Читать книгу The Bright Pavilions - Hugh Walpole - Страница 7

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It was nearly a year before Nicholas met Philip Irvine again. In February 1570 he was fortunate enough to be a member of the entourage of old Lord Rottingham of Seeby on a visit to Paris. Old Rottingham was an ancient friend of Sir Michael’s and, seeing Nicholas tilting with his young grandson on a frosty January morning, was so greatly pleased with his size and strength that he asked for the young man to accompany him. He went to Paris on no ordinary mission. The fact is that he was an alchemist in a private amateur way and, hearing about some very extraordinary experiments in Paris, determined to see for himself. What there happened to him, the charlatans, cutpurses and fortune-hunters who tried to inveigle him, the clever fashion in which, old as he was, he escaped the plunderers (with the exception of his one crazy fancy he was a shrewd old man), the strange back-quarters of Paris into which he ventured, the smells and obscenities, witches’ Sabbaths, orgies and fairy-tales in which he was involved without any personal surrender whatever, all this would make a grand story of itself and may be told one day. There is a Journal still extant, kept by one of his secretaries, Peter Curling, filled with most interesting and unusual matter. Finally he stayed there for more than six months and Nicholas stayed there with him, receiving full board and lodging plus a number of delightful love affairs, four duels, and plenty of admirable exercise.

Of the necromancy he saw nothing; he took not the slightest interest therein. He was introduced to the French King and thought little of him. He kissed the hand of the Queen Mother and likened her, in his mind, to a queen of the Moon-Men he had seen in a fair at Edmonton. He admired her and fancied her capable of murder on a really handsome scale, which, two years later, was to prove a true prophecy.

He enjoyed Paris to the full, but thought poorly of Frenchmen. He, as was his rule, avoided politics, which was as well, for he was a Protestant, and Protestants, whatever the outward seeming might be, were none too popular at the French Court.

So he returned home in the autumn of the year, joyfully, healthily and eager for the English food again. When he saw his mother he squeezed her in his arms until she screamed aloud: he kissed all the maids of the household, exclaimed that Juno had proved herself better than any mare in France, and made old Hogben, the chaplain, drunk on the very first evening.

His first thought, however, as always, was for his brother. It was a grand moment when they met again after that long separation. When he had embraced him, Nicholas held Robin away from him and looked at him. He was pleased at what he saw. The boy was always a miracle to Nicholas, who was often tired of his own hulking health and size. Robin’s beauty was of heaven. Here, for Nicholas, if he ever considered it, which he seldom did, was evidence of another, more spiritual world. For a swift passing instant he was ashamed of his Paris love-making, duelling and wine-bibbing.

In any case the boy was in splendid state; his cheeks clear with health, his eyes shining with a great brightness, and love for his brother beaming from them. What had he to tell? Not very much beyond the news of his letters. He had been quietly at home, he had visited at Sir Henry Sidney’s, he had been to Court and kissed the Queen’s hand. . . .

Only one thing that he said disturbed Nicholas. Robin mentioned Anthony Pierson.

‘Anthony Pierson?’

‘Last Christmas. Don’t you remember? At our uncle’s in Cumberland.’

‘Oh yes, a stout, red-faced young man. He was a priest?’

‘Yes. A Jesuit from Douai.’

‘And so?’

‘We were friends at that first meeting. He has been in England on several occasions.’

At sight of Nicholas’ thundering brow Robin burst out laughing.

‘I’m not a Catholic yet, Nick.’

‘Priests are not liked and soon will be less so.’

‘He is only my friend—not my religious adviser.’

‘He would like to be, though. I know them. I hate all priests.’

‘You should meet him,’ Robin said.

Now it happened that Sir Michael had a brother Henry, a year younger than himself. This Henry was as unlike Michael as a brother may be and still have the same father and mother. He represented, however, from babyhood, a persistent element in the Herries’ character, for, so soon as he could toddle, he was out to make all the material profit he might from his fellow human beings. Michael was always a gay, singing, merry kind of fellow, like his son Nicholas-to-be, and an easy prey to brother Henry’s commercial mind. He bought from Henry toys of no value at all at inordinate prices; entered, mildly and innocently, into little commercial arrangements always to his own disadvantage; and was involved in small usuries that, being no mathematician, he never properly understood.

