'Eleven hundred dishes shall be served this day,' Viridus proclaimed,
seeming to warn her. 'There can no other lord find so many plates of
parcel gilt.' His level and cold voice penetrated through all the
ascending din of voices, of knives, of tuckets of trumpets that
announced the courses of meat and of the three men's songs that
introduced the sweet jellies which only Privy Seal, it was said, could
direct to be prepared.

'Other lordings all,' Viridus continued with his sermon, 'ha' ruined
themselves seeking in vain to vie with my lord. Most of those you see
are broken men, whose favour would be worth naught to you.'

Tables were ranged down each side of the great hall, the men sitting
on the right, each wearing upon his shoulder a red rose made of silk
since no flowers were to be had. The women, sitting upon the left, had
white favours in their caps. In the wide space between these tables
were two bears; chained to tall gilt posts, they rolled on their hams
and growled at each other. From time to time the serving men who went
up and down in the middle let fall great dishes containing craspisces,
cranes, swans or boars. These meats were kicked contemptuously aside
for the bears to fight over, and their places supplied immediately
with new. Other serving men broke priceless bottles of Venetian glass
against the corners of tables, and let the costly Rhenish wines run
about their feet.

This, the Master Viridus said, was intended to point out the wealth of
their lord and his zealousness to entertain his Sovereigns.

'It would serve the purpose as well to give them twice as much fare,'
Katharine said.

'They could never contain it,' Viridus answered gravely, 'so great is
the bounty of my lord.'

Throckmorton, the spy, enormous, bearded and with the half-lion badge
of the Privy Seal hanging round his neck from a gilt chain, walked up
and down behind the guests, bearing the wand of a major-domo,
affecting to direct the servers when to fill goblets and listening at
tables where much wine had been served. Once he looked up at the
gallery, and his scrutinising and defiant brown eyes remained for a
long time upon Katharine's face, as if he too were appraising her
beauty.

'I would not drink much wine with that man listening at my back. He
came from my country, and was such a foul villain that mothers fright
their children with his name,' Katharine said.

Viridus moved his lips quickly one upon another, and suddenly