This story is so well known to the student of English history that I fear its repetition will lack that zest which attends the development of an unforeseen denouement.  But it is of so great interest, and is so full, in its sweet, fierce manifestation, of the one thing insoluble by time, Love, that I will nevertheless rewrite it from old Sir Edwin’s memoir.  Not so much as an historical narrative, although I fear a little history will creep in, despite me, but simply as a picture of that olden long ago, which, try as we will to put aside the hazy, many-folded curtain of time, still retains its shadowy lack of sharp detail, toning down and mellowing the hard aspect of real life—­harder and more unromantic even than our own—­into the blending softness of an exquisite mirage.

I might give you the exact words in which Sir Edwin wrote, and shall now and then quote from contemporaneous chronicles in the language of his time, but should I so write at all, I fear the pleasure of perusal would but poorly pay for the trouble, as the English of the Bluff King is almost a foreign tongue to us.  I shall, therefore, with a few exceptions, give Sir Edwin’s memoir in words, spelling and idiom which his rollicking little old shade will probably repudiate as none of his whatsoever.  So, if you happen to find sixteenth century thought hob-nobbing in the same sentence with nineteenth century English, be not disturbed; I did it.  If the little old fellow grows grandiloquent or garrulous at times—­he did that.  If you find him growing super-sentimental, remember that sentimentalism was the life-breath of chivalry, just then approaching its absurdest climax in the bombastic conscientiousness of Bayard and the whole mental atmosphere laden with its pompous nonsense.

CHAPTER I

The Duel

It sometimes happens, Sir Edwin says, that when a woman will she won’t, and when she won’t she will; but usually in the end the adage holds good.  That sentence may not be luminous with meaning, but I will give you an illustration.

I think it was in the spring of 1509, at any rate soon after the death of the “Modern Solomon,” as Queen Catherine called her old father-in-law, the late King Henry VII, that his august majesty Henry VIII, “The Vndubitate Flower and very Heire of both the sayd Linages,” came to the throne of England, and tendered me the honorable position of Master of the Dance at his sumptuous court.

As to “worldly goods,” as some of the new religionists call wealth, I was very comfortably off; having inherited from my father, one of the counselors of Henry VII, a very competent fortune indeed.  How my worthy father contrived to save from the greedy hand of that rich old miser so great a fortune, I am sure I can not tell.  He was the only man of my knowledge who did it; for the old king had a reach as long as the kingdom, and, upon one pretext or another, appropriated to himself everything on which he could lay his hands.  My father, however, was himself pretty shrewd in money matters, having inherited along with his fortune a rare knack at keeping it.  His father was a goldsmith in the time of King Edward, and enjoyed the marked favor of that puissant prince.