THE FAVOR OF KINGS

CHAPTER I

THE QUEEN'S REFUSAL

'PRIL, the deceitful minx, after promising fair weather, was sending gust after gust of rain. With wet, mocking fingers she tapped at the mullioned panes as if to flout the three exasperated young men within, booted and spurred for a ride, who were lounging in the palace hall and roundly reviling the state of things.

"Devil take it!" groaned Norris, with a yawn that eclipsed half well-featured

a

month's a very woman for tears!"

countenance.

“The

"A jilt-like all her sex," pronounced Wyatt, the poet.

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"Will it never have done?" Brereton grumbled, drumming on the leaded glass and staring out over the drenched gardens to the rain shrouded sweep of country beyond.

"An it does, the ways will be muddy," Norris gloomily predicted with a careful thought for his new breeches. Wyatt opened his lips for a scoffing rejoinder, then stopped to listen. He had caught the muffled blare of a trumpet and the distant grinding of heavy doors.

"Hark," said he, “the queen is coming from mass.” Usual as the incident was, it was at least an incident, and in their tedium they paid it a more flattering atten

tion than it generally received. Turning to face the great doors at the end of the hall, they swept off their hats, brushing back some random locks and shaking out a frill or two in preparation. They were three as fine looking young men as you would often see in a row, all between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age; Brereton big and ruddy, with a mane of golden hair the color of the massy gold chain about his neck, Norris lithe and dark, and Wyatt between the two in stature and beyond them both in a distinction of bearing and charm of feature. Youth and gay spirits and a kinship of tastes had made fast comrades of them.

In a few moments the large doors were pushed open, maneuvered by four backward moving little pages, bowing at every step to usher in the procession. Two pages came to a standstill on either side of the entrance while the other two made their crab-like way down the hall to open the opposite doors leading to the queen's apartments. Two trumpeters came next, rending the ears with a roar as they entered the hall, and then appeared the woman for whom all this ceremony took place. She was a thick, middle-aged figure, cumbered with heavy velvet and satin damask. Lacking in the appearance of majesty, lumpy, plain featured, with the scant hair strained baldly back to be hidden under a black velvet cap, she nevertheless managed to express majesty's authority. There was a proud habit of command in the very set of the neck upon her shoulders, in the proud lines of her harsh features, in the arrogance of her eyes. She crossed the hall slowly, awkwardly, her sagging train supported by the two Spanish women who had been her life-long attendants at her alien court.

Two by two followed the English maids of honor, some with faces meekly cast down as if in pious revery, others

bright-eyed and alert, shooting slant beams at the three courtiers. Demure or daring, a visible self-consciousness animated them all as they passed by, all but the youngest maid of honor at the end of the line, who marched in a kind of furious oblivion. She was a slender slip of a girl, of delicate lines and vivid color. High carried head, face pale but for two crimson fires in the cheeks, dark eyes immovably forward, blazing with unguarded emotion such a bearing arrested even young Norris's wandering gaze.

"Look at Mistress Anne," said he in wonder.

Wyatt was already looking. "She is ill-pleased," he diagnosed promptly. As cousin of the girl, he might, on that and other accounts, be considered an authority on her humors. "There is a storm brewing - God send cover to the poor wretch on whom it breaks! Anne hath a dagger behind those red lips of hers. . . . It would seem that the mass brought but scant peace to her soul." Mistress Anne was bent over a letter the great time," volunteered one of the small pages, who, now that the train was past, had sidled over from his post at the door to insinuate himself among the young men.

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"Billet-dour during mass!" sighed the poet in mock dismay. He looked across to the doorway through which flickered the last scarlet gleam of Anne's gown. There is some love mischief afoot I shall give a candle to Our Lady of Good Chances that I am not in Percy of Northumberland's shoes this day."

"Ho!" said Brereton with a grunt of awakened interest. "Is Percy then —"

"My supplanter!" Wyatt laughed - the laugh of a man who turns a resolutely gay face to the world, but there was an edge to the laughter. He had worn his cousin's colors at joust and tourney since her arrival in

England from the court of France, and though he carried off the affair lightly as the customary allegiance of knight to lady, the lightness had sometimes a summoned air. “In faith only the blind can deny it," he proclaimed airily. "Henry Percy hath fallen over heels in love." Brereton, tweaking the curls of the page, who sustained a difficult grin under the attention, looked reflective.

"That Percy hath been contracted to marry Lady Mary Talbot these three years,” he said.

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Wyatt shrugged airily. Aye, three years, and women are not wine to grow dearer through keeping. And the contract, I hear, was none of Percy's making. His father made it let his father look to it."

"You think then that Percy intends-?"

"I think then that Percy intends," Wyatt gayly assented. "I think also that Anne intends, which is the important matter, and that my small cousin will therefore be Countess of Northumberland some fine day. I must be choosing my rhymes for the occasion."

The girl of whom he prophesied so securely had entered the chamber of the queen. It was a long, somber apartment, hung with tapestries between the panelings of carved oak, and lighted by small windows, near whose leaded panes were placed the embroidery frames where the ladies in waiting were already setting to work. Time hung heavily for young spirits in this chamber where King Henry and his gay retinue rarely entered; the days were dull repetitions of devotion and needle work and the only hint of amusement was the evening play of cards and a snatched gossip with the suite of those who came to pay their respects to the queen.

Catherine was seated before her embroidery frame