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Henry VIII and His Court: A Historical Novel

by L. Mühlbach · English · Gutenberg #3476 · 811,843 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Henry VIII and His Court: A Historical Novel

Author: L. Mühlbach

Translator: Henry Niles Pierce


        
Release date: October 1, 2002 [eBook #3476]
                Most recently updated: October 14, 2016

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HENRY VIII AND HIS COURT: A HISTORICAL NOVEL ***




Produced by Charles Franks, Ralph Zimmermann and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team






HENRY VIII AND HIS COURT

A HISTORICAL NOVEL

By Louise Muhlbach


Translated From German, by H. N. Pierce




CHAPTER I. CHOOSING A CONFESSOR.


It was in the year 1543. King Henry the Eighth of England that day
once more pronounced himself the happiest and most enviable man in his
kingdom, for to-day he was once more a bridegroom, and Catharine Parr,
the youthful widow of Baron Latimer, had the perilous happiness of being
selected as the king’s sixth consort.

Merrily chimed the bells of all the steeples of London, announcing to
the people the commencement of that holy ceremony which sacredly bound
Catharine Parr to the king as his sixth wife. The people, ever fond of
novelty and show, crowded through the streets toward the royal palace to
catch a sight of Catharine, when she appeared at her husband’s side upon
the balcony, to show herself to the English people as their queen, and
to receive their homage in return.

Surely it was a proud and lofty success for the widow of a petty baron
to become the lawful wife of the King of England, and to wear upon her
brow a royal crown! But yet Catharine Parr’s heart was moved with a
strange fear, her cheeks were pale and cold, and before the altar her
closely compressed lips scarcely had the power to part, and pronounce
the binding “I will.”

At last the sacred ceremony was completed. The two spiritual
dignitaries, Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, and Cranmer, archbishop
of Canterbury, then, in accordance with court etiquette, led the young
bride into her apartments, in order to bless them, and once more to pray
with her, before the worldly festivities should begin.

Catharine, however, pale and agitated, had yet sustained her part in the
various ceremonies of the day with a true queenly bearing and dignity;
and, as now with head proudly erect and firm step, she walked with a
bishop at either side through the splendid apartments, no one suspected
how heavy a burden weighed upon her heart, and what baleful voices were
whispering in her breast.

Followed by her new court, she had traversed with her companions the
state apartments, and now reached the inner rooms. Here, according to
the etiquette of the time, she must dismiss her court, and only the two
bishops and her ladies of honor were permitted to accompany the queen
into the drawing-room. But farther than this chamber even the bishops
themselves might not follow her. The king himself had written down
the order for the day, and he who swerved from this order in the most
insignificant point would have been proclaimed guilty of high treason,
and perhaps have been led out to death.

Catharine, therefore, turned with a languid smile to the two high
ecclesiastics, and requested them to await here her summons. Then
beckoning to her ladies of honor, she withdrew into her boudoir.

The two bishops remained by themselves in the drawing-room. The
circumstance of their being alone seemed to impress them both alike and
unpleasantly; for a dark scowl gathered on the brows of both, and they
withdrew, as if at a concerted signal, to the opposite sides of the
spacious apartment.

A long pause ensued. Nothing was heard save the regular ticking of a
large clock of rare workmanship which stood over the fireplace, and from
the street afar off, the rejoicing of the people, who surged toward the
palace like a roaring sea.

Gardiner had stepped to the window, and was looking up with his peculiar
dark smile at the clouds which, driven by the tempest, were sweeping
across the heavens.

Cranmer stood by the wall on the opposite side, and sunk in sad
thoughts, was contemplating a large portrait of Henry the Eighth,
the masterly production of Holbein. As he gazed on that countenance,
indicative at once of so much dignity and so much ferocity; as he
contemplated those eyes which shone with such gloomy severity, those
lips on which was a smile at once voluptuous and fierce, there came over
him a feeling of deep sympathy with the young woman whom he had that
day devoted to such splendid misery. He reflected that he had, in like
manner, already conducted two wives of the king to the marriage altar,
and had blessed their union. But he reflected, too, that he had also,
afterward, attended both these queens when they ascended the scaffold.

How easily might this pitiable young wife of the king fall a victim to
the same dark fate! How easily might Catharine Parr, like Anne Boleyn
and Catharine Howard, purchase her short-lived glory with an ignominious
death! At any time an inconsiderate word, a look, a smile, might be her
ruin. For the king’s choler and jealousy were incalculable, and, to his
cruelty, no punishment seemed too severe for those by whom he fancied
himself injured.

Such were the thoughts which occupied Bishop Cranmer. They softened him,
and caused the dark wrinkles to disappear from his brow.

He now smiled to himself at the ill-humor which he had felt shortly
before, and upbraided himself for having been so little mindful of his
holy calling, and for having exhibited so little readiness to meet his
enemy in a conciliating spirit.

For Gardiner was his enemy; that Cranmer very well knew. Gardiner had
often enough showed him this by his deeds, as he had also taken pains by
his words to assure him of his friendship.

But even if Gardiner hated him, it did not therefore follow that Cranmer
was obliged to return that hatred; that he should denominate him his
enemy, whom he, in virtue of their mutual high calling, was bound to
honor and love as his brother.

The noble Cranmer was, therefore, ashamed of his momentary ill-humor.
A gentle smile lighted up his peaceful countenance. With an air at once
dignified and friendly, he crossed the room and approached the Bishop of
Winchester.

Lord Gardiner turned toward him with morose looks, and, without
advancing from the embrasure of the window in which he was standing,
waited for Cranmer to advance to him. As he looked into that noble,
smiling countenance, he had a feeling as if he must raise his fist and
dash it into the face of this man, who had the boldness to wish to be
his equal, and to contend with him for fame and honor.

But he reflected in good time that Cranmer was still the king’s
favorite, and therefore he must proceed to work against him with great
caution.

So he forced these fierce thoughts back into his heart, and let his face
again assume its wonted grave and impenetrable expression.

Cranmer now stood close before him, and his bright, beaming eye was
fixed upon Gardiner’s sullen countenance.

“I come to your highness,” said Cranmer, in his gentle, pleasant voice,
“to say to you that I wish with my whole heart the queen may choose you
for her confessor and spiritual director, and to assure you that, should
this be the case, there will not be in my soul, on that account, the
least rancor, or the slightest dissatisfaction. I shall fully comprehend
it, if her majesty chooses the distinguished and eminent Bishop of
Winchester as her confessor, and the esteem and admiration which I
entertain for you can only be enhanced thereby. In confirmation of this,
permit me to offer you my hand.” He presented his hand to Gardiner, who,
however, took it reluctantly and but for a moment.

“Your highness is very noble, and at the same time a very subtle
diplomatist, for you only wish in an adroit and ingenious way to give
me to understand how I am to act should the queen choose you for her
spiritual director. But that she will do so, you know as well as I. It
is, therefore, for me only a humiliation which etiquette imposes when
she compels me to stand here and wait to see whether I shall be chosen,
or contemptuously thrust aside.”

“Why will you look at matters in so unfriendly a light?” said Cranmer,
gently. “Wherefore will you consider it a mark of contempt, if you are
not chosen to an office to which, indeed, neither merit nor worthiness
can call us, but only the personal confidence of a young woman?”

“Oh! you admit that I shall not be chosen?” cried Gardiner, with a
malicious smile.

“I have already told you that I am wholly uninformed as to the queen’s
wish, and I think it is known that the Bishop of Canterbury is wont to
speak the truth.”

“Certainly that is known, but it is known also that Catharine Parr was
a warm admirer of the Bishop of Canterbury; and now that she has
gained her end and become queen, she will make it her duty to show her
gratitude to him.”

“You would by that insinuate that I have made her queen. But I assure
your highness, that here also, as in so many other matters which relate
to myself, you are falsely informed.”

“Possibly!” said Gardiner, coldly. “At any rate, it is certain that the
young queen is an ardent advocate of the abominable new doctrine which,
like the plague, has spread itself from Germany over all Europe and
scattered mischief and ruin through all Christendom. Yes, Catharine
Parr, the present queen, leans to that heretic against whom the Holy
Father at Rome has hurled his crushing anathema. She is an adherent of
the Reformation.”

“You forget,” said Cranmer, with an arch smile, “that this anathema was
hurled against the head of our king also, and that it has shown itself
equally ineffectual against Henry the Eighth as against Luther. Besides,
I might remind you that we no longer call the Pope of Rome, ‘Holy
Father,’ and that you yourself have recognized the king as the head of
our church.”

Gardiner turned away his face in order to conceal the vexation and rage
which distorted his features. He felt that he had gone too far, that he
had betrayed too much of the secret thoughts of his soul. But he could
not always control his violent and passionate nature; and however much
a man of the world and diplomatist he might be, still there were moments
when the fanatical priest got the better of the man of the world, and
the diplomat was forced to give way to the minister of the church.

Cranmer pitied Gardiner’s confusion, and, following the native goodness
of his heart, he said pleasantly: “Let us not strive here about dogmas,
nor attempt to determine whether Luther or the pope is most in the
wrong. We stand here in the chamber of the young queen. Let us,
therefore, occupy ourselves a little with the destiny of this young
woman whom God has chosen for so brilliant a lot.”

“Brilliant?” said Gardiner, shrugging his shoulders. “Let us first wait
for the termination of her career, and then decide whether it has been
brilliant. Many a queen before this has fancied that she was resting on
a couch of myrtles and roses, and has suddenly become conscious that she
was lying on a red-hot gridiron, which consumed her.”

“It is true,” murmured Cranmer, with a slight shudder, “it is a
dangerous lot to be the king’s consort. But just on that account let us
not make the perils of her position still greater, by adding to them our
own enmity and hate. Just on that account I beg you (and on my part I
pledge you my word for it) that, let the choice of the queen be as it
may, there may be no feeling of anger, and no desire for revenge
in consequence. My God, the poor women are such odd beings, so
unaccountable in their wishes and in their inclinations!”

