On the islet appeared a beautiful woman, clad in a watchet-coloured
silken mantle, bound with a broad girdle inscribed with characters like
the phylacteries of the Hebrews. Her feet and arms were bare, but her
wrists and ankles were adorned with gold bracelets of uncommon size.
Amidst her long, silky black hair she wore a crown or chaplet of
artificial mistletoe, and bore in her hand a rod of ebony tipped with
silver. Two Nymphs attended on her, dressed in the same antique and
mystical guise.
The pageant was so well managed that this Lady of the Floating Island,
having performed her voyage with much picturesque effect, landed at
Mortimer's Tower with her two attendants just as Elizabeth presented
herself before that outwork. The stranger then, in a well-penned speech,
announced herself as that famous Lady of the Lake renowned in the
stories of King Arthur, who had nursed the youth of the redoubted Sir
Lancelot, and whose beauty 'had proved too powerful both for the wisdom
and the spells of the mighty Merlin. Since that early period she had
remained possessed of her crystal dominions, she said, despite the
various men of fame and might by whom Kenilworth had been successively
tenanted. 'The Saxons, the Danes, the Normans, the Saintlowes, the
Clintons, the Montforts, the Mortimers, the Plantagenets, great though
they were in arms and magnificence, had never, she said, caused her
to raise her head from the waters which hid her crystal palace. But a
greater than all these great names had now appeared, and she came in
homage and duty to welcome the peerless Elizabeth to all sport which the
Castle and its environs, which lake or land, could afford.
The Queen received this address also with great courtesy, and made
answer in raillery, "We thought this lake had belonged to our own
dominions, fair dame; but since so famed a lady claims it for hers,
we will be glad at some other time to have further communing with you
touching our joint interests."
With this gracious answer the Lady of the Lake vanished, and Arion,
who was amongst the maritime deities, appeared upon his dolphin. But
Lambourne, who had taken upon him the part in the absence of Wayland,
being chilled with remaining immersed in an element to which he was not
friendly, having never got his speech by heart, and not having, like the
porter, the advantage of a prompter, paid it off with impudence, tearing
off his vizard, and swearing, "Cogs bones! he was none of Arion or Orion
either, but honest Mike Lambourne, that had been drinking her Majesty's
health from morning till midnight, and was come to bid her heartily
welcome to Kenilworth Castle."