and my Lady Suffolk, Kate Knyvet—they have been, especially the woman, intriguing for the King's favour, and they fawn on me now—but I will have nothing to do with them."

"You choose me, then," said Overbury as he turned, clenching his lean hands on his thin knees. "You choose me, Robin, to be your friend and guide?"

"I choose you," replied the other young man quickly. "I have always remembered you—if I had been quicker with the pen I should have written to you in Paris. You were kind to me when almost no one else was. You knew I had been dismissed from the service at Holyrood because I was clumsy and forgot the prayers. I was in disgrace for that with my Uncle Bruce, and my cousins laughed at me—but you did not. I remember the tales you told me of London, of the taverns and playhouses. You know my Uncle Bruce used to call us then," added Robin with a certain wistfulness, "David and Jonathan, or Damon and Pythias."

"And you've remembered, Robin, you've remembered that."

Tom Overbury, nimble as his wits were, could scarcely control his amazement. Until he had heard of the good fortune of Robin Carr he had forgotten all about the merry, affectionate boy whom he had met in Scotland and who had been such a gratifying audience for his tales of students' secret revels and adventures. There was no affection or sentiment in the nature of Tom Overbury; he thought of nothing and no one but himself and his own advancement. He had analysed, summed up and labelled as a fool the King's new favourite, and yet he, Robin Carr, with England and Scotland at his feet, had remembered him, with a schoolboy affection of seven years ago, and was willing to give him that position as his friend and guide which the greatest of the great would eagerly snatch at. Even Tom Overbury was a little moved, a sensation to which he had hitherto been a stranger. He looked sharply at the brilliant youth who was regarding him with such honest affection, and, placing his thin hand on the warm, strong fingers of Robin, he said:

"If you give me this post I will serve you well. I will be loyal to you, and do you, Robin, be true to me, and between us we may rule the Kingdom and defy the Howards and the Cecils—ay, all of them. Do not be lured away from me and my advice, for I truly know the world. Everything you want you must have, and I will help obtain it for you."

So a pact was made, and it seemed to both of them like a golden gift from fortune, for the favourite knew that left to himself he would be no better than a simpleton, like Philip Herbert whom he had despised. Yet he had been, as he told his newfound mentor, chary of confiding in people like the Howards or the Cecils who might secretly be working for his undoing; but in Tom Overbury he believed he had found a friend whom he could wholly trust, who would be dependent upon him and who would work for him, while for his part the Gloucestershire gentleman believed that he had found in this simple lad a key to all his desires. He meant to keep his pact, too; it would please him to exert his talents secretly and to show his great cleverness by pulling deftly in the dark the strings of this gorgeous puppet of the King's.

Tom Overbury had not left Whitehall an hour when the gossips were busy with his name and when later in the day he was seen to return with a servant and to take up his lodging in the room next to that of Robert Carr, everyone discussed the new friendship, and even speculated on a pact, for those who were versed in Court intrigue had long since guessed that if comely Robin Carr did not find some such shadow he would not long be able to keep his place. Will he now? the courtiers argued with one another. Who is Overbury, this young nobody? He would be unwise to set his wits against the Howards and the Cecils.

Among those who had noted the newcomer was Doctor Mayerne. For several days the fat, genial physician, going about his business with easy cheerfulness, made his observations, and then took himself on a professional visit, as it were, to Northampton House, where he remained closeted with my lord in the library.

Henry Howard already knew much of what Doctor Mayerne had come to tell him, but he was glad to have all the rumours confirmed by a man of such sound common sense. The upshot of their conversation was that Mayerne said to my lord:

"It is not the fool Robin Carr you have to deal with, but a nimble-witted rogue behind him—Tom Overbury—who sticks to him like a burr. Carr governs the King, but Overbury governs Carr."

And the Earl had said in his pleasant, quiet voice: "And I'll have both of them."

Then Mayerne asked, as he had asked before when they had talked on the subject of the new favourite: "But how? By what bait? This Scots lad has everything, and is, beside, haughty and stiff."

"Has he a mistress?" asked the Earl lightly.

"If he had, you would know of it," smiled the doctor.

"Maybe, but sometimes even these frank fools have their secrets and I thought you might have heard if any subtle woman had caught him—even by as much as the hem of the coat."

"No, he is free from that as yet." Then the doctor mentioned the names of several bright girls with whom Robin Carr had been seen at masques or on the river in pleasure barges—but there was no one in particular, though they all tried for him. Doctor Mayerne ended with: "I warn you, this fool is very firmly set in the saddle. He will have an Earldom, the Garter, manors, money. He may have any wife he chooses."

"Unless," remarked Northampton dryly, "his fancy falls on one who is already married."

Even Doctor Mayerne did not understand this hint at once. He was at the door leaning on his great staff ready to take his departure; he peered at the ascetic face of Henry Howard, then suddenly laughed.

"One who is already married!" he repeated with a shrug of his massive shoulders. "Well, there is such a thing as divorce—and I believe the King would deny him nothing."

He went his way smiling into the dusty streets, and Northampton remained alone in his library which was now full of the glow of the summer sun; the old man smiled too—at himself. He often thought that it was strange that he, who must in the nature of things have so little while to live, should be so active in these worldly affairs that he really despised. Yet these intrigues were like a dish of cream set before a hungry cat; he could not resist lapping them up.

Cunning was stimulated by this new danger. Robin Carr had been one enemy—now there was this Tom Overbury, unscrupulous and clever. He had heard that even Salisbury had taken notice of this newcomer who now lived in the lap of the favourite as the favourite lived in the lap of the King; Tom called himself Robin's secretary and was always about his person or closeted in his rooms—writing his letters, no doubt, and his poems, teaching him how to behave, what to say and do. The situation was the more difficult as Robin Carr had not made many enemies. It had been recognised since the King came to Whitehall that a favourite he must have—a comely lad on whom to lean as he shambled round the rooms, some minion to dress up, to share with him the pleasures of the chase, to hold his cup and sit at his feet and be slobbered over and caressed. And this fact having been accepted, it was felt by all who hoped to get some scraps from the royal table that Robin Carr filled his position gracefully and with good humour. He was civil to all, he had given no offence; he had not shown any notable greed, he was merry and cheerful, and, within simple limits, honest, and a good sportsman. He shared his pickings, he stood in no one's way.

Northampton rose and rubbed his thin hands together. How many other pieces were there in this game that he must consider? Robin, now, and Tom Overbury who was working for Robin—and Cecil in the background who stood for England, and the King who stood for nothing, yet who was all-important because he was the King. Then men like Lake and Winwood—and perhaps Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney-General, and the Lord Chief Justice, Sir Edward Coke—all working against the House of Howard. There was the coarse, silly Queen, with fine eyes and jovial laugh, who kept a separate establishment from the King's; and Prince Henry, soon to be made Prince of Wales, whom his mother loved passionately but whom his father feared and disliked.

