Читать книгу The King's Minion - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 12

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As in the person, so in all the actions and transactions of Mr. Overbury there was the neat tidiness which proceeds from methodical habits. With him thought and plan were ever the precursors of speech and act. Thought revealed to him that the success of his alliance with Sir Robert Carr must depend upon the world's assumption that Sir Robert moved upon his own unsupported inspiration. Therefore Mr. Overbury took good care completely to efface himself for the present.

He waited on the morrow upon the Lord Treasurer. But the offer of an under-secretaryship which Cecil made him he declined with a polite show of gratitude and reluctance. The reason he advanced was, truthfully, that he had made other plans: less truthfully, that these plans might entail his going abroad again shortly, in obedience also to a restless, roving disposition.

They parted with mutual expressions of good will, sincere on both sides, and of regret which can have been sincere only on the part of my Lord Treasurer.

Mr. Overbury removed himself in the course of the next few days from the Angel in Cheapside to a more commodious lodging of his own near Paul's Wharf. Here for the next few months he remained comfortably established, with a single servant to wait upon him, a sleek, discreet, intelligent Welsh lad named Lawrence Davies, who quickly became devoted to him. Here he was visited at least twice a week by Sir Robert, who came by water and with hired sculls, his identity unsuspected. He would commonly dine or sup with Overbury and remain for some hours, to be primed with such information as he sought, and tutored in the uses of it.

From this lodging Mr. Overbury would sally forth, sometimes to the inns of court to renew old acquaintances and to seek fresh ones among the men of law; sometimes to Paul's, in the Middle Aisle of which between the hours of three and six all manner of folk were to be met and all manner of news was to be canvassed. Often he was to be seen dining in ordinaries, and occasionally he would visit the Royal Exchange and the taverns thereabouts, the Three Morrice Dancers or the White Horse in Friday Street, where the fishmongers drove their trade. Wherever he could set his finger upon the pulse of the town, which again was to be accounted the pulse of England, he was assiduous. As much with this intent as to indulge a poet's natural taste for the drama, he was often at the Globe Theatre on Bankside, where Mr. Shakespeare was still at work; and because he was in a sense kin with such men, he frequented the suppers at the Mermaid, introduced there by Mr. Ben Jonson who we know esteemed him highly. Easy and affable in manner, he ingratiated himself into all companies, engaged all and sundry in conversation, assuming in some assemblies the character of a lawyer, in others that of a poet and man of letters.

Often he would, himself, be the bearer of tidings in his various haunts, announcing new measures which as yet were in the egg—matters which Sir Robert informed him were under contemplation—so as to put them to the touchstone of public opinion and study the various comments they provoked. In this manner he was able to advise with confidence that the enactments touching the fines upon recusants, which of late had been relaxed, should be fully enforced so as to replenish the ever-empty purse of royal prodigality. Similarly he dictated leniency in dealing with certain lingering activities of the levellers, perceiving that public opinion was strongly on their side and that indignation was all against the usurpations which had provoked those outbreaks.

In short, had he been a spy in Cecil's pay he could not have acted other than he did throughout that year (when he was generally supposed to be abroad), save that no spy of any Secretary of State was ever half so diligent, alert, accomplished, and insinuating as was he.

Invisible and unsuspected, he dictated policy to the Privy Council through the lips of Sir Robert Carr, who garnered all the glory and increased in credit at a rate that to some appeared alarming.

Towards the consolidation of Carr's position nothing contributed more than the fulfilment of his timely prognostication touching Spain and the Netherlands. Early in the new year came an invitation to England to coöperate in the peace settlement, as France was already disposed to do.

The King slobbered and dribbled in sheer rapture to discover in his beloved Robin the gifts of statecraft, not only in this, but in almost every subject. The lad's penetration and insight into the heart of the nation seemed almost uncanny. With so little experience of the world and so few opportunities of observing national life at first hand, his shrewd comments, trenchant criticisms, lucid inferences, and daring forecasts argued a power of deductive reasoning amounting to genius.

