, or
splendid guards patrolling at his heels wherever he went, or obsequious
ushers bowing to the floor at every turn, and asking him what he might
be pleased to wish. And by the time night fell and the attendant came to
light them to their beds, he felt like a fly on the rim of a wheel that
went so fast he could scarcely get his breath or see what passed him by,
yet of which he durst not let go.

The palace was much too much for him.

CHAPTER XXVIII

CHRISTMAS WITH QUEEN BESS

Christmas morning came and went as if on swallow-wings, in a gale of
royal merriment. Four hundred sat to dinner that day in Greenwich halls,
and all the palace streamed with banners and green garlands.

Within the courtyard two hundred horses neighed and stamped around a
water-fountain playing in a bowl of ice and evergreen. Grooms and pages,
hostlers and dames, went hurry-scurrying to and fro; cooks, bakers, and
scullions steamed about, leaving hot, mouth-watering streaks of
fragrance in the air; bluff men-at-arms went whistling here and there;
and serving-maids with rosy cheeks ran breathlessly up and down the
winding stairways.

The palace stirred like a mighty pot that boils to its utmost verge, for
the hour of the revelries was come.

Over the beech-wood and far across the black heath where Jack Cade
marshaled the men of Kent, the wind trembled with the boom of the castle
bell. Within the walls of the palace its clang was muffled by a sound of
voices that rose and fell like the wind upon the sea.

The ambassadors of Venice and France were there, with their courtly
trains. The Lord High Constable of England was come to sit below the
Queen. The earls, too, of Southampton, Montgomery, Pembroke, and
Huntington were there; and William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, the Queen's
High Treasurer, to smooth his care-lined forehead with a Yuletide jest.

Up from the entry ports came shouts of "Room! room! room for my Lord
Strange! Room for the Duke of Devonshire!" and about the outer gates
there was a tumult like the cheering of a great crowd.

The palace corridors were lined with guards. Gentlemen pensioners under
arms went flashing to and fro. Now and then through the inner throng
some handsome page with wind-blown hair and rainbow-colored cloak pushed
to the great door, calling: "Way, sirs, way for my Lord--way for my Lady
of Alderstone!" and one by one, or in blithe groups, the courtiers, clad
in silks and satins, velvets, jewels, and l