Northampton rubbed his hands together again. Surely if only he had but a few more years to live he would be able to combine all these pieces into some game to his own advantage—to that of the House of Howard and the true Faith. He left his library and padded softly on his felt, satin-lined slippers along the corridor, full of light from the June afternoon, and went up the great staircase to the apartments that were allotted to his great-niece, the Countess of Essex, when she chose to stay with him. He loved this child for her clear beauty, her coaxing ways, her sweet gaiety, and he was sorry now that he had listened to her pushing, ambitious mother who had been so eager for the Essex match; it certainly had seemed a splendid marriage at the time—Essex was wealthy, it was a fine title, a good family, a splendid estate. But might not even better have been achieved? He had not realised that the child of thirteen would become such a beautiful woman; she was the brightest star in a Court that did not lack lovely creatures; Howard had noted with pride the tributes paid to his great-niece. Her gifts were not mere beauty of feature and figure, though she had those in abundance. There was something about her that made everything she said and did memorable; she seemed to have all the graces and all the accomplishments. Her voice was lovely, her touch on the virginals or the lute delicate, her taste in clothes was exquisite, and her temper was even, her cheerfulness unshakeable and she was married, a virgin whose husband was still abroad finishing his education.

Northampton opened the door of his great-niece's apartment and wondered if he had done well to give this pearl to Robin Essex. There was Prince Henry, a well-thought-of youth who had as many virtues as his father had vices, and he had been fascinated by Frances Howard. The old man's ambitious thoughts leapt like a rocket ...she might have been Queen of England, she might be yet. What had Mayerne said? "There is such a thing as divorce." But no, maybe that was flying too high. Yet surely something better could be done with Frances Howard than send her to Chartley as the bride of young Essex.

There was not too much time, either; any moment the young man would come home and claim his wife.

Northampton questioned the women who were working at a great train of peacock-coloured velvet which they had spread over two chairs. The Countess was asleep in the inner chamber; she had been dancing late at the palace; her mother had said she was not to be disturbed.

The old man with his light step and keen glance and his eyes still as bright as jewels in his wrinkled face, entered the shaded room where the girl slept. She was curled, fresh and delicate as a flower, on the coverlet of quilted crimson.

The old man looked down at her long and critically. He thought he knew her through and through; he had her training since she was an infant playing with dolls on the rug at his feet; he had taught her pride of birth, courage, good breeding, self-control, how to behave: and how to lie.

In so far as she was his work he was proud of her; she was all that he imagined a woman and a Howard should be. Her parents, her mother at least, had made her proud, passionate, pleasure-loving, and, as he believed, wanton and unscrupulous. He recalled young Essex, an austere lad with dry manners, not likely to win the heart of such a bride as this.

The girl stirred, disturbed in her sleep by the old man's keen scrutiny. She sighed and sat up, then, seeing her great-uncle there, laughed and threw her arms round his neck and kissed him. She chattered in her pretty voice, still that of a child, of her triumph at the masque the night before—she had been the most envied of all the ladies and had the most courtiers in her train; all the little poets were writing verses about her and shows were being written in which she might be the chief figure—as a goddess, as a queen. She whispered to her friend, giving him a sidelong look from glittering grey eyes, how Prince Henry had begged for a ribbon from her hair—the ribbon was pearl-coloured, pinked and cut by Anne Turner.

"Leave that, my wanton sprite," smiled the old man, twisting his dry fingers affectionately in the mesh of golden ringlets. "He will marry an ugly Spanish Princess. He is a pious, virtuous youth who does not care for crooked ways."

"Crooked ways!" laughed Frances Howard. "There was one of my name who was Queen of England."

"And lost her head, too. No, no, my poppet, do not let Prince Henry be more to you than an amusement. There are other more splendid gentlemen about the Court," he added shrewdly.

"And you want to know, sir, which I fancy?" said the girl. She rose from the bed, yawned and stretched.

"This Robin Carr, now. Is he not a proper man?"

Frances Howard smiled, lifted her delicate shoulders and replied:

"I have not marked him much. He is like Philip Herbert, all for sport, tennis, cock-fighting and the chase. He does not care greatly for the dance and the masque. He has that little fellow Tom Overbury always with him now. He is not," she added wilfully, "as fine a cavalier as Henry—his Scots speech is rough. Oh, Henry is my fancy now!"

"Take your mind from royal princes," said Northampton. "Have you danced with this Robin Carr? Or played with him in a masque? You know how retired I live, my child—all this extravagance of the Court is foreign to me."

"I have never danced with him or played with him, or even seen him face to face—or thought very much of him. Why should I," she added gaily, "think of one who does not think of me when there are so many who admire me?"

The old man's mind went to the Prince, to Robert Carr. Henry Stewart was a great figure in the land, although he was still only a boy, and had his own Court at St. James's Palace thereby rousing the jealousy of the King. He had gathered about him people who despised the follies and luxuries of King James and the stupid, spendthrift whims of the Queen. Northampton had flattered the Prince and often had him to his mansion and discussed with him his schemes for building new ships, and supported him in his patronage of the shipwright, Phineas Pet. He had watched the young Prince on horseback, tossing the pike, shooting straight with the bow, playing tennis, sailing a boat, in attendance on the beautiful Frances. He had heard him say of the Spanish marriage that "two religions could not meet in one bed," and his mind darted with longing to the thought that Frances herself had touched on when she had reminded him there had been a Queen of England who was a Howard—and this Prince was naturally the enemy of Robert Carr and all the other King's favourites; he despised them even as Northampton despised them, but would not stoop to use them as Northampton did.

The old man turned again to look at the girl, and he thought: "She is her mother's child, a little worldly, wanton poppet; her heart is hard and her mind is good—she will suit my purpose very well and get her own pleasure from it maybe."

He jested with her about her young lord who was coming home soon, and the fine life she would have in the Manor House at Chartley, and Frances laughed merrily.

Then he went to his library at the eastern end of the house, and in his own hand wrote a letter to Thomas Overbury, begging him to come and wait on him at Northampton House.

As far as it was possible Tom Overbury was open with Robin Carr. He had, indeed, so identified his own interests with those of the favourite that they had become from the first, as he had hoped they would, almost like one person. Almost, but not quite, for Overbury had his reserves, and sometimes laughed up his sleeve at Robin for a fool, albeit a pleasant, charming fellow. Yet still, whenever he could, he told him everything, only keeping silent on those matters that he thought would confuse Robin or those intrigues which would be rejected by Robin's sense of honour. So in the matter of the interview with Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, Tom told Robin the truth, relating what had passed between him and the crafty old lord word for word. In doing this Tom gave himself great credit for the way in which he had been able to outwit this sly, subtle, worldly man.

"He wants you, Robin, he wants to buy you. He'll offer almost any price. Old and frail he is, and half in the grave, but he is still full of schemes and plots. He flattered me, Robin. Imagine that! The man who had been an obscure, mean scholar but a year ago—" He laughed with a relish that slightly displeased his friend, who muttered sullenly:

"There is too much flattery in this business; there is too much talking of baits and lures, of this and that intrigue."

Tom saw that he had offended; he sat silent like a man rebuked. In reality he was merely waiting till the youth had said his say and returned to his usual casual gaiety. But Robin, who was a man of few words, this time tried to force some of his feelings into speech.

"Look you, Tom, I do not want this to be a foul business. They seem to think the King's a fool and I am something worse. And you—there's a vile name for you too, Tom, going about Whitehall."

"We must rise above the gossip and the scandal," replied Tom Overbury, putting the tips of his fingers together. "We arouse much jealousy, envy and wickedness, Robin."

"There is no need for us to be slandered. I enjoy my good fortune, it's true—what if the King likes my company, and I like his? He is, you know, a wise man. His heart may be empty—I know not yet. But he is a fine scholar and a good companion, for all his ugly ways—and clever. You'd hardly believe his cleverness, Tom—poor old Dad, I am truly fond of him. It is because he does not care that he leaves the Government to men like Salisbury."