“Ah! it seems you know the women very intimately,” cried Gardiner, with
a malicious laugh. “Verily, were you not Archbishop of Canterbury, and
had not the king prohibited the marriage of ecclesiastics as a very
grave crime, one might suppose that you had a wife yourself, and had
gained from her a thorough knowledge of female character.”

Cranmer, somewhat embarrassed, turned away, and seemed to evade
Gardiner’s piercing look. “We are not speaking of myself,” said he at
length, “but of the young queen, and I entreat for her your good wishes.
I have seen her to-day almost for the first time, and have never spoken
with her, but her countenance has touchingly impressed me, and it
appeared to me, her looks besought us to remain at her side, ready to
help her on this difficult pathway, which five wives have already trod
before her, and in which they found only misery and tears, disgrace, and
blood.”

“Let Catharine beware then that she does not forsake the right way,
as her five predecessors have done!” exclaimed Gardiner. “May she be
prudent and cautious, and may she be enlightened by God, that she may
hold the true faith, and have true wisdom, and not allow herself to be
seduced into the crooked path of the godless and heretical, but remain
faithful and steadfast with those of the true faith!”

“Who can say who are of the true faith?” murmured Cranmer, sadly. “There
are so many paths leading to heaven, who knows which is the right one?”

“That which we tread!” cried Gardiner, with all the overweening pride
of a minister of the church. “Woe to the queen should she take any other
road! Woe to her if she lends her ear to the false doctrines which
come ringing over here from Germany and Switzerland, and in the worldly
prudence of her heart imagines that she can rest secure! I will be her
most faithful and zealous servant, if she is with me; I will be her most
implacable enemy if she is against me.”

“And will you call it being against you, if the queen does not choose
you for her confessor?”

“Will you ask me to call it, being for me?”

“Now God grant that she may choose you!” exclaimed Cranmer, fervently,
as he clasped his hands and raised his eyes to heaven. “Poor,
unfortunate queen! The first proof of thy husband’s love may be thy
first misfortune! Why gave he thee the liberty of choosing thine own
spiritual director? Why did he not choose for thee?”

And Cranmer dropped his head upon his breast, and sighed deeply.

At this instant the door of the royal chamber opened, and Lady Jane,
daughter of Earl Douglas, and first maid of honor to the queen, made
her appearance on the threshold. Both bishops regarded her in breathless
silence. It was a serious, a solemn moment, the deep importance of which
was very well comprehended by all three.

“Her majesty the queen,” said Lady Jane, in an agitated voice, “her
majesty requests the presence of Lord Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury,
in her cabinet, in order that she may perform her devotions with him.”

“Poor queen!” murmured Cranmer, as he crossed the room to go to
Catharine--“poor queen! she has just made an implacable enemy.”

Lady Jane waited till Cranmer had disappeared through the door, then
hastened with eager steps to the bishop of Winchester, and dropping on
her knee, humbly said, “Grace, your highness, grace! My words were in
vain, and were not able to shake her resolution.”

Gardiner raised up the kneeling maiden, and forced a smile. “It is
well,” said he, “I doubt not of your zeal. You are a true handmaid of
the church, and she will love and reward you for it as a mother! It is
then decided. The queen is--”

“Is a heretic,” whispered Lady Jane. “Woe to her!”

“And will you be true, and will you faithfully adhere to us?”

“True, in every thought of my being, and every drop of my heart’s
blood.”

“So shall we overcome Catharine Parr, as we overcame Catharine Howard.
To the block with the heretic! We found means of bringing Catharine
Howard to the scaffold; you, Lady Jane, must find the means of leading
Catharine Parr the same way.”

“I will find them,” said Lady Jane, quietly. “She loves and trusts me. I
will betray her friendship in order to remain true to my religion.”

“Catharine Parr then is lost,” said Gardiner, aloud.

“Yes, she is lost,” responded Earl Douglas, who had just entered, and
caught the last words of the bishop. “Yes, she is lost, for we are
her inexorable and ever-vigilant enemies. But I deem it not altogether
prudent to utter words like these in the queen’s drawing-room. Let us
therefore choose a more favorable hour. Besides, your highness, you must
betake yourself to the grand reception-hall, where the whole court
is already assembled, and now only awaits the king to go in formal
procession for the young queen, and conduct her to the balcony. Let us
go, then.”

Gardiner nodded in silence, and betook himself to the reception-hall.

Earl Douglas with his daughter followed him. “Catharine Parr is lost,”
 whispered he in Lady Jane’s ear. “Catharine Parr is lost, and you shall
be the king’s seventh wife.”

Whilst this was passing in the drawing-room, the young queen was on her
knees before Cranmer, and with him sending up to God fervent prayers for
prosperity and peace. Tears filled her eyes, and her heart trembled as
if before some approaching calamity.




CHAPTER II. THE QUEEN AND HER FRIEND


At last this long day of ceremonies and festivities drew near its close,
and Catharine might soon hope to be, for the time, relieved from this
endless presenting and smiling, from this ever-renewed homage.

At her husband’s side she had shown herself on the balcony to receive
the greetings of the people, and to bow her thanks. Then in the spacious
audience-chamber her newly appointed court had passed before her in
formal procession, and she had exchanged a few meaningless, friendly
words with each of these lords and ladies. Afterward she had, at her
husband’s side, given audience to the deputations from the city and from
Parliament. But it was only with a secret shudder that she had received
from their lips the same congratulations and praises with which the
authorities had already greeted five other wives of the king.

Still she had been able to smile and seem happy, for she well knew that
the king’s eye was never off of her, and that all these lords and ladies
who now met her with such deference, and with homage apparently so
sincere, were yet, in truth, all her bitter enemies. For by her marriage
she had destroyed so many hopes, she had pushed aside so many who
believed themselves better fitted to assume the lofty position of queen!
She knew that these victims of disappointment would never forgive her
this; that she, who was but yesterday their equal, had to-day soared
above them as queen and mistress; she knew that all these were watching
with spying eyes her every word and action, in order, it might be, to
forge therefrom an accusation or a death-warrant.

But nevertheless she smiled! She smiled, though she felt that the choler
of the king, so easily kindled and so cruelly vindictive, ever swung
over her head like the sword of Damocles.

She smiled, so that this sword might not fall upon her.

At length all these presentations, this homage and rejoicing were well
over, and they came to the more agreeable and satisfactory part of the
feast.

They went to dinner. That was Catharine’s first moment of respite,
of rest. For when Henry the Eighth seated himself at table, he was
no longer the haughty monarch and the jealous husband, but merely the
proficient artiste and the impassioned gourmand; and whether the pastry
was well seasoned, and the pheasant of good flavor, was for him then a
far more important question than any concerning the weal of his people,
and the prosperity of his kingdom.

But after dinner came another respite, a new enjoyment, and this time a
more real one, which indeed for a while banished all gloomy forebodings
and melancholy fears from Catharine’s heart, and suffused her
countenance with the rosy radiance of cheerfulness and happy smiles.
For King Henry had prepared for his young wife a peculiar and altogether
novel surprise. He had caused to be erected in the palace of Whitehall
a stage, whereon was represented, by the nobles of the court, a comedy
from Plautus. Heretofore there had been no other theatrical exhibitions
than those which the people performed on the high festivals of the
church, the morality and the mystery plays. King Henry the Eighth was
the first who had a stage erected for worldly amusement likewise, and
caused to be represented on it subjects other than mere dramatized
church history. As he freed the church from its spiritual head, the
pope, so he wished to free the stage from the church, and to behold
upon it other more lively spectacles than the roasting of saints and the
massacre of inspired nuns.

And why, too, represent such mock tragedies on the stage, when the king
was daily performing them in reality? The burning of Christian martyrs
and inspired virgins was, under the reign of the Christian king Henry,
such a usual and every-day occurrence, that it could afford a piquant
entertainment neither to the court nor to himself.

But the representation of a Roman comedy, that, however, was a new and
piquant pleasure, a surprise for the young queen. He had the “Curculio”
 played before his wife, and if Catharine indeed could listen to the
licentious and shameless jests of the popular Roman poet only with
bashful blushes, Henry was so much the more delighted by it, and
accompanied the obscenest allusions and the most indecent jests with his
uproarious laughter and loud shouts of applause.

At length this festivity was also over with, and Catharine was now
permitted to retire with her attendants to her private apartments.

With a pleasant smile, she dismissed her cavaliers, and bade her women
and her second maid of honor, Anna Askew, go into her boudoir and await
her call. Then she gave her arm to her friend Lady Jane Douglas, and
with her entered her cabinet.

At last she was alone, at last unwatched. The smile disappeared from her
face, and an expression of deep sadness was stamped upon her features.

“Jane,” said she, “pray thee shut the doors and draw the window
curtains, so that nobody can see me, nobody hear me, no one except
yourself, my friend, the companion of my happy childhood. Oh, my God, my
God, why was I so foolish as to leave my father’s quiet, lonely castle
and go out into the world, which is so full of terror and horror?”

She sighed and groaned deeply; and burying her face in her hands, she
sank upon the ottoman, weeping and trembling.

Lady Jane observed her with a peculiar smile of malicious satisfaction.

“She is queen and she weeps,” said she to herself. “My God, how can a
woman possibly feel unhappy, and she a queen?”

She approached Catharine, and, seating herself on the tabouret at her
feet, she impressed a fervent kiss on the queen’s drooping hand.

“Your majesty weeping!” said she, in her most insinuating tone. “My God,
you are then unhappy; and I received with a loud cry of joy the news of
my friend’s unexpected good fortune. I thought to meet a queen, proud,
happy, and radiant with joy; and I was anxious and fearful lest the
queen might have ceased to be my friend. Wherefore I urged my father,
as soon as your command reached us, to leave Dublin and hasten with me
hither. Oh, my God! I wished to see you in your happiness and in your
greatness.”

