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James Courthope enjoyed his sixtieth birthday in the November of 1610, and Nicholas, who was now himself sixty-six years of age, gave a family party to celebrate it at his Westminster house. He gave it for two other reasons not publicly stated—to show off his young son, Robert, who was ten, and to honour his dear Lucy Garland, who had been twenty only a month earlier.

All the Garlands were there as well as the Courthopes, the Broughtons, the Turners, the Pickets, Janet and Martha, Edward’s daughters, the Gorings—all the tributaries that had for a long time now been flowing into the broad Herries river.

Nicholas, when he looked back on the gathering, saw four things—Lucy’s look of foreboding of a tragic destiny, the look that he had caught first at his own wedding, when she had been a guest at Mallory; two angry young men fighting; his wife’s happiness; and the poor bewildered monkey in his bright-green jacket that affected Janet Herries had brought with her, climbing one of the decorated banisters of the staircase in a panic terror.

For he detected in himself, for the first time, a new irony. He had never in all his life been ironic—he had been too active for that. It came with his detachment, the detachment that had begun with him on the night of the late Queen’s death.

A detachment and yet not a detachment, for this was the very time, three years before, when he had begun to take so active an interest in the lives of the three young Garlands.

Since then Rashleigh Garland had come to take up his place at Court in Lord Monteagle’s household. The boy was here to-night. He was now a young man, the handsomest man at Court. Even the favourite, Robert Carr, acknowledged it. There was about him a strange aloofness: no one, not even Royalty, was intimate with him. With every day the Court was becoming looser and more ribald and more extravagant. Rashleigh took part in the extravagances but was never of them. He had, Nicholas thought, dear Robin’s aloofness, but it was not religion that kept him apart. He did not offend: his courtesy was perfect. He had no close friends and no bitter enemies. Peter, on the other hand, had many friends but of the learned sort. He was, at present, secretary to one Marmaduke Fettle, who was writing a ‘History of the World’ in a gloomy wooded house in the village of Chelsea. Peter had more lively friends. He was privileged to be one of the company at the Mermaid Tavern, the company that Raleigh, still in the Tower, had founded. He was a very subordinate, unattended member, but he had the pleasure of listening to the voices of Inigo Jones and young Francis Beaumont, Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, Sir Richard Martin, lawyer Selden, and Cotton, Christopher Brooke and Camden, John Donne, Chapman, Michael Drayton.

Sometimes the evenings were of a mortal dullness, sometimes of a foul bawdy, sometimes drunken, noisy—but there were evenings when, through the smoke of the tobacco, the bellowings of Jonson, the gloomy prophesyings of Donne, there would come an argument between Shakespeare and Jonson maybe, or Chapman and Drayton, or many of them together, that would light heaven with stars.

Nevertheless young Peter was growing as he had begun—very serious-minded although sweet-hearted. But he was against the Court, and some of the company that he was said to keep distressed Nicholas.

They were watching now a game of Blind-man’s-buff, Nicholas with his arm around Rosamund’s waist. They sat close together on a cushioned settle placed on a slightly raised dais.

The games and dancing took place in the central hall of the house. The four pillars and the balustrades of the wide staircase were wreathed in flowers and gold tissue. In the small gallery at the hall end were the musicians. The black-and-white chequered floor was now covered with laughing Herries.

Janet Herries was blindfolded and her tall bony figure in its crimson dress (too gay for a thin gawky woman) tottered about stretching thin arms and giving cries like a startled hen when she touched bodies and missed them.

Lucy Garland danced around more madly than any. Her curly hair swung against her cheeks. She was mad with pleasure. Her dress was over-decorated with little rosettes of gilt and ribbons that swung about her hips. Yes, she was almost mad with pleasure. Peter was politely talking to old amiable Alicia Turner, who was dressed meanly because Ralph Turner, her husband, was a miser. Everyone knew it and not the least his three sons, Matthew, Paul, and Mark. Turner was a business Puritan, that is a City man who went to church three times of a Sunday to do business there. But it was because Alicia Turner looked faded and neglected that Peter Garland was talking with her. And she was pleased—she looked up into his round friendly face with pleasure.