"Like Salisbury," smiled Overbury, trying delicately to turn the conversation. "He, too, has cast his eye on me; he, too, is taking notice. He thinks that we want to govern England, Robin."

"Well, why not?" repeated the Scots youth, with the confidence of stupidity. "You and I, Tom, as well as the Cecils and the Howards—why not? And I intend it to be all for the good of the people, too—there are many abuses I'll check, many wrongs I'll put right. You shall show me how to do it, Tom. You have the learning, the wit and the experience—"

Overbury, smiling, interrupted softly: "Quietly, Robin, quietly. We are new to the game and must try not to elbow experienced players from their seats."

"Young Henry hates me," cried Robin abruptly. "He almost insults me when we meet—he cut me openly yesterday in the tennis courts—he is a forward boy! He sets his own Court up in St. James's, has his own creatures about him. The King dislikes him and is jealous of him."

"Take care how you meddle there. Henry will be the Prince of Wales—he is well supported and well admired. Be very wary how you make mischief between the King and Prince Henry."

"Make mischief! I'm not a woman to go carrying gossip! When the King asks me what the Prince does and says, in his sports, I tell him—and so does everyone else. But as for him, I'll not be hectored even by a prince. The Carrs are not so much lesser than the Stewarts that I should take that boy's disdain. But come, tell me what Northampton said."

"Flatteries, flatteries," smiled Tom Overbury. "He wants to give you a banquet. He says he will offer you an entertainment equal to those he gives the Prince. Lady Suffolk came in—she, too, was full of your praises."

"It is well known about the Court," replied Robin petulantly, "that Kate Suffolk has been trying to find some man who will be at once the King's favourite and her puppet."

"Let that go, let that go, take what they offer you without enquiring into their motives. Will you not go to Northampton House, to a masque and a banquet, and escort, as the Prince does, the Lady Frances?"

"He is her servant, is he not?" asked Carr indifferently.

"She is the most beautiful woman about the Court," said Overbury coolly. "Northampton already repents the Essex marriage."

"What better could he find for her?" Carr said quickly. "Did you see her? She is beautiful, I suppose, but I have never looked at her closely."

"She is fair enough," said Overbury. "Not so much fairer than many another—but decked out and made to glisten. Why, every time a sonnet is written to her charms, or a fresh cavalier bows before her, her beauty seems increased. But if her name were not Frances Howard, if she did not live in Northampton House, I doubt if she would be thought more than a comely young woman."

"She is a great prize then—do you think the Prince is truly her servant?"

"If so," Overbury said spitefully, "he must be careful—her husband comes home soon." Then he added, as if he spoke casually of an indifferent matter: "Old Pandarus is ready to make a bargain with his sweet Cressida—she's a summer flower, for the summer's wearing—who shall enjoy her company before Essex returns?"

As he spoke Tom Overbury smiled with such meaning at the fellow who was at once his patron and his catspaw, that even slow Robin understood him. Scorn clouded the favourite's sullen face; for, despite his sudden elevation, the young man's native modesty and honest disposition were not altogether spoiled, and he looked at many matters as he had looked at them since boyhood. He knew now what Overbury would propose and what Northampton would second—that he should become the cavalier, the servant of the Lady Frances Howard, Countess of Essex, thus making himself the rival of Prince Henry, next highest in rank to the King—that he should seek the favours of the most talked-of, most admired, highest born lady of the Court. Overbury saw that he was understood and quickly pushed the points home.

"Do you want to vex Prince Henry and therefore please the King? Why, the King will laugh at this jest, if his son is cheated of this bright goddess. Do you want to have behind you the whole power of the Howard faction; and they are more powerful than you, dear Robin, realise."

"The lady is married and her husband must soon claim her—you say he will return for the investiture of the Prince Henry as Prince of Wales? Why should I dangle in her train for a few months, even if I am to be more favoured than the others?"

"Leave the future to the future," replied Overbury lightly. "Will you go to Northampton House and meet the Lady Frances Howard?"

Robin Carr's serious mood did not remain long. He laughed, stretched and said, with the air of a spoilt child accepting yet another toy: "Why should I not go to Northampton House and see their entertainment, even if it makes young Henry sulk?"

Tom Overbury did not answer, he had known from the first that he would be able to persuade Robin to accept the proffered flattery of the Howards—as he could persuade him to anything, eventually. While Robin began talking of his dogs and horses, Tom, observing him with secret amusement, thought how like a sleek animal Robin was himself, glossy, Well fed, perfectly groomed, wrapped with useless splendour, wasting his strength in sport and show—like a pampered hound or haughty charger, kept for ornament and display.

That old rogue, Northampton, angling for Robin had baited his hook with the exquisite Frances; he had whispered "Bring your friend, your Patron, your master to Northampton House, and he shall sit beside my great-niece, the little Countess of Essex, who is adjudged no mean beauty, while we try to entertain him."

Well could Overbury understand the intention behind this silken invitation. Howard intended to cast Discord's apple between the young favourite, Robin Carr, and Henry Stewart, who was so popular and would soon be Prince of Wales, who was perhaps in many ways more influential in the country than the King himself. Already there was intense dislike between the two young men; Henry Howard intended that this should be a lively hatred ...how did he want it all to end?

Tom thought that he could guess that. The conclusion would be the return of my Lord of Essex, who would snatch away the tempting little enchantress from both the angry youths and take her to his great house at Chartley and shut her up from the light of the Court, where now she flitted like a silver butterfly. The lovely Frances was to put not only bitterness and fury between the King's favourite and the King's son, but she was to entangle Robin and break him—if possible, mind and body—so that he began to neglect the King and all those pleasures in which he was the King's companion. Thus Robin would lose the royal favour in passion for a woman. And the spell might work, for Robin was fancy-free; he was young and handsome, and leading an idle life and Frances Howard might ruin him without much trouble and no disgrace, for it was not Northampton's intention that she should take the young upstart for a lover.

But Tom Overbury's plan, whereby he hoped to defeat all the intrigues of the Howards, was that Robin Carr should take the shining girl whom old Northampton was casting in his way, and thereby hurt and anger Prince Henry, who was Robin's and his, Tom Overbury's enemy. This too would please the King, who came daily to dislike his son more and more, and might so wound and distract Henry Stewart, who was still only a boy, and, as Tom Overbury shrewdly judged, lost in his first love, as to make him retire from Court and give up all his schemes.

As Overbury saw Northampton's subtle scheme, there was more in it than the humiliation of an enemy. Henry Howard intended to bind Robin Carr's fortunes to the great House of Howard only as long as it suited him. The girl should flirt with him, laugh with him, dance with him, enchant him and then disappear, under the protection of her newly returned husband, into the distant domain of Chartley.

But Tom Overbury saw it otherwise; he needed the alliance of the House of Howard; he thought his family was too great to offend or flout, and he intended to ally Robin Carr to them forever. The boy and the girl, as Tom planned it, should be lovers indeed, closeted, chambered, bedded together, not once but often. It should not be difficult; they were young and beautiful, there was ardour, fire in the smoothness of their pampered bodies. Tom would see that there was opportunity too. He would outwit Northampton and Madame Suffolk—they were trafficking in the girl's pride and delicacy. Tom was trafficking in other things; when he and Robin Carr had done with Frances Howard as Overbury planned, her name, her reputation, her future would be in the hands of Robert Carr; that is to say in the hands of his faithful secretary, Tom Overbury.

