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"I have told you Buckingham's motive, and therefore his conduct will no longer surprise you. Have you heard of the wager between De Gondomar and the Marquis, in consequence of which a trial of skill is to be made in the Tilt-yard to-morrow? Mounchensey is to run against Buckingham, and I leave you to guess what the result will be. I myself am to be among the jousters."
Zafira seized the lady's hand, and silence fell around, As mixed in loud confusion brushed the jousters to the ground. In came the Berber tribesmen, in varied cloaks arrayed; They ranged themselves in companies against the palisade.
The present opportunity shall not be neglected." Having formed this resolution, Buckingham, to all appearance, entirely recovered his gaiety, and pressed the King to give importance to the trial by allowing it to take place in the royal tilt-yard at Whitehall, and to extend the number of jousters to fourteen seven on one side, and seven on the other.
Bramante was summoned to arrange a succession of dramatic performances, and a grand tournament was held in the park of the Castello, in which Messer Galeazzo and his brother and all the most skilled jousters at court took part.
All round the arena rose the cries of itinerant merchants: 'Iced malvoisie, 'Score-cards; ye cannot tell the jousters without a score-card. All was revelry and excitement. A hush fell on the throng. From either end of the arena a mounted knight in armour had entered. The herald raised his hand. 'Ladeez'n gemmen! Battling Galahad and Agravaine the Dolorous.
The knights who were acclaimed victors, or at least the best jousters on the field, were led up to the royal stand, and knelt before the queen of the jousts, who placed a gold chaplet on the head of the first, and tied a silken scarf round the shoulders of the second and third. Happily, no one was killed or even seriously injured not a very unusual state of things.
"And he who shall the victor be Among the jousters of the game, I pledge my knightly word to him, In token of his valorous fame, "On his right arm myself to bind The favor of my lady bright; 'Twas given me by her own white hand, The hand as fair as it is white."
The number of jousters being agreed upon, it was next decided that the party with whom Buckingham was to range should be headed by the Duke of Lennox; while Mounchensey's party was to be under the command of Prince Charles; and though the disposition was too flattering to his adversary to be altogether agreeable to the haughty favourite, he could not raise any reasonable objection to it, and was therefore obliged to submit with the best grace he could.
The two jousters, on meeting, broke their lances skilfully; but Montgomery forgot to drop at once, according to usage, the fragment remaining in his hand; he unintentionally struck the king's helmet and raised the visor, and a splinter of wood entered Henry's eye, who fell forward upon his horse's neck. All the appliances of art were useless; the brain had been injured.
Our Helen witnessed in silence for a long time this scene in history with that feminine pleasure which the daughters of Eve enjoy at such critical moments. But gradually her pretty brow clouded over, until, drawing from her delicate ear, not a flower or earring, but the stump of a cigar, she hurled it amidst the jousters.
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