The Howards—and old Northampton in particular—began to perceive in him a person to be respected, one who, if provoked to enmity, might presently be able to crush them without effort. Therefore, with gifts and flatteries they studied all ways of making him their friend.

Forewarned against them by Overbury, and obeying implicitly the dictates of this shrewd famulus, Sir Robert held aloof, received their advances with a distant frigid condescension oddly at variance with his ordinarily friendly nature, and thereby drove them to almost frantic lengths of sycophancy.

Because the King favoured him, and because he now revealed himself in all senses worthy of that favour, these men courted him assiduously. And the more assiduously did they court him, the more did the King favour him, taking ever-increasing pride in a creature whose merit flattered the discernment of his creator. Thus his popularity and influence spread in ever-widening circles as that year advanced.

As a result of all this, he found himself ultimately with so much business on his hands on the King's behalf that it became necessary—as he represented to his majesty—to seek a secretary who should assist him more closely and to whom he could give his confidence more freely than to any of the three or four amanuenses whom already he employed.

When his need became known there was no lack of candidates for the office. Scarcely a gentleman about the court but had some nephew or cousin or even son who would be proud to serve under Sir Robert Carr. Sir Robert looked into the qualifications of those submitted, but could not be satisfied. And then one day he announced to the King a piece of great good fortune. Mr. Thomas Overbury was returned to town and had been to wait upon him. Mr. Overbury was in need of employment, and his reappearance at such a moment seemed to Sir Robert singularly opportune. For he fulfilled the requirements of Sir Robert more than any man alive, and subject to his majesty's approval Sir Robert proposed to take him into his service.

Thus had it been concerted between them. Sir Robert's reputation for ability in affairs was so completely established that none could attribute the continued display of it to any wits but his own. Mr. Overbury, therefore, might now without damage to Sir Robert step into the open from behind the arras which had hitherto concealed him.

The King demurred. He thrust out a sulky nether lip. 'I mind me of him, ay. The horse-faced carle that was here nigh upon a year since.' He remembered with a pang the flash of intimacy which he had seen pass between the two. 'Is he not maybe an over-important gentleman for your needs, Robin? A dour fellow I deemed him. Overburying I named him, and rightly I think.'

But Sir Robert insisted, employing craft, and reluctantly the King yielded his consent.

However unobtrusive Mr. Overbury might be in his character of secretary, the moment was one in which it was impossible for him to be unobtrusive in his own. His famous 'Characters,' those inimitable sketches of contemporary life, penned to beguile the loneliness of idle hours in his lodging at Paul's Wharf, had lately been published by Lisle, the bookseller at the Tiger's Head in Paul's Yard. The little work had attracted the attention of the wits. They were loudly acclaiming it, and purchasing it widely to use it as a whetstone for their own small talk. A copy of it reached the hands of the King, who read it with reluctant admiration mingled with envy. His jealousy of any man who might rival him in scholarship was irrepressible, which may have contributed to his scandalous treatment of Sir Walter Raleigh, and to his affection for Philip Herbert, who made butts of all scholars below the royal rank, and indulged at their expense his ignorant buffooneries. His majesty, however, dissembled his envy, swallowed the spite which is the inevitable fruit of it, and condescendingly from his own Olympian heights of learning bestowed a benediction upon an author so generally acclaimed. As a result Mr. Overbury began to be seen about the court much earlier than would otherwise have been the case.

If on the score of his own merits he was the recipient of courtesies from those who could appreciate them, as the favourite's favourite he shared the open contempt in which Sir Robert was still held by the few—those of the Queen's party and of Prince Henry's—and the secret animosity of which Sir Robert was the object at the hands of those who had learned to fear his influence and to perceive in it an obstacle to their own advancement.