He put a question deliberately to himself; "What price shall I exact from the Howards on the day when it is in my power to send Frances to the Tower for adultery?"

Mrs. Anne Turner was designing the dresses for the masque to be given by the Howards for Robert Carr at Northampton House. She worked quickly, with pleasure in her own skill; she held the drawings at arm's length, surveyed them critically, then marked on the margins the materials of which they were to be made.

It was to be a river pageant, with the women dressed as river nymphs, the men as sea gods. Then there was to be an interlude of Muscovites. Part of the entertainment was to be in the garden and part to take place on a raised stage in the great hall.

Fatigue came over her, and she let her thoughts drift away from her occupation while she absently gazed at the girls seated on the floor who were sewing lengths of sea-green taffeta with knots of coral silk. Though Anne Turner was a happy woman she did not know who she was; she had been brought up by people who had declared that they were relations of hers, that they had been merely paid, through an attorney, to keep and educate her till she was of marriageable age. Her delicate prettiness, her cleverness, and above all her charming gaiety, had soon procured her a husband. She had married a physician, George Turner, an able man who had graduated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and who, though he had taken his medical degree abroad, was a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and well thought of among his colleagues.

Anne Turner had nothing against her husband, but she had found it impossible to live with him. It was some years now since she had left him, and the worthy physician had made no effort to regain her affection or her company. She had had her adventures, her misfortune, her disillusionment; but an introduction to Mr. Inigo Jones, the designer of the royal masques, had brought her a livelihood at which she very happily employed her talents. She had also found a lover, Sir Arthur Mainwaring, with whom she had lived contentedly for several years and by whom she had three children, whom she kept in a little house in Lambeth. Her husband did not trouble her, her lover was passably faithful, she had many amusing acquaintances and her life was passed in precisely those surroundings of gaiety, carelessness, extravagance and luxury that suited her shallow nature.

So pretty Anne had only one trouble, and that was lack of sufficient money. Sir Arthur was not a wealthy man, and her dress-designing was, she always declared, poorly paid; however hard she worked she never earned enough for her needs, so that a life that would otherwise have been perfectly free from care was always ruffled by this anxiety about money. She dressed extravagantly, lived luxuriously, there were the children, there was the nurse, the servants, her horse, her coach, her entertainments; with all her influence and her wit and her coaxing ways she could not push her idle, thriftless lover into any place at Court. He, too, was expensive; his estate was mortgaged, he did not contribute as much as she did to their little establishment; yet she liked the man and was used to him, and though now and then she was unfaithful to him with some passing cavalier, she would have regretted it if he had left her. She was an affectionate mother and spared no thought or expense for her children.

At this particular moment Mrs. Anne was unpleasantly pressed for money; she had spent too much in every direction; she had been forced to part with what she considered her greatest treasure—a necklet of pearls and emeralds that had been given her by her first lover. Now there were bills to pay, and the household accounts ...she was so stupid at finance that she had become hopelessly involved.

There was one person to whom she always turned when she was in a difficulty, and that was Dr. Simon Forman. Since she was ready to earn small sums of money by any means whatsoever, she had been very useful to the good physician, who had bought from her items of information about the Court that had been invaluable to him in his practice. The learned doctor in his turn had set her on to many a lucrative enterprise. His large and extremely profitable practice was a secret one, almost entirely among idle, lovesick and neurotic women, and in dealing with these delicate cases Simon Forman had found Mrs. Turner very helpful. In her capacity of dressmaker and milliner she was able to go anywhere without comment, almost without being noticed, and she could take and receive messages, and in the quiet rooms in her obscure house at Lambeth, which stood secluded in a grove of poplar-trees, arrange meetings between lovers brought together by the philtres and charms of Simon Forman. These services were fairly well paid, but Anne Turner always thought, with that petulance which took the place in her of resentment, that she did not get her fair share of all the money that flowed into the coffers of Simon Forman, so much of which he owed to her discretion.

Now, with no particular purpose in her mind save that of obtaining help from the one person who had helped her before, Anne Turner left Whitehall, and went down to the river to Chelsea where the doctor lived. She walked across the summer fields to his mansion which was well set back from the high road, surrounded by herb gardens and lawns, that sloped down to a little pleasure-house, a jetty and the river.

It was Mrs. Forman who admitted her, and Anne smiled at the woman's look of sullen jealousy. As if she, fastidious Anne Turner, took the least interest in Simon Forman, with his long white beard, bald head and austere manners!

As soon as he knew who his visitor was the sage appeared and conducted the lady into the laboratory, which was behind the consulting-room. Here he did his work and made his experiments, and there was nothing in this room to impress the ignorant or deceive the timid. Simon Forman could, on occasion, when it was necessary, stage an effective display sufficient to daunt the nerves even of the strong-minded; but in the laboratory he received only those who were his accomplices.

It was a chamber of which his dupes were never allowed to catch a glimpse; the room looked on to a walled garden, and two large windows admitted the daylight. At one end of the apartment was a furnace with a brick oven and several retorts, limbecs and chemical apparatus. On a shelf above were jars and bottles of various liquids and powders. Beyond was a little closet, the door of which now stood open, in which Weston, the servant, and sometimes Franklin, Simon Forman's partners, slept. Hanging against the wall were several garments in which the doctor and his assistants often made very dramatic appearances, but which now, draped over their pegs in broad daylight, looked drab and unimpressive. On the long table lay the carcase of a crocodile, half stuffed; through a gash in the stomach sawdust was falling on to the thread and pack needle.

Anne Turner took no notice of these implements of Dr. Forman's trade. Several of them she had helped to make and they were no more to her than the garments that she, almost daily, designed and sold for the masques about the Court. But it did not surprise her that many women, far more intelligent and more learned than she was herself, were frightened by the theatrical displays that Simon Forman could stage—pretending to evoke spirits, and even devils on occasions—for Anne also believed in witchcraft, in black magic and in the power of the Prince of Darkness; and these convictions, held firmly in a heart essentially simple, were by no means shaken by the knowledge of the trickery of Simon Forman.

Shaking back her hood she began to complain of her ill-fortune.

"Money—Simon, I must have money! It seems to slip through my fingers! Was there ever a creature in the world as unfortunate as I am? You know there is a mortgage on the house and how badly I am paid and Arthur every month gives me less and less. Then there are the children, soon there will be their education ..."

The sage stopped this chatter by majestically raising his hand. "Have you anything to sell me, Anne?" he asked pleasantly. "You know that I do not pay unless something good is offered."

Anne sighed, shrugged her shoulders, pouted and then began to gossip about the affairs at Whitehall—the jealousy between the King and Prince Henry, the estrangement between the King and the Queen, the rise of Robin Carr who would soon, people said, be made Viscount Rochester, and the influence that Thomas Overbury had over the favourite.

"All this," said Forman, "is common gossip. Of what use is it to me?"

The dress-designer shot the doctor petulant glances for this curtness and sighed.

"Lord Northampton is putting the Lady Prances Essex in the way of Robin Carr."

"All the world knows that," replied Forman dryly. "You are making the dresses for the masque at Northampton House. I can tell you something also, my dear. A double game is being played there—it will be amusing to see who will win. Northampton intends to dangle the bait, and Overbury intends that it shall be swallowed."

Anne Turner could not quite understand this, nor was she really interested.

"I want money," she exclaimed peevishly. "Surely you have some use for me? I am a friend of Frances Essex."

"A friend!" laughed Forman, suddenly showing his teeth.

