CHAPTER XXII
Our sovereign lord the king, Whose word no man relies on; He never said a foolish thing, And never did a wise one.
The king's private apartments in his ramshackle, patched-together, wandering old hunting-lodge, presented a vastly different scene from the like sacred precincts by courtesy misnamed "private" at Whitehall. There up to his bed-rails all was buzz and bustle; here in Newmarket his love of ease, and his good-will and pleasure, were so far consulted and respected that the swarm of courtly hangers-on was kept at bay by those velvet hangings; and Lee heard not a sound in the corridor they had entered but the rustling of the ladies' gowns and the echo of his own footfall.
Pausing before a door about midway along the right-hand wall of the corridor, and which bore on its heavy ebony panels the gilded royal cognizance and initials, the queen pushed it open with her own hand, and, followed by her companions, entered the apartment beyond. It was an oblong chamber, sparsely lighted at its further end by a couple of tall windows, in whose deep recesses some half-dozen lackeys were yawningly watching what might be going on in the courtyard below. At sight, however, of the queen they hurried into rank, and proceeded to throw open with much ceremony another double door, which brought them into a room, or rather vestibule of circular form, panelled with looking-glass deeply sunken in heavy gilded scrollwork, and which reflected in ghastly distorted fashion the gaudy elephantine ugliness of the crimson silk and ormolu furniture of the latest French fashion, ranged formally round the windowless walls; for the light of heaven only found its way into this dreary apartment through the blue and orange-coloured panes of a skylight let into the centre of its painted domed roof.
[Sidenote: The King's chambers.]
Here the queen paused; and having with a gesture dismissed the lackeys, and desired her ladies to await her return, she passed on alone with Lawrence Lee into a long straight corridor, richly carpeted and lighted by bull's-eye windows of coloured glass not larger than those of a ship's cabin. The silence and tortuous ways of the place oppressed Lee's senses like a nightmare dream; and he began to think that a guide through its dim passages was not altogether a mere courtly superfluity, but rather a thing of absolute necessity. "I'd sooner undertake to be finding my way for the first time through our hornbeam maze at home than in and out of all these crinkum-crankums," thought he; "and if this be your King Charles's merry court, give me the Nether Hall kitchen."
[Sidenote: Under the royal eye.]
A silvery peal of merriment, that rippled like dancing water on the sonorous laughter of men's voices, dispelled Lee's too hastily formed conclusions. He glanced at the queen. Was it his fancy? or did a shadow momentarily darken the composure of her face as she lifted the gorgeously embroidered Indian silk hangings before which they now stood, and with a sign to Lee to keep close, stepped over the threshold of a low-ceiled but spacious chamber, whose wainscot of ebonized wood was enriched with paintings, and gilded carved reliefs of fruit and flowers entwining emblems of the chase. Here at all events was no lack of life; for the apartment was thronged with persons of both sexes, and all so engrossed in talk and merriment that they did not observe the entrance of the queen, until it was marked by the quick glance of one pair of eyes, which all the others had a trick of following, despite their seeming carelessness. The expression in the face of the owner of these eyes, who was seated near the fire which burned upon the hearth curiously built into one of the corners of the room, soon brought to their senses the merry company nearest the door; and, subsiding into a decorous gravity, they fell apart into a sort of double thickset hedgeway of feathers and furbelows reaching clear up to the stone-canopied fireplace, whose logs, burning brilliantly between the brazen dogs, cast their light upon the swarthy countenance of King Charles the Second, where he sat leaning carelessly back in a tall carved elbow-chair, attired in a hunting suit of darkest olive velvet.
"Your majesty is astir betimes this morning," he said, rising a little hurriedly, and addressing the queen in tones which were not wanting in courtesy, if they might be in cordiality. "You have been to church?" he added, glancing at the little book in her hand.
The queen bowed her head. "'Tis the feast of my patron saint, Catharine, your majesty will remember," she said.
"Odds fish!" ejaculated Charles, vexedly cud gelling his brows, for he had in no wise remembered; and a flush of something like compunction crossed his swarthy features. "You have our hearty wishes, Catharine, for its many happy returns."
A lightless smile curved the queen's lips as she acknowledged with a deep inclination of her head the chorus of voices endorsing this tardy felicitation.
[Sidenote: The King's breakfast.]