The perspicient Mr. Overbury missed none of this. But he was not perturbed. He met the contempt that was rooted in envy with the deeper and deadlier contempt that springs from the consciousness of intellectual superiority, and he knew how to wound whilst preserving an inscrutable sardonic urbanity of surface towards the victim of his pitiless wit.

The improved relations between Spain and England resulting from their coöperation in the peace settlement of the Netherlands led the King in the course of that year 1610 to turn his thoughts to the promotion of a Spanish marriage for his son. Despite his stout Protestantism, King James was anxious to prove himself a king who ruled by love and who by the loving arts of peace could achieve more than had ever been achieved by force of arms.

As a preliminary to any definite proposals, his majesty offered a great banquet at Whitehall to the Spanish Ambassador, the Count of Villamediana, and the Constable of Castile, Don Pedro of Aragon. It was the most lavish of the many lavish junketings that had piled up King James's enormous load of debt.

About himself, his Queen, and their son Prince Henry, his majesty assembled the nobility and beauty of the court, to welcome the two illustrious representatives of King Philip and their train of Spanish grandees.

They dined in public state in the great audience chamber, and after many toasts, in the course of which his majesty became mildly intoxicated and very maudlin, the tables were removed and the floor was cleared for dancing.

First came a coranto, in which the stout, flaxen-haired, freckled Queen, deep-bosomed, broad-shouldered, and almost masculine of countenance, was led forth by Don Pedro of Aragon.

After this the King, sleepily benign and slightly lachrymose, lolling in his great brocaded chair under a canopy of cloth of gold with the blazonry of united England and Scotland behind his head, desired to show off his son's paces to the Spaniards. He commanded him to dance a galliard, and gave him leave to choose a partner, subject to his majesty's confirmation of the choice.

The handsome boy, who was the hope of England and the ornament of his not very decorative house, assented willingly enough. He delighted almost as much in dancing as in the sterner exercises for which he was already renowned. Although still in his seventeenth year, he was of a good height and excellently shaped, as graceful in body as in mind, and in all things the very antithesis of his sire. High-spirited, valiant, gracious, and even at this young age a patron of all deserving arts, he was fast becoming the idol of the people, whilst the very flower of the nobility was to be found surrounding him at Saint James's Palace, where he held his court. Athletic in his pursuits and austere in manners, God-fearing and studious by inclination, he contrived to be dignified and princely beyond his years. Inevitably a gulf was widening daily between himself and his father, opened by jealousy on the one hand and disdain on the other. Each, however, masked his feelings. Prince Henry studiously preserved the appearances of filial piety, and King James displayed a fatherliness which was as much a pretence as his uxoriousness.

The young Prince, standing now beside his father's chair, swept the brilliant assembly with his glance upon no random quest. It travelled purposefully until it reached the young Countess of Essex, and was there arrested. Then he leaned towards the King, and announced his choice in a murmur audible to his majesty alone. The King smiled and nodded his great head covered by the heavily plumed and diamond-buckled hat. The Prince, thus authorised, stepped forward to claim the Countess.

Blushing a little, but displaying no more agitation than was proper in a child as yet unfamiliar with the court, she suffered herself to be led forth, full conscious of the great honour done her, and unconscious of the envy it provoked in other feminine breasts. But a few months older than the Prince, this daughter of the Earl of Suffolk was already acknowledged to be the loveliest ornament of King James's court, where as yet she had been all too rarely seen. Delicately featured and very fair, the fire of life glowed brightly in eyes whose colour shifted with the light from blue to violet. As in the case of Prince Henry, it was universally agreed that her outward graces were but a reflection of inward spiritual worth. We have it on the word of one who knew her well and had no cause to judge her generously that her goodness of heart, her gentleness and her sweetness of disposition outshone the ravishing beauty of her person. And with all this she was sprightly, lively, and gay, and utterly adorable. She stood a little above the middle height, and at this stage was almost sylph-like in her virginal slimness. For although she had been four years now a wedded wife, she still remained a maid. Her husband, the Earl of Essex, a year or so younger than herself, had been parted from her at the altar and sent upon his travels to complete his education and to grow to manhood before claiming the custody of his wife. The marriage had been one of policy, in which the wishes of neither child had been consulted.