Catharine removed her hands from her face, and looked down at her friend
with a sorrowful smile. “Well,” said she, “are you not satisfied with
what you have seen? Have I not the whole day displayed to you the
smiling queen, worn a dress embroidered with gold? did not my neck
glitter with diamonds? did not the royal diadem shine in my hair? and
sat not the king by my side? Let that, then, be sufficient for the
present. You have seen the queen all day long. Allow me now for one
brief, happy moment to be again the feeling, sensitive woman, who
can pour into the bosom of her friend all her complaint and her
wretchedness. Ah, Jane, if you knew how I have longed for this hour,
how I have sighed after you as the only balm for my poor smitten heart,
smitten even to death, how I have implored Heaven for this day, for this
one thing--‘Give me back my Jane, so that she can weep with me, so that
I may have one being at my side who understands me, and does not allow
herself to be imposed upon by the wretched splendor of this outward
display!’”

“Poor Catharine!” whispered Lady Jane, “poor queen!”

Catharine started and laid her hand, sparkling with brilliants, on
Jane’s lips. “Call me not thus!” said she. “Queen! My God, is not all
the fearful past heard again in that word? Queen! Is it not as much as
to say, condemned to the scaffold and a public criminal trial? Ah, Jane!
a deadly tremor runs through my members. I am Henry the Eighth’s
sixth queen; I shall also be executed, or, loaded with disgrace, be
repudiated.”

Again she hid her face in her hands, and her whole frame shook; so she
saw not the smile of malicious satisfaction with which Lady Jane again
observed her. She suspected not with what secret delight her friend
heard her lamentations and sighs.

“Oh! I am at least revenged!” thought Jane, while she lovingly stroked
the queen’s hair. “Yes, I am revenged! She has robbed me of a crown, but
she is wretched; and in the golden goblet which she presses to her lips
she will find nothing but wormwood! Now, if this sixth queen dies not on
the scaffold, still we may perhaps so work it that she dies of anxiety,
or deems it a pleasure to be able to lay down again her royal crown at
Henry’s feet.”

Then said she aloud: “But why these fears, Catharine? The king loves
you; the whole court has seen with what tender and ardent looks he has
regarded you to-day, and with what delight he has listened to your every
word. Certainly the king loves you.”

Catharine seized her hand impulsively. “The king loves me,” whispered
she, “and I, I tremble before him. Yes, more than that, his love fills
me with horror! His hands are dipped in blood, and as I saw him to-day
in his crimson robes I shuddered, and I thought, How soon, and my blood,
too, will dye this crimson!”

Jane smiled. “You are sick, Catharine,” said she. “This good fortune has
taken you by surprise, and your overstrained nerves now depict before
you all sorts of frightful forms. That is all.”

“No, no, Jane; these thoughts have ever been with me. They have attended
me ever since the king selected me for his wife.”

“And why, then, did you not refuse him?” asked Lady Jane. “Why did you
not say ‘no’ to the king’s suit?”

“Why did I not do it, ask you? Ah, Jane, are you such a stranger at
this court as not to know, then, that one must either fulfil the king’s
behests or die? My God, they envy me! They call me the greatest and
most potent woman of England. They know not that I am poorer and more
powerless than the beggar of the street, who at least has the power to
refuse whom she will. I could not refuse. I must either die or accept
the royal hand which was extended to me; and I would not die yet, I have
still so many claims on life, and it has hitherto made good so few of
them! Ah, my poor, hapless existence! what has it been, but an endless
chain of renunciations and deprivations, of leafless flowers and
dissolving views? It is true, I have never learned to know what is
usually called misfortune. But is there a greater misfortune than not to
be happy; than to sigh through a life without wish or hope; to wear away
the endless, weary days of an existence without delight, yet surrounded
with luxury and splendor?”

“You were not unfortunate, and yet you are an orphan, fatherless and
motherless?”

“I lost my mother so early that I scarcely knew her. And when my father
died I could hardly consider it other than a blessing, for he had never
shown himself a father, but always only as a harsh, tyrannical master to
me.”

“But you were married?”

“Married!” said Catharine, with a melancholy smile. “That is to say,
my father sold me to a gouty old man, on whose couch I spent a few
comfortless, awfully wearisome years, till Lord Neville made me a rich
widow. But what did my independence avail me, when I had bound myself in
new fetters? Hitherto I had been the slave of my father, of my husband;
now I was the slave of my wealth. I ceased to be a sick-nurse to become
steward of my estate. Ah! this was the most tedious period of my life.
And yet I owe to it my only real happiness, for at that period I became
acquainted with you, my Jane, and my heart, which had never yet learned
to know a tenderer feeling, flew to you with all the impetuosity of a
first passion. Believe me, my Jane, when this long-missing nephew of my
husband came and snatched away from me his hereditary estate, and, as
the lord, took possession of it, then the thought that I must leave
you and your father, the neighboring proprietor, was my only grief. Men
commiserated me on account of my lost property. I thanked God that He
had relieved me of this load, and I started for London, that I might at
last live and feel, that I might learn to know real happiness or real
misery.”

“And what did you find?”

“Misery, Jane, for I am queen.”

“Is that your sole unhappiness?”

“My only one, but it is great enough, for it condemns me to eternal
anxiety, to eternal dissimulation. It condemns me to feign a love which
I do not feel, to endure caresses which make me shudder, because they
are an inheritance from five unfortunate women. Jane, Jane, do you
comprehend what it is to be obliged to embrace a man who has murdered
three wives and put away two? to be obliged to kiss this king whose lips
open just as readily to utter vows of love as sentences of death? Ah,
Jane, I speak, I live, and still I suffer all the agonies of death! They
call me a queen, and yet I tremble for my life every hour, and conceal
my anxiety and fear beneath the appearance of happiness! My God, I am
five-and-twenty, and my heart is still the heart of a child; it does not
yet know itself, and now it is doomed never to learn to know itself; for
I am Henry’s wife, and to love another is, in other words, to wish to
mount the scaffold. The scaffold! Look, Jane. When the king approached
me and confessed his love and offered me his hand, suddenly there rose
before me a fearful picture. It was no more the king whom I saw before
me, but the hangman; and it seemed to me that I saw three corpses lying
at his feet, and with a loud scream I sank senseless before him. When
I revived, the king was holding me in his arms. The shock of this
unexpected good fortune, he thought, had made me faint. He kissed me
and called me his bride; he thought not for a moment that I could refuse
him. And I--despise me, Jane--I was such a dastard, that I could not
summon up courage for a downright refusal. Yes, I was so craven also, as
to be unwilling to die. Ah, my God, it appeared to me that life at that
moment beckoned to me with thousands of joys, thousands of charms, which
I had never known, and for which my soul thirsted as for the manna in
the wilderness. I would live, live at any cost. I would gain myself a
respite, so that I might once more share happiness, love, and enjoyment.
Look, Jane, men call me ambitious. They say I have given my hand to
Henry because he is king. Ah, they know not how I shuddered at this
royal crown. They know not that in anguish of heart I besought the king
not to bestow his hand upon me, and thereby rouse all the ladies of his
kingdom as foes against me. They know not that I confessed that I loved
him, merely that I might be able to add that I was ready, out of love to
him, to sacrifice my own happiness to his, and so conjured him to choose
a consort worthy of himself, from the hereditary princesses of Europe.
[Footnote: “La vie d’Elizabeth, Reine d’Angleterre, traduite de
l’Italien de Monsieur Gregoire Leti,” vol. ii. Amsterdam, 1694] But
Henry rejected my sacrifice. He wished to make a queen, in order to
possess a wife, who may be his own property--whose blood, as her lord
and master, he can shed. So I am queen. I have accepted my lot, and
henceforth my existence will be a ceaseless struggle and wrestling with
death. I will at least sell my life as dearly as possible; and the maxim
which Cranmer has given me shall hereafter be my guide on the thorny
path of life.”

“And how runs this maxim?” asked Jane.

“Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” replied Catharine, with a
languid smile, as she dropped her head upon her breast and surrendered
herself to her painful and foreboding reflections.

Lady Jane stood opposite to her, and gazed with cruel composure upon the
painfully convulsed countenance and at times violently trembling form of
the young queen for whom all England that day kept festival, and who yet
was sitting before her so wretched and full of sorrow.

Suddenly Catharine raised her head. Her countenance had now assumed an
entirely different expression. It was now firm, resolute, and dauntless.
With a slight inclination of the head she extended her hand to Lady
Jane, and drew her friend more closely to her.

“I thank you, Jane,” said she, as she imprinted a kiss upon her
forehead--“I thank you! You have done my heart good and relieved it
of its oppressive load of secret anguish. He who can give his grief
utterance, is already half cured of it. I thank you, then, Jane!
Henceforth, you will find me calm and cheerful. The woman has wept
before you, but the queen is aware that she has a task to accomplish
as difficult as it is noble, and I give you my word for it, she will
accomplish it. The new light which has risen on the world shall no more
be dimmed by blood and tears, and no more in this unhappy land shall men
of sense and piety be condemned as insurgents and traitors! This is the
task which God has set me, and I swear that I will accomplish it! Will
you help me in this, too, Jane?”

Lady Jane responded faintly in a few words, which Catharine did not
understand, and as she looked up to her, she noticed, with astonishment,
the corpse-like pallor which had suddenly overspread the countenance of
her maid of honor.

Catharine gave a start, and fixed on her face a surprised and searching
look.

Lady Jane cast down her eyes before that searching and flashing glance.
Her fanaticism had for the moment got the better of her, and much as she
was wont at other times to hide her thoughts and feelings, it had, at
that moment, carried her away and betrayed her to the keen eye of her
friend.

“It is now a long while since we saw each other,” said Catharine, sadly.
“Three years! It is a long time for a young girl’s heart! And you were
those three years with your father in Dublin, at that rigidly popish
court. I did not consider that! But however much your opinions may have
changed, your heart, I know, still remains the same, and you will ever
be the proud, high-minded Jane of former days, who could never stoop to
tell a lie--no, not even if this lie would procure her profit and glory.
I ask you then, Jane, what is your religion? Do you believe in the Pope
of Rome, and the Church of Rome as the only channel of salvation? or do
you follow the new teaching which Luther and Calvin have promulgated?”