"I am her intimate friend," cried the dress-designer. "She will have no one else but myself to fit her gowns. I spend hours in her company. She likes to hear all the scandal I can tell her, she likes to hear of the Court's goings on. I carry tit-bits to her from the dressing-rooms of other women—and she in return tells me much."

"She can have no secrets that would be worth my purchase," mused Simon Forman, but he seemed to ponder over what the young woman had said.

Anne Turner watched him eagerly. "Surely that will be useful to you?" she asked stepping closer to the old man. "I am in the confidence of Frances Essex, and Frances Essex is being used to lure Robin Carr into the Howard faction. From her, if I am careful and do not let her have any suspicion that I am other than a silly chatterbox, I can find out everything."

"Robin Carr does not concern me," replied Simon Forman, "but Tom Overbury interests me."

"Well, cannot we get at Overbury through Carr and the Lady Frances? You tell me what to do and pay me—that is all I ask. I will do anything, anything. I must have money, and within the month."

"You overrate your own importance," replied the doctor sternly. "Neither Robin Carr nor Tom Overbury nor any of the Howards are among my clients or patients. They have never been to me, nor are they likely to come."

"Perhaps," suggested Anne Turner quickly, "I can bring them."

Simon Forman, stroking his beard, looked at her keenly. "If you can ever bring any of them to me for advice or help, you shall certainly be paid highly."

"The girl," urged Mrs. Anne. "I might bring the girl. At present she wants nothing that money can buy, but the day might come."

"She loves no one?" asked Simon Forman.

"No. She is only fourteen years of age—she thinks of nothing but pleasure. The day must come soon when she will want a lover. They all do. She is only flesh and blood."

"Perhaps that lover," sneered Simon Forman, "will be her returning husband, my Lord Essex, who is a respectable young man. Who knows?"

"Have I ever been indiscreet?" replied the dress-designer, peevishly. "Do I not make my living by being discreet? I tell you that if ever the girl is in distress I will bring her to you. She is, for all her pride and her breeding, ignorant."

"Even more ignorant than yourself, my pretty Anne?" The doctor laughed out aloud.

"Yes, even more so," said Anne coolly. "For, whereas I know that all these masks and robes are only silly shams, she does not—and any painted devil that you can stage would frighten her."

Simon Forman went to the end of the room and, unlocking a cupboard that hung below a shelf of bottles and jars of powders, took out a leather bag. From this he extracted three gold pieces, which he put into the eager fingers of Mrs. Anne.

"You will keep me closely informed of this intrigue, I can give you no more money now, but the matter may be worth a great deal to both of us—only I beg of you to be prudent. We have our fingers now in great affairs."

Anne Turner pocketed the gold. It was not as much as she wanted, but it was more than she had expected, and she saw that she had roused the interest of the doctor in her intimacy with Frances Essex.

"I want a further supply of perfumes," she said. "Something subtle and potent—there is always a ready sale for those but you charge so highly, there is little profit left for me."

"Perfumes cost a great deal to make," replied the doctor "your wantons tire of orris, violet and bergamot, I must search for novelties."

The dress-designer glanced in idle curiosity at the row of jars on the shelf above the cupboard from which the money had been taken.

"Are those some of the ingredients for your perfumes?"

Simon Forman showed his crooked teeth through his white beard.

"Oh, my duck, my darling, those are the ingredients of which I try to make poisons."

The words fell unexpectedly upon the ears of the woman. She was surprised, slightly startled.

"Poisons! I never thought of that, though I've heard they make good use of them in Italy, and even in France."

"I wish I had their secrets," said the doctor, walking up and down with his hands clasped behind his robe; "they are very difficult to discover. A crude poison, yes—but that, would instantly be detected by a physician. Doctor Mayerne, they say, is very hard to deceive ...but there are subtle poisons, something that might be taken in, say, a bunch of grapes or in a goblet of wine or even snuffed up in a bouquet or from the hot wax of a candle—but they are very difficult to track down."

"Why," asked Mrs. Turner with a shade of uneasiness in her light voice, "should you wish to make poisons?—You do well enough."

"Ay, I do well enough. But I am an old man, and of not much more use for this world. I suppose it is the sense of power I envy. One takes so much trouble to intrigue, to bribe, to cringe, to flatter—when, if one had a pinch of one of these Italian poisons, the business would be done quickly. Think what a price one could ask, think what a trade one could do ..."

"Think what a death one would die," shivered Mrs. Turner, moving towards the door with a gesture of aversion. "I do not like this talk. Besides, I did not know there was any mystery about the matter. I thought that those who wished it could easily come by poison."

"That is not so," replied Simon Forman softly. "A subtle poison is very difficult to discover. I have been in France, I have been in Italy, I have tried to find out—there are some secrets that are very jealously guarded."

"Well, for my part," said the little woman with an uneasy laugh, "I hope you will not discover any such horrible mixture!"

"It is what I most want to do. I have my helpers, too—Franklin and Weston. You may chatter about this as you will, and no one will believe you. But for your own sake I should not let the word 'poison' pass your lips in Whitehall—are too many who would be interested"—and he turned on the shrinking Anne Turner the full light of his pale, clear grey eyes, that were strangely undimmed by age or study, and that he knew how to employ with great effect. "Do you think," he added softly, "that because you have seen all this trumpery here, because I have let you into some of my secrets, I have no power?"

Frivolous Anne, who had been brought up in the ancient Faith, tremblingly traced the sign of the Cross on her brow.

"Master," she begged, "because I jest with you do not think that I do not reverence you!" Then her habitual lightness effaced her moment of awe and she added flippantly:

"If you are really in the service of the Devil how is it that he will not tell you how to discover this secret poison?"

Simon Forman replied gloomily: "The Devil is a hard taskmaster, he puts his servants to a grim apprenticeship. We must labour long and patiently before we have our reward."

In the scheme for bringing together Robin and Frances, Henry Howard was not only helped but goaded by Kate Suffolk, his niece by marriage and seafaring Tom Howard's wife. Northampton could have done with less of this intriguing feminine ambition. When he, the wise old scholar, set his traps and his lures, it was that a great House might rule England, that the old Faith might be restored, as well as for his own personal advancement.

"Take care," he warned the impatient woman, "that you do not urge the girl too far. Remember that she is not only your daughter, but Countess of Essex, that within a year at least Robert Devereux will return to claim his wife—I want no disgrace."

"Next year can take care of itself," replied Madame Suffolk. "Besides, if we gain Robin Carr it seems to me that we may let Robin Devereux go."

"There was a marriage," the Earl reminded her dryly.

The woman gave a hollow laugh. "It is no marriage as yet—one ceremony can annul another ceremony."

"You disturb me," said the old man quietly. "I was writing here, Kate, and, meditating upon many things—and as for what you have come to talk about, I have already arranged it."

"But it is so," replied the lady harshly. "The entertainment you arrange is poor, compared to that which this young Scots boy sees every day at Whitehall. Cannot Frances be put in his way in some more subtle manner?"

The Earl placed his thin white fingers together, and after a sigh of resignation replied, making his plans simple for this stupid, ambitious woman:

"Do you think it so easy to bring this boy and girl together? She is wilful, proud, vain and heartfree. The boy's absorbed in his sports, his dogs, his horses, his stables; he is like a child let loose into a room full of toys; he is not glutted yet with all the King can offer him. All women look the same to him—ay, even your divine Frances, my dear Kate, glitters no more brightly before Robin Carr's eyes than a hundred others whom he has seen at Court. This butterfly," added Northampton with a dry chuckle, "has been freed into a garden of golden flowers—how will you see that he pauses and sniffs at the particular honey, in your particular bloom?"