Henry grew up into a world ripe and ready for active minds like his. After the dissolution of the monasteries, there was plenty of land to be bought, by men in the right favour, for a song. Henry was always in the right favour where anyone important was concerned, and balanced himself marvellously during the difficult reigns of Edward and Mary; lending for handsome return, buying sharply at exactly the right moment and achieving the name everywhere of an excellent, trustworthy man of business. In the early years of Elizabeth he might, had he wished, have risen to a high place at Court—Cecil had his eye upon him—but, like so many Herries before and after him, he failed at the highest flights, wishing always for safety. He was twice married, first to Mary Trowneer, who brought him an excellent dowry, two fair sons, and a daughter, Barbara; and, secondly, after an interval, to Grace Clyde, who bore him, when he was forty-four years of age, a daughter, Sylvia.

He had a fine country place at Chelsea and a town house close to the Temple Gardens, where a little later, in 1576, he was to be greatly annoyed at the easy lease by Sir Christopher Hatton of the garden and orchard for the rent of a red rose, ten loads of hay and ten pounds per annum. To miss a simple thing like this was really an agony to him.

By now he was sixty years of age but still burly, rosy-faced and vigorous. He was outwardly a cheerful, welcoming companion, but the habit of taking advantage of others had withered his impulses and made him suspicious of even his own family. His wife had suffered for many years from stomach disorders, and any and every quack was at her service. His elder daughter, Barbara, now the wife of Tobias Garland, he saw but seldom. Of the boys, Edward was now thirty-four and Sidney thirty. Edward was as sharp and thrifty as his father, but Sidney had an unfortunate liking for low company, with whom he was jolly in a rather nervous and irritable fashion.

Of Sylvia, Nicholas and Robin knew little. They had not seen her for four years and then she had been but twelve years of age and quite uninteresting to growing young men.

For, sad to say, there had been a quarrel between the two families. Money meaning so much to Henry, he quite naturally patronized a brother who had managed to secure so little of it. But Michael was not an easy man to patronize, and one evening at the Chelsea manor there had been so unfortunate a quarrel and such hard words had been spoken that Michael had incontinently ordered his horses and ridden, there and then, to London. The quarrel between the brothers had not been healed, largely because neither party wished for the healing. Henry was always afraid that Michael would ask money of him, a thing that Michael never considered doing, and Michael was weary of the chaffing, superior joking of his self-satisfied brother. Nor had the ladies cared for one another since Nicholas’ mother had told her sister-in-law to give up her quacks and nostrums and see whether her health was not therefore the better.

To Nicholas, his uncle, aunt and cousins were simply one great joke. He knew that Edward and Sidney were physically terrified of him and he would have enjoyed terrifying them further. He had not the time to bother his head about them.

It happened, however, that after his return from Paris he heard, on a number of occasions, of the beauty of his cousin Sylvia, now a girl of sixteen. He hoped that he might see her somewhere in town or country, but his curiosity was not satisfied and grew therefore the greater. Then, early in December, he learned that his uncle was giving a masked ball in his town house. Nicholas decided to go and he persuaded Robin to go with him. They slept the night at the ‘White Hart’ in Southwark, and the next evening, cloaked and shrouded, their masks close to hand, started on their adventure.

Distrusting their waterman’s ability to shoot London Bridge, which was dangerous not only from the breadth of the piers and narrowness of the arches but also because of the corn-mills that had been built in some of the openings, they insisted on being landed above the bridge at the Old Swan stairs.

Many and many a time had Robin crossed the river at night and always there was something miraculous in that journey. The swift flowing of the river, the clever handling of the boat by the waterman, the craft that shot so gallantly past them, the freshness of the breeze, the sense that he was now at the very heart of the city that was surely the greatest in the whole world—all these things elated and delighted him. But on this night some spirit stirred in him of wonder, of anticipation, that he had never known before. He did not especially care for this adventure. He had thought it, from the first, a foolish one and was sure that some family crisis would come from it, for how could Nicholas, with his great size, hope that his mask would disguise him? He disliked his uncle and two cousins as strongly as it was in his power to dislike anybody and had no desire to be in communication with them again. Nevertheless, as he sat there, his cloak lightly about him against the cold, he was aware of an exulting happiness.