Lady Jane smiled. “Would I have risked appearing before you, if I still
reckoned myself of the Roman Catholic Church? Catharine Parr is hailed
by the Protestants of England as the new patroness of the persecuted
doctrine, and already the Romish priests hurl their anathemas against
you, and execrate you and your dangerous presence here. And you ask me,
whether I am an adherent of that church which maligns and damns you?
You ask me whether I believe in the pope, who has laid the king under
an interdict--the king, who is not only my lord and master, but also the
husband of my precious and noble Catharine? Oh, queen, you love me not
when you can address such a question to me.”

And as if overcome by painful emotion, Lady Jane sank down at
Catharine’s feet, and hid her head in the folds of the queen’s robe.

Catharine bent down to raise her and take her to her heart. Suddenly
she started, and a deathly paleness overspread her face. “The king,”
 whispered she, “the king is coming!”




CHAPTER III. KING HENRY THE EIGHTH.


Catharine was not deceived. The doors were opened, and on the threshold
appeared the lord marshal, with his golden mace.

“His majesty the king!” whispered he, in his grave, solemn manner, which
filled Catharine with secret dread, as though he were pronouncing the
sentence of death over her.

But she forced a smile and advanced to the door to receive the king. Now
was heard a thunder-like rumble, and over the smoothly carpeted floor
of the anteroom came rolling on the king’s house equipage. This house
equipage consisted of a large chair, resting on castors, which was
moved by men in the place of horses, and to which they had, with artful
flattery, given the form of a triumphal car of the old victorious Roman
Caesars, in order to afford the king, as he rolled through the halls,
the pleasant illusion that he was holding a triumphal procession, and
that it was not the burden of his heavy limbs which fastened him to
his imperial car. King Henry gave ready credence to the flattery of his
truckle-chair and his courtiers, and as he rolled along in it through
the saloons glittering with gold, and through halls adorned with
Venetian mirrors, which reflected his form a thousandfold, he liked
to lull himself into the dream of being a triumphing hero, and wholly
forgot that it was not his deeds, but his fat, that had helped him to
his triumphal car.

For that monstrous mass which filled up the colossal chair, that
mountain of purple-clad flesh, that clumsy, almost shapeless mass, that
was Henry the Eighth, king of merry England. But thae mass had a head--a
head full of dark and wrathful thoughts, a heart full of bloodthirsty
and cruel lusts. The colossal body was indeed, by its physical weight,
fastened to the chair. Yet his mind never rested, but he hovered, with
the talons and flashing eye of the bird of prey, over his people, ever
ready to pounce upon some innocent dove, to drink her blood, and tear
out her heart, that he might lay it, all palpitating, as an offering on
the altar of his sanguinary god.

The king’s sedan now stopped, and Catharine hastened forward with
smiling face, to assist her royal husband in alighting.

Henry greeted her with a gracious nod, and rejected the proffered aid of
the attendant pages.

“Away,” said he, “away! My Catharine alone shall extend me her hand, and
give me a welcome to the bridal chamber. Go, we feel to-day as young and
strong as in our best and happiest days, and the young queen shall see
that it is no decrepit graybeard, tottering with age, who woos her, but
a strong man rejuvenated by love. Think not, Kate, that I use my car
because of weakness. No, it was only my longing for you which made me
wish to be with you the sooner.”

He kissed her with a smile, and, lightly leaning on her arm, alighted
from his car.

“Away with the equipage, and with all of you!” said he. “We wish to be
alone with this beautiful young wife, whom the lord bishops have to-day
made our own.”

At a signal from his hand, the brilliant cortege withdrew, and Catharine
was alone with the king.

Her heart beat so wildly that it made her lips tremble, and her bosom
swell high.

Henry saw it, and smiled; but it was a cold, cruel smile, and Catharine
grew pale before it.

“He has only the smile of a tyrant,” said she to herself. “With this
same smile, by which he would now give expression to his love, he
yesterday, perhaps, signed a death-warrant, or will, to-morrow, witness
an execution.”

“Do you love me, Kate?” suddenly said the king, who had till now
observed her in silence and thoughtfulness. “Say, Kate, do you love me?”

He looked steadily into her eyes, as though he would read her soul to
the very bottom.

Catharine sustained his look, and did not drop her eyes. She felt that
this was the decisive moment which determined her whole future; and this
conviction restored to her all her self-possession and energy.

She was now no longer the shy, timid girl, but the resolute, proud
woman, who was ready to wrestle with fate for greatness and glory.

“Do you love me, Kate?” repeated the king; and his brow already began to
darken.

“I know not,” said Catharine, with a smile, which enchanted the king,
for there was quite as much graceful coquetry as bashfulness on her
charming face.

“You know not?” replied Henry, astonished. “Now, by the Mother of God,
it is the first time in my life that a woman has ever been bold enough
to return me such an answer! You are a bold woman, Kate, to hazard it,
and I praise you for it. I love bravery, because it is something I so
rarely see. They all tremble before me, Kate--all! They know that I am
not intimidated by blood, and in the might of my royalty I subscribe a
death-warrant with the same calmness of soul as a love-letter.”

“Oh, you are a great king,” murmured Catharine. Henry did not notice
her. He was wholly buried in one of those self-contemplations to which
he so willingly surrendered himself, and which generally had for their
subject his own greatness and superbility.

“Yes,” continued he, and his eyes, which, in spite of his corpulency
and his extremely fleshy face, were yet large and wide open, shone more
brightly. “Yes, they all tremble before me, for they know that I am
a righteous and powerful king, who spares not his own blood, if it is
necessary to punish and expiate crime, and with inexorable hand punishes
the sinner, though he were the nearest to the throne. Take heed to
yourself, therefore, Kate, take heed to yourself. You behold in me the
avenger of God, and the judge of men. The king wears the crimson, not
because it is beautiful and glossy, but because it is red like blood,
and because it is the king’s highest prerogative to shed the blood of
his delinquent subjects, and thereby expiate human crime. Thus only do
I conceive of royalty, and thus only will I carry it out till the end
of my days. Not the right to pardon, but the right to punish, is that
whereby the ruler manifests himself before the lower classes of mankind.
God’s thunder should be on his lips, and the king’s wrath should descend
like lightning on the head of the guilty.”

“But God is not only wrathful, but also merciful and forgiving,” said
Catharine, as she lightly and shyly leaned her head on the king’s
shoulder.

“Just that is the prerogative of God above kings; that He can, as it
pleases Him, show mercy and grace, where we can only condemn and punish.
There must be something in which God is superior to kings, and greater
than they. But how, Kate, you tremble, and the lovely smile has vanished
from your countenance! Be not afraid of me, Kate! Be always frank with
me, and without deceit; then I shall always love you, and iniquity will
then have no power over you. And now, Kate, tell me, and explain to me.
You do not know that you love me?”

“No, I do not know, your majesty. And how should I be able to recognize,
and know, and designate by name what is strange to me, and what I have
never before felt?”

“How, you have never loved, Kate?” asked the king with a joyful
expression.

“Never. My father maltreated me, so that I could feel for him nothing
but dread and terror.”

“And your husband, child? That man who was my predecessor in the
possession of you. Did you not love your husband either?”

“My husband?” asked she abstractedly. “It is true, my father sold me to
Lord Neville, and as the priest had joined our hands, men called him
my husband. But he very well knew that I did not love him, nor did he
require my love. He needed a nurse, not a wife. He had given me his name
as a father gives his to a daughter; and I was his daughter, a true,
faithful, and obedient daughter, who joyfully fulfilled her duty and
tended him till his death.”

“And after his death, child? Years have elapsed since then, Kate. Tell
me, and I conjure you, tell me the truth, the simple, plain truth! After
the death of your husband, then even, did you never love?”

He gazed with visible anxiety, with breathless expectation, deep into
her eyes; but she did not drop them.

“Sire,” said she, with a charming smile, “till a few weeks past, I
have often mourned over myself; and it seemed to me that I must, in the
desperation of my singular and cold nature, lay open my breast, in order
to search there for the heart, which, senseless and cold, had never
betrayed its existence by its stronger beating. Oh, sire, I was full of
trouble about myself; and in my foolish rashness, I accused Heaven of
having robbed me of the noblest feeling and the fairest privilege of any
woman--the capacity of loving.”

“Till the past few weeks, did you say, Kate?” asked the king, breathless
with emotion.

“Yes, sire, until the day on which you, for the first time, graciously
afforded me the happiness of speaking with me.”

The king uttered a low cry, and drew Catharine, with impetuous
vehemence, into his arms.

“And since, tell me now, you dear little dove, since then, does your
heart throb?”

“Yes, sire, it throbs, oh, it often throbs to bursting! When I hear your
voice, when I behold your countenance, it is as if a cold tremor rilled
through my whole being, and drove all my blood to the heart. It is as
though my heart anticipated your approach before my eyes discern you.
For even before you draw near me, I feel a peculiar trembling of the
heart, and the breath is stifled in my bosom; then I always know that
you are coming, and that your presence will relieve this peculiar
tension of my being. When you are not by me I think of you, and when I
sleep I dream of you. Tell me, sire, you who know every thing, tell me,
know you now whether I love you?”

“Yes, yes, you love me,” cried Henry, to whom this strange and joyous
surprise had imparted youthful vivacity and warmth. “Yes, Kate, you
love me; and if I may trust your dear confession, I am your first love.
Repeat it yet again; you were nothing but a daughter to Lord Neville?”

“Nothing more, sire!”

“And after him have you had no love?”

“None, sire!”

“And can it be that so happy a marvel has come to pass? and that I have
made, not a widow, but a young maiden, my queen?”

As he now gazed at her with warm, passionate, tender looks, Catharine
cast down her eyes, and a deep blush covered her sweet face.