Nicholas’ eye was always on one of the three.

‘There was a time when I would have played Blind-man as madly as any of them. I’m sixty-six. But I don’t feel it, wife, I don’t feel it. Happy?’ he asked her.

She put her hand in his and looked up at him.

‘Most happy. And now I will take my son to his bed.’

They both looked to where young Robert Herries, aged ten, was politely playing Blind-man as though he were sixty. It had been found to be impossible to continue calling him Robin. He was not Robin, but Robert.

‘The Lord be thanked,’ Nicholas said, looking down at his young son, ‘that Robert has a warm heart. For nothing else is warm in him. And if only one thing is to be warm in a man it had best be his heart. At Westminster School they say his mathematics are a marvel.’

Rosamund laughed. She was standing up. ‘Say what you will about him, husband, he is ours and our only one. As he undresses he will tell me a hundred things about our feast to-night that I had not noticed. But when he is in his naked bed he will put up his arms and draw my head to his cheek and quite forget his mathematics.’

Nicholas nodded. ‘Aye, he loves you and me and Gilbert. He will make a fortune and will marry a plain maiden with another fortune and then he will beget children on her, not for love, but that he may have sons to make yet other fortunes.’

He pulled her down on to the settle again. ‘Wait an instant, my lady. I have the spirit of prophecy strong upon me.’

He laughed—that deep, chuckling, boyish laugh that Rosamund had loved to hear almost since her birth. ‘You know that I have come to love these three children of Toby’s most dearly. It has been a new life for me and so continues. But do you feel, wife, as I do, that some sort of doom lies about them? Now about your father and you, Rosamund, there never was such a thing, but about Sylvia and Robin always. I know not what it is, but men, I think, are not masters of their fate but only of their character. And for the ripening of that character, with one the circumstances must be tragedy, with another comedy, and with another, as with oneself, ripeness, which is everything, comes late, almost at the last. Robin’s tragedy was necessary, that he and Sylvia and I—all must ripen.... Yes, and Philip too. Who knows?

‘Peter was telling us yesternight that he was at the Mermaid a week back and that Shakespeare, the writer of plays, was close by him. This Shakespeare is a plump, merry, kindly man who puts plays together for his manager, a man, it seems, handy and quick, but of no great talent, but always with a kindly word and a generous hand. Jonson, who is his friend, mocks him and he takes it in excellent part. But Peter says there are times when Shakespeare is grave and sees deeply into things, and then Jonson and Drayton and the others listen with open ears.

‘So it was the other night, when a lad of the place had stolen silver pieces from Drayton’s pocket. The lad, in his terror, fell at Shakespeare’s feet and Shakespeare gave Drayton his silver pieces and went away with the lad, no one knew whither. And Peter said that no one stayed him, or thought to stay him, as they went out—and ten minutes before that Shakespeare had been bobbing for cherries in a bowl. A week later the lad stole again, and he hanged himself, for, as he said on a paper, he could not meet Mr. Shakespeare’s eyes.... I feel something, Rosamund, about these three children. Rashleigh could be a king among men, but he will give his life, as Robin did, for a notion. My Lucy is so mad for life that she will destroy herself as a moth in the flame. Peter will serve the State to his own destruction. I love them so dearly that I might have begotten them.’

‘Not on Barbara’s body,’ Rosamund said, laughing. She had never been one to believe in prophecies, fortune-tellings, or anyone’s overhanging doom. But she thought, as she looked at him with loving eyes, that in his old age he was catching some of his brother Robin’s spirit. Perhaps not. It had always been his way to love with all his heart, even though his love for her was something different from that.

She went to fetch her son. He watched her as she went down into the hall, moving with that assured sensible compactness that was so especially hers. The dignity, the wisdom that she had! He reflected on the different kinds of love there were in the world, and his heart warmed, his eyes filled with tears (was he not by years an old man?) as he considered that perhaps, in the end, it would be this love that would be the strongest of them all. With no other human being had he ever been such a comrade, for Catherine he had never attained and in Robin there had been always a world that he could not enter, and for Gilbert Armstrong he felt something more or less than comradeship.