One of the early acts of King James's reign had been the reinstatement of the son of that Earl of Essex whom Elizabeth had loved and beheaded, in the titles and confiscated estates of his unfortunate father. The Howards, too, had found favour in his royal eyes for the sake of that Duke of Norfolk who had suffered similarly under Elizabeth for his devotion to King James's mother. And the marriage of Robert Devereux and Frances Howard, because desired by her family, had been promoted by the King as being to the advantage of both houses.

Until lately the young Countess had been kept more or less in retirement at Audley End. Accounted until now too young to take her proper place at court, she had pursued in the quiet of the country, and saving for occasional visits to Whitehall, the studies that should enable her to adorn the station which was hers by birth and marriage.

That she had profited by them she now evinced as she moved through the sprightly measure of the galliard with the Prince for partner, displaying a grace and liveliness as well as an assurance in her steps which captivated the entire court, and made the stately Spanish gentlemen about his majesty almost as eloquent in their praise of her beauty and art as they were in the praise which etiquette prescribed of the person and deportment of the Prince.

Having reconducted her to the care of her mother, and constrained her to resume her chair, the Prince, instead of returning to his father and the Spanish guests as would have been more fitting, lingered in talk with her, bending over her where she sat. The court looked on, and with covert amusement was blended open surprise at conduct so very unusual in this austere young man. If embarrassed at being made the object of these open attentions, Lady Essex was nevertheless flattered by them, considering from whom they proceeded, particularly when remembering his reputation for reserve where women were concerned.

But whilst she listened to the Prince and spoke to him in her turn, Lady Essex scarcely looked at him, and this not from any shyness, but because her eyes were busy elsewhere. Covertly their glances were directed towards the royal dais, drawn thither by one who stood near the King, one whom the King used familiarly, patting his shoulder or pinching his arm as he addressed him. A tall, straight-limbed young man this, in blue velvet that glittered with jewels, broad of shoulder, but tapering thence to a graceful slimness. His handsome head, framed in a cloud of red-gold hair, proudly carried and radiant with youth and health and ready laughter.

Once before she had seen him, on a day nearly three years ago, in the tilt-yard at Whitehall, when he had been flung from his horse, and she had cried out in fear and pain for him, and had long thereafter been haunted by the memory of his white face, as he lay helpless and swooning in the dust. If he had looked radiant and splendid as he rode that day on his big white horse, infinitely more radiant and splendid did he look now, standing so self-assured beside the royal chair.

Meanwhile, the Prince, bending his auburn head, continued to utter amiabilities, and she knew without looking at him that his eyes were devouring her the while. Thus until the King, grown impatient, put an end to the matter. Court usage required that either he or his deputy should tread a measure with the Countess of Villamediana. Since James's own rachitic legs did not permit him to dance, it was necessary that his son should represent him. He despatched Sir Robert Carr to summon the Prince to his duty.

My Lady Essex, covertly watching them, caught the flash of jewels on the royal hand as it was raised to point in her direction, and then saw Sir Robert detach himself from the group about the dais and come straight towards her and the Prince.

If she had flushed when his highness had approached her, she paled now at the approach of Sir Robert, which she could not even suppose to be in any way concerned with her. By the time he came to halt before her at the Prince's side, she was conscious of quickened heartbeats, of a sense of embarrassment amounting almost to panic. She dissembled it by making play with her fan of peacock's feathers, and masking with the edges of it the lower part of her face.

Sir Robert bowed to her formally, as if to crave her indulgence, and she admired again at close quarters his grace and his air of noble self-command. Then he addressed himself to the Prince, and his broad Scots accent startled her. Yet she reflected instantly that it was no worse than the King's, and scarcely out of place in a court presided over by a Scottish monarch. It was, indeed, almost a maxim that a king, even in his shortcomings and infirmities, would be the model of his courtiers.

