Chapter XX
A Royal Reckoning
A tale is always half told if only one man tells it.
GRETTI'S SAGA.
Whether from policy or necessity, the guest-house of Gloucester Abbey was
surrendered to the royal band with open-armed hospitality. Every comfort the
place afforded was heaped together to soften the bare rooms for the
accommodation of the noble ladies; every delicacy the epicurean abbot could
obtain loaded the table; and what little grass the frost had left in the
cloister garth was sacrificed to the swarm of pages and henchmen, minstrels
and tumblers. Now a tournament of games in the riverside meadows took up the
day, now a pageant up the river itself; again, a ride with the hawks or a run
after the hounds,--and the nights were one long revel. Time slipped by like a
song off the lips of a harper.
To-day it was to chase a boar over the wooded hills that the holiday troop was
awake and stirring at sunrise. The silvery bell-notes that called the monks to
morning prayer were jostled in mid-air by the blare of hunters' horns.
Stamping iron-shod hoofs and the baying of deep-voiced hounds broke the
stillness of the cloister, and threescore merry voices laughed out of memory
the Benedictine vow of silence.
Voices and horns made a joyous uproar when the King led forth his lady and her
fair following; and he smiled with pleasure at the welcome and the picturesque
beauty of the gay throng between the gray old walls.
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