The Queen's Secret Read Online Free PDF Page B

dogs!’
    As though on cue, a door was flung wide and a huge porter appeared, ducking his head to avoid knocking it against the lintel. The man was eight or nine feet in height, a rough club gripped staunchly in one hand and a rattling bunch of keys in the other. Like the Sibyl’s before him, his costume was of white silk, wrapped about his paunch and barely concealing the comic bulge of his groin. His cheeks were flushed as though he had been drinking, an impression not denied by his ungainly swaying as he stumbled into the circle of torches.
    Was the poor man on stilts?
    The mummer played his part well, lurching towards the Queen with such a convincing roar that half the courtiers at her back scattered with undignified haste, leaving the watching crowd in helpless laughter.
    ‘What stir, what coil is here?’ he demanded, shaking his vast bunch of keys so violently at the crowd, he himself almost went over backwards.
    Again the crowd laughed, partly at the man himself, partly at the old-fashioned language, though the nearest shifted carefully out of his reach. One of her own guards, hurriedly dismounting, took a threatening step towards the porter, but was brought to a halt by Robert’s upraised hand.
    The porter’s voice boomed over their heads, echoing around the outer courtyard. ‘Come back, hold, whither now?’
    Robert came to stand beside her in the fluttering torchlight. Fleetingly, his hand brushed hers, a taunt in his low voice. ‘Afraid, Your Majesty?’
    ‘Of a man on stilts, wrapped up in his own shroud?’
    ‘
A man on stilts
?’ His eyes danced, sharing her sense of the ridiculous. ‘Why, Your Majesty, this is none other than the great Hercules himself, commanded to guard the castle in my absence.’
    ‘But what dainty darling’s here?’ Pointing with his club at Elizabeth, sitting still and erect in the saddle, the porter pretended surprise. ‘O God, a peerless pearl!’
    ‘I am lost,’ she commented to the crowd. ‘He has seen me now.’
    The crowd laughed and pushed closer, elbowing each other and cursing the guards who held them back, their sturdy pikes crossed. Robert, leaning familiarly against the side of her mount, toyed with his own pearl earring as he listened, the smile on his face that of a satisfied cat, his mouse caught and killed. No doubt he thought her half won already, seeing his popularity with the crowd, knowing how this progress would be memorable chiefly for her visit to Kenilworth.
    ‘This is no worldly woman,’ the porter continued, undaunted by the laughter, determined to deliver his lines as written, ‘but a sovereign goddess, surely? Her face, her hand, her eye – her features are all come from heaven, and with such majesty!’
    ‘Did you write this nonsense?’ Elizabeth asked softly.
    ‘Not I,’ Robert protested. ‘The author is John Badger, Your Majesty, a most worthy scholar and Oxford man. I could not stop him. He was insistent that he should play his part in this mummery. Indeed, I fear Master Badger has a certain
liking
for Your Majesty. Though no one can blame him for that.’
    Master Badger had struggled to his knees in the dust now, requiring the help of another man in this effort at dutiful obeisance, and was holding out his club and keys.
    ‘Come, most perfect paragon,’ he proclaimed bravely, ‘pass on with joy and bliss. Most worthy, welcome, goddess guest, whose presence gladdens all. Take here, have here, both club and keys. Myself I yield, these gates and all, submit and seek your shield.’
    Applause echoed about the outer walls as the porter laid down his club and keys, and ordered the gates to be opened in the name of the Queen. As he knelt before her, the white silk costume, thin as a winding sheet, strained ever more tightly about his groin, its bulge obscene.
    Elizabeth looked away while he adjusted himself. One of her ladies-in-waiting sniggered, hurriedly stifling the sound with the back of her hand. It was Lettice, of