“Anyone you know, hey?” Sir Hugo asked after another liveried and white-wigged servant had taken their hats and presented them with yet another set of claim tickets.
“Hmm?” Lewrie responded, peering about owl-eyed.
“Damn my eyes, are ye foxed?” Sir Hugo grumbled. “Did ye take on a load o’ ‘Dutch Courage’ with yer breakfast?”
“Nought but coffee, lashin’s of it,” Lewrie told him. “Now, last night was another matter. No, I don’t think I do know anyone. Don’t even see the Blandings, yet. Do you?”
“None I know… but one’r two I’d care t’know,” Sir Hugo said as he raised a brow and put on a grin to a willowy and languid dame in her forties, one with dark auburn hair and a “come-hither” grin, who was gliding by on the arm of a much older and tubbier man. She seemed to look the both of them up and down, then smiled and played with her fan against her cheek for a moment. Flirtatiously?
“I’m out of touch,” Lewrie confessed. “Does that mean anything?”
“The key to Paradise,” Sir Hugo muttered back. “She’s took with one of us. Either that, or she had an itch needed scratchin’.”
Yet another liveried fellow came up to them as they neared the tall and wide doors to the hall proper. He seemed to know what he was about, and was all coolly buinsesslike.
“Captain Alan Lewrie… Major-General Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, aha,” he briskly said, “honouree and guest. In a moment, you gentlemen will be formally announced. Right after, Captain Lewrie, might you grant us a few minutes to explain the procedure, with some of the others?… Oh, good. Tea or coffee will be available, and there are side-chambers where any adjustments of your habiliments may be made… and last-minute needs may be answered in a ‘necessary.’ Once His Majesty has made his entrance, an equerry shall queue you up in order of honours to be presented.”
“I’ll take another number?” Lewrie asked, hoping that coffee would be shoved into his hands, instanter.
“In a matter of speaking, sir,” the courtier told him, grinning. He was an older fellow who had obviously supervised these ceremonies so often that he could have done them in his sleep.
Another queue as couples, or parties of three or more, waited to be announced and admitted. There were old hands at it who’d been coming to the palace for ages, along with nervous, coughing, and “aheming” throat clearers of both sexes. Husbands squeezed wives’ hands to reassure them; sons and daughters ranging from gawky teens to matronly women with flushed faces, all but squirming in un-accustomed finery to get more comfortable, some moving their lips over rehearsed phrases of greeting should they get a chance to be spoken to by their sovereign, and a pair of teen daughters practicing their deep curtsies, tittering at each other each time. There were men…
Christ, half of ’em look like brick-layers, or greengrocers! Lewrie thought in wonder; They handin’ out knighthoods for brewin’ a good beer? That’s how Sam Whitbread got his!
On closer inspection, even those who already wore signs of rank, ladies in tiaras and elegantly clothed men with sashes and stars, were not all that elegant or handsome, either.
At last, the haughty major-domo thudded his five-foot mace on the marble floor and bellowed (elegantly!), “Major-General Sir Hugo Saint George Willoughby, and Captain Alan Lewrie!” That drew no particular note from those already in the hall, though Lewrie plastered a smile to one and all on his phyz and looked the room over. There were thrones at the far end, atop a raised dais, with a cushioned kneeler before it; all adrip with even more gilt, red, purple cloth, with the Union flag, the ancient royal banner, and the flags of England’s subordinate lands, stood up behind. He admittedly gawked.
“If you would come this way, sir, ah,” a plummy Oxonian voice bade. It was Sir Harper Strachan, Baron Ludlow, again, dressed in an even grander suit of court clothes, wielding his mace-like cane, and scowling for a second as he gave Lewrie another of those up-and-down appraisals. “Quite a change for the better, hah,” he decided.
“Harper,” Sir Hugo said from the side, nodding in thin greeting.
“Hugo,” Strachan replied, just as coolly. There was evidently no love lost between them.
“Subalterns together… in The King’s Own,” Sir Hugo explained. “Ah… what memories,” he sarcastically added.
Strachan wriggled his nose and mouth in a petulant manner, then languidly extended an arm to steer Lewrie to a side-chamber.
“Oh, there you be, Lewrie!” Captain Blanding said as he spotted him. “Top of the morning to you!”
“And to you as well, sir,” Lewrie replied, bound for the side-board where a silver coffee pot stood steaming over a candle warmer. At last! After a sip or two of creamed and sugared coffee, he began to feel as if he was back in the land of the aware, and gave an ear to Strachan’s introductions and explanations.
There was a coal baron who would be made knight and baronet, a senior, doddering don from Cambridge who’d written something or other impressive who would be knighted, an unctuous younger fellow who was to be made a baron… from the names and hints he dropped, Lewrie got the impression that pimping for the Prince of Wales was going to be amply rewarded in a few minutes. There was a fellow retiring from the Foreign Office who would also be knighted. Disappointingly, there were no other officers from the Navy. There were none from the Army either, but they hadn’t done all that much but drill, drink, and dance since the Dutch expedition in ’98.
When summoned, once the attendees had had half an hour or so to mingle, they were to queue up in descending order: the pimp, the coal baron, Captain Blanding, then Lewrie, followed by the don and the old Foreign Office ink-spiller. When announced by name, they were to make their way to a particular rosette in the carpet and perform a graceful “leg”-a deep, long one, Strachan insisted (there would be time for them to practice)-then move forward to the edge of the dais before the thrones and stop. Head bowed still, in proper humility when named to the King ’til the Sovereign approached them with the Sword of State, at which time they should kneel on the cushion. Once the rite was done, it was allowed that one might express a brief sentence of gratitude, before rising, bowing again, then walk backwards away from the throne, counting the large rosettes in the carpet ’til they reached the third (where they had begun) and deliver a final “leg.”
“It is not done to break away and turn your backs on His Majesty,” Sir Harper cautioned in a stern, clench jawed drawl. “So long as he is present-”
“Doesn’t that make chatting someone up rather awkward?” Captain Blanding interrupted.
“One may converse with others, turned somewhat towards the Presence, but one must not face deliberately away, sir,” Strachan said in irritation.
“Lask to ’em on a bow-and-quarter line, sir,” Lewrie said with a tongue-in-cheek smirk. A third cup of coffee was doing wonders.