“Ah, a woman’s bashful blushes, what an exquisite sight!” cried the
king, and while he wildly pressed Catharine to his bosom, he continued:
“Oh, are we not foolish and short-sighted men, all of us, yes, even we
kings? In order that I might not be, perhaps, forced to send my
sixth wife also to the scaffold, I chose, in trembling dread of the
deceitfulness of your sex, a widow for my queen, and this widow with
a blessed confession, mocks at the new law of the wise Parliament, and
makes good to me what she never promised.” [Footnote: After Catharine
Howard’s infidelity and incontinency had been proved, and she had atoned
for them by her death, Parliament enacted a law “that if the king or his
successors should intend to marry any woman whom they took to be a clean
and pure maid--if she, not being so, did not declare the same to the
king, it should be high treason: and all who knew it; and did not reveal
it, were guilty of misprision of treason.”--“Burnet’s History of the
Reformation of the Church of England.” London, 1681 (vol. i, p. 313)]

“Come, Kate, give me a kiss. You have opened before me to-day a happy,
blissful future, and prepared for me a great and unexpected pleasure.
I thank you for it, Kate, and the Mother of God be my witness, I will
never forget it.”

And drawing a rich diamond ring from his own finger, and putting it upon
Catharine’s, he continued: “Be this ring a remembrancer of this hour,
and when you hereafter present it to me, with a request, I will grant
that request, Kate!”

He kissed her forehead, and was about to press her more closely in his
arms, when suddenly from without was heard the dull roll of drums, and
the ringing of bells.

The king started a moment and released Catharine from his arms. He
listened; the roll of drums continued, and now and then was heard in the
distance, that peculiar thundering and yet sullen sound, which so much
resembles the roar and rush of the sea, and which can be produced only
by a large and excited mob.

The king, with a fierce curse, pushed open the glass door leading to the
balcony, and walked out.

Catharine gazed after him with a strange, half-timid, half-scornful
look. “I have not at least told him that I love him,” muttered she. “He
has construed my words as it suited his vanity. No matter. I will not
die on the scaffold!”

With a resolute step, and firm, energetic air, she followed the king to
the balcony. The roll of drums was kept up, and from all the steeples
the bells were pealing. The night was dark and calm. All London seemed
to slumber, and the dark houses around about stood up out of the
universal darkness like huge coffins.

Suddenly the horizon began to grow bright, and on the sky appeared
a streak of fiery red, which, blazing up higher and higher, soon
illuminated the entire horizon with a crimson glow, and even shed its
glaring fiery beams over the balcony on which stood the royal pair.
Still the bells clanged and clamored; and blended with their peals was
heard now and then, in the distance, a piercing shriek and a clamor as
of thousands and thousands of confusedly mingled voices.

Suddenly the king turned to Catharine, and his countenance, which was
just then overspread by the fire-light as with a blood-red veil, had now
assumed an expression of savage, demoniacal delight.

“Ah,” said he, “I know what it is. You had wholly bewildered me, and
stolen away my attention, you little enchantress. I had for a moment
ceased to be a king, because I wished to be entirely your lover. But
now I bethink me again of my avenging sovereignty! It is the fagot-piles
about the stake which flame so merrily yonder. And that yelling and
clamor indicate that my merry people are enjoying with all their soul
the comedy which I have had played before them to-day, for the honor of
God, and my unimpeachable royal dignity.”

“The stake!” cried Catharine, trembling. “Your majesty does not mean
thereby to say that right yonder, men are to die a cruel, painful
death--that the same hour in which their king pronounces himself happy
and content, some of his subjects are to be condemned to dreadful
torture, to a horrible destruction! Oh, no! my king will not overcloud
his queen’s wedding-day with so dark a veil of death. He will not wish
to dim my happiness so cruelly.”

The king laughed. “No, I will not darken it, but light it up with bright
names,” said he; and as, with outstretched arm, he pointed over to the
glaring heavens, he continued: “There are our wedding-torches, my Kate,
and the most sacred and beautiful which I could find, for they burn to
the honor of God and of the king. [Footnote: “Life of King Henry the
Eighth, founded on Authentic and Original Documents.” By Patrick Fraser
Tytler. (Edinburgh, 1887, p. 440.)] And the heavenward flaring flames
which carries up the souls of the heretics will give to my God joyous
intelligence of His most faithful and obedient son, who, even on the
day of his happiness, forgets not his kingly duty, but ever remains the
avenging and destroying minister of his God.”

He looked frightful as he thus spoke. His countenance, lit up by the
fire, had a fierce, threatening expression; his eyes blazed; and a cold,
cruel smile played about his thin, firmly-pressed lips.

“Oh, he knows no pity!” murmured Catharine to herself, as in a paroxysm
of anguish she stared at the king, who, in fanatical enthusiasm, was
looking over toward the fire, into which, at his command, they were
perhaps hurling to a cruel, torturing death, some poor wretch, to the
honor of God and the king. “No, he knows no pity and no mercy.”

Now Henry turned to her, and laying his extended hand softly on the back
of her slender neck, he spanned it with his fingers, and whispered in
her ear tender words and vows of love.

Catharine trembled. This caress of the king, however harmless in itself,
had in it for her something dismal and dreadful. It was the involuntary,
instinctive touch of the headsman, who examines the neck of his victim,
and searches on it for the place where he will make the stroke. Thus had
Anne Boleyn once put her tender white hands about her slender neck,
and said to the headsman, brought over from Calais specially for her
execution: “I pray you strike me well and surely! I have, indeed, but a
slim little neck.” [Footnote: Tytler, p. 382] Thus had the king clutched
his hand about the neck of Catharine Howard, his fifth wife when
certain of her infidelity, he had thrust her from himself with fierce
execrations, when she would have clung to him. The dark marks of that
grip were still visible upon her neck when she laid it on the block.
[Footnote: Leti, vol. i, p. 193]

And this dreadful twining of his fingers Catharine must now endure as
a caress; at which she must smile, which she must receive with all the
appearance of delight.

While he spanned her neck, he whispered in her ear words of tenderness,
and bent his face close to her cheeks.

But Catharine heeded not his passionate whispers. She saw nothing save
the blood-red handwriting of fire upon the sky. She heard nothing save
the shrieks of the wretched victims.

“Mercy, mercy!” faltered she. “Oh, let this day be a day of festivity
for all your subjects! Be merciful, and if you would have me really
believe that you love me, grant this first request which I make of you.
Grant me the lives of these wretched ones. Mercy, sire, mercy!”

And as if the queen’s supplication had found an echo, suddenly was heard
from the chamber a wailing, despairing voice, repeating loudly and in
tones of anguish: “Mercy, your majesty, mercy!” The king turned round
impetuously, and his face assumed a dark, wrathful expression. He
fastened his searching eyes on Catharine, as though he would read in her
looks whether she knew who had dared to interrupt their conversation.

But Catharine’s countenance expressed unconcealed astonishment. “Mercy,
mercy!” repeated the voice from the interior of the chamber.

The king uttered an angry exclamation, and hastily withdrew from the
balcony.




CHAPTER IV. KING BY THE WRATH OF GOD.


“Who dares interrupt us?” cried the king, as with headlong step he
returned to the chamber--“who dares speak of mercy?”

“I dare!” said a young lady, who, pale, with distorted features, in
frightful agitation, now hastened to the king and prostrated herself
before him. “Anne Askew!” cried Catharine, amazed. “Anne, what want you
here?”

“I want mercy, mercy for those wretched ones, who are suffering yonder,”
 cried the young maiden, pointing with an expression of horror to the
reddened sky. “I want mercy for the king himself, who is so cruel as
to send the noblest and the best of his subjects to the slaughter like
miserable brutes!”

“Oh, sire, have compassion on this poor child!” besought Catharine,
turning to Henry, “compassion on her impassioned excitement and
her youthful ardor! She is as yet unaccustomed to these frightful
scenes--she knows not yet that it is the sad duty of kings to be
constrained to punish, where they might prefer to pardon!”

Henry smiled; but the look which he cast on the kneeling girl made
Catharine tremble. There was a death-warrant in that look!

“Anne Askew, if I mistake not, is your second maid of honor?” asked the
king; “and it was at your express wish that she received that place?”

“Yes sire.”

“You knew her, then?”

“No, sire! I saw her a few days ago for the first time. But she had
already won my heart at our first meeting, and I feel that I shall love
her. Exercise forbearance, then, your majesty!”

But the king was still thoughtful, and Catharine’s answers did not yet
satisfy him.

“Why, then, do you interest yourself for this young lady, if you did not
know her?”

“She has been so warmly recommended to me.”

“By whom?”

Catharine hesitated a moment; she felt that she had, perhaps, in her
zeal, gone too far, and that it was imprudent to tell the king the
truth. But the king’s keen, penetrating look was resting on her, and she
recollected that he had, the first thing that evening, so urgently and
solemnly conjured her to always tell him the truth. Besides, it was no
secret at court who the protector of this young maiden was, and who had
been the means of her obtaining the place of maid of honor to the queen,
a place which so many wealthy and distinguished families had solicited
for their daughters.

“Who recommended this lady to you?” repeated the king, and already his
ill-humor began to redden his face, and make his voice tremble.

“Archbishop Cranmer did so, sire,” said Catharine as she raised her eyes
to the king, and looked at him with a smile surpassingly charming.

At that moment was heard without, more loudly, the roll of drums, which
nevertheless was partially drowned by piercing shrieks and horrible
cries of distress. The blaze of the fire shot up higher, and now was
seen the bright flame, which with murderous rage licked the sky above.

Anne Askew, who had kept respectful silence during the conversation of
the royal pair, now felt herself completely overcome by this horrible
sight, and bereft of the last remnant of self-possession.

“My God, my God!” said she, quivering from the internal tremor, and
stretching her hands beseechingly toward the king, “do you not hear that
frightful wail of the wretched? Sire, by the thought of your own dying
hour, I conjure you have compassion on these miserable beings! Let them
not, at least, be thrown alive into the flames. Spare them this last
frightful torture.”

King Henry cast a wrathful look on the kneeling girl; then strode
past her to the door, which led into the adjoining hall, in which the
courtiers were waiting for their king.