"And now," continued Charles with a gesture of his hand towards the breakfast tables, glittering in their costly confusion, while his eyes travelled rather regretfully down over his long buff riding-boots, "does not your majesty propose to stay and breakfast with us? It is true--"
"That you have breakfasted," interrupted the queen with another faint smile. "Nay, I take it my absence will be more esteemed. Oh! no protests, gentlemen," she went on, lifting her hand as the polite chorus was repeated, "for I perceive, as to be sure I only anticipated, that you are all booted and spurred for your day's pleasure. And I had no intention of coming here to--to spoil it. But on my way from chapel this young gentleman--" and she made a motion towards Lawrence Lee--"a supplicant for a word with your majesty,--crossed it. And though some of your majesty's people would have denied him, his business--"
"Business!" groaned the king, sinking down again into his chair with a cavernous yawn.
"Was urgent, he said."
"We have no leisure for it;" and Charles's black brows knitted with angry impatience. "Let him carry it to Whitehall."
"He says," persisted Catharine, "that it concerns your majesty personally."
"Then its standing over can give the less offence. If we alone are concerned--"
[Sidenote: Lawrence speaks out.]
"We!" cried Lee, breaking to the front and sending all ceremony to the winds, and his bashfulness after it. "We! 'Tis there all the whole matter lies. 'Tis just because your majesty is 'We,' and never can be 'I.' The King is England, and England is the King!"
Charles's brow relaxed into an expression of amused curiosity at the earnestness of the speaker. "Your sentiments are loyal at all events," he said, as his dark eyes considered the young man's appearance from beneath their heavy lids. "Are we to feel assured that your heart is no traitor to them?"
Lee blushed. "'Tis my heart," he replied, "that bids me entreat your majesty to hear me."
"And a sweet heart I think it must be, by my faith, and your red cheeks," merrily laughed the king. "And a brave honest meaning one, I will not doubt. But we have seen too many shadows and mumbo-jumbos in our life, to be afraid of them. And," continued the king, glancing round at the company, all ready equipped for their expedition, "we are detaining these gentlemen, and the ladies too, from their pleasure."
"They could be spared," hopefully said Lee, who desired nothing better than to speak alone with the king.
[Sidenote: Suspicion.]
"But it is suspicious indeed--this!" cried a beautiful Frenchified-looking lady, coming close up beside Charles, and darting angry glances on the young farmer from her brilliant eyes. "His majesty loves not so well tête-à-têtes with persons of your condition," she added in haughty tones.
"He might hold them with less honest folks, madam," returned the queen still more haughtily. "And he asks not your leave, I doubt, to speak with his own English-born subjects."
"Come, come!" said the king, as the lady at his side poutingly drew a step back; "this grows troublesome. What is the bottom of your business with us, my good friend?"
"Treason!" curtly answered Lawrence.
"Soho! And assassination to follow--eh? The old parrot screech," he went on, as Lee nodded. "Some new plot to rid the world of our sacred presence. Is that it?"
"And of his Grace of York's, your majesty's august brother."
"Why, that of course," laughed Charles, casting a mischievous glance at a sombre-browed gentleman seated near his own chair; "for to a dead certainty no man in England would take my life to make thee king, James."
"Then," said the duke, accepting his brother's jest with a sullen smile, "if this young man is to be trusted--"
"Ay, ay, IF," chorused several of the impatient company. "There your grace hits the bull's-eye. IF."
"We are both doomed men," imperturbably concluded the duke. "And when," he added, addressing Lee, "is this to be?"
"Ten days hence. On your return from this place."
[Sidenote: Charles wakes up.]
"Ods-fish! So they would take us red hot in our pleasures, would they? The scurvy crew! and where, prithee?" demanded Charles.
"Near by Hoddesdon. Over against the Rye House."
"The Rye House! Is not that how they call the ancient moated place that looks upon Master Izaak Walton's favourite old hostelry on the banks of the Lea?"
"The same, your majesty."
"And belongs, if we mistake not, to one Rum--Rum--"
"--bold. Richard Rumbold, a maltster."
"Ay; a prick-eared, Puritan-looking, malignant of a fellow, your majesty," interposed a twinkling-eyed gentleman, "who owns 'one daughter, passing fair,' as the dull old person does in the dull old play we all went to sleep over, a week or two since. Yes, yes; I remember her charming face well, and how the old curmudgeon came and dragged her in, sans cérémonie, from the little postern in the big red wall, where she was standing as pretty a framed picture as Lely or Sir Godfrey might make, to see your majesty's coach pass by. I' faith! I recall her well."