But Rosamund was his comrade. She knew him as no one else had ever known him. When, even at the first, he had held her in his arms, he had not felt that he had heaven there, he had not lost himself in any ecstasy, but he had known that he was secure and comforted and reassured.

This was the best in marriage, and the most enduring. He watched her as she moved among their guests. Blind-man was now ended. The musicians played softly. Rosamund stayed here a little and there a little. Young Robert moved towards her and now they were returning together, Robert looking as though he guarded her.

Nicholas was proud of his son as he watched him, of his sturdy bearing, his good manners, his assurance that was never impertinence. His hand was on his little sword; the long hair that was the fashion, even for children, became him. His long plum-coloured coat fitted his body handsomely. Nicholas could wish that he were taller and that in his eyes there might be some fire instead of that considering shrewdness. But there! no man, or child either, could be everything!

The boy knelt down and received his father’s blessing. Then he went upstairs to bed. Most children would have protested, for all the best of the evening was to come, but Robert knew that he would do nothing with protests. Already he had learned the lesson of never wasting words. Nicholas, alone now, considered his kind-ironic view of his guests, of his relations.

He considered the three Turner boys, Matthew, Paul, and Mark. Poor boys! He knew very well what they were feeling, that they were conscious of their shabby clothes and their dowdy mother. He knew that Paul, an intelligent young man, and ambitious, hated his father. But Paul would make his way. Already he had some small humble office in the business of Cecil’s secretary. He would not stay there. Mark was a loose lubberly young man, something of a rake and a glutton, though there were signs that he might mend.

But Matthew was the interesting one. Matthew, tall and thin, with a large head, was dressed from head to foot in a faded black. He wore no sword. His forehead was noble, his eyes bright as stars. He was a strange creature with a stutter, a sharp, ironic tongue, and a passion for letters. He lived in a small upstairs room near the Strand. He read all night, so it was said, had a mistress as shabby as himself, starved without grumbling, and had friends of the queerest kind, cut-throats, pickpockets, bear-minders—and they all loved him. Such was his reputation.

Why had he come to-night? Nicholas felt that perhaps he would go and speak to this strange creature when someone caught his eye. This was Carey Courthope, the son of the James for whom this fine party was given. Carey was near thirty and, in Nicholas’ opinion, would be better out of the world than in it. He was exceedingly handsome and, in the view of many, a finer man than Rashleigh. His body had poise and litheness; his hair, which fell in thick curls to his collar, was of a radiant blackness. He dressed with extravagance and always in the latest fashion. To-night he was ahead of the fashion in a crimson coat with a vest of patterned purple silk. His breeches were less bombasted than was current. He wore earrings and his face was delicately painted, a habit only just beginning. His eyes and mouth were weak. His vanity was apparent in every breath he drew. Nicholas knew that he was causing his father, the worthy James, much distress.

Even as Nicholas watched him he moved across the floor, well aware that eyes were upon him for his handsomeness, and stopped beside Lucy who, for a moment, was alone, and very hot and rather dishevelled, fanned herself with her handkerchief.

Nicholas was to realize afterwards, when he looked back, that at the moment when Carey spoke to the girl he, as though to protect her, slipped down from the dais and moved towards them.

His movement was instinctive, an impulse within himself telling him that he must go, and when he discovered himself between them he had nothing to say. What he wanted to say was—to the girl, ‘Go and find my wife. Tidy yourself. Wipe the sweat off your forehead. Two of those ridiculous rosettes are half torn from your dress.’

But he could say nothing, because the pleasure in her eyes was so great that he could not dream of quenching it. She caught his arm and he put his thick strong hand over hers, which was damp with perspiration.

‘You are heated. You will catch a rheum.’ But he laughed even as he was speaking because she was laughing. Nevertheless he tried to draw her away with his hand. ‘Now come, Rosamund is seeing the child to his bed. There will be no games before supper, and after supper I have a surprise.’