He beckoned to the two bishops, Cranmer and Gardiner, to come nearer,
and ordered the servants to throw the hall doors wide open.

The scene now afforded an animated and singular spectacle, and this
chamber, just before so quiet, was suddenly changed to the theatre of
a great drama, which was perhaps to end tragically. In the queen’s
bedchamber, a small room, but furnished with the utmost luxury and
splendor, the principal characters of this scene were congregated. In
the middle of the space stood the king in his robes, embroidered with
gold and sparkling with jewels, which were irradiated by the bright
light of the chandelier. Near him was seen the young queen, whose
beautiful and lovely face was turned in anxious expectation toward
the king, in whose stern and rigid features she sought to read the
development of this scene.

Not far from her still knelt the young maiden, hiding in her hands her
face drenched in tears; while farther away, in the background, were the
two bishops observing with grave, cool tranquillity the group before
them. Through the open hall doors were descried the expectant and
curious countenances of the courtiers standing with their heads crowded
close together in the space before the doors; and opposite to them,
through the open door leading to the balcony, was seen the fiery,
blazing sky, and heard the clanging of the bells and the rolling of the
drama, the piercing shrieks and the yells of the people.

A deep silence ensued, and when the king spoke, the tone of his voice
was so hard and cold, that an involuntary shudder ran through all
present.

“My Lord Bishops of Winchester and Canterbury,” said the king, “we have
called you that you may, by the might of your prayers and the wisdom of
your words, rid this young girl here from the devil, who, without doubt,
has the mastery over her, since she dares charge her king and master
with cruelty and injustice.”

The two bishops drew nearer to the kneeling girl; each laid a hand
upon her shoulder, and bent over her, but the one with an expression of
countenance wholly different from that of the other.

Cranmer’s look was gentle and serious, and at the same time a
compassionate and encouraging smile played about his thin lips.

Gardiner’s features on the contrary bore the expression of cruel,
cold-hearted irony; and the smile which rested on his thick, protruding
lips was the joyful and merciless smile of a priest ready to sacrifice a
victim to his idol.

“Courage, my daughter, courage and prudence!” whispered Cranmer.

“God, who blesses the righteous and punishes and destroys sinners, be
with thee and with us all!” said Gardiner.

But Anne Askew recoiled with a shudder from the touch of his hand, and
with an impetuous movement pushed it away from her shoulder.

“Touch me not; you are the hangman of those poor people whom they are
putting to death down yonder,” said she impetuously; and as she turned
to the king and extended her hands imploringly toward him, she cried:

“Mercy, King Henry, mercy!”

“Mercy!” repeated the king, “mercy, and for whom? Who are they that they
are putting to death down there? Tell me, forsooth, my lord bishops, who
are they that are led to the stake to-day? Who are the condemned?”

“They are heretics, who devote themselves to this new false doctrine
which has come over to us from Germany, and who dare refuse to recognize
the spiritual supremacy of our lord and king,” said Bishop Gardiner.

“They are Roman Catholics, who regard the Pope of Rome as the chief
shepherd of the Church of Christ, and will regard nobody but him as
their lord,” said Bishop Cranmer.

“Ah, behold this young maiden accuses us of injustice,” cried the king;
“and yet, you say that not heretics alone are executed down there,
but also Romanists. It appears to me then that we have justly and
impartially, as always, punished only criminals and given over the
guilty to justice.”

“Oh, had you seen what I have seen,” said Anne Askew, shuddering, “then
would you collect all your vital energies for a single cry, for a single
word--mercy! and that word would you shout out loud enough to reach yon
frightful place of torture and horror.”

“What saw you, then?” asked the king, smiling. Anne Askew had stood up,
and her tall, slender form now lifted itself, like a lily, between the
sombre forms of the bishops. Her eye was fixed and glaring; her noble
and delicate features bore the expression of horror and dread.

“I saw,” said she, “a woman whom they were leading to execution. Not a
criminal, but a noble lady, whose proud and lofty heart never harbored
a thought of treason or disloyalty, but who, true to her faith and her
convictions, would not forswear the God whom she served. As she passed
through the crowd, it seemed as if a halo encompassed her head, and
covered her white hair with silvery rays; all bowed before her, and the
hardest natures wept over the unfortunate woman who had lived more than
seventy years, and yet was not allowed to die in her bed, but was to
be slaughtered to the glory of God and of the king. But she smiled, and
graciously saluting the weeping and sobbing multitude, she advanced to
the scaffold as if she were ascending a throne to receive the homage of
her people. Two years of imprisonment had blanched her cheek, but had
not been able to destroy the fire of her eye, or the strength of her
mind, and seventy years had not bowed her neck or broken her spirit.
Proud and firm, she mounted the steps of the scaffold, and once more
saluted the people and cried aloud, ‘I will pray to God for you.’ But as
the headsman approached and demanded that she should allow her hands to
be bound, and that she should kneel in order to lay her head upon the
block, she refused, and angrily pushed him away. ‘Only traitors and
criminals lay their head on the block!’ exclaimed she, with a loud,
thundering voice. ‘There is no occasion for me to do so, and I will not
submit to your bloody laws as long as there is a breath in me. Take,
then, my life, if you can.’

“And now began a scene which filled the hearts of the lookers-on with
fear and horror. The countess flew like a hunted beast round and
round the scaffold. Her white hair streamed in the wind; her black
grave-clothes rustled around her like a dark cloud, and behind her,
with uplifted axe, came the headsman, in his fiery red dress; he, ever
endeavoring to strike her with the falling axe, but she, ever trying,
by moving her head to and fro, to evade the descending stroke. But at
length her resistance became weaker; the blows of the axe reached her,
and stained her white hair, hanging loose about her shoulders, with
crimson streaks. With a heart-rending cry, she fell fainting. Near her,
exhausted also, sank down the headsman, bathed in sweat. This horrible
wild chase had lamed his arm and broken his strength. Panting and
breathless, he was not able to drag this fainting, bleeding woman to the
block, or to lift up the axe to separate her noble head from the body.
[Footnote: Tytler, p. 430] The crowd shrieked with distress and horror,
imploring and begging for mercy, and even the lord chief justice could
not refrain from tears, and he ordered the cruel work to be suspended
until the countess and the headsman should have regained strength; for
a living, not a dying person was to be executed: thus said the law. They
made a pallet for the countess on the scaffold and endeavored to restore
her; invigorating wine was supplied to the headsman, to renew his
strength for the work of death; and the crowd turned to the stakes which
were prepared on both sides of the scaffold, and at which four other
martyrs were to be burnt. But I flew here like a hunted doe, and now,
king, I lie at your feet. There is still time. Pardon, king, pardon for
the Countess of Somerset, the last of the Plantagenets.”

“Pardon, sire, pardon!” repeated Catharine Parr, weeping and trembling,
as she clung to her husband’s side. “Pardon!” repeated Archbishop
Cranmer; and a few of the courtiers re-echoed it in a timid and anxious
whisper.

The king’s large, brilliant eyes glanced around the whole assembly, with
a quick, penetrating look. “And you, my Lord Bishop Gardiner,” asked he,
in a cold, sarcastic tone, “will you also ask for mercy, like all these
weak-hearted souls here?”

“The Lord our God is a jealous God,” said Gardiner, solemnly, “and it
is written that God will punish the sinner unto the third and fourth
generation.”

“And what is written shall stand true!” exclaimed the king, in a voice
of thunder. “No mercy for evil-doers, no pity for criminals. The axe
must fall upon the head of the guilty, the flames shall consume the
bodies of criminals.”

“Sire, think of your high vocation!” exclaimed Anne Askew, in a tone of
enthusiasm. “Reflect what a glorious name you have assumed to yourself
in this land. You call yourself the head of the Church, and you want to
rule and govern upon earth in God’s stead. Exercise mercy, then, for you
entitle yourself king by the grace of God.”

“No, I do not call myself king by God’s grace; I call myself king by
God’s wrath!” exclaimed Henry, as he raised his arm menacingly. “It is
my duty to send sinners to God; may He have mercy on them there above,
if He will! I am the punishing judge, and I judge mercilessly, according
to the law, without compassion. Let those whom I have condemned appeal
to God, and may He have mercy upon them. I cannot do it, nor will I.
Kings are here to punish, and they are like to God, not in His love, but
in His avenging wrath.”

“Woe, then, woe to you and to all of us!” exclaimed Anne Askew. “Woe to
you, King Henry, if what you now say is the truth! Then are they right,
those men who are bound to yonder stakes, when they brand you with the
name of tyrant; then is the Bishop of Rome right when he upbraids you
as an apostate and degenerate son, and hurls his anathemas against you!
Then you know not God, who is love and mercy; then you are no disciple
of the Saviour, who has said, ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse
you.’ Woe to you, King Henry, if matters are really so bad with you;
if--”

“Silence, unhappy woman, silence!” exclaimed Catharine; and as she
vehemently pushed away the furious girl she grasped the king’s hand, and
pressed it to her lips. “Sire,” whispered she, with intense earnestness,
“Sire, you told me just now that you loved me. Prove it by pardoning
this maiden, and having consideration for her impassioned excitement.
Prove it by allowing me to lead Anne Askew to her room and enjoin
silence upon her.”

But at this moment the king was wholly inaccessible to any other
feelings than those of anger and delight in blood.

He indignantly repelled Catharine, and without moving his sharp,
penetrating look from the young maiden, he said in a quick, hollow tone:
“Let her alone; let her speak; let no one dare to interrupt her!”

Catharine, trembling with anxiety and inwardly hurt at the harsh manner
of the king, retired with a sigh to the embrasure of one of the windows.

Anne Askew had not noticed what was going on about her. She remained
in that state of exaltation which cares for no consequences and which
trembles before no danger. She would at this moment have gone to the
stake with cheerful alacrity, and she almost longed for this blessed
martyrdom.

“Speak, Anne Askew, speak!” commanded the king. “Tell me, do you know
what the countess, for whose pardon you are beseeching me, has done?
Know you why those four men were sent to the stake?”

