House of Torment Part 21

"We will break a lance together some day," he said, "but you must forego the lists this afternoon."

Johnnie bowed very low. This was extraordinary favour. He knew, of course, that the King would never tilt with him, but he recognised the compliment.

He knew, again, that his star was high in the ascendant. The son of the great Charles V was reserved, cautious, suspicious of all men--except when, in private, he would unbend to buffoons and vulgar rascals like Sir John Shelton--and the icy gravity of his deportment to courtiers seldom varied.

Commendone was quite aware that the King did not cla.s.s him with men of Shelton's stamp. He was the more signally honoured therefore.

"This night," His Grace continued, "after the jousts, your attendance will be excused, Senor. I retire early to rest."

The Esquire bowed, but he had caught a certain gleam in the King's small eyes. "Duck Lane or Bankside!" he thought to himself. "Thank G.o.d he hath not commanded me to be with him."

Johnnie was beginning to understand, more than he had hitherto done, something of his sudden rise to favour and almost intimacy. The King Consort was trying him, testing him in every way, hoping to find at length a companion less dangerous and drunken, a reputation less blown upon, a servant more discreet....

He could have spat in his disgust. What he had tolerated in others before, though loftily repudiated for himself, now became utterly loathsome--in King or commoner, black and most foul.

The King wore a mask; Johnnie wore one also--there was _finesse_ in the game between master and servant. And to-night the King would wear a literal mask, the "_maschera_," which Badovardo speaks of when he set down the frailties of this monarch for after generations to read of: "_Nelle piaceri delle donne e incontinente, predendo dilletatione d'andare in maschera la notte et nei tempi de negotii gravi_."

Then and there Johnnie made a resolution, one which had been nascent in his mind for many hours. He would have done with the Court as soon as may be. Ambition, so new a child of his brain, was already dead. He would marry, retire from pageant and splendour even as his father had done years and years ago. With Elizabeth by his side he would once more live happily among the woods and wolds of Commendone.

Torrome, the _criado_ or valet, came into the room again from the bed-chamber. His Highness was to change his clothes once more--at high noon he must be with the Queen upon State affairs. The Chancellor and Lord Wharton were coming, and with them Brookes, the Bishop of Gloucester, the papal sub-delegate, and the Royal Proctors, Mr. Martin and Mr. Storey.

The prelates, Ridley and Latimer, were lying in prison--their ultimate fate was to be discussed on that morning.

The King had but hardly gone into his bed-chamber when the door of the Closet opened and Don Diego Deza entered, unannounced, and with the manner of habitude and use.

He greeted Commendone heartily, shaking him by the hand with considerable warmth, his clear-cut, inscrutable face wearing an expression of fixed kindliness--put on for the occasion, meant to appear sincere, there for a purpose.

"I will await His Grace here," the priest said, glancing at the door leading to the bedroom, which was closed. "I am to attend him to the Council Chamber, where there is much business to be done. So next week, Mr. Commendone, you'll be at Whitehall! The Court will be gayer there--more suited to you young gallants."

"For my part," Johnnie answered, "I like the Tower well enough."

"Hast a contented mind, Senor," the priest answered brightly. "But I hap to know that the Queen will be glad to be gone from the City. This hath been a necessary visit, one of ceremony, but Her Grace liketh the Palace of Westminster better, and her Castle of Windsor best of all. I shall meet you at Windsor in the new year, and hope to see you more advanced.

Wilt be wearing the gold spurs then, I believe, and there will be two knights of the honoured name of Commendone!"

Johnnie answered: "I think not, Father," he said, turning over his own secret resolve in his mind with an inward smile. "But why at Windsor?

Doubtless we shall meet near every day."

"Say nothing, Mr. Commendone," the priest answered in a low voice.

"There can be no harm in telling you--who are privy to so much--but I sail for Spain to-morrow morn, and shall be some months absent upon His Most Catholic Majesty's affairs."

Shortly after this, the King came out of his room, three of his Spanish gentlemen were shown in, and with Johnnie, the Dominican, and his escort, His Highness walked to the Council Chamber, round the tower of which stood a company of the Queen's Archers, showing that Her Grace had already arrived.

Then for two hours Johnnie kicked his heels in the Ante-room, watching this or that great man pa.s.s in and out of the Council Chamber, chatting with the members of the Spanish suite--bored to death.

At half-past one the Council was over, and Their Majesties went to dinner, as did also Johnnie in the Common Room.

At half-past three of the clock the Esquire was standing in the Royal box behind the King and Queen, among a group of other courtiers, and looking down on the great tilting yard, where he longed himself to be.