‘A surprise? Oh, by Jesu, I love a surprise! What surprise? A hobby-horse, a pig with two faces, a bucket that turns from leather into gold as you look, a masque with Psyche watching Cupid by the light of a candle ...’ She sprang a little on her heels and clapped her hands. ‘What care I so long as there is dancing? Dancing! I could dance into the middle of next week.’

‘That is why I came.’ Carey, who had not yet spoken, interrupted. ‘The first of the dances after supper....’

‘I believe the boy’s in love with her,’ Nicholas thought, with extreme distaste. He looked at Carey, at the earrings of tiny pearls, at the faint colour on the cheek, and the redder colour on the lips, neither of them natural, and at that clear, undoubted beauty—a beauty weak, selfish, but to a certain kind of woman irresistible. Was it so to her? He looked at her and feared that it might be, or was this a general joy sprung from her eagerness for life?

She was lovely with the intensity of her appreciation of life rather than with any actual beauty. Her dark curls glistened with the heat. Her mouth, a little large, was parted and the lips glistened. Her breasts heaved as though they would burst the bonds of the over-decorated dress. He felt her eagerness, her helplessness, her defencelessness. ‘Why, why,’ he cried, as so many before him, ‘has time passed so remorselessly?’ But his hand closed on the gold hilt of his rapier—a gesture, although she did not know it, of protection. Carey felt, perhaps, her appreciation of him, or at least he was accustomed to be admired. He was completely cool, at his ease and self-satisfied. But was there, Nicholas wondered, something also in him unprotected, defenceless? He was foolish rather than wicked, and Nicholas felt the more indignant that the girl should notice him. Someone else had joined them. A gentle, stuttering voice said:

‘Once upon a time, at Greenwich, four mighty Earls, of Lennox, Montgomery, Pembroke, and Arundel, offered the world a challenge to deny these prop-propositions.

‘That in service of Ladies no Knight hath free will. That it is B-Beauty maintaineth the world in valour—that no fair Lady was ever false. That none can be perfectly wise but Lovers.’

Nicholas, looking at this young man, in his black faded suit, wondered that he could be so unconcerned—but there was nobility in that brow, sadness, and much considering wisdom. He liked Matt Turner, liked him so much that he now put his hand on the sharp bony shoulder, and the boy looked at him with a smile so sweet that he was still further won.

‘That no fair lady was ever false?’ Nicholas cried. ‘Why, Matt, that is the greatest falsity!’

But Lucy broke in. ‘Matt—will you dance with me the first dance after supper?’ His cheek flushed. As he stood there, his thin black legs close together, he looked like a gentle, kindly scarecrow.

‘Cousin, I d-dance abominably.’

Carey said, his voice shaking a little, ‘You promised me that.’

Nicholas thought: ‘This beautiful young man with the earrings is not clever. He cannot hide chagrin.’

Lucy said: ‘I am a lady. I wish to prove myself false. I had promised you, Carey, but now I shall dance it with Matthew.’ She pulled at Nicholas’ arm.

‘I know what a sweat I am in. Let us go and find Rosamund.’

But they did not get so far. At the corner of the first flight of stairs there was an alcove, with a cushioned settle. Lucy pulled Nicholas down on it, threw her arms around him and kissed him. She began to put herself to rights, talking as she did so. ‘You think I am ill dressed. As you always do. I think you are right and I would wish to know why things are so handsome before I touch them.’

‘Because you are always in a hurry,’ Nicholas told her.

‘I am in a hurry because I grow like the phoenix. Or is it some other bird? I must question Matt Turner. But this week we return to Seascale and then I shall be reading Eutropius with Mr. Mangin, riding Dapple, and asking young Mr. Senhouse—“And pray, Mr. Senhouse, how is your new madrigal?”—and he will then sing it to me, in a voice half cracked, like a door in the wind. I shall be there many months and the boys will not be there and the best entertainment will be a bull-baiting or a cock-fighting—and I am twenty!’

‘You are to come next year to London.’