'His majesty is asking for your highness.'

The Prince nodded almost imperceptibly, as he might have nodded to a lackey.

Sir Robert stood his ground a moment, with the feeling that his face had been slapped in public. But his lips retained their deferential smile. Retaliation was out of the question. Humiliation might be avoided only by ignoring that contemptuous dismissal; but to remain, some pretext was necessary. He found it instantly in the person of Lady Suffolk, and he turned to address her where she sat beside her daughter, a stout woman in whose crafty, pock-marked face it was difficult to discover the source of any of the grace and beauty that earlier had distinguished her. Ordinarily he might have feared from her an imitation of the Prince's manner such as sycophancy prescribed. But Lady Suffolk was a Howard, and the Howards were too actively wooing his friendship in those days to leave him under any apprehension here. If her ladyship was uncomfortable in this situation, she dissembled it. After all, the Prince's discourtesy to Sir Robert had been no more than a lightning flash which she might easily have failed to perceive. She spoke to him civilly, even pleasantly.

His highness stared haughtily at Sir Robert's shoulder, which was quite deliberately turned to him. Then with a low bow to Lady Essex, he swung round and walked stiffly away to obey his father's summons.

Malice whispered in Sir Robert's ear, showed him how he might gall the Prince, who had so deliberately slighted him. Acting upon it, he reminded Lady Suffolk that he had not yet been honoured by presentation to her lovely daughter, thereby increasing the unsuspected tumult in that lovely daughter's virginal breast.

The fiddlers in the gallery were tuning up for the last coranto, as Sir Robert, bowing low before the youthful lady who was to shape his destiny, murmured conventional amiabilities. No embarrassment had tied her inexperienced tongue when a prince had similarly addressed her under the watchful eyes of a whole court. Yet now she was dumb. She could do no more than smile, and look up at him, to look away again as quickly, as if dazzled by the radiance of his countenance, the effulgence of his steady glance, which yet had none of that devouring, wooing quality which had marked Prince Henry's.

The Prince, as his father's deputy, was leading forth the handsome Spanish Countess; the Queen had partnered with the stately Earl of Pembroke; the Princess Elizabeth had given her hand to the Count of Villamediana; and other noble couples were making haste to take the floor. Sir Robert surrendered completely to the impulse of his playful malice. Humbly he craved the honour of Lady Essex's hand for the coranto. It was so instantly surrendered that he was almost startled. Indeed, a pretext for refusing him the honour would have surprised him less.

The musicians struck up, and the dance began. Sir Robert displayed himself fully as graceful in the more sedate coranto as the Prince had done in the sprightlier galliard. He carried his head high, and there was a gleam of mockery in his eyes with which to meet the occasional frosty glances of his highness. Lady Essex moved with less certainty and self-possession through this measure than she had shown in the more intricate paces of the galliard. She was vexed with herself for this; yet so far as her partner was concerned she need not have troubled. His mind was so intent upon levelling the score with Prince Henry that he scarce gave a thought to the ravishing lady who was affording him the means to do so.

As he was leading her back to her mother's charge, he thanked her becomingly.

'Your ladyship has honoured me beyond my poor deserts.'

She had herself in hand by now and flashed him a quick answer: 'Your deserts are small, then, Sir Robert.'

'Compared with the honour, madam, they are naught. All things are relative.'

She looked up at him, and quickly away again. 'You rally me, I think,' she said, and he caught a note of odd complaint in her voice. Was this bewitching child, he asked himself, already a graduate in the arts of dalliance, and did she affect this tone to challenge him? Or was she honest? He would meet sincerity, real or simulated, with sincerity which was both at once.

'Judge for yourself, my lady, upon the truth; which is that, when I begged the honour, I feared it would be denied me.'

'It would tax you, sir, to show reason for the fear.'

'I accept the challenge. The reason lay in that you had last condescended to a prince.'

