Elizabeth leaned back in her chair and laughed. The Lord High Constable hastily finished the laugh that he had hidden in his hand. Everybody laughed. "Upon my word," said the Queen, "it is an odd skylark cannot sleep in feathers! What didst thou do, forsooth?"

"I slept in the coverlid on the floor," said Nick. "It was na hurt,--I dusted the place well,--and I slept like a top."

"Now verily," laughed Elizabeth, "if it be floors that thou dost desire, we have acres to spare--thou shalt have thy pick of the lot. Come, we are ill used to begging people to be favored--thou'lt stay?"

Nick shook his head.

"_Ma foi!"_ exclaimed the Queen, "it is a queer fancy makes a face at such a pleasant dwelling! What is it sticks in thy throat?"

Nick stood silent. What was there to say? If he came here he never would see Stratford town again; and _this_ was no abiding-place for him. They would not even let him go to the fountain himself to draw water with which to wash, but fetched it, three at a time, in a silver ewer and a copper basin with towels and a flask of perfume.

Elizabeth was tapping with her fan. "Thou art be-dazzled like," she said. "Think twice--preferment does not gooseberry on the hedge-row every day; and this is a rare chance which hangs ripening on thy tongue.

Consider well. Come, thou wilt accept?"

Nick slowly shook his head.

"Go then, if thou wilt go!" said she; and as she spoke she shrugged her shoulders, illy pleased, and turning toward Colley, took him by the hand and drew him closer to her, smiling at his guise. "Thy comrade hath more wit."

"He hath no mother," Nick said quietly, loosing his hold at last on Colley's hand. "I would rather have my mother than his wit."

Elizabeth turned sharply back. Her keen eyes were sparkling, yet soft.

"Thou art no fool," said she.

A little murmur ran through the room.

She sat a moment, silent, studying his face. "Or if thou art, upon my word I like the breed. It is a stubborn, froward dog; but Hold-fast is his name. Ay, sirs," she said, and sat up very straight, looking into the faces of her court, "Brag is a good dog, but Hold-fast is better. A lad who loves his mother thus makes a man who loveth his native land--and it's no bad streak in the blood. Master Skylark, thou shalt have thy wish; to London thou shalt go this very night."

"I do na live in London," Nick began.

"What matters the place?" said she. "Live wheresoever thine heart doth please. It is enough--so. Thou mayst kiss our hand." She held her hand out, bright with jewels. He knelt and kissed it as if it were all a doing in a dream, or in some unlikely story he had read. But a long while after he could smell the perfume from her slender fingers on his lips.

Then a page standing by him touched his arm as he arose, and bowing backward from the throne, came with him to the curtain and the rest. Old Master Gyles was standing there apart. It was too dark to see his face, but he laid his hand upon Nick's head.

"Thy cake is burned to a coal," said he.

CHAPTER XXIX

BACK TO GASTON CAREW

So they marched back out of the palace gates, down to the landing-place, the last red sunlight gleaming on the basinets of the tall halberdiers who marched on either side.

Nick looked out toward London, where the river lay like a serpent, bristling with masts; and beyond the river and the town to the forests of Epping and Hainault; and beyond the forests to the hills, where the waning day still lingered in a mist of frosty blue. At their back, midway of the Queen's park, stood up the old square tower Mirefleur, and on its top one yellow light like the flame of a gigantic candle. The day seemed builded of memories strange and untrue.

A belated gull flapped by them heavily, and the red sun went down.

England was growing lonely. A great barge laden with straw came out of the dusk, and was gone without a sound, its ghostly sail drawing in a wind that the wherry sat too low to feel. Nick held his breath as the barge went by: it was unreal, fantastical.

Then the river dropped between its banks, and the woods and the hills were gone. The tide ran heavily against the sh.o.r.e, and the wake of the wherry broke the floating stars into cold white streaks and zigzag ripplings of raveled light that ran unsteadily after them. The craft at anchor in the Pool had swung about upon the flow, and pointed down to Greenwich. A hush had fallen upon the never-ending bustle of the town; and the air was full of a gray, uncanny afterglow which seemed to come up out of the water, for the sky was grown quite dark.

They were all wrapped in their boat-cloaks, tired and silent. Now and then Nick dipped his fingers into the cold water over the gunwale.

This was the end of the glory.

He wished the boat would go a little faster. Yet when they came to the landing he was sorry.

The man-at-arms who went with him to Master Carew's house was one of the Earl of Arundel's men, in a stiff-wadded jacket of heron-blue, with the earls colors richly worked upon its back and his badge upon the sleeves.

Prowlers gave way before him in the streets, for he was broad and tall and mighty, and the fear of any man was not in the look of his eye.