"You must get hold of him—you should get hold of him." The Countess crossed to the window and looked out into the unfinished gardens below. "There must be ways and means. Even when I want to ask him to my entertainments you will not let me."

"No, I would do it my own way. But this, I warn you—" The old man rose to his full lean height; he was still, despite his stooping shoulders, tall. "Take care how you play with the girl. Remember she is a wife, even if it be only in name. See that she does not become talked of with this Scots adventurer."

The Countess shrugged her plump shoulders.

"Frances has a heart like a diamond, she thinks of nothing but her own advantage. She, too, has many to choose from. Do you think that she will cast a longing eye on Robin Carr when she may have Prince Henry for her servant, at the lifting of her little finger?"

"I do not know," said the Earl wearily. "And you do not know either, Kate. And," he added, "since Frances is so indifferent to this youth, will she play our game?"

"Ay, that she will, and willingly too," replied her mother readily. "She has noted young Carr at Whitehall and thinks he carries his head too high. She is glad to be able to bring him down."

"I hope," replied Northampton coolly, "that she may be able to do so. See that she is dressed up and displayed in the most fitting manner to strike his senses—see that she has every opportunity of enchanting him. Tell Anne Turner, who is with her so much, to train her in her part."

With these instructions the Earl nodded towards the door, desiring his niece to leave him. He disliked women who meddled in his schemes and intrigues, and he was very weary of what seemed to him the greed of Catherine Suffolk. Nor did he leave the chances of his scheme in female hands. When next Dr. Mayerne came to advise upon the treatment of my lord's gout there was a brief conversation between the two men on the subject of Robin Carr, who seemed to prefer dogs and horses to women and who had offered Frances Howard at Whitehall no more than a passing civility. It ended with the passing of a packet of powder from the physician's pouch to that of my lord.

The moon was full on the night of the entertainment at Northampton House and touched the swans on the river and the undersides of the willow-trees with faint shades of silver.

My lord, whose taste was so sure, had not tried to vie with the ostentatious splendours of Whitehall, with which both Prince Henry and Robin Carr were glutted. He had hired the best men in their various professions to help him—Daniel for the words, Inigo Jones for the devices and Ferrabosco for the music. But for the masque itself, it was to be a delicate, airy affair, without pretension yet arranged to make a vivid impression.

The great house, newly finished, still fresh and clean from the craftsmen's hands, was set open to the summer air and lit with wax tapers that threw a soft glow over the bright colours of newly woven tapestries and the rich tints of paintings. Servants and pages in the Howard livery stood on every second step of the great stairway and waited in the courtyard holding torches that sent up flames and faint trails of smoke into the purple night air.

The only guests were Prince Henry and his gentlemen and Robin Carr and his secretary, Tom Overbury, who had celebrated his knighthood by purchasing a better suit than any he had worn before.

Northampton acted the host with exquisite courtesy, and supporting him was his niece, Catherine Suffolk, who, ever since King James had come to the throne, had trained herself to be civil to handsome youths who might catch the royal favour. With her was her husband, a hearty, brave, dull sea-dog, the noble Admiral who shut his eyes to all these intrigues and despised them in his heart, yet who made his profit by them and did what he could in a quiet simple way to help his cunning wife fish in the corrupt waters of Whitehall.

Rich music filled the house and hovered over the stately banquet. The food was served on silver gilt plate and the wine in rock crystal goblets on enamelled stands; yet there was no ostentation of rare meats or out of season fruits. The luxury was beyond show, it was cold, rich splendour, splendidly offered.

Prince Henry, the Earl at once noted, was melancholy and uneasy. Under cover of the light easy monody of the viols and wind instruments he asked where Lady Frances, who had been his companion so frequently of late, lingered? The old man nodded and said she would appear presently in the masque.

Then to cover the Prince's low spirits and seeming not to notice him while he talked. Henry Howard discoursed pleasantly of the first masque that Ben Jonson had written for Anna of Denmark, which was called the Masque of Blackness, that had been given on the marriage of Sir Philip Herbert to the Lady Susan Vere. His niece Catherine Suffolk had played Kathare and the Queen, who was famous for her brilliant fair skin, had had the mood to disguise herself as a Negress ...for his part, he said, he preferred it to the Masque of Beauty, that had been given at Court the previous Christmas. Prince Henry listened courteously but, when the old, soft voice came to a pause, he said, staring across the table at Robin Carr, who sat silent beside the watchful Sir Thomas:

"I think all these masques, pageants and entertainments come too costly. We spend too much, all of us, on frippery and trumpery. Not that I would be slighting your entertainment, my lord," he added sweetly, "yet, when one goes abroad ..." He paused, fingering the stem of his glass.

The old Earl, with gentle instinct, left the sentence unfinished, and so did Robin Carr, for he knew not what to say. But with misplaced audacity, Tom Overbury put in, leaning across the glittering table:

"Your Royal Highness would prefer the money spent on navies and the schemes of Phineas Pet?"

By this Tom Overbury meant to raise a smile at the expense of the Prince, his master's rival and enemy; but clever as he was, he was not as yet properly versed in the ways of a Court, and all he got for his sally was a look of disdain from Henry, who answered gravely:

"Ay, that I would, and on bettering the people and on men of great intelligence and worth—not so much on shows and tricks one forgets or grows stale in remembering."

With that the young man rose, and all the others got to their feet except Overbury, who, in defiance of the Prince's rebuke, dared to linger a little in his place to finish his glass of wine until the old Earl cast him a severe look, and he too had to stand up. Then they went out into the cool, dark garden to watch the entertainment.

Out of the obscurity of the garden into the circle of lamplight, came masquers, disguised as Negroes, who drew in a great concave shell glittering like mother-of-pearl, curiously made to move on invisible wheels. The scene was lit, too, by twelve torch-bearers who had lights burning out of whelk or murex shells. All these masqueraders were attired alike, in colours of azure and silver with a scroll of antique dressing of feathers on their heads and jewels interlaced with ropes of pearls. The light-bearers wore sea-green, waved about the skirts with gold and silver, their hair, loose and flowing, garlanded with sea grass and stuck with branches of coral.

Henry Stewart leaned forward watching this show and forgot who he was with and why he had been brought to Northampton House, though he knew well enough that it was to set him against Robin Carr.

The young Prince was shrewd and had intelligent advisers and understood well enough the game his father played and that played by Northampton and the Howards, but his mind was above all this, and he would not have come to this show to-night had it not been for Frances Howard, who had for him a rare enchantment. He was brave, modest and honourable and it distressed him that this daughter of a great House and the wife of an Earl, should appear like a player in a masque, though he knew that his own mother did not hesitate to black her face and dress herself fantastically for these pageants. Still he disliked it, and even more did he dislike what he suspected to be the truth—that Frances was there to lure the new favourite, Robin Carr, into an alliance with the Howards.

However, since he was young, and romantic, the night beautiful and the moon bright, music was in his ears and lights before his eyes, the young man's thoughts strayed from all these sordid matters, and he kept his glance fastened on the shell, certain that Frances was lying curled up inside it and presently would spring out to dazzle them all. He fell to musing over how he would take her away from these masquers and revellers and lead her down through the fragrant gardens to the landing-stage and perhaps induce her to come in his painted barge on the moonlit river, away from them all.