'Now that is almost treason. Condescension is for princes.'

'Saving only where Lady Essex is concerned.'

She grew so daring as frankly to laugh at him. They had reached her mother now. 'You take advantage of my youth, Sir Robert.'

He bowed as she resumed her seat. 'No advantage, madam, but to serve you, and that were an advantage I must always covet.'

He commended himself to Lady Suffolk, and took his leave.

As he was retracing his steps to the royal dais, the Prince swept past him, moving with a stride better suited to Blackheath when playing there the game of golf which the Scots had newly brought with them to England. Straight for Lady Essex he steered his course, as if determined to complete the work of giving her name to the gossips which his choice of her for the galliard had already started.

And there was more to follow. The courtiers were crowding now to the windows, to witness the baitings in the yard which the King had ordered for the entertainment of his Spanish guests. The Prince offered his hand to Lady Essex, and conducted her to a little balcony in which there was room for not more than three and into which no third intruded, since her mother did not see fit to do so. The Countess of Suffolk, greedy of royal favour and the perquisites accompanying it, saw no disadvantage in leaving her daughter alone thus with the Prince. After all, my Lady Essex had a husband of her own (if one who was absent and not yet of age) and on that score was entitled to be her own guardian.

Lady Essex, still a little bemused, as Sir Robert had left her, suffered his highness almost listlessly to have his way.

She leaned beside him on the parapet of the little balcony and looked down into the wide quadrangle, where a crowd of townsfolk surged behind the barriers about the ring. In this a great shaggy bear, chained to a post, now shambled to and fro as far as the length of his chain permitted, now stood still with rocking body and plaintive grunts expressive of his apprehension.

His highness was speaking, but no longer with any of the sprightliness with which he had erstwhile addressed her. There was a touch of sulkiness in his manner, of resentment even, as if his having danced a galliard with her gave him certain rights.

'That fellow, Carr,' said he. 'You danced with him. Why?'

The audacity of it took her breath away. Only on the recollection that he was Prince of Wales and her future king did she restrain her indignant mirth.

'For the same reason that I danced with your highness. Because he did me the honour to invite me.'

'Honour! Faugh! The word is hollow. Your ladyship is not so easily honoured.'

'Your highness mistakes me. I am but a simple child.'

'Which is why I would not have your simplicity deluded.'

'Would he delude it, sir, do you suppose?' There was mischief in her eyes, which but increased their witchery upon him.

'Ay, by making you suppose him something who is nothing, an upstart nobody from Teviotdale.'

'Your highness does not like him. Is being Scottish the worst with which you can reproach him?'

He bit his lip and glared at her, to be distracted by the archness of her smile.

'The fellow is not fit to approach you; an upstart, scarcely gentle.'

'Nay, now there you wrong him. For I found him all gentleness.'

'I mean in birth, not in manners.'

'Surely manners are of more account than birth. And his manners were faultless. He spoke no ill of any.'

His highness was out of patience at the implied rebuke. 'You defend him?'

'I have not yet perceived the need. And why does your highness speak of him?'

'Why?' He checked and laughed. 'Why, indeed, when there is so much that is better worth our while?'

Came a babble of voices and a baying of dogs to draw their attention to the scene below.

The bearward and his men were entering the enclosure.

The grooms retained by their leashes four pairs of straining, eager mastiffs, furiously barking now at sight of their uncouth prey. The great bear reared himself upon his haunches to receive the charge of which his instincts warned him. Two dogs were loosed and bounded forward with a last short yelp to leap gallantly at the beast's throat. One he cuffed aside with a blow of his great paw which rent its flank. The other he received in a hug which crushed its ribs, then hurled it from him dead.

The crowd, in which city prentices ever eager for such a show as this were conspicuous, howled its delight in Bruin's prowess. The King and his nobles from the windows and balconies above looked down almost as eagerly.