The night sky was thick with stars and against this radiance the towers and roofs of the buildings on the other bank rose in a delicacy of moth-silver chastity. The icy air, the swift current of the water that caught the stars and the path of a gold-plated moon in its ripples, brought his beloved Utopian world straight into his heart. Here was purity, a world of silver sharpness, space, and only the sounds that liberate stillness.

But there was more than that. He seemed to be on the eve of a great event. He wished to say something to his brother who now, like a little boy, was asking the waterman a lot of foolish questions. (‘Aye, for a pin and a web there’s nothing but cutting. A friend of my mother’s had it and was in darkness a twelvemonth.’ ‘The tide’s high. How deep is the water here? I’d swim you to the bank for a silver sixpence. And your sixpences will be debased, I warrant. . . . Nay, not married? You know a fine girl with the naked Indians in Fleet Street? How fine? . . . If that’s a whitlow it must be cut. . . . I can tell you a surgeon—he’ll do it for you for a passage or two across the river. . . .’)

All men of their hands—watermen, draymen, farmers, hostlers, wrestlers and bear-wardens—loved Nicholas. First they were flattered by his size, to think they were allowed to converse with so prodigious a young man, and secondly Nicholas, although careful enough of his dignity if it were improperly challenged, was friend to all the world.

And so Robin did not disturb him but wondered why he had the sense of excitement and whether he might not sail down the river, out to the open seas, and discover for himself some of these countries of gold trees and spices and miraculous birds of which everyone was always talking.

They landed at the steps and Nicholas, by the light of the boat’s lantern, examined the young waterman’s whitlow very seriously, paid him the due and started up the dark miry pathway.

They were now at once in another world. The thick overhanging buildings almost touched above their heads. There was no lighting of any kind and both men had their hands on their rapiers, ready for cut-throats and vagabond soldiers and any lazy fellow who, by a sudden snatch, might obtain the price of a night’s lodging. They had been going but a pace or two when an eerie cry broke the night’s silence. It was a cry of agony but did not disturb them in the slightest, for it might be a murder, or a man in his sleep, or someone dying from the plague.

The plague indeed was never far away, nor was it difficult to understand the reason, for the stinks and waves of recurrent nastiness would have made them vomit were they not so used to the conditions as never to give them a thought. Proclamations were for ever being issued by magistrates—‘Where the infection is entered to cause fires to be made in the streets every morning and evening, wherein should be burnt frankincense, pitch or some other sweet thing’ or ‘to command that all excrements and filthy things voided from the infected places be not cast into streets or into sewers that are daily used to make drink or dress meat’ or ‘No surgeons or barbers that use to let blood should cast it into the street or rivers. Nor should vaults nor privies be emptied therein, for it is a most dangerous thing.’

But no proclamations made the slightest difference, especially as the plague was the Act of God and it was not for the human soul to work against God’s will. So they splashed with their leather boots through squash and squeak of filth and ordure, came on a dead dog under a lantern, swollen to three times his size, and found an old man in a doorway on the point of death from starvation.

Very heartily and in the most excellent spirits they pushed through the gates into the forecourt of their uncle’s house, which was the scene of handsome bustle and confusion. The music could be heard coming from within the lighted house, horses were neighing, figures laughing and chattering passed up the torch-illuminated steps.

‘There is something strange with me to-night,’ Robin thought. ‘I have known many scenes like this before, and yet the light and the dark, the sound of the music, the soothing sound of the falling fountain, these things are striking me newly as though I had been born but an hour ago.’

The figures, passing up and down the steps, were like ghosts as though they rose from the stone slabs of the court; the lighted windows of the house were unsubstantial, as though made from air. For a moment he stood and looked back. The water of the fountain hung suspended in glittering drops against the torchlight. Then he put on his mask and entered.