“I do know, King Henry, by the wrath of God,” said the maiden, with
burning passionateness. “I know why you have sent the noble countess to
the slaughter-house, and why you will exercise no mercy toward her. She
is of noble, of royal blood, and Cardinal Pole is her son. You would
punish the son through the mother, and because you cannot throttle the
cardinal, you murder his mother.”

“Oh, you are a very knowing child!” cried the king, with an inhuman,
ironical laugh. “You know my most secret thoughts and my most hidden
feelings. Without doubt you are a good papist, since the death of the
popish countess fills you with such heart-rending grief. Then you must
confess, at the least, that it is right to burn the four heretics!”

“Heretics!” exclaimed Anne, enthusiastically, “call you heretics those
noble men who go gladly and boldly to death for their convictions
and their faith? King Henry! King Henry! Woe to you if these men are
condemned as heretics! They alone are the faithful, they are the true
servants of God. They have freed themselves from human supremacy, and as
you would not recognize the pope, so they will not recognize you as head
of the Church! God alone, they say, is Lord of the Church and Master
of their consciences, and who can be presumptuous enough to call them
criminals?”

“I!” exclaimed Henry the Eighth, in a powerful tone. “I dare do it. I
say that they are heretics, and that I will destroy them, will tread
them all beneath my feet, all of them, all who think as they do! I say
that I will shed the blood of these criminals, and prepare for them
torments at which human nature will shudder and quake. God will manifest
Himself by me in fire and blood! He has put the sword into my hand, and
I will wield it for His glory. Like St. George, I will tread the dragon
of heresy beneath my feet!”

And haughtily raising his crimsoned face and rolling his great bloodshot
eyes wildly around the circle, he continued: “Hear this all of you who
are here assembled; no mercy for heretics, no pardon for papists. It is
I, I alone, whom the Lord our God has chosen and blessed as His hangman
and executioner! I am the high-priest of His Church, and he who dares
deny me, denies God; and he who is so presumptuous as to do reverence
to any other head of the Church, is a priest of Baal and kneels to an
idolatrous image. Kneel down all of you before me, and reverence in me
God, whose earthly representative I am, and who reveals Himself through
me in His fearful and exalted majesty. Kneel down, for I am sole head of
the Church and high-priest of our God!”

And as if at one blow all knees bent; all those haughty cavaliers, those
ladies sparkling with jewels and gold, even the two bishops and the
queen fell upon the ground.

The king gazed for a moment on this sight, and, with radiant looks and
a smile of triumph, his eyes ran over this assembly, consisting of the
noblest of his kingdom, humbled before him.

Suddenly they were fastened on Anne Askew.

She alone had not bent her knee, but stood in the midst of the kneelers,
proud and upright as the king himself. A dark cloud passed over the
king’s countenance.

“You obey not my command?” asked he.

She shook her curly head and fixed on him a steady, piercing look. “No,”
 said she, “like those over yonder whose last death-groan we even now
hear, like them, I say: To God alone is honor due, and He alone is Lord
of His Church! If you wish me to bend my knee before you as my king, I
will do it, but I bow not to you as the head of the holy Church!”

A murmur of surprise flew through the assembly, and every eye was turned
with fear and amazement on this bold young girl, who confronted the king
with a countenance smiling and glowing with enthusiasm.

At a sign from Henry the kneelers arose and awaited in breathless
silence the terrible scene that was coming.

A pause ensued. King Henry himself was struggling for breath, and needed
a moment to collect himself.

Not as though wrath and passion had deprived him of speech. He was
neither wrathful nor passionate, and it was only joy that obstructed his
breathing--the joy of having again found a victim with which he might
satisfy his desire for blood, on whose agony he might feast his eyes,
whose dying sigh he might greedily inhale.

The king was never more cheerful than when he had signed a
death-warrant. For then he was in full enjoyment of his greatness
as lord over the lives and deaths of millions of other men, and this
feeling made him proud and happy, and fully conscious of his exalted
position.

Hence, as he now turned to Anne Askew, his countenance was calm and
serene, and his voice friendly, almost tender.

“Anne Askew,” said he, “do you know that the words you have now spoken
make you guilty of high treason?”

“I know it, sire.”

“And you know what punishment awaits traitors?”

“Death, I know it.”

“Death by fire!” said the king with perfect calmness and composure.
A hollow murmur ran through the assembly. Only one voice dared give
utterance to the word mercy.

It was Catharine, the king’s consort, who spoke this one word. She
stepped forward, and was about to rush to the king and once more implore
his mercy and pity. But she felt herself gently held back. Archbishop
Cranmer stood near her, regarding her with a serious and beseeching
look.

“Compose yourself, compose yourself,” murmured he. “You cannot save her;
she is lost. Think of yourself, and of the pure and holy religion
whose protectress you are. Preserve yourself for your Church and your
companions in the faith!”

“And must she die?” asked Catharine, whose eyes filled with tears as she
looked toward the poor young child, who was confronting the king with
such a beautiful and innocent smile.

“Perhaps we may still save her, but this is not the moment for it. Any
opposition now would only irritate the king the more, and he might
cause the girl to be instantly thrown into the flames of the fires still
burning yonder! So let us be silent.”

“Yes, silence,” murmured Catharine, with a shudder, as she withdrew
again to the embrasure of the window.

“Death by fire awaits you, Anne Askew!” repeated the king. “No mercy for
the traitress who vilifies and scoffs at her king!”




CHAPTER V. THE RIVALS.


At the very moment when the king was pronouncing, in a voice almost
exultant, Anne Askew’s sentence of death, one of the king’s cavaliers
appeared on the threshold of the royal chamber and advanced toward the
king.

He was a young man of noble and imposing appearance, whose lofty bearing
contrasted strangely with the humble and submissive attitude of the
rest of the courtiers. His tall, slim form was clad in a coat of mail
glittering with gold; over his shoulders hung a velvet mantle decorated
with a princely crown; and his head, covered with dark ringlets, was
adorned with a cap embroidered with gold, from which a long white
ostrich-feather drooped to his shoulder. His oval face presented
the full type of aristocratic beauty; his cheeks were of a clear,
transparent paleness; about his slightly pouting mouth played a smile,
half contemptuous and half languid; the high, arched brow and delicately
chiselled aquiline nose gave to his face an expression at once bold and
thoughtful. The eyes alone were not in harmony with his face; they were
neither languid like the mouth, nor pensive like the brow. All the
fire and all the bold and wanton passion of youth shot from those dark,
flashing eyes. When he looked down, he might have been taken for a
completely worn-out, misanthropic aristocrat; but when he raised those
ever-flashing and sparkling eyes, then was seen the young man full
of dashing courage and ambitious desires, of passionate warmth and
measureless pride.

He approached the king, as already stated, and as he bent his knee
before him, he said in a full, pleasant voice:

“Mercy, sire, mercy!”

The king stepped back in astonishment, and turned upon the bold speaker
a look almost of amazement.

“Thomas Seymour!” said he. “Thomas, you have returned, then, and your
first act is again an indiscretion and a piece of foolhardy rashness?”

The young man smiled. “I have returned,” said he, “that is to say, I
have had a sea-fight with the Scots and taken from them four men-of-war.
With these I hastened hither to present them to you, my king and lord,
as a wedding-gift, and just as I entered the anteroom I heard your voice
pronouncing a sentence of death. Was it not natural, then, that I, who
bring you tidings of a victory, should have the heart to utter a
prayer for mercy, for which, as it seems, none of these noble and proud
cavaliers could summon up courage?”

“Ah!” said the king, evidently relieved and fetching a deep breath,
“then you knew not at all for whom and for what you were imploring
pardon?”

“Yet!” said the young man, and his bold glance ran with an expression of
contempt over the whole assembly--“yet, I saw at once who the condemned
must be, for I saw this young maiden forsaken by all as if stricken
by the plague, standing alone in the midst of this exalted and brave
company. And you well know, my noble king, that at court one recognizes
the condemned and those fallen into disgrace by this, that every one
flies from them, and nobody has the courage to touch such a leper even
with the tip of his finger!”

King Henry smiled. “Thomas Seymour, Earl of Sudley, you are now, as
ever, imprudent and hasty,” said he. “You beg for mercy without once
knowing whether she for whom you beg it is worthy of mercy.”

“But I see that she is a woman,” said the intrepid young earl. “And a
woman is always worthy of mercy, and it becomes every knight to come
forward as her defender, were it but to pay homage to her sex, so fair
and so frail, and yet so noble and mighty. Therefore I beg mercy for
this young maiden!”

Catharine had listened to the young earl with throbbing heart and
flushed cheeks. It was the first time that she had seen him, and yet she
felt for him a warm sympathy, an almost tender anxiety.

“He will plunge himself into ruin,” murmured she; “he will not save
Anne, but will make himself unhappy. My God, my God, have a little
compassion and pity on my anguish!”

She now fixed her anxious gaze on the king, firmly resolved to rush
to the help of the earl, who had so nobly and magnanimously interested
himself in an innocent woman, should the wrath of her husband threaten
him also. But, to her surprise, Henry’s face was perfectly serene and
contented.

Like the wild beast, that, following its instinct, seeks its bloody prey
only so long as it is hungry, so King Henry felt satiated for the day.
Yonder glared the fires about the stake, at which four heretics were
burned; there stood the scaffold on which the Countess of Somerset had
just been executed; and now, within this hour, he had already found
another new victim for death. Moreover, Thomas Seymour had always been
his favorite. His audacity, his liveliness, his energy, had always
inspired the king with respect; and then, again, he so much resembled
his sister, the beautiful Jane Seymour, Henry’s third wife.

“I cannot grant you this favor, Thomas,” said the king. “Justice must
not be hindered in her course, and where she has passed sentence, mercy
must not give her the lie; and it was the justice of your king which
pronounced sentence at that moment. You were guilty, therefore, of a
double wrong, for you not only besought mercy, but you also brought an
accusation against my cavaliers. Do you really believe that, were this
maiden’s cause a just one, no knight would have been found for her?”

