against the blue sky, though sometimes in a gust it cracked like a huge
whip, and its shadow, where it fell upon the terrace, was sufficient to
cover four men.

To take away from the grimness of the flat walls many little banners had
been suspended from loopholes and beneath windows. Swallow-tailed, long,
or square, they hung motionless in the shelter, or, since the dying away
of the great gale three days before, had looped themselves over their
staffs. These were all painted green, because that was the Queen's
favourite colour, being the emblem of Hope.

A little pavilion, all of green silk, at the very edge of the platform,
had all its green curtains looped up, so that only the green roof
showed; and, within, two chairs, a great leathern one for the King, a
little one of red and white wood for the Queen, stood side by side as if
they conversed with each other. At the top of it was a golden image of a
lion, and above the peak of the entrance another, golden too, of the
Goddess Flora, carrying a cornucopia of flowers, to symbolise that this
tent was a summer abode for pleasantness.

Here the King and Queen, for the four days that they had been in the
castle, had delighted much to sit, resting after their long ride up from
the south country. For it pleased Henry to let his eyes rest upon a
great view of this realm that was his, and to think nothing; and it
pleased Katharine Howard to think that now she swayed this land, and
that soon she would alter its face.

They looked out, over the tops of the elm trees that grew right up
against the terrace wall; but the land itself was too green, the fields
too empty of dwellings. There was no one but sheep between all the
hedgerows: there was, in all the wide view, but one church tower, and
where, in place and place, there stood clusters of trees as if to
shelter homesteads--nearly always the homesteads had fallen to ruin
beneath the boughs. Upon one ridge one could see the long walls of an
unroofed abbey. But, to the keenest eye no men were visible, save now
and then a shepherd leaning on his crook. There was no ploughland at
all. Now and then companies of men in helmets and armour rode up to or
away from the castle. Once she had seen the courtyard within the keep
filled with cattle that lowed uneasily. But these, she had learned, had
been taken from cattle thieves by the men of the Council of the Northern
Borders. They were destined for the provisioning of that castle during