In a small withdrawing-room they pulled off their leather boots, laid down their cloaks and appeared in their full splendour, Nicholas with a ruff larger than the immediate fashion, a doublet of rose and silver and silver hose, Robin in dark purple slashed with white which marvellously suited his slim body. A moment later they were in the great hall that was hung with tapestries. In the gallery the musicians were already playing. Henry Herries and his wife stood on the dais below the gallery, and the guests, as they arrived, moved to the dais, bowed low and then mingled with the crowd that was already dancing. The hall was lit by immense candelabra that glittered with a thousand facets. Servants crowded, looking over the gallery’s balustrade at the scene and pointing out to one another the guests they recognised under the masks. Close beside Henry Herries was a long, lean, dough-faced man with lank hair and unmasked. This was Mr. Phineas Thatcher, Henry’s confidential secretary. His long nose had once been pulled by Nicholas, who scornfully detested him. He belonged to the extreme sect of Puritans whose party was fast growing in the country. He was extremely able and, like his master, balanced nicely both his politics and his religion. It was said, however, that he was secretly an ardent fanatic.

When Nicholas and Robin advanced to the dais Nicholas was certain that Thatcher at once recognized him. He made no movement and spoke no word. The volte was in progress, a very difficult dance at which Nicholas prided himself. It consisted of a turn of the body with two steps, a high spring, and a pause with feet close together. Nicholas, in spite of his big body, was an excellent dancer, and as the French Court preferred, at this time, the volte to any other dance, he had but just known six months of constant practice in the most excellent company. He prided himself especially on his ‘spring,’ holding himself rigidly and alighting ‘like a little bird,’ as he said, ‘delicately with no sound,’ his two feet rigidly together.

So now, facing a beautiful lady with hair so flaxen as to be almost white, he gazed into her eyes so intently that her bosom heaved and her hands fluttered.

‘Sir, I am sure that I know you.’

He sprang magnificently, alighted delicately, then in the pause that followed said:

‘You are right. I have come for what you promised me.’

‘You have grown in the month since we met.’

‘It is my doublet.’ They turned together, did their two steps, leapt and once more faced one another. ‘My new doublet,’ he repeated. ‘I was not wearing it on the last time.’

She giggled a little.

‘No. Indeed you were not. You were wearing . . .’

He smiled. ‘Exactly. These are clothes of courtesy. Those . . .’

‘You were not dancing.’

‘I was at your feet.’

She smiled.

‘Your chin was not so round.’

‘You saw it from a different angle.’

The dance was over. She took his arm. They vanished into the crowd. He knew that he had never seen her before and wondered how, without her mask, she would be. Now, close to her, he was afraid that her bosom was too massive.

Robin was not dancing. He had gone quietly to a pillar at the end of the hall and, leaning against it, in comparative obscurity, watched the scene. He could not rid himself of the sense that he was taking part in a fantasy, a masque. He was well accustomed to that experience of the soul when the material world seems only a thin covering for the more real world beneath it. This sense would come upon him suddenly and he would even touch the stuff of his clothes to be certain of his own bodily existence. Music had especially this spiritual power over him, and now the viols seemed more human than the human voices and the sudden cry of the flute had had a ghostly urgency. The masked figures seemed to him so unsubstantial that he felt that, if he cried out, they would vanish, like trailing shimmering silk, into the air: the purple of shadows, the bright green like a parrot’s wing, the rich rose brocade like a cloud of evening. One cry and they would be gone.

With this unreality was still this real sense of urgent, expectant happiness. Something was about to happen to him: something of an utter transcendent reality.

He moved, he eased his mask, raised his head, and saw, close to him, almost touching him, a girl.

She stood, all by herself, watching the dancers. She was no more than a child. She seemed indeed a baby behind her white silk mask, her slim immature neck inside the enormous ruff.

She was magnificently dressed—over-dressed, Robin at once saw. The first thing he felt about her—he was afterwards to smile tenderly at his accurate perception—was a certain pathos. She was over-dressed and a sort of symbol of all the over-grandeur of this ball. Robin had realized this at once, even in the courtyard. His uncle, the New Rich, flaunting splendour without taste. The musicians, for example, wore a crimson slashed with gold that hurt the eye. The candelabra were too vast. The colours of the tapestries, blue and orange and violet, were too crude.