‘Oh, I would not be for ever in London. I would not be for ever in any place. But why is it, Cousin Nick, I must for ever be doing? “Now think first!” says my mother, and “Think first!” says my father, and “Think first!” says——’

‘Cousin Nicholas. And for why? Because living is dangerous. There are perils at every turn.’

‘I wish life to be dangerous!’ she cried, her eyes flashing. ‘I would have it all, all! Pressed down into my lap—here!’

‘One mistake and the wrong road! So it was with your Aunt Sylvia. She married a villain, but loved a saint.’

‘If I married a villain that would be no tragedy, for as soon as I knew him for a villain I would take his hair and tear it from its roots, and I would defend my saint.’

‘’Tis none so easy!’ He took her hand and held it very lightly. ‘I will tell you something. I love you as though you were my daughter. I am at the end of my life. I have had, in it, most things I would wish—all save one. But now, recovering it, I cannot discern its meaning. My brother spoke, sometimes, of the bright pavilions in Heaven which he would one day reach. Maybe he is in them now. I never cared for anything I could not touch nor see. I am such a man. But I do at least know that life has a meaning, and if it has been hid from me I would wish you to have something of Robin’s vision, for that, I fancy, is where reality lies.’

She shook her head. ‘I am like you, Cousin Nicholas. I will love and ride and bear children—and then, in the ingle-nook, be a wise old woman at the last. But not yet, not yet!’

‘How wise are you?’ He looked intently into her merry eager face. ‘Of those two, Carey and Matthew,—which do you prefer?’

‘Why, there’s a question! And the answer is neither, for Carey is only for play and poor Matthew has no laces to his breeches.’

‘Carey is dangerous.’

‘Not to me! Oh, I could worry a dozen such Careys! When I want a line of Eutropius I go to Matthew.’

They were silent a little while, then Nicholas said:

‘There are the trumpets for supper. You know I would live to be a hundred and fifty to see you secure.’ He sighed. ‘I like not the times. We have lost our guide. Men are no longer as simple as they were. Now they are all men of opinions. Once they were all for the Queen and for England. Now one is for the Communion Table to be shifted t’other end of the church, another is for the King to have money only when Parliament allows it, one is for the Netherlands, another for Spain. But no man is for England only....’

‘And I am for you,’ she cried, throwing her arms around him and kissing him. ‘When I find such a man as you I will marry, but not before.’

He felt as though he could not let her go, as though as soon as he released her she would slip into a nest of dangers. He realized that when you are old and love the young, you are quite helpless, for they cannot go your way and would not if they could. But at the top of the stairs they were laughing again.

‘After supper there will be my surprise.’

‘Whisper it.’

‘Do you remember three years back a conjurer came to your house—a conjurer with a little girl?’

She thought. Then she clapped her hands.

‘Why, yes! He had a big nose and a red cloak.’

‘I have found him again. He is coming to-night.’

‘He made flowers fall through the air ...’

‘Hush! ... It is to be a surprise.’

In his heart he was not at all sure about his grand ‘surprise’—but he was not going to say so!

It had been all a matter of impulse. Three days before, walking not far from the boundaries of Alsatia, he had witnessed the chase of a man suspected of being a Jesuit priest. The crowd had been stopped by a man in a fine hat and a velvet cloak who had with considerable courage harangued the people while the fugitive escaped. He had waved his hand at the crowd and the crowd had stopped and listened, whether it wished or no.

Nicholas, who had stayed at the crowd edge amused by the affair, discovered that this was his old friend Dom Ferdinand Christian of three years before. He would have known him in any case because of the humpbacked boy who watched his master with the old almost fervent devotion.

‘Good-day to you,’ said Nicholas. Dom Christian took off his hat with a grand flourish. He looked very much more prosperous than he had been. No shabby red cloak but handsome velvet, and his silken laces at his breeches were the brightest orange. He also wore elaborate earrings, circles of jet with little gold centres.

He was stouter but his face was as white and pock-marked, his nose as monstrous, his eyes as lidded.