Lady Essex, seated upon a stool which a gentleman usher had placed for her, used her fan of peacock's feathers to screen off the view from her piteous eyes. She was white and nauseated by that first glimpse of bear-baiting.

'Oh, cruelty!' she murmured.

The Prince faced her, leaning his elbow on the parapet, his shoulder to the show, as if to proclaim that his interest in it was far less than in his companion. With the arguments of a boy and a sportsman he set about combating her aversion. The cruelty was more apparent than real. Dogs and bear obeyed their respective natures, which were combative. Each yielded to the lust of battle which the sight of the other aroused, and therefore relished it.

If his discourse carried no conviction to that gentle lady, at least she preferred it to the brutality of the spectacle itself, and so was content to listen to expositions until the show was ended and she could lower her fan without being sickened by what confronted her.

The bear-baiting was followed by a performance of tumblers and rope-dancers in which the displays of skill and agility delighted her as highly as the previous displays had disgusted her.

The Prince, watching her eager face and parted lips, delighted in her delight and was growing oblivious of his surroundings, when suddenly a step sounded behind them. His highness swung round irritably, to be confronted by a splendid figure in blue velvet. It was Sir Robert Carr again, who now came to make a third upon that balcony.

'Sir,' the Prince informed him curtly, 'we are private here.'

The lady's breath seemed suspended at that rudeness. There was distress in her eyes.

Sir Robert, very calm, a man well schooled by now in courtly deportment and secure in his sense of consequence, smiled easily into the boy's angry face.

'Your highness should not suppose that I intrude here without orders.'

The lady's distress increased. Perhaps she feared he might suppose that she, too, regarded his advent as an intrusion.

The Prince's glance lost nothing of its hardness, Sir Robert's nothing of its suavity.

'His excellency the Count of Villamediana is taking his leave, and his majesty desires the attendance of your highness.' He paused to add with a touch of peremptoriness. 'They wait, your highness.' He stood aside to give passage to the Prince, as if inviting him to depart. Prince Henry hesitated, looking at the lady. Sir Robert, as if answering that look, added further: 'I will be her ladyship's escort if she will suffer it.'

The Prince looked beyond him, into the room. Espying Sir Arthur Mainwaring, he suddenly beckoned him. 'Her ladyship shall have a gentleman of my own for escort,' said he, to put the favourite down. And added rashly: 'I am master here.'

Sir Robert commanded himself with a difficulty none would have suspected from his maintained urbanity. He bowed formally as Sir Arthur approached. To his amazement, however, the lady was suddenly on her feet, a bright red spot in either cheek.

'No master of mine, your highness,' she hardily informed the young Prince, and hardily met the instant discomfiture of his glance. The child had suddenly become a woman. 'I own no master other than my husband, and in his absence I am mistress of myself.' Her glance shifted to the favourite. 'I thank you, Sir Robert, for the escort you have offered.'

Prince Henry had the sense to perceive that his boyish arrogance had carried him too far and that her ladyship was justified of her self-assertion. The perception, however, did not soothe his ruffled spirit.

He bowed abruptly. He was determined to have the last word in the matter and to cast a final insult at Sir Robert. 'I do not felicitate your ladyship.'

On that he stalked angrily from the balcony into the room, and went to attend his sire.

Lady Essex quitted the balcony a moment later with Sir Robert in attendance. The favourite shouldered Sir Arthur aside as if he had been so much rubbish and all but trod on that gentleman's toes in his concern to clear a way for her ladyship. Once past him, Lady Essex spoke.

'I am no party, sir, to the ill manners of his highness.'

'You are gracious, madam, to give me in words an assurance with which your acts had already provided me. But the ill manners are naught. I shall forget them.'

'You are charitable, Sir Robert.'

'Just understanding. Ill manner springs from ill temper, and perhaps in his highness's place an interruption might similarly have distempered me.'

Her mother advanced to meet them. He resigned his charge and took his leave, unconscious that the eyes that followed him as he went to rejoin the King were questioning and a little wistful.