CHAPTER XXVIII
CHRISTMAS WITH QUEEN BESS

HRISTMAS morning came and went as if on swal-

low-wings, in a gale of royal merriment. Four hun-

dred sat to dinner that day in Greenwich halls, and all the
palace streamed with banners and green garlands.

Within the courtyard two hundred horses neighed and
stamped around a water-fountain playing in a bowl of ice
and evergreen. Grooms and pages, hostlers and dames,
went hurry-scurrying to and fro; cooks, bakers, and scul-
lions steamed about, leaving hot, mouth-watering streaks
of fragrance in the air; bluff men-at-arms went whistling
here and there; and serving-maids with rosy cheeks ran
breathlessly up and down the winding stairways.

The palace stirred like a mighty pot that boils to its ut-
most verge, for the hour of the revelries was come.

Over the beech-wood and far across the black heath
where Jack Cade marshaled the men of Kent, the wind
trembled with the boom of the castle bell. Within the
walls of the palace its clang was muffled by a sound of

voices that rose and fell like the wind upon the sea.
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