So was this child. In the front of her lovely dark brown hair was a jewelled ship. The ship was of emerald and the sails of clear sapphires. Her farthingale was in a most extravagant style, fantastically enlarged at the hips. Her little breasts were squeezed into the stiff-pointed bodice. Her sleeves were cut and slashed and crossed with small puffings. The colour of the brocaded farthingale was a faint, very lovely rose, studded with pearls. The bodice was silver and the slashings of the sleeves were silver. In this elaborate exaggerated dress the child stood, staring at the dancers, her mouth open, as still as a little image. Under the white silk mask her childish excited mouth was a living protest against her anonymity. Robin felt that if, at another time, she were veiled from head to foot, and still he saw that mouth he would know her. The lips were beautiful, natural, healthy red, her cheeks, too, rosy with health. There was no sign on her of paint and powder, becoming very popular with ladies. Her emerald ship, her ruff, the cut of her farthingale and sleeves, the lavish scattering of the pearls about the rose brocade, these were exaggerations, but within them she was radiant, untouched, Nature herself.

She said aloud: ‘After all the lessons he dances more oafishly than ever.’

She was speaking to herself. She made an effort over the word ‘oafishly’ and even stammered very slightly. She saw Robin staring at her and raised her head with a great assumption of haughtiness. It was clear that she hated to have been heard speaking to herself. She began to move away, her head so erect that it surely must have hurt her.

Robin said: ‘Please don’t go away.’

‘Why should I not?’ she asked, and her voice was enchanting, a child’s voice assuming maturity, very clear and bell-like.

She looked at him and smiled, and Robin loved her for that smile. It was quite clear that she considered him something worth staring at. In fact the two of them stood gazing at one another.

‘So we meet again,’ Robin said tenderly. It was the official, recognized opening at all masked balls.

‘No.’ She shook her head very decisively. ‘We have never met before.’ She smiled once more. ‘And that is not curious, for this is my first ball.’

‘It will, after to-night, be my first ball also,’ Robin answered.

She came closer to him. She was utterly sincere in her honest gaze.

‘I have seen you before, I think. And I know your voice. But not at a ball. A long time ago.’

Robin himself thought that, in some way, she was familiar to him. But not like this—and, yes, as she said, a long time ago. But it could not be so very long, for even now she was only a child.

‘Why are you not dancing?’ he asked her.

‘The volte,’ she answered very grandly, ‘is not my sort of dancing. I prefer the pavane.’

‘Will you dance the pavane with me?’

‘Yes,’ she said, suddenly quite shy. ‘If it is soon,’ she added. ‘I am not to stay very late.’

They continued to stare at one another.

‘Will you not take your mask off for one moment?’

His hand, moving as it seemed of its own volition, touched her sleeve.

‘Perhaps we do know one another.’

She laughed and shook her head until the ship rocked as though on a stormy sea.

‘No. Not before the general unmasking. They say it is unlucky.’

‘You need not fear,’ Robin said. ‘Bad luck is not for you.’

She gave a sharp cry.

‘Oh, you must not say that!’ She was shaking her head. The little ship, loosened, fell to the floor. A tiny sapphire rolled to Robin’s feet.

He picked the ship up and gave it her. She held it in her hand, looking at it.

‘It was my father’s Christmas gift. I don’t know why. I never liked it. It’s gaudy. I shall find Boniface to take it and put it away.’

He had the tiny sapphire in his hand.

‘Then I may keep this?’

‘If you care to. It’s nothing.’ She turned twice round on her high heels. ‘Now—am I not better without the ship?’

‘Very much better.’

The dancers were moving forward. The musicians struck up. It was a pavane.

The whole company was now formed in a great procession and in this Robin and the child took their places. He watched her now, delighting in her solemnity and gravity. He saw that she was widely recognized and was treated with ceremony. Who could she be? Why was it that he knew her and yet did not know her? She could not be the daughter of any high person at Court. No one accustomed to Court practices would so overdress her. And yet what a little lady she was! How criminal to emphasize her childishness with that exaggerated ruff! Nevertheless, how she carried her head with its lovely hair, so far lovelier now without the bejewelled ship. And with what a child’s motion she sometimes raised her little hand to ease the mask that pinched her nose! With what perfect grace, too, she moved, two simple steps and a double one forward, the same number backwards. Again he had the sense that this was a dream and these dream-figures, the waves of mingled colours rising and falling while the musicians blared with their hautboys and trumpets. How exquisite that pause, when the wave is frozen into stillness, every figure carved from a jewelled form; a great dignity and power seems to sweep through the air. ‘We are the kings and queens of this world, transmuted into power by our terrible immobility!’ Then, quite suddenly, the last movement, the galliard, come from the French Court to make the pavane less dull, all lively briskness, although not as yet allowing that frivolous kicking of the heels in the air, the capriole.