As they came up the slow hill, Nick sighed, for the long-legged man-at-arms walked fast. "What, there!" said he, and clapped Nick on the shoulder with his bony hand; "art far spent, lad? Why, marry, get thee upon my back. I'll jog thee home in the shake of a black sheep's tail."

So Nick rode home upon the back of the Earl of Arundel's man-at-arms; and that, too, seemed a dream like all the rest.

When they came to Master Carew's house the street was dark, and Nick's foot was asleep. He stamped it, tingling, upon the step, and the empty pa.s.sage echoed with the sound. Then the earl's man beat the door with the pommel of his dagger-hilt, and stood with his hands upon his hips, carelessly whistling a little tune.

Nick heard a sound of some one coming through the hall, and felt that at last the day was done. A tired wonder wakened in his heart at how so much had come to pa.s.s in such a little while; yet more he wondered why it had ever come to pa.s.s at all. And what was the worth of it, anyway, now it was over and gone?

Then the door opened, and he went in.

Master Gaston Carew himself had come to the door, walking quickly through the hallway, with a queer, nervous twitching in his face. But when he made out through the dusk that it was Nick, he seemed in no wise moved, and said quite simply, as he gave the man-at-arms a penny: "Oh, is it thou? Why, we have heard somewhat of thee; and upon my word I thought, since thou wert grown so great, thou wouldst come home in a coach-and-four, all blowing horns!"

Nevertheless he drew Nick quickly in, and kissed him thrice; and after he had kissed him kept fast hold of his hand until they came together through the hall into the great room where Cicely was sitting quite dismally in the chimney-seat alone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SO NICK RODE HOME UPON THE BACK OF THE EARL OF ARUNDEL'S MAN-AT-ARMS."]

"There, Nick," said he; "tell her thyself that thou hast come back. She thought she had lost thee for good and all, and hath sung, 'Hey ho, my heart is full of woe!' the whole twilight, and would not be comforted.

Come, Cicely, doff thy doleful willow--the proverb lies. 'Out of sight, out of mind'--fudge! the boy's come back again! A plague take proverbs, anyway!"

But when the children were both long since abed, and all the house was still save for the scamper of rats in the wall, the heavy door of Nick's room opened stealthily, with a little grating upon the uneven sill, and Master Carew stood there, peeping in, his hand upon the bolt outside.

He held a rush-light in the other. Its glimmer fell across the bed upon Nick's tousled hair; and when the master-player saw the boy's head upon the pillow he started eagerly, with brightening eyes. "My soul!" he whispered to himself, a little quaver in his tone, "I would have sworn my own desire lied to me, and that he had not come at all! It cannot be--yet, verily, I am not blind. _Ma foil_ it pa.s.seth understanding--a freed skylark come back to its cage! I thought we had lost him forever."

Nick stirred in his sleep. Carew set the light on the floor. "Thou fool!" said he, and he fumbled at his pouch; "thou dear-beloved little fool! To catch the skirts of glory in thine hand, and tread the heels of happy chance, and yet come back again to ill-starred twilight--and to me! Ai, lad, I would thou wert my son--mine own, own son; yet Heaven spare thee father such as I! For, Nick, I love thee. Yet thou dost hate me like a poison thing. And still I love thee, on my word, and on the remnant of mine honour!" His voice was husky. "Let thee go?--send thee back?--eat my sweet and have it too?--how? Nay, nay; thy happy cake would be my dough--it will not serve." He shook his head, and looked about to see that all was fast. "Yet, Nick, I say I love thee, on my soul!"

Slipping to the bedside with stealthy step, he laid a fat little Banbury cheese and some brown sweet cakes beside Nick's pillow; then came out hurriedly and barred the door.

The fire in the great hall had gone out, and the room was growing cold.

The table stood by the chimney-side, where supper had been laid, Carew brought a napkin from the linen-chest, and spread it upon the board.

Then he went to the server's screen and looked behind it, and tried the latches of the doors; and having thus made sure that all was safe, came back to the table again, and setting the rush-light there, turned the contents of his purse into the napkin.

There were both gold and silver. The silver he put back into the purse again; the gold he counted carefully; and as he counted, laying the pieces one by one in little heaps upon the cloth, he muttered under his breath, like a small boy adding up his sums in school, saying over and over again, "One for me, and one for thee, and two for Cicely Carew. One for me, and one for thee, and two for Cicely Carew"; and told the coins off in keeping with the count, so that the last pile was as large as both the others put together. Then slowly ending, "None for me, and one for thee, and two for Cicely Carew," he laid the last three n.o.bles with the rest.

Then he arose and stood a moment listening to the silence in the house.

An old he rat that was gnawing a rind on the hearth looked up, and ran a little nearer to his hole. "Tsst! come back," said Carew, "I'm no cat!"

and from the sliding panel in the wall took out a buckskin bag tied like a meal-sack with a string.