The Royal Gallery was at one end of the yard, a great stage-box, as it were, into which two carved chairs were set, and which was designated, as a somewhat fervent chronicler records, "the gallery, or place at the end of the tilting yard adjoining to Her Grace's Palace of the Tower, whereat her person should be placed. It was called, and with good cause, the Castle, or Fortress of Perfect Beauty, forasmuch as Her Highness should be there included."

Johnnie stood and watched it all with eyes in which there was but little animation. A few days before nothing would have gladdened him more than such a spectacle as this. To-day it was as nothing to him.

Down below was a device of painted canvas, imitating a rolling-trench, which was supposed to be the besieging works of those who attempted the "Fortress of Perfect Beauty."

"Upon the top of it were set two cannons wrought of wood, and coloured so pa.s.sing well, as, indeed, they seemed to be two fair field-pieces of ordnance. And by them were placed two men for gunners in cloth and crimson sarcanet, with baskets of earth for defence of their bodies withal."

At the far end of the lists there came a clanking and hammering of the farriers' and armourers' forges.

Grooms in mandilions--the loose, sleeveless jacket of their calling--were running about everywhere, leading the chargers trapped with velvet and gold in their harness. Gentlemen in short cloaks and Venetian hose bustled about among the knights, and here and there from the stables, and withdrawing sheds outside the lists, great armoured figures came, the sun shining upon their plates--russet-coloured, fluted, damascened with gold in a hundred points of fire.

Nothing could be more splendid, as the trumpeters advanced into the lists, and the fierce fanfaronade snarled up to the sky. The Garter King-at-arms in his tabard, mounted on a white horse with gold housings, rode out into the centre of the yard, and behind him, though on foot, were Blue-mantle and Rouge-dragon.

The afternoon air was full of martial noise, the clank of metal, the brazen notes of horns, the stir and murmur of a great company.

To Johnnie it seemed that he did not know the shadow from the substance.

It all pa.s.sed before him in a series of coloured pictures, unreal and far away. Had he been down there among the knights and lords, he felt that he would but have fought with shadows. It was as though a weird seizure had taken hold on him, a waking dream enmeshed him in its drowsy impalpable net, so that on a sudden, in the midst of men and day, while he walked and talked and stood as ever before, he yet seemed to move among a world of ghosts, to feel himself the shadow of a dream. Once when Sir Charles Paston Cooper, a very clever rider at the swinging ring, and also doughty in full shock of combat, had borne down his adversary, the Queen clapped her hands.

"Habet!" she cried, like any Roman empress, excited and glad, because young Sir Charles was a very strong adherent of the Crown, and known to be bitterly opposed to the pretensions of the Lady Elizabeth. "Habet!"

the Queen cried again, with a shriek of delight.

She looked at her husband, whose head was a little bent, whose sallow face was lost in thought. She did not venture to disturb his reverie, but glanced behind him and above his chair to where John Commendone was standing.

"C'est bien fait, n'est-ce pas, Monsieur?" she said in French.

The young man's face, also, was frozen into immobility. It did not waken to the Queen's joyous exclamation. The eyes were turned inwards, he was hearing nothing of it all.

Her Grace's face flushed a little. She said no more, but wondered exceedingly.

The stately display-at-arms went on. The sun declined towards his western bower, and blue shadows crept slowly over the sand.

A little chill wind arose suddenly, and as it did so, Commendone awoke.

Everything flashed back to him. In the instant that it did so, and the dreaming of his mind was blown away, the curtain before his subconscious intelligence rolled up and showed him the real world. The first thing he saw was the head of King Philip just below him. The tall conical felt hat moved suddenly, leaning downwards towards a corner of the arena just below the Royal box.

Johnnie saw the King's profile, the lean, sallow jowl, the corner of the curved, tired, and haughty lip--the small eye suddenly lit up.

Following the King's glance, he saw below the figure of Sir John Shelton, dressed very quietly in ordinary riding costume, and by the side of the knight, Torrome, the valet of His Highness.

Both men nodded, and the King slightly inclined his head in reply.

Then His Highness leant back in his chair, and a little hissing noise, a sigh of relief or pleasure, came from his lips.

Immediately he turned to the Queen, placed one hand upon her jewelled glove, and began to speak with singular animation and brightness.

The Queen changed in a moment. The la.s.situde and disappointment went from her face in a flash. She turned to her husband, radiant and happy, and once more her face became beautiful.

It was the last time that John Commendone ever saw the face of Queen Mary. In after years he preferred always to think of her as he saw her then.

The tourney was over. Everybody had left the tilting yard and its vicinity, save only the farriers, the armour smiths, and grooms.