The music sang, the lights poured down, Robin had her hand in his.

‘Soon, soon you shall unmask,’ he whispered.

Two trumpets rang out. The dancers stayed. They moved back into a serried rank. The doors to the right of the dais opened and the masquers entered.

First came four blackamoors in silver, then the ‘pageant,’ or stage on wheels, moving with much clumsy creaking, and on it the captive Queen of the Moon, a lovely lady in scales of silver, weeping because she was captive. Four giants held dominion over her. The ‘pageant’ stayed in front of the dais and one of the giants spouted verse, declaring his great powers, and summoning his men who presently appeared, a band of wild men naked to the waist and painted in horrible reds and greens. After this a distant trumpet sounded, a knight clad from head to feet in gold armour stated that he would rescue the Lady of the Moon, was defied by the giants, summoned his men who were likewise in gold armour. The knight challenged one of the giants to single combat, and a great battle followed in which the giant was worsted, whereupon the giant’s men rushed upon the knight’s men and there was a fine comic battle. The giants were slain, the knight mounted the ‘pageant’ and claimed the Queen of the Moon.

He stood forward and cried: ‘We command you all—our true and liege subjects—unmask!’

At that, with a common gesture, the whole company unmasked. Trumpets blew a peal, the ‘pageant,’ rocking the Queen and knight on its path, moved away, a small blackamoor, alone now in the scene, stepped forward, declared that love, as always it must, had won, that only one Queen in the known world might command such devotion, and that now, to please her, they would drink and feast in Her Honour!

The trumpets blared. The company shouted.

At the unmasking Robin turned to his child.

‘Sylvia!’

‘Cousin Robin!’

‘It is four years. . . . You must forgive me.’

She looked at him with considering gravity. ‘I know. You have been very wrong not to have visited us.’

‘Nicholas and I . . .’

‘I don’t care for Nicholas. He laughs at us. Mr. Thatcher hates him because once he pulled his nose. But you, Robin, are quite another thing. You were always kind. You read to me once out of a book. Do you remember? Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. I can recall it exactly. It was in the Chelsea garden and we could hear the apples fall on the grass. You said you would read often and I believed you. I know now that men are always false. . . .’

She walked, her hand quite confidently in his, chattering as a little bird sings. They moved up the high staircase towards the gallery where they were to eat. Robin knew that he had been right in his expectation of happiness.

Nicholas, on his side, had plenty to think about. He had recognized, immediately, that the knight in gold armour was Philip Irvine. His mind flew instantly back to their last meeting. In a sense, through the whole year, through all the gaieties and adventures of Paris, his mind had never left it. He was tied to the event with a conviction of implacable hatred. To see him now, flaunting his beauty in his gold armour before this admiring world, roused in Nicholas, who was not, by nature, at all jealous or grudging, a sort of savage anger. Irvine was in truth superb with his perfect shape, his dark scorning face under the gold helmet. His voice too was beautiful, low and ringing, understanding the rhythm and colour of the poetry that he spoke, as Nicholas would never understand them. Nicholas felt his own clumsiness, the uncouth size and height of his limbs. He was always uncomfortable in grand clothes such as he was wearing now. Irvine wore his glories to perfection. Nicholas was best in shirt and hose, wrestling or digging or fighting with his fists, or, in the country at home, carrying a child on his shoulder, walking in from the harvest, or shooting in the long garden between the clipped hedges at a toy pigeon, or lifting the garden-barrel filled with weeds and emptying it on to the bonfire that blazed in orange-gold to the pigeon-cote beyond the lawn.