Nicholas asked him as to his affairs. Oh, they were merry! The King had commanded him to Court to show his fancies and had laughed most heartily at the trick of the Naked Negro Boy and the Serpent in the Apple.

Nicholas, slipping aside to avoid the mud-splash from one of the new fandangle coaches, put his hand on Dom Christian’s arm. It was as hard and as indifferent as cold steel. Dom Christian swayed a little on his feet, as though he were not yet properly awake, twitched his gloved fingers, and produced between them a silver comfit-box. He offered Nicholas a sugared jelly, and on Nicholas refusing it popped it into his own large mouth. Nicholas thought how satisfactory it must be to have sugared jellies hanging in mid-air when you wanted them—that is, if you cared for sugared jellies!

On the spur of this incident he invited Dom Christian to perform at his party, enquired his fee, told him the position of his house in Westminster, and went his way.

But now that the Herries family, seated or standing in his hall, awaited the magician, he was not sure of his wisdom. Rosamund had been very doubtful—

‘The King is set against witches.’

‘My beloved, this man has himself entertained His Majesty with the trick of the Naked Negro Boy.’

‘If he tries so indecent a trick here, Alicia and Constance (and after all our celebration is given for James), Janet and Martha, they will all summon their conveyances, whatever they may be, and hurry home. The mere thought of a naked man is too much for them.’

‘This is not a man but a boy. Besides, that is but the name of the trick. There may be no nakedness.’

For that was the trouble. He was not sure of his magician. The affair had been, until this, a wonderful success. At supper they had all drunk so much that now the waiting hall was chattering like an aviary. Janet Herries’ monkey climbed on to Alicia Turner’s shoulder and she screamed with horror. Nicholas looked over them all. He saw all the young men—Rashleigh, Peter, Carey, Somerset—standing together surveying the scene with some of the proud confidence of youth. Paul and Mark Turner sat, not too comfortably, by their mother. Matthew stood apart, not far from the dais.

When Dom Christian appeared there was a little drawn ‘Ah!’ from the company. He was dressed in cloth of gold and was spangled with silver stars. He carried a wand that terminated in a star. But it was not he that had stirred the wonder. It was his daughter. A child of not more than nine or ten, she was in common black, her shoulders bare. She was beautiful then, as she was afterwards, not because of the perfect colour and shape of her face, the symmetry of her body, but because of the spirit that shone through these beauties—her scorn and contempt that even now as a child she showed for everyone, her courage and independence, her loneliness, a loneliness of which she was proud. She had even then, as afterwards she had so abundantly, the power to draw all eyes.

‘By the passion of Christ,’ Nicholas said to himself, ‘how that child despises us!’

The murmuring had died. Dom Christian began his magic. The humpbacked boy produced a wicker basket. The basket was empty. Dom Christian waved his wand and there was a French poodle jumping out of it. That was nothing. Every magician did the same. He threw out his arms. Doves flew from them. They rested on the shoulders of the girl, who was staring into the crowd as though she would destroy them with a thunderbolt. The doves flew back into the basket. This was nothing. Every magician could do the same. Then everyone perceived that Janet Herries’ monkey was in great agitation. He chattered, scratched his head, and, quite suddenly, swung himself along from pediment and pillar until, before anyone could stop him, he was on the dais and perched in the middle of the table. He picked up the white cone and put it on his head, then with a leap he was on the magician’s shoulder.

Everyone laughed and waited to see what the magician would do. But, alas, no one was ever able to tell afterwards what the magician did do!

‘Nothing!’ Constance Courthope declared indignantly to James in their big four-poster afterwards. ‘Nothing at all! A celebration of your birthday! I stared. I even repeated the Lord’s Prayer, for I will confess to some fear. But I need not ... I need not, indeed.... Only Janet’s monkey pulled the girl’s hair ...’

‘Indeed it did not!’ James said sleepily. ‘The necromantic thing ... the necromantic thing’—he could scarce keep his eyes open—‘was that the stars on the man’s coat separated themselves, dancing ...’ But he was asleep, snoring.

