The young man advanced to the Queen. She held out her left hand, a little shrivelled hand, for him to kiss. He did so, and then, rising, bent over the wonderfully illuminated music book.
The six horizontal lines of the lute notation, each named after a corresponding note of the instrument, were drawn in scarlet. The Arabic numerals which indicated the frets to be used in producing the notes were black and orange, the initial H was a wealth of flat heraldic colour.
"His golden locks time hath to filuer turnde"
the Queen read out in her great masculine voice, – a little subdued now, but still fierce and strong, like the purring of a panther. "What think you of my new book of songs, Mr. Commendone?"
"A beautiful book, Madam, and fit for Your Grace's skill, who hath no rival with the lute."
"'Tis kind of you to say so, Mr. Commendone, but you over compliment me."
She bent her brows together, lost in serious thought for a moment, and drummed with lean fingers upon the table.
Suddenly she looked up and her face cleared.
"I can say truly," she continued, "that I am a very skilled player. For a woman I can fairly put myself in the first rank. But I have met others surpassing me greatly."
She had thought it out with perfect fairness, with an almost pedantic precision. Woman-like, she was pleased with what the young courtier had said, but she weighed truth in grains and scruples – tithe of mint and cummin, the very word and article of bald fact; always her way.
"And here, Mr. Commendone," she continued, "is my new virginal. It hath come from Firenze, and was made by Nicolo Pedrini himself. My Lord Mayor begged Our acceptance of it."
The virginal was a fine instrument – spinet it came to be called in Elizabeth's reign, from the spines or crow-quills which were attached to the "jacks" and plucked at the strings.
The case was made of cypress wood, inlaid with whorls of thin silver and enamels of various colours.
"We were pleased at the Lord Mayor's courtesy," the Queen concluded, and the change in pronoun showed John that the interview was over in its personal sense, and that he had been very highly honoured.
He bowed, with a murmur of assent, and drew aside to the wall of the room, waiting easily there, a fresh and gallant figure, for any further commands.
Nor did it escape him that the Queen had given him a look of prim, but quite marked approval – as an old maid may look upon a handsome and well-mannered boy.
The Queen pressed down the levers of the spinet once or twice, and the thin, sweet chords like the ghost of a harp rang out into the room.
John watched her from the wall.
The divine right of monarchs was a doctrine very firmly implanted in his mind by his upbringing and the time in which he lived. The absolutism of Henry VIII had had an extraordinary influence on public thought.
To a man such as John Commendone the monarch of England was rather more than human.
At the same time his cool and clever brain was busily at work, drinking in details, criticising, appraising, wondering.
The Queen wore a robe of claret-coloured velvet, fringed with gold thread and furred with powdered ermine. Over her rather thin hair, already turning very grey, she wore the simple caul of the period, a head-dress which was half bonnet, half skull-cap, made of cloth of tinsel set with pearls.
Small, lean, sickly, painfully near-sighted, yet with an eye full of fierceness and fire – your true Tudor-tiger eye – she was yet singularly feminine. As she sat there, her face wrinkled by care and evil passions even more than by time, touching the keys of her spinet, picking up a piece of embroidery, and frequently glancing at her husband with quick, hungry looks of fretful and even suspicious affection, she was far more woman than queen.
The great booming voice which terrified strong men, coming from this frail and sinister figure, was silent now. There was pathos even in her attitude. A submissive wife of Philip with her woman's gear.
The King of Spain went on writing, coldly, carefully, and with concentrated attention, and John's eyes fell upon him also, his new master, the most powerful man in the world of that day. King of Spain, Naples, Sicily, Duke of Milan, Lord of Franche Comté and the Netherlands, Ruler of Tunis and the Barbary coast, the Canaries, Cape de Verd Islands, Philippines and Spice Islands, the huge West Indian colonies, and the vast territories of Mexico and Peru – an almost unthinkable power was in the hands of this man.
As it all came to him, Johnnie shuddered for a moment. His nerves were tense, his imagination at work, it seemed difficult to breathe the same air as these two super-normal beings in the still, warm chamber.
From outside came the snarling of trumpets, the stir and noise of soldiery – here, warm silence, the scratching of a pen upon parchment, the echo of a voice which rolled like a kettle-drum…
Suddenly the King laid down his pen and rose to his feet, a tall, lean, sombre-faced man in black and gold. He spoke a few words to Father Diego Deza and then went up to the Queen in the window.
The monk went on arranging papers in orderly bundles, and tying some of them with cords of green silk, which he drew from a silver box.
John saw the Queen's face. It lit up and became almost beautiful for a second as Philip approached. Then as husband and wife conversed in low voices, the equerry saw yet another change come over Mary's twitching and expressive countenance. It hardened and froze, the thin lips tightened to a line of dull pink, the eyes grew bitter bright, the head nodded emphatically several times, as if in agreement at something the King was saying.
Then John felt some one touch his arm, and found that the Dominican had come to him noiselessly, and was smiling into his face with a flash of white teeth and steady, watchful eyes.
He started violently and turned his head from the Royal couple in some confusion. He felt as though he had been detected in some breach of manners, of espionage almost.
"Buenos dias, señor, como anda usted?" Don Diego asked in a low voice.
"Thank you, I am very well," Johnnie answered in Spanish.
"Como está su padre?"
"My father is very well also. He has just left me to ride home to Kent," John replied, wondering how in the world this foreign priest knew of the old knight's visit.
It was true, then, what Sir James Clinton had said! He was being carefully watched. Even in the Royal Closet his movements were known.
"A loyal gentleman and a good son of the Church," said the priest, "we have excellent reports of him, and of you also, señor," he concluded, with another smile.
John bowed.
"Los negocios del politica– affairs of state," the chaplain whispered with a half-glance at the couple in the window. "There are great times coming for England, señor. And if you prove yourself a loyal servant and good Catholic, you are destined to go far. His Most Catholic Majesty has need of an English gentleman such as you in his suite, of good birth, of the true religion, with Spanish blood in his veins, and speaking Spanish."
Again the young man bowed. He knew very well that these words were inspired. This suave ecclesiastic was the power behind the throne. He held the King's conscience, was his confessor, more powerful than any great lord or Minister – the secret, unofficial director of world-wide policies.
His heart beat high within him. The prospects opening before him were enough to dazzle the oldest and most experienced courtier; he was upon the threshold of such promotion and intimacies as he, the son of a plain country gentleman, had never dared to hope for.
It had grown very hot; he remarked upon it to the priest, noticing, as he did so, that the room was darker than before.
The air of the closet was heavy and oppressive, and glancing at the windows, he saw that it was no fancy of strained and excited nerves, but that the sky over the river was darkening, and the buildings