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 G.o.d, 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 n.o.blest 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 m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sage in front of him with noiseless footsteps.

He knew at once that he was in Queer Street.

The nondescript figure in its fantastic robe and mask struck a chill of disgust to his blood.

It was a fantastic age, and all aberrations--all deviations--from the normal were constantly accentuated by means of costumes and theatric effect.

The superficial observer of the manners of our day is often apt to exclaim upon the decadence of our time. One has heard perfectly sincere and healthy Englishmen inveigh with anger upon the literature of the moment, the softness and luxury of life and art, the invasion of st.u.r.dy English ideals by the corrupt influences of France.

"Give me the days of Good Queen Bess, the hearty, healthy, strong Tudor life," is the sort of exclamation by no means rare in our time.

... "Bluff King Hal! Drake, Raleigh, all that rough, brave, and splendid time! Think of Shakespeare, my boy!"

Whether or no our own days are deficient in hardihood and endurance is not a question to be discussed here--though the private records of England"s last war might very well provide a complete answer to the query. It is certain, however, that in an age when personal prowess with arms was still a t.i.tle to fortune, when every gentleman of position and birth knew and practised the use of weapons, the under-currents of life, the hidden sides of social affairs, were at least as "curious" and "decadent" as anything Montmartre or the Quartier Latin have to show.

It must be remembered that in the late Tudor Age almost every one of good family, each gentleman about the Court, was not only a trained soldier, but also a highly cultured person as well. The Renaissance in Italy was in full swing and activity. Its culture had crossed the Alps, its art was borne upon the wings of its advance to our northern sh.o.r.es.

Grossness was refined....

Johnnie twirled his moustache as he followed the nondescript s.e.xless figure which flitted down the dimly-lit panelled pa.s.sage before him like some creature from a masque.

At the end of the pa.s.sage there was a door.

Arrived at it, a long, thin arm, in a sleeve of close-fitting black silk, shot out from the red robe. A thin ivory-coloured hand, with fingers of almost preternatural length, rose to a painted scarlet slit which was the creature"s mouth.

The masked head dropped a little to one side, one lean finger, shining like a fish-bone, tapped the mouth significantly, the door opened, some heavy curtains of Flanders tapestry were pushed aside, and the Equerry walked into a place as strange and sickly as he had ever met in some fantastic or disordered dream.

Johnnie heard the door close softly behind him, the "swish, swish" of the falling curtains. And then he stood up, his eyes blinking a little in the bright light which streamed upon them--his hand upon his sword-hilt--and looked around to find himself. He was in a smallish room, hung around entirely with an arras of scarlet cloth, powdered at regular intervals with a pattern of golden bats.

The floor was covered with a heavy carpet of Flanders pile--a very rare and luxurious thing in those days--and the whole room was lit by its silver lamps, which hung from the ceiling upon chains. On one side, opposite the door, was a great pile of cushions, going half-way up the wall towards the ceiling--cushions as of strange barbaric colours, violent colours that smote upon the eye and seemed almost to do the brain a violence.

In the middle of the room, right in the centre, was a low oak stool, upon which was a silver tray. In the middle of the tray was a miniature chafing-dish, beneath which some volatile amethyst-coloured flame was burning, and from the dish itself a pastille, smouldering and heated, sent up a thin, grey whip of odorous smoke.

The whole air of this curious tented room was heavy and languorous with perfume. Sickly, and yet with a sensuous allurement, the place seemed to reel round the young man, to disgust one side of him, the real side; and yet, in some low, evil fashion, to beckon to base things in his blood--base thoughts, physical influences which he had never known before, and which now seemed to suddenly wake out of a long sleep, and to whisper in his ears.

All this, this surveyal of the place in which he found himself, took but a moment, and he had hardly stood there for three seconds--tall, upright, and debonair, amid the wicked luxury of the room--when he heard a sound to his left, and, turning, saw that he was not alone.

Behind a little table of Italian filigree work, upon which were a pair of tiny velvet slippers, embroidered with burnt silver, a sprunking-gla.s.s--or pocket mirror--and a tall-stemmed bottle of wine, sat a vast, pink, fleshy, elderly woman.

Her face, which was as big as a ham, was painted white and scarlet. Her eyebrows were pencilled with deep black, the heavy eyes shared the vacuity of gla.s.s, with an evil and steadfast glitter of welcome.

There were great pouches underneath the eyes; the nose was hawk-like, the chins pendulous, the lips once, perhaps, well curved and beautiful enough, now full, bloated, and red with horrid invitation.

The woman was dressed with extreme richness.

Fat and powdered fingers were covered with rings. Her corsage was jewelled--she was like some dreadful mummy of what youth had been, a sullen caricature of a long-past youth, when she also might have walked in the fields under G.o.d"s sky, heard bird-music, and seen the dew upon the bracken at dawn.

Johnnie stirred and blinked at this apparition for a moment; then his natural courtesy and training came to him, and he bowed.

As he did so, the fat old woman threw out her jewelled arms, leant back in her chair, stuttering and choking with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"_Tiens!_" she said in French, "_Monsieur qui arrive!_ Why have you never been to see me before, my dear?"

Johnnie said nothing at all. His head was bent a little forward. He was regarding this old French procuress with grave attention.

He knew now at once who she was. He had heard her name handed about the Court very often--Madame La Motte.

"You are a little out of my way, Madame," Johnnie answered. "I come not over Thames. You see, I am but newly arrived at the Court."

He said it perfectly politely, but with a little tiny, half-hidden sneer, which the woman was quick to notice.

"Ah! Monsieur," she said, "you are here on duty. _Merci_, that I know very well. Those for whom you have come will be down from above stairs very soon, and then you can go about your business. But you will take a gla.s.s of wine with me?"

"I shall be very glad, Madame," Johnnie answered, as he watched the fat, trembling hand, with all its winking jewels, pouring Vin de Burgogne into a gla.s.s. He raised it and bowed.

The old painted woman raised her gla.s.s also, and lifted it to her lips, tossing the wine down with a sudden smack of satisfaction.

Then, in that strange perfumed room, the two oddly a.s.sorted people looked at each other straightly for a moment.

Neither spoke.

At length Madame La Motte, of the great big house with the red door, heaved herself out of her arm-chair, and waddled round the table. She was short and fat; she put one hand upon the shoulder of the tall, clean young man in his riding suit and light armour.