"And your memory on such points is a proverb, my Lord of Dorset," laughed the king; "but in truth I remember myself thinking the picture so exquisite, that I intended asking who she was of the good hostess of the King's Arms, one Mistress--Mistress--"
[Sidenote: A slip in a name.]
"Sheppard," prompted Lee.
"Ay, Sheppard, to be sure. A murrain befall me for forgetting the name of one who always professes such loyalty. Professes, friend," added the king in a significant tone.
"'Tis but the expression of what her heart feels," replied Lawrence warmly. "Mistress Sheppard is as loyal as the sign that hangs before her door. Though for Master Sheppard--h'm, well, 'tis no matter," and Lawrence came to a dead halt.
"We like not half-told tales, friend," sternly said the duke. "What of this fellow Sheppard?"
"Nothing, I assure you, sir--my lord--your highness," floundered Lee. "Nothing. He is a man of straw, a poor weathercock of a creature a lamb could not fear."
"Then whom the plague are we to fear?" demanded Charles testily.
"Not the old gentleman, I suppose, who fathers the pretty daughter, and hasn't a thought beyond her, and his rye-sacks, and his homily books, if his face goes for anything. Faith! 'twas as sour looking as if't had risen out of his own yeast tubs!" cried the earl.
"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed the company, who made a point of always greeting the very smallest sally of my Lord of Dorset's wit with shouts of laughter.
"Not he, friend?" said the king, who had not failed to remark Lee's silence and slightly confused downcasting of the eyelids during Lord Dorset's speech. "By the by," he went on, still scanning the young man's face and figure with a sort of indolent curiosity, "what may be your name? All this time we have not heard that. Who may you be?"
[Sidenote: A reminder.]
"Lawrence Lee, of the Nether Hall Farm by Hoddesdon," answered Lee proudly. "My father served your majesty's father well. Though, 'tis possible, your majesty may not recall his name."
Short memory on such points, even when such services touched still closer home, and had been rendered to himself, was far from uncommon in Charles. Notwithstanding, his dark eyes kindled genially as he continued to look at the young man, and the bantering smile grew softer. "And Nether Hall," he said, "neighbours the house of Master Rum--Rum--how the plague did the fellow come by such a heathenish name?"
"'Tis fortunate," said the irrepressible Earl of Dorset, "that so fair a damsel as his daughter is scarce like to wear it to the end of her days."
"Nay," said the king, holding up a rebukeful finger at the earl, as he noted Lee's flushing cheek, and the ill-pleased gnawing of his nether lip; "that quite clearly concerns not our deciding; for here we have, it seems, a question of treason, and this pretty Mistress--Mistress--"
[Sidenote: Sorry jesting.]
"Ruth," said Lee in a low tone; "Ruth is her Christian name."
"I' faith! and such a sweet one, too, that it covers all the sinning of her father's--"
Lee started. "I said not--"
"You interrupt," smiled the king; "'twould go hard indeed for us all if fair Mistress Ruth should prove traitress."
"Your majesty has not a loyaller heart in all your kingdom than Ruth Rumbold," said Lee, conquering down his agitation.
"Say you so?" merrily returned the king; "then with such fair ladies for our champions, how can we fear the blackest treason in all Hertforshire? Here we have valiant Mistress Sheppard on one side of the road, and the loyal Mistress of the Rye House on the other--"
"Nay, be serious, Charles," frowned the duke, out of all patience at his brother's levity.
"Pah! I cannot," as impatiently returned the king, taking as he spoke a pair of riding-gloves from the table, and beginning to draw them on. "These would-be scares sicken one. 'Tis like the shepherd crying wolf."
"And when the real one came at last--" began the duke.
[Sidenote: The royal pleasure.]
"Ods-fish, man. For pity's sake, let us have no more of this," interrupted the king. "The lad means honestly enough, no doubt. But he has been picking up some ale-house tale, and got a nightmare of it, depend on't. Stay you, my dear brother, if you will, to hear it out. And hark you, when 'tis ended, don't forget to see the lad falls to and picks up a good breakfast for his melancholy entertainment of your grace. Do you propose to accompany us this morning, Catharine?" he continued, turning to the queen.
"If your majesty commands," she answered, in slow almost hesitating tones, and as if her thoughts were elsewhere engaged.
"Nay, not command, Catharine," said the king; "but we do not forget it is your patron saint's day," he added, in tones that conveyed also a strong intimation of his will; "and it is our pleasure."
"And that is mine," said the queen, too well content to hesitate longer.