While he was lost in these thoughts the old Earl was observing him keenly, wondering what England, what Great Britain would be like when this young man was King. He was different in everything from his father, who some said had great intellectual gifts, and others declared was little short of an imbecile. To Henry Howard he seemed to be nothing but a cunning fool of gross appetites whom George Buchanan had turned into a pedant by means of the rod, so that James Stewart could argue on points of Latin grammar and set lawyers aright on details of the law, but knew nothing of human nature or the arts of government nor any rules of decency or decorum. Henry Stewart was not like this strange father of his, or his blonde frivolous mother with the fine eyes and the dazzling skin and the flaxen hair. He was a tall, lean youth with a grave face and brown hair, and more plainly dressed than any other man there, in a suit of murrey colour, indifferently put on and carelessly laced with a silver cord at the throat.

From him the old Earl glanced at Robin Carr, to whom the Countess of Suffolk was whispering jests and flatteries in vain, for Robin was suspicious and even sullen, and his natural courtesy was strained by the tedium of the evening. He felt jealous and uneasy in the presence of Prince Henry, whom he heartily disliked and slightly feared. Robin had no imagination, so the pageant to him was just a number of paid players disguised in strange costumes moving about over a garden as yet unfinished, and the moon to him was just a moon. He would rather have been in the company of King James, with whom he had much in common and where he did not have to be so rigid, and formal, as he did before Prince Henry, with whom he could discuss dogs and horses and feats of strength and games.

Robin was dressed too splendidly, as Northampton, correct in his own elegant black and silver, noted with disdain; yet the old lord, gazing at him with detachment, decided that the sullen boy was a gorgeous and splendid creature and well fitted himself to be the figurehead in a pageant. The old Earl could read very clearly the young man's expression; "he feels here nothing but tedium and that sly dog who follows him has told him all my intentions in asking him here." The old man cast looks of delicate hatred towards Tom Overbury, who, with a smug, self-satisfied air and a lift of disdain on his thin lips for all this display of Howard pride, sat on a stool at his master's feet, and now and then touched him lightly or whispered to him. Northampton could not hear the words that passed between them, but he knew well enough that they were expressions of contempt for himself and his efforts to buy the favourite by such obvious means as this entertainment and its attendant flattery. Henry Howard enjoyed the situation; this shadow fight between two civilised subtle intellects was much to his taste, and he was even more interested in his delicate battle with Tom Overbury than he was in securing dull Robin for the House of Howard, even though dull Robin had the King in his pocket.

On some given signal, all the lamps and candles were withdrawn or extinguished, the music took on a fuller note, and everyone turned to look keenly at the empty stage before them; even Robin Carr stopped listening to Tom Overbury's spiteful whisperings and gazed curiously at the moonlit space of green.

Between two upright pillars of verde antico marble that stood on a little grassy knoll to the right of the stage moved a little, airy figure; the silver light that mingled with the moonbeams came from a lantern shaped like a crescent which she held above her head. The thing had been very cunningly arranged; no one had seen her coming.

From the hidden masquers came the cry—"The Moon!" and the musicians who were out of sight set up an undersong. As it floated over the gardens everyone looked at the figure of the girl who represented the moon. She stood with conscious grace between the marble pillars that her lantern silvered with delicate light. She was wearing white, showing her rounded limbs through the thin folds of her dress; round her thighs, her knees and ankles were wreaths of pearls, on her head was a turret of close-packed white roses, from which hung a veil of dark blue spangled with stars. She held herself erect, her lovely face like a silver mask.

Northampton beckoned to a page who stood behind the torch-bearers, peering at the show.

"Take a goblet of wine," he whispered, "to Sir Robin Carr and his friend. Sir Thomas. But bring it first to me, that I may see there is no error."

So the golden goblet of heavy Frontignan was brought on a salver to the old Earl, and while no one was looking Henry Howard slipped a little powder, a powerful aphrodisiac that Dr. Mayerne had given him, into the wine.

In another moment the page was on one knee beside Robin Carr. The young man, gazing, half-admiringly, half-suspiciously at the girl who was exposing herself as deliberately as if she had been a slave in an Eastern market-place, drank up the wine impatiently and waved the page away.

Then the song ended; there was a pause. Then the moon came down from her place and walked up the turf that served as the stage, bent her pearl-wreathed knee to Prince Henry, folding her long hands, which had been carefully whitened and silvered on the backs and nails, across her childish bosom.

The young Prince rose impetuously frowning at this mockery, and looked to right and left, then bent forward, and taking his dark blue cloak from his shoulders flung it over the barely veiled charms of Frances Howard.

"The moon is in eclipse," said the old Earl with a dry laugh, and all, taking their cue, broke into laughter, as if this were part of the pageant.

Tom Overbury did not join in this laughter; he tugged his patron by his sleeve and whispered: "It is from your eyes he covers her—he tries to take her away from you. He thinks it unworthy to set her out thus for your pleasure like a painted player. Frances Howard is not for your gaze, Robin, young Henry thinks."

"Frances Howard," repeated Robin Carr stupidly.

He had seen the girl many times before but had not been concerned in her, or indeed in any woman, but now he felt exalted, like one who wakes from a heavy sleep, eager to satisfy awakening desires.

"The wine was strong," he muttered, and put his hand to his golden crest of hair.

"Or drugged," thought Tom Overbury. He could always understand another man's cunning and he knew the close alliance there was between Northampton and Dr. Mayerne. A love potion! Well, that suited him too; he wanted Robin Carr in full chase after this silver girl, but whereas those who had let her loose wanted her to return home unscathed, Overbury intended that she should be brought down, wounded, broken and humiliated.

Prince Henry clasped the cloak round the girl's bare throat and said in her ear: "It is chill for a summer night and there are many eyes upon you. Did you attire yourself like this for me? You know I prefer you in a modest gown."

Frances Howard laughed with a touch of insolence. This part of the show had not been in the rehearsals and she was vexed that the Prince, to whose homage she was well used, had spoilt the effect she was trying to make on stubborn Robin Carr. Henry looked over her shoulder, for he still held the ends of the cloak lightly, at the young Scot who was slowly leaving his chair and coming towards her, walking softly in front of the line of spectators.

Frances whispered: "It is all a jest, a diversion, arranged by my great-uncle—an innocent play. You hold the mantle too tightly, it hurts my throat." Rebuked, the Prince let the taffeta slip between his fingers and the girl stepped away from him and stood half-naked in her pretty disguise between the two young men. Tom was close as a shadow behind Robin. "If she runs, follow," he whispered. "Take no heed of the Prince or any other." Then he slipped aside, laughing to himself at this play of wits between poor Tom and the great Henry Howard.

"A hue and cry!" exclaimed the old Earl, rising and clapping his hands. "Up, up, youths and ladies—a hue and cry for Cupid!"

There was a stir of movement and of laughter among the guests. The Prince spoke to Frances. "Come with me, sweet madam, we have no more part in these revels," but the girl laughed in his face:

"A hue and cry, sir!"

She turned to Robin, who was staring at her and put a silvered finger on his sleeve and peered up into his face as if she tried to puzzle out his mind.

