You loggerheaded and unpolish’d grooms,
What, no attendance, no regard, no duty?
Where is the foolish knave I sent before?
Taming of the Shrew.
There is no period at which men look worse in the eyes of each other, or feel more uncomfortable, than when the first dawn of daylight finds them watchers. Even a beauty of the first order, after the vigils of a ball are interrupted by the dawn, would do wisely to withdraw herself from the gaze of her fondest and most partial admirers. Such was the pale, inauspicious, and ungrateful light which began to beam upon those who kept watch all night in the hall at Sayes Court, and which mingled its cold, pale, blue diffusion with the red, yellow, and smoky beams of expiring lamps and torches. The young gallant, whom we noticed in our last chapter, had left the room for a few minutes, to learn the cause of a knocking at the outward gate, and on his return was so struck with the forlorn and ghastly aspects of his companions of the watch that he exclaimed, “Pity of my heart, my masters, how like owls you look! Methinks, when the sun rises, I shall see you flutter off with your eyes dazzled, to stick yourselves into the next ivy-tod or ruined steeple.”
“Hold thy peace, thou gibing fool,” said Blount; “hold thy peace.
Is this a time for jeering, when the manhood of England is perchance dying within a wall’s breadth of thee?”
“There thou liest,” replied the gallant.
“How, lie!” exclaimed Blount, starting up, “lie! and to me?”
“Why, so thou didst, thou peevish fool,” answered the youth; “thou didst lie on that bench even now, didst thou not? But art thou not a hasty coxcomb to pick up a wry word so wrathfully? Nevertheless, loving and, honouring my lord as truly as thou, or any one, I do say that, should Heaven take him from us, all England’s manhood dies not with him.”
“Ay,” replied Blount, “a good portion will survive with thee, doubtless.”
“And a good portion with thyself, Blount, and with stout Markham here, and Tracy, and all of us. But I am he will best employ the talent Heaven has given to us all.”
“As how, I prithee?” said Blount; “tell us your mystery of multiplying.”
“Why, sirs,” answered the youth, “ye are like goodly land, which bears no crop because it is not quickened by manure; but I have that rising spirit in me which will make my poor faculties labour to keep pace with it. My ambition will keep my brain at work, I warrant thee.”
“I pray to God it does not drive thee mad,” said Blount; “for my part, if we lose our noble lord, I bid adieu to the court and to the camp both. I have five hundred foul acres in Norfolk, and thither will I, and change the court pantoufle for the country hobnail.”
“O base transmutation!” exclaimed his antagonist; “thou hast already got the true rustic slouch — thy shoulders stoop, as if thine hands were at the stilts of the plough; and thou hast a kind of earthy smell about thee, instead of being perfumed with essence, as a gallant and courtier should. On my soul, thou hast stolen out to roll thyself on a hay mow! Thy only excuse will be to swear by thy hilts that the farmer had a fair daughter.”
“I pray thee, Walter,” said another of the company, “cease thy raillery, which suits neither time nor place, and tell us who was at the gate just now.”
“Doctor Masters, physician to her Grace in ordinary, sent by her especial orders to inquire after the Earl’s health,” answered Walter.
“Ha! what?” exclaimed Tracy; “that was no slight mark of favour. If the Earl can but come through, he will match with Leicester yet. Is Masters with my lord at present?”
“Nay,” replied Walter, “he is half way back to Greenwich by this time, and in high dudgeon.”
“Thou didst not refuse him admittance?” exclaimed Tracy.
“Thou wert not, surely, so mad?” ejaculated Blount.
“I refused him admittance as flatly, Blount, as you would refuse a penny to a blind beggar — as obstinately, Tracy, as thou didst ever deny access to a dun.”
“Why, in the fiend’s name, didst thou trust him to go to the gate?” said Blount to Tracy.
“It suited his years better than mine,” answered Tracy; “but he has undone us all now thoroughly. My lord may live or die, he will never have a look of favour from her Majesty again.”
“Nor the means of making fortunes for his followers,” said the young gallant, smiling contemptuously;—“there lies the sore point that will brook no handling. My good sirs, I sounded my lamentations over my lord somewhat less loudly than some of you; but when the point comes of doing him service, I will yield to none of you. Had this learned leech entered, think’st thou not there had been such a coil betwixt him and Tressilian’s mediciner, that not the sleeper only, but the very dead might have awakened? I know what larurm belongs to the discord of doctors.”
“And who is to take the blame of opposing the Queen’s orders?” said Tracy; “for, undeniably, Doctor Masters came with her Grace’s positive commands to cure the Earl.”
“I, who have done the wrong, will bear the blame,” said Walter.
“Thus, then, off fly the dreams of court favour thou hast nourished,” said Blount, “and despite all thy boasted art and ambition, Devonshire will see thee shine a true younger brother, fit to sit low at the board, carve turn about with the chaplain, look that the hounds be fed, and see the squire’s girths drawn when he goes a-hunting.”