It was the old antithesis. But why should he hate him so? It was, perhaps, because Irvine had made him, for the only time in his life, betray a helpless man’s trust. The shame of that would never leave him as long as he lived. He had asked himself again and again what he should have done for that blue-eyed man? Should he have jumped from his horse at the first and defied Irvine? The ignominy of it was that Irvine had only been doing his duty. For months after, such scenes, and worse scenes, had been repeated again and again all over the North. It was perhaps the only occasion when Elizabeth showed what was not truly in her cautious, considering, often generous character, real vindictive vengeance. It left its mark for ever on those parts of England, that Northern Rebellion!

Yes, but no matter the general case. What should he, Nicholas Herries, have done? He could see the dog leap now on Gascoigne’s back—and he was looking now into the handsome, vain eyes of Irvine. There was not a shadow of a space between them! It was early morning. The candles guttered on the long table of the small picture gallery where some of the young men had gathered for a last joke and drink before going home. There were perhaps a dozen of them in silver and crimson and jade green, swinging their beautiful legs from the table, most of them very drunk, all proclaiming their pride in their Queen, their country, their future, themselves.

For, behind the noise and the drunkenness and the singing of ribald songs and the heat and the long mirrors swaying as the servant-men jogged them, carrying the liquor, and the pictures of past and present Herries that Henry had had painted (most of them very bad), and the splendid clock, with the silver moon and gold stars and old man grinning in mother-of-pearl, that chimed tunes, and the bawdy picture in needlework of Susanna and the Elders; behind all the trash and traffic of the current world, there was a great fiery spirit of new-born patriotism in the bosoms of these young men. There were many, many thousands like them. For their country had, in the years before Elizabeth came to its throne, reached its lowest ignominy. There was little army, less navy. Calais had been lost. A king of a foreign country, hated and hating, had pushed his long nose contemptuously down the London streets. There had been burnings and quarterings at the order of foreign priests and Englishmen sold to Spain. Shame, shame on a conquered, mocked country that had once been great!

And then God had sent a Jael, a Princess who redeemed them. From the moment that that red-haired, lantern-jawed, cold-lipped girl had taken the government into her hand, her people had hoped again. And now, within so short a while, again there was a navy, the beginning of an army, money was being saved, debased coin was called in—and more than that, Englishmen were going out once more into the world taking all that they were strong enough to take. Never mind if what they took belonged to someone else! He who is strongest seizes what he may. The power of the mailed fist! These young men sat there, stood there, shouted there, crying their Queen’s name, with a great joy once more in their hearts, because the future belonged to them. God was with them, their leader was God’s servant, the world was at their feet for the capture.

So, three hundred and fifty years later, a great body of young patriots of another country would once again feel the same exultations!

Although there were not more than twenty there, they were representative. Edward Herries, very drunk, but his sharp little eyes on the watch for an advantage. A strange fellow, Falk Herries, son of a small squire in Wiltshire, a thin man with a slight hump of one shoulder; sardonic, able, believing in nothing and nobody. Kennet Herries, a big, stout young man, crimson-faced, noisy and boastful. Charles Lacey, a young elegant poet and dandy. Tristram Cornwallis, a splendid young soldier, a great favourite at Court; Robert Rockage, a serious young man and said to be a Catholic, a recent friend of Robin’s; and Philip Irvine himself.

Nicholas, drunk enough to be noisily gay, was so close to him that the stiff edgings of their doublets touched.

‘Mr. Irvine—after a year we meet again.’

Irvine, very handsome in black and silver, was cordial.

‘Why, Mr. Herries, I was hoping for a meeting. But you have been in France, I hear.’

Nicholas nodded.

‘Yes. You have not been North?’

‘No. That was but a temporary duty.’

‘Your arm is recovered?’

‘It was but a scratch. We must have another meeting. Of course a friendly one. I bear no grudge.’

Nicholas smiled. ‘At any time. In any place I am at your service.’