Robin heard the laughter and movement of the spectators behind him as Northampton rose and broke up the show. He was conscious of the dark, sad figure of the young Prince looking at him but he had eyes for only the girl; a light breeze had taken her gauzy garments and stirred them so that he could see her rounded limbs, all wreathed with pearls. Then she put her finger to her lips and ran away into the darkness of the garden. Robin heard the Prince's voice commanding her to return, but she took no notice and Robin ran after her, vaulting over the rounded marble pillars that lay between myrtle and ilex trees, crushing down the beds of coloured lilies with his golden boots, pushing aside the garlands of streaked roses that hung from gilt pergolas, pursuing Frances Howard in her gleaming white and silver to the river's edge, where the gardens broadened into a lawn set with box-hedges and a tall sundial.

On the landing stage he caught her. She was breathless and laughing, her crown of white roses had fallen off in her flight and her spangled hair was silvered by the moon and hung like a net over her shoulders. She paused with her gauzy dress stirring about her in the breeze, peering down into the rushing river, and at the pearl-white swans that slept among the reeds.

"This was not meant," she cried, laughing, and thrust together her hands under her chin, shuddering. "It's cold, it's cold! Was ever a June night so chill?"

"I have no mantle to offer you," panted Robin Carr. "But I can warm you well enough."

She had always thought him slow and dull, and she looked at him shrewdly, wondering what had changed him. His face was flushed and amorous and he caught her hands more boldly than any man had dared to do before. Her first feelings were ones of wounded pride, and she was about to cry for help to her great-uncle's men, the Prince's men, to punish this upstart who had dared to touch her, but she had no time; for Robin Carr had taken her in his arms and began to kiss her violently with rough, hot lips. Frances struggled with little cries and writhed to be free, so that the pearl circlets were broken from her legs and ankles and wrists and the great gleaming beads went rolling down the landing steps and splashed into the river among the upright reeds.

It was Tom Overbury who rescued her, coming up breathlessly after his patron: he pulled at Robin's sleeve and said with that violence he rarely used, but knew very well how to employ, "Come away, come away now. It will be a brawl—the Prince is looking for you. You cannot behave like this yet, but you may when the time comes."

The young man's befuddled wits could hardly comprehend this warning, he kept the struggling girl close. Thereupon Tom struck him hard on the breast, and he fell back a little, in surprise. The girl slipped away out of his arms and stood sobbing under her breath, her frail robe nearly torn from her, almost wholly naked now in the light of the moon.

Tom Overbury gave her a cold look, edged with a disdain that she had never seen before in anyone's eyes and which she was never to forget.

"Lady," he sneered, "come away—the masque is over, and you are the Countess of Essex."

She stared at him and then at Robin Carr, who was frowning at her with his hand still on his breast where his friend had struck him, all the tinsel bravery that he wore glittering metallic like armour in the moonshine. Forgetful for the first time of his faithful Tom's advice, and intoxicated by the sweet poison in his veins, he cried:

"Oh, my dearest! When may I come to you?"

Tom Overbury clapped his thin hands over his friend's mouth and told the girl in a thin tone of contempt, as if she had been a milkmaid, "to go her way."

Frances did not move. She stared, bright-eyed, at the young man who was struggling with his friend and speaking to her thickly, words that she could not understand or even disentangle. But she understood the rhythm, the purpose and the intensity, and she bent towards Robin, flexible as a willow bough before the wind, then, before he could touch her, turned and ran away holding her torn clothes about her, lightly leaping over the marble columns, rushing between the dark, cool trunks of the cypress, the ilex and the laurel, past the blind, blank-faced statues to a side-door in the brick house and there to her private stairway to her bedroom.

She was not expected, for the festival was not supposed to be over yet, but was planned to end up with a concert and the setting of the moon, and for that there was an hour still to go.

So Frances Howard found herself in her room alone; even Anne Turner, who had been so diligent in designing the moon goddess's robe, was absent. One little light burnt above the mirror where Frances had preened for many an hour in readiness for the day that was now past. She did not look at her own reflection now, but stood shivering in her torn dress by the polished carved pillars of the great bed in which she had so many nights lain alone and dreamt of love.

She had begun the revel as a vague and light-hearted diversion, and now it seemed to her as if the whole evening had been distorted and fantastic, touched by sombre phantoms. Everything was different from what it had been before; she thought of the garden, so familiar to her even on moonlight nights, as if it had been the scene of a nightmare—all those figures of sprites and nymphs and Negresses that she herself had seen dress in all their trumpery and cardboard finery seemed now as if they really had been immortal. The young man Robin with his great splendid sleeves fastened to his shoulders with diamond pins and his ruddy hair curled on his low forehead—she had seen him, too, often enough in Whitehall and mocked lightly at his dullness—he, too, had seemed different—he had pursued her, he had held her, he had called her "Dearest." She remembered his eyes glittering above the hand that Thomas Overbury had put over his mouth, which she had felt on her neck, bosom and shoulders.

She huddled against the white wool coverlet of her bed and her slim body shook with the words "My love, my love." and then "Robin, Robin." It seemed to her that she was being swept away on the sea of some irrepressible and dark emotion that engulfed her in tremendous waves; it seemed to her, too, as if her secret life, in which she had always walked alone, had been suddenly invaded and that she could never be solitary again.

When Anne Turner came lightly in in her robe of saffron-coloured silk, prattling about the festival and the success of the masque, Frances Howard turned on her unseeing eyes and did not answer and looked so strange that the pretty woman began to lament and hoped that my lady had not caught a chill or been disappointed or become tired? Frances shook her head and Anne Turner, who had never known a profound or serious emotion in her life, chattered on merrily about the moonlight and the magic, at the way the young gallants had applauded and stared at the vision of the moon goddess. It was a pity the festival had ended so early, no one knew where Prince Henry was ...he had gone without any leave-taking ...

"Bring me a robe," whispered Frances. "I am cold."

Anne Turner went to the press and took out a garment lined with white fur, glancing the while over her shoulder at the girl's almost naked body and uttering gay obscenities and talking in the same breath of a new dye she had discovered that turned partlets, ruffles and cuffs a delicate yellow that set off the complexion far more sweetly than the pure white of the old-fashioned starch.

"Lock the door, sweet Anne. Do not let my mother or my great-uncle come in to-night."

Frances rose, took a flask of jasmine water and poured it over her hands, rubbing off the silver tinsel that stained them, then shook the silver dust out of her hair and huddled into the fur-lined garment, while she stammered, "The swans I never saw so many swans—asleep in the moonlight."

Anne complained: "The musicians have gone home, the banqueting hall is empty—why was it all ended so soon?"

Frances flung herself down on her bed and for the first time in her life felt as if she believed in God. Anne Turner tripped away with a shrug and a smirk and went down to the butler's room, where she had her glass of wine and her plate of cakes before she tip-toed away with the serving-man who had been waiting for her at the postern gate, and took the Lambeth Ferry across the darkness of the Thames.

Prince Henry returned to St. James's Palace with his retainers and torch-bearers and his blue cloak that Frances had, for a second, worn, cast about his face.

Robin Carr went back to Whitehall, leaning heavily on the thin shoulders of Sir Thomas Overbury, and staggering far ahead of his servants. The dark crooked roofs of the city seemed to his confused senses to rock against the paler sky and the sinking moon to glow with the lovely nakedness of Frances Howard. He talked thickly and incoherently, while Tom Overbury whispered soothingly: "You shall have her. I promise you shall have her, only a little patience, leave it to me."

Old Henry Howard lit himself to bed, holding his one candle carefully, smiling at his thoughts. The Earl was very pleased with his meddling, even though the melancholy young Prince had seemed vexed—"but what does that matter. I shall be dead before he is King."