“Not so,” said the young man, colouring, “not while Ireland and the Netherlands have wars, and not while the sea hath pathless waves. The rich West hath lands undreamed of, and Britain contains bold hearts to venture on the quest of them. Adieu for a space, my masters. I go to walk in the court and look to the sentinels.”
“The lad hath quicksilver in his veins, that is certain,” said Blount, looking at Markham.
“He hath that both in brain and blood,” said Markham, “which may either make or mar him. But in closing the door against Masters, he hath done a daring and loving piece of service; for Tressilian’s fellow hath ever averred that to wake the Earl were death, and Masters would wake the Seven Sleepers themselves, if he thought they slept not by the regular ordinance of medicine.”
Morning was well advanced when Tressilian, fatigued and over-watched, came down to the hall with the joyful intelligence that the Earl had awakened of himself, that he found his internal complaints much mitigated, and spoke with a cheerfulness, and looked round with a vivacity, which of themselves showed a material and favourable change had taken place. Tressilian at the same time commanded the attendance of one or two of his followers, to report what had passed during the night, and to relieve the watchers in the Earl’s chamber.
When the message of the Queen was communicated to the Earl of Sussex, he at first smiled at the repulse which the physician had received from his zealous young follower; but instantly recollecting himself, he commanded Blount, his master of the horse, instantly to take boat, and go down the river to the Palace of Greenwich, taking young Walter and Tracy with him, and make a suitable compliment, expressing his grateful thanks to his Sovereign, and mentioning the cause why he had not been enabled to profit by the assistance of the wise and learned Doctor Masters.
“A plague on it!” said Blount, as he descended the stairs; “had he sent me with a cartel to Leicester I think I should have done his errand indifferently well. But to go to our gracious Sovereign, before whom all words must be lacquered over either with gilding or with sugar, is such a confectionary matter as clean baffles my poor old English brain.— Come with me, Tracy, and come you too, Master Walter Wittypate, that art the cause of our having all this ado. Let us see if thy neat brain, that frames so many flashy fireworks, can help out a plain fellow at need with some of thy shrewd devices.”
“Never fear, never fear,” exclaimed the youth, “it is I will help you through; let me but fetch my cloak.”
“Why, thou hast it on thy shoulders,” said Blount,—“the lad is mazed,”
“No, No, this is Tracy’s old mantle,” answered Walter. “I go not with thee to court unless as a gentleman should.”
“Why,” Said Blount, “thy braveries are like to dazzle the eyes of none but some poor groom or porter.”
“I know that,” said the youth; “but I am resolved I will have my own cloak, ay, and brush my doublet to boot, ere I stir forth with you.”
“Well, well,” said Blount, “here is a coil about a doublet and a cloak. Get thyself ready, a God’s name!”
They were soon launched on the princely bosom of the broad Thames, upon which the sun now shone forth in all its splendour.
“There are two things scarce matched in the universe,” said Walter to Blount —“the sun in heaven, and the Thames on the earth.”
“The one will light us to Greenwich well enough,” said Blount, “and the other would take us there a little faster if it were ebb-tide.”
“And this is all thou thinkest — all thou carest — all thou deemest the use of the King of Elements and the King of Rivers — to guide three such poor caitiffs as thyself, and me, and Tracy, upon an idle journey of courtly ceremony!”
“It is no errand of my seeking, faith,” replied Blount, “and I could excuse both the sun and the Thames the trouble of carrying me where I have no great mind to go, and where I expect but dog’s wages for my trouble — and by my honour,” he added, looking out from the head of the boat, “it seems to me as if our message were a sort of labour in vain, for, see, the Queen’s barge lies at the stairs as if her Majesty were about to take water.”
It was even so. The royal barge, manned with the Queen’s watermen richly attired in the regal liveries, and having the Banner of England displayed, did indeed lie at the great stairs which ascended from the river, and along with it two or three other boats for transporting such part of her retinue as were not in immediate attendance on the royal person. The yeomen of the guard, the tallest and most handsome men whom England could produce, guarded with their halberds the passage from the palace-gate to the river side, and all seemed in readiness for the Queen’s coming forth, although the day was yet so early.
“By my faith, this bodes us no good,” said Blount; “it must be some perilous cause puts her Grace in motion thus untimeously, By my counsel, we were best put back again, and tell the Earl what we have seen.”
“Tell the Earl what we have seen!” said Walter; “why what have we seen but a boat, and men with scarlet jerkins, and halberds in their hands? Let us do his errand, and tell him what the Queen says in reply.”
