water had run under the bridges since he kissed his father farewell in the bright morning light. His whole prospects were altered, and advanced. For one thing, he had been present at an intimate and private conference and had received marked and special favour – he shuddered now as he remembered the four intent faces round the table in the Privy Closet, those sharp faces, with a cruel smirk upon them, those still faces with the orange light playing over them in the dark, tempest-haunted room.
"I' faith," he said to himself, "thou art fairly put to sea, Johnnie! but I will not feed myself with questioning. I am in the service of princes, and must needs do as I am told. Who am I to be squeamish? But hey-ho! I would I were in the park at Commendone to-night."
About eleven o'clock his servant came to him and helped him to change his dress. He wore long riding-boots of Spanish leather, a light corselet of tough steel, inlaid with arabesques of gold, and a big quilted Spanish hat. Over all he fastened a short riding-cloak of supple leather dyed purple. He primed his pistols and gave them to a man to be put into his holsters, and about a quarter before midnight descended the stairs.
He found a man-at-arms with a short pike, already mounted, and his servant leading the other two horses; he walked toward the Coal Harbour Gate, gave the word to the Lieutenant of the Guard, and left the Tower.
A light moon was just beginning to rise and throw fantastic shadows over Tower Hill. It was bright enough to ride by, and Johnnie forbade his man to light the horn lantern which was hanging at the fellow's saddle-bow.
They went at a foot pace, the horses' feet echoing with an empty, melancholy sound from the old timbered houses back to the great bastion wall of the Tower.
The man-at-arms led the way. When they came to London Bridge, where a single lantern showed the broad oak bar studded with nails, which ran across the roadway, Johnnie noticed that upon the other side of it were two halberdiers of the Tower Guard in their uniforms of black and crimson, talking to the keeper of the gate.
As they came up the bar swung open.
"Mr. Commendone?" said the keeper, an elderly man in a leather jerkin.
Johnnie nodded.
"Pass through, sir," the man replied, saluting, as did also the two soldiers who were standing there.
The little cavalcade went slowly over the bridge between the tall houses on either side, which at certain points almost met with their overhanging eaves. The shutters were up all over the little jewellers' shops. Here and there a lamp burned from an upstairs window, and the swish and swirl of the river below could be heard quite distinctly.
At the middle of the bridge, just by the well-known armourer's shop of Guido Ponzio, the Italian sword-smith, whose weapons were eagerly purchased by members of the Court and the officers both of the Tower and Whitehall, another halberdier was standing, who again saluted Commendone as he rode by.
It was quite obvious to Johnnie that every precaution had been taken so that the King's excursion into les coulisses might be undisturbed.
The pike was swung open for them on the south side of the bridge directly they drew near, and putting their horses to the trot, they cantered over a hundred yards of trodden grass round which houses were standing in the form of a little square, and in a few minutes more turned into Duck Lane.
At this hour of the night the narrow street of heavily-timbered houses was quite dark and silent. It seemed there was not a soul abroad, and this surprised Johnnie, who had been led to understand that at midnight "The Lane" was frequently the scene of roistering activity. Now, however, the houses were all blind and dark, and the three horsemen might have been moving down a street in the city of the dead.
Only the big honey-coloured moon threw a primrose light upon the topmost gables of the houses on the left side of "The Lane" – all the rest being black velvet, sombreness and shadow.
John's mouth curved a little in disdain under his small dark moustache, as he noted all this and realised exactly what it meant.
When a king set out for furtive pleasures, lesser men of vice must get them to their kennels! Lights were out, all manifestation of evil was thickly curtained. The shameless folk of that wicked quarter of the town must have shame imposed upon them for the night.
The King was taking his pleasure.
John Commendone, since his arrival in London, and at the Court, had quietly refused to be a member of any of those hot-blooded parties of young men who sallied out from the Tower or from Whitehall when the reputable world was sleeping. It was not to his taste. He was perfectly capable of tolerating vice in others – looking on it, indeed, as a natural manifestation of human nature and event. But for himself he had preferred aloofness.
Nevertheless, from the descriptions of his friends, he knew that Duck Lane to-night was wearing an aspect which it very seldom wore, and as he rode slowly down that blind and sinister thoroughfare with his attendants, he realised with a little cold shudder what it was to be a king.
He himself was the servant of a king, one of those whom good fortune and opportunity had promoted to be a minister to those almost super-human beings who could do no wrong, and ruled and swayed all other men by means of their Divine Right.
This was a position he perfectly accepted, had accepted from the first. Already he was rising high in the course of life he had started to pursue. He had no thought of questioning the deeds of princes. He knew that it was his duty, his métier, in life to be a pawn in the great game. What affected him now, however, as they came up to a big house of free-stone and timber, where a lanthorn of horn hung over a door painted a dull scarlet, was a sense of the enormous and irrevocable power of those who were set on high to rule.
No! They were not human, they were not as other men and women are.
He had been in the Queen's Closet that morning, and had seen the death warrant signed. The great convulsion of nature, the furious thunders of God, had only been, as it were, a mere accompaniment to the business of the four people in the Queen's lodge.
A scratch of a pen – a man to die.
And then, during the evening, he had seen, once more, the King and Queen, bright, glittering and radiant, surrounded by the highest and noblest of England, serene, unapproachable, the centre of the stupendous pageant of the hour.
And now, again, he was come to the stews, to the vile quarter of London, and even here the secret presence of a king closed all doors, and kept the pandars and victims of evil silent in their dens like crouching hares.
As they came up to the big, dark house, a little breeze from the river swirled down the Lane, and fell fresh upon Johnnie's cheek. As it did so, he knew that he was hot and fevered, that the riot of thought within him had risen the temperature of his blood. It was cool and grateful – this little clean breeze of the water, and he longed once more, though only for a single second, that he was home in the stately park of Commendone, and had never heard the muffled throb of the great machine of State, of polity, and the going hither and thither of kings and queens.
But it only lasted for a moment.
He was disciplined, he was under orders. He pulled himself together, banished all wild and speculative thought – sat up in the saddle, gripped the sides of his cob with his knees, and set his left arm akimbo.
"This is the house, sir," said the trooper, saluting.
"Very well," Johnnie answered, as his servant dismounted and took his horse by the bridle.
Johnnie leapt to the ground, pulled his sword-belt into position, settled his hat upon his head, and with his gloved fist beat upon the big red door before him.
In ten seconds he heard a step on the other side of the door. It swung open, and a tall, thin person, wearing a scarlet robe and a mask of black velvet over the upper part of the face, bowed low before him, and with a gesture invited him to enter.
Johnnie turned round.
"You will stay here," he said to the men. "Be quite silent, and don't stray away a yard from the door."
Then he followed the tall, thin figure, which closed the door, and flitted down a short passage in front of him with noiseless