It was not, however, at all so fanciful a matter. It was simply that these Herries looked imaginatively where their fancy led them. Matthew, leaning against the wall, feeling its cold impress against the worn stuff of his sleeve, dreamed of the great things to do.

But with an armed and resolved hand

I’ll strip the ragged follies of the time

Naked as at their birth.

The works, the works! He saw himself another Jonson, the crowd surging round him after such a play as the The Poetaster, and the anger about Captain Tucca who, with his lewdness and crawling cowardice, had insulted all the ragged half-pay captains of Alsatia. No matter the insults, the flying cabbages, the cat-calls!

‘Make way! Make way here! ’Tis Matthew Turner, the writer of plays. Matthew Turner, the writer of epics. Matthew Turner, the lovely cozener of beautiful words....’ And the sun shines out above St. Paul’s while the current of dirty water runs iridescent through the twisting streets and the honest booksellers by the church nudge and whisper: ‘That is he! There he goes! Matt Turner! The only and rare Matt Turner! ...’

Near to him the beautiful face of Rashleigh lightens with its dream. He had all but retired when he heard the magician announced. It was not magic that he needed but rather to strike, from the dark and twisted Court, a weapon so bright that the Crown of England might glitter and shine again before the world. He would lift it up. Oh! he would lift it up! There should be a King in his own future time, who would challenge his city-mongering, prayer-caterwauling, coin-grabbing enemies, and ride, all his servants behind him, on to the Hill of Splendour.... The Divine Right! The Divine Right! To fight for it, to die for it if need be! And Rashleigh stared at the magician, whose ugly nose and pocked cheek were beautiful in the great world that they prophesied.

Ralph Turner, in his decent party suit of grey, saw the air shining with coins. As the magician caught the light with the diamond on his finger Ralph Turner drew in his breath, for his lean quivering fingers dived into the bag, and as they dived the coins came tumbling down, falling on to his dried skin, and then he plunged his hands deep down among all those golden pieces. He felt their chill, their multiplicity, and his palms were piled with them, his fingers curved about them.

Carey also saw the body of the magician bend courteously towards him, and there were wonderful promises whispered to him—the naked bodies of beautiful girls and the wine in the flagon sparkling ruby-red before the leaping flame of the fire—clothes, clothes, wonderful clothes with colours most subtly blended and the jewelled buttons hard to the touch, and he walking, the well-beloved, the admired of all observers, across the shining floor of Whitehall, and the shambling King turning, catching sight of him with his little bright eyes, shuffling towards him ...

And Martha Herries, whom nobody considered, having at last her little house—her little house with the decent man and the submissive maid, the rich settle and the handsome chest, the wood shining in the firelight, the parrot from the Indies of green and red in its cage, and the ladies entering, the envious, covetous ladies, taking their places while she, in her rich velvet, listened to their requests and felt her power, her power that she had never had, beating through the room.

Peter also had his vision—vision of justice and equity. An England where every man had his rights, where in a glorious Parliament the meanest voice might be heard and the humblest prayer answered. The magician seemed to promise him that. The magician and the child beside him, growing before his eyes, as she had done before, into a woman so lovely that he sighed and leaned forward.

For the spell was broken. The humpbacked boy was collecting the things from the table. They were moving, talking, saying their farewells.

Only one thing more. As Peter neared the dais the child, of her own will, came to him. She smiled; the scorn was gone from her eyes.

‘I remember you. You lifted me in your arms and kissed me.’

He laughed. ‘You have grown, Katherine.’

‘You remember my name?’

She was now only a child, bending to ease the pressure of her shoe, with a little sigh such as a child makes, then straightening herself again.

‘And what is your name?’ she asked.

‘Peter Garland.’

‘Oh, I am so tired!’ She rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.

‘Are you hungry? I could find you something——’

‘No, I am not. My father is waiting for me.’

She gave him her hand very ceremoniously and he kissed it.

Later, when all the Herries were on their backs or their sides, asleep, in the dark hall, on the dais, a white cone of stiff paper lay like a little ghost.