So saying, he caused the boat to be pulled towards a landing-place at some distance from the principal one, which it would not, at that moment, have been thought respectful to approach, and jumped on shore, followed, though with reluctance, by his cautious and timid companions. As they approached the gate of the palace, one of the sergeant porters told them they could not at present enter, as her Majesty was in the act of coming forth. The gentlemen used the name of the Earl of Sussex; but it proved no charm to subdue the officer, who alleged, in reply, that it was as much as his post was worth to disobey in the least tittle the commands which he had received.
“Nay, I told you as much before,” said Blount; “do, I pray you, my dear Walter, let us take boat and return.”
“Not till I see the Queen come forth,” returned the youth composedly.
“Thou art mad, stark mad, by the Mass!” answered Blount.
“And thou,” said Walter, “art turned coward of the sudden. I have seen thee face half a score of shag-headed Irish kerns to thy own share of them; and now thou wouldst blink and go back to shun the frown of a fair lady!”
At this moment the gates opened, and ushers began to issue forth in array, preceded and flanked by the band of Gentlemen Pensioners. After this, amid a crowd of lords and ladies, yet so disposed around her that she could see and be seen on all sides, came Elizabeth herself, then in the prime of womanhood, and in the full glow of what in a Sovereign was called beauty, and who would in the lowest rank of life have been truly judged a noble figure, joined to a striking and commanding physiognomy. She leant on the arm of Lord Hunsdon, whose relation to her by her mother’s side often procured him such distinguished marks of Elizabeth’s intimacy.
The young cavalier we have so often mentioned had probably never yet approached so near the person of his Sovereign, and he pressed forward as far as the line of warders permitted, in order to avail himself of the present opportunity. His companion, on the contrary, cursing his imprudence, kept pulling him backwards, till Walter shook him off impatiently, and letting his rich cloak drop carelessly from one shoulder; a natural action, which served, however, to display to the best advantage his well-proportioned person. Unbonneting at the same time, he fixed his eager gaze on the Queen’s approach, with a mixture of respectful curiosity and modest yet ardent admiration, which suited so well with his fine features that the warders, struck with his rich attire and noble countenance, suffered him to approach the ground over which the Queen was to pass, somewhat closer than was permitted to ordinary spectators. Thus the adventurous youth stood full in Elizabeth’s eye — an eye never indifferent to the admiration which she deservedly excited among her subjects, or to the fair proportions of external form which chanced to distinguish any of her courtiers.
Accordingly, she fixed her keen glance on the youth, as she approached the place where he stood, with a look in which surprise at his boldness seemed to be unmingled with resentment, while a trifling accident happened which attracted her attention towards him yet more strongly. The night had been rainy, and just where the young gentleman stood a small quantity of mud interrupted the Queen’s passage. As she hesitated to pass on, the gallant, throwing his cloak from his shoulders, laid it on the miry spot, so as to ensure her stepping over it dry-shod. Elizabeth looked at the young man, who accompanied this act of devoted courtesy with a profound reverence, and a blush that overspread his whole countenance. The Queen was confused, and blushed in her turn, nodded her head, hastily passed on, and embarked in her barge without saying a word.
“Come along, Sir Coxcomb,” said Blount; “your gay cloak will need the brush today, I wot. Nay, if you had meant to make a footcloth of your mantle, better have kept Tracy’s old drab-de-bure, which despises all colours.”
“This cloak,” said the youth, taking it up and folding it, “shall never be brushed while in my possession.”
“And that will not be long, if you learn not a little more economy; we shall have you in cuerpo soon, as the Spaniard says.”
Their discourse was here interrupted by one of the band of Pensioners.
“I was sent,” said he, after looking at them attentively, “to a gentleman who hath no cloak, or a muddy one.— You, sir, I think,” addressing the younger cavalier, “are the man; you will please to follow me.”
“He is in attendance on me,” said Blount —“on me, the noble Earl of Sussex’s master of horse.”
“I have nothing to say to that,” answered the messenger; “my orders are directly from her Majesty, and concern this gentleman only.”
So saying, he walked away, followed by Walter, leaving the others behind, Blount’s eyes almost starting from his head with the excess of his astonishment. At length he gave vent to it in an exclamation, “Who the good jere would have thought this!” And shaking his head with a mysterious air, he walked to his own boat, embarked, and returned to Deptford.
The young cavalier was in the meanwhile guided to the water-side by the Pensioner, who showed him considerable respect; a circumstance which, to persons in his situation, may be considered as an augury of no small consequence. He ushered him into one of the wherries which lay ready to attend the Queen’s barge, which was already proceeding; up the river, with the advantage of that flood-tide of which, in the course of their descent, Blount had complained to his associates.
The two rowers used their oars with such expedition at the signal of the Gentleman Pensioner, that they very soon brought their little skiff under the stern of the Queen’s boat, where she sat beneath an awning, attended by two or three ladies, and the nobles of her household. She looked more than once at the wherry in which the young adventurer was seated, spoke to those around her, and seemed to laugh. At length one of the attendants, by the Queen’s ............