After that, for a while, he knew very little clearly. His uncle had spoken to him with an almost over-eager kindness, saying that he was glad that his nephews had honoured his little entertainment, that he hoped that now again he would see them constantly, that relations in these difficult days must hold together. Nicholas had solemnly agreed to all these courtesies. He was exceedingly popular with the young men. They made him perform feats of strength; he stripped to his shirt and lifted a table. He raised young Rockage in one hand and Charles Lacey in the other. He drank, he sang choruses, he shouted again and again the health of their Mistress. . . . And then the scene was confused. The candles rushed like the wind across the table and burnt in one glorious conflagration from which a spire of light ran rocking to the naked cherubs painted on the ceiling. But the most disturbing thing was the mirrors that swayed backwards and forwards, redoubled themselves so that heads of hair, noses and mouths, ruffs and slashed doublets, multiplied, were connected and disconnected. He moved to a mirror to steady it and stood there, rocking on his feet, seeing his own face, flushed and wavering. He raised a hand, and, stepping aside, saw the long, dark figure of Irvine, quite still in the mirror watching him. From Irvine’s body all that queer conglomeration of arms and thighs and heads ran in a stream of colour into the candlelight, but Irvine himself was complete and immaculate in the snowy ruff, his thin brown hand resting on the gold hilt of his rapier.

A mad impulse to challenge him seized Nicholas. He jerked round to face the room, and then saw that Irvine was not there. He stumbled forward searching the room. Irvine was gone.

He was sober enough to realise that something else was doing. There had mounted on to the table, that was slippery with spilt wine, two men, both stripped to the waist. One was a big hulking fellow, with heavy breasts, a thick neck, black hair on his chest, that Nicholas recognized—a servant of Kennet Herries. The other he had never seen before: fair-haired, white-skinned, blue-eyed. They were to wrestle, there on the table. Bets were being laid. The young men crowded about the table. Nicholas, eagerly pushing forward, wagered on the fair young man. Then he held his breath. The lights steadied and hung in a circle above the two men, who advanced, hugged, strained, almost slipped, steadied themselves again, stayed, tight in one another’s arms. Then the young man, his head raised, jerked with his leg; the other staggered, tried to hold himself, then crashed over the table-edge, falling into Nicholas’ arms.

He held the fellow for a moment, set him on his feet, where he stood, shamefacedly apologizing to his irate master.

The young man jumped lightly from the table.

‘You did that well,’ Nicholas said.

‘Of course. There are two parts of England where they can wrestle—Cornwall and Cumberland. I come from one of them.’

‘From Cornwall?’

‘No. From Cumberland, sir.’

Someone had thrown the young man his shirt and he was now quickly and deftly buttoning it.

‘From Cumberland,’ Nicholas said eagerly.

‘Yes, Mr. Herries.’

‘You know me then?’

The young man grinned.

‘I come from a place Rosthwaite, near Keswick. I know your uncle.’

‘My uncle? I was there a year ago.’

‘Yes, sir. I saw you.’

‘You saw me?’

‘Riding away in the morning from your uncle’s house. It was nine of the morning—a frosty, clear day.’

‘You remember that?’

‘You are not lightly forgotten, sir.’

‘What is your name?’

‘Gilbert Armstrong.’

‘What are you doing in London?’

‘Your uncle is interested in the Newlands mines. I came down a week ago with letters. I return to-morrow. I am in service with Mr. Cowperthwaite in Keswick. Mr. Cowperthwaite knows your uncle well.’

Nicholas caught his arm.

‘Do you know a girl—a German girl—in Keswick, called Catherine Hodstetter?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Do you ride alone to-morrow?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I will go with you. I will ride with you.’

He was sober now, longing with a passionate desire for that freshness instead of this wine-stink; the moon rising above the moth-grey hills rather than this candlelight. . . .

There was more than that. Soon, in a month or so, he was to take over the charge of his father’s property. His free young manhood would be ended. This should be his last gesture of freedom.

‘By Jesu, I’ll go with you. When do you start?’

‘I have some business with Mr. Herries in the morning. I should be ready by eleven forenoon.’

‘I will meet you by Durham House, in the Strand.’

He clapped the man heartily on the shoulder and, now exceedingly happy, his head quite clear, he turned away to find Robin.

He found him standing in the doorway. The brothers smiled.

‘Where were you, Robin? I looked for you.’

‘I was in Paradise,’ Robin said, ‘for a little. And, having discovered it, I mean shortly to return.’