"Now I do not know where you
think the power to do that will come from!" she hissed in her ear. "Do you not
see that if you go back to your grooms and let them know that you have not got
enough honor with the King to gain an entrance, they will never dare do your
bidding again? Do you not see that you must do one of two things, or now win,
or now lose?"
Apparently Elfgiva saw. After a moment's bridling, she whirled back with an
angry flounce of her draperies. "The gallery, then, dog! I shall reach my
lord's ear from that, which will be an unlucky thing for you."
Saluting in silence, the guard drew back to let her pass, at the same time
signing to a row of men-at-arms standing motionless as pillars against the
stone wall of the ante-room. With a rattle and clank they came to life, and
the little band of five kirtles, surrounded and led, was marched to a low
side-door which gave in upon a short flight of stone steps, white-frosted now
with the dampness and their distance from the fire. At the head of the flight,
another door gave entrance to a narrow passage that probably reached the
length of the hall below, though it seemed to the shivering women to extend
the length of the Palace itself. A third door, ending this corridor, admitted
them to the gallery that ran across the upper end of the hall.
As she passed the threshold Elfgiva exclaimed in vexation, for the light of
the log fire, whose rudely carved chimney-piece broke the long side-wall,
succumbed at the balcony's lower edge to the shadows of the raftered ceiling,
and all above was wrapped in soft twilight.
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