“Yes, I really believe it,” cried the earl, with a laugh. “The sun of
your favor had turned away from this poor girl, and in such a case your
courtiers no longer see the figure wrapped in darkness.”

“You are mistaken, my lord; I have seen it,” suddenly said another
voice, and a second cavalier advanced from the anteroom into the
chamber. He approached the king, and, as he bent his knee before him, he
said, in a loud, steady voice: “Sire, I also beg mercy for Anne Askew!”

At this moment was heard from that side of the room where the ladies
stood, a low cry, and the pale, affrighted face of Lady Jane Douglas was
for a moment raised above the heads of the other ladies. No one noticed
it. All eyes were directed toward the group in the middle of the room:
all looked with eager attention upon the king and these two young men,
who dared protect one whom he had sentenced.

“Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey!” exclaimed the king; and now an
expression of wrath passed over his countenance. “How! you, too,
dare intercede for this girl? You, then, grudge Thomas Seymour the
pre-eminence of being the most discreet man at my court?”

“I will not allow him, sire, to think that he is the bravest,” replied
the young man, as he fixed on Thomas Seymour a look of haughty defiance,
which the other answered by a cold, disdainful smile.

“Oh,” said he, with a shrug of his shoulders, “I willingly allow you, my
dear Earl of Surrey, to tread behind me, at your convenience, the path,
the safety of which I first tested at the peril of my life. You saw that
I had not, as yet, lost either my head or my life in this reckless under
taking, and that has given you courage to follow my example. That is a
new proof of your prudent valor, my Honorable Earl of Surrey, and I must
praise you for it.”

A hot flush suffused the noble face of the earl, his eyes shot
lightning, and, trembling with rage, he laid his hand on his sword.
“Praise from Thomas Seymour is--”

“Silence!” interposed the king, imperatively. “It must not be said that
two of the noblest cavaliers of my court have turned the day, which
should be one of festivity to all of you, into a day of contention. I
command you, therefore, to be reconciled. Shake hands, my lords, and let
your reconciliation be sincere. I, the king command it!”

The young men gazed at each other with looks of hatred and smothered
rage, and their eyes spoke the insulting and defiant words which their
lips durst no longer utter. The king had ordered, and, however great
and powerful they might be, the king was to be obeyed. They,
therefore, extended their hands to each other, and muttered a few low,
unintelligible words, which might be, perhaps, a mutual apology, but
which neither of them understood.

“And now, sire,” said the Earl of Surrey, “now I venture to reiterate my
prayer. Mercy, your majesty, mercy for Anne Askew!”

“And you, Thomas Seymour, do you also renew your petition?”

“No, I withdraw it. Earl Surrey protects her; I, therefore, retire, for
without doubt she is a criminal; your majesty says so, and, therefore,
it is so. It would ill become a Seymour to protect a person who sinned
against the king.”

This new indirect attack on Earl Surrey seemed to make on all present a
deep but very varied impression. Here, faces were seen to turn pale,
and there, to light up with a malicious smile; here, compressed
lips muttered words of threatening, there, a mouth opened to express
approbation and agreement.

The king’s brow was clouded and troubled; the arrow which Earl Sudley
had shot with so skilful a hand had hit. The king, ever suspicious and
distrustful, felt so much the more disquieted as he saw that the greater
part of his cavaliers evidently reckoned themselves friends of Henry
Howard, and that the number of Seymour’s adherents was but trifling.

“These Howards are dangerous, and I will watch them carefully,” said the
king to himself; and for the first time his eye rested with a dark and
hostile look on Henry Howard’s noble countenance.

But Thomas Seymour, who wished only to make a thrust at his old enemy,
had at the same time decided the fate of poor Anne Askew. It was now
almost an impossibility to speak in her behalf, and to implore pardon
for her was to become a partaker of her crime. Thomas Seymour had
abandoned her, because, as traitress to her king, she had rendered
herself unworthy of his protection. Who now would be so presumptuous as
to still protect the traitress?

Henry Howard did it; he reiterated his supplication for Anne Askew’s
pardon. But the king’s countenance grew darker and darker, and the
courtiers watched with dread the coming of the moment when his wrath
would dash in pieces the poor Earl of Surrey.

In the row of ladies also, here and there, a pale face was visible, and
many a beautiful and beaming eye was dimmed with tears at the sight of
this gallant and handsome cavalier, who was hazarding even his life for
a woman.

“He is lost!” murmured Lady Jane Douglas; and, completely crushed
and lifeless, she leaned for a moment against the wall. But she soon
recovered herself, and her eye beamed with bold resolution. “I will try
and save him!” she said to herself; and, with firm step, she advanced
from the ladies’ ranks, and approached the king.

A murmur of applause ran through the company, and all fares brightened
and all eyes were bent approvingly on Lady Jane. They knew that she
was the queen’s friend, and an adherent of the new doctrine; it was,
therefore, very marked and significant when she supported the Earl of
Surrey in his magnanimous effort.

Lady Jane bowed her beautiful and haughty head before the king, and
said, in her clear, silvery voice: “Sire, in the name of all the women,
I also beseech you to pardon Anne Askew, because she is a woman. Lord
Surrey has done so because a true knight can never be false to himself
and his ever high and sacred obligation: to be the protector of those
who are helpless and in peril is enough for him. A real gentleman asks
not whether a woman is worthy of his protection; he grants it to
her, simply because she is a woman, and needs his help. And while I,
therefore, in the name of all the women, thank the Earl of Surrey for
the assistance that he has been desirous to render to a woman, I unite
my prayer with his, because it shall not be said that we women are
always cowardly and timid, and never venture to hasten to the help of
the distressed. I, therefore, ask mercy, sire, mercy for Anne Askew!”

“And I,” said the queen, as she again approached the king, “I add my
prayers to hers, sire. To-day is the feast of love, my festival, sire!
To-day, then, let love and mercy prevail.”

She looked at the king with so charming a smile, her eyes had an
expression so radiant and happy, that the king could not withstand her.

He was, therefore, in the depths of his heart, ready to let the royal
clemency prevail for this time; but he wanted a pretext for this, some
way of bringing it about. He had solemnly vowed to pardon no heretic,
and he might not break his word merely because the queen prayed for
mercy.

“Well, then,” said he, after a pause, “I will comply with your request.
I will pardon Anne Askew, provided she will retract, and solemnly abjure
all that she has said. Are you satisfied with that, Catharine?”

“I am satisfied,” said she, sadly.

“And you, Lady Jane Douglas, and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey?”

“We are satisfied.”

All eyes were now turned again upon Anne Askew, who, although every
one was occupied by her concerns, had been entirely overlooked and left
unnoticed.

Nor had she taken any more notice of the company than they of her. She
had scarcely observed what was going on about her. She stood leaning
against the open door leading to the balcony, and gazed at the flaming
horizon. Her soul was with those pious martyrs, for whom she was
sending up her heart-felt prayers to God, and whom she, in her feverish
exaltation, envied their death of torture. Entirely borne away from the
present, she had heard neither the petitions of those who protected her,
nor the king’s reply.

A hand laid upon her shoulder roused her from her reverie.

It was Catharine, the young queen, who stood near her.

“Anne Askew,” said she, in a hurried whisper, “if your life is dear to
you, comply with the king’s demand.”

She seized the young girl’s hand, and led her to the king.

“Sire,” said she, in a full voice, “forgive the exalted and impassioned
agony of a poor girl, who has now, for the first time, been witness of
an execution, and whose mind has been so much impressed by it that she
is scarcely conscious of the mad and criminal words that she has
uttered before you! Pardon her, then, your majesty, for she is prepared
cheerfully to retract.”

A cry of amazement burst from Anne’s lips, and her eyes flashed with
anger, as she dashed the queen’s hand away from her.

“I retract!” exclaimed she, with a contemptuous smile. “Never, my lady,
never! No! as sure as I hope for God to be gracious to me in my last
hour, I retract not! It is true, it was agony and horror that made me
speak; but what I have spoken is yet, nevertheless, the truth. Horror
caused me to speak, and forced me to show my soul undisguised. No, I
retract not! I tell you, they who have been executed over yonder are
holy martyrs, who have ascended to God, there to enter an accusation
against their royal hangman. Ay, they are holy, for eternal truth had
illumined their souls, and it beamed about their faces bright as the
flames of the fagots into which the murderous hand of an unrighteous
judge had cast them. Ah, I must retract! I, forsooth, am to do as did
Shaxton, the miserable and unfaithful servant of his God, who, from
fear of earthly death, denied the eternal truth, and in blaspheming
pusillanimity perjured himself concerning the holy doctrine. [Footnote:
Burnet, vol. i, p. 341] King Henry, I say unto you, beware of
dissemblers and perjurers; beware of your own haughty and arrogant
thoughts. The blood of martyrs cries to Heaven against you, and the time
will come when God will be as merciless to you as you have been to the
noblest of your subjects! You deliver them over to the murderous flames,
because they will not believe what the priests of Baal preach; because
they will not believe in the real transubstantiation of the chalice;
because they deny that the natural body of Christ is, after the
sacrament, contained in the sacrament, no matter whether the priest be
a good or a bad man. [Footnote: Ibid.] You give them over to the
executioner, because they serve the truth, and are faithful followers of
the Lord their God!”

“And you share the views of these people whom you call martyrs?” asked
the king, as Anne Askew now paused for a moment and struggled for
breath.

“Yes, I share them!”

“You deny, then, the truth of the six articles?”

“I deny them!”

“You do not see in me the head of the Church?”

“God only is Head and Lord of the Church!”

A pause followed--a fearful, awful pause.

Every one felt that for this poor young girl there was no hope, no
possible escape; that her doom was irrevocably sealed.

There was a smile on the king’s countenance.

The courtiers knew that smile, and feared it yet more than the king’s
raging wrath.

When the king thus smiled, he had taken his resolve. Then there was with
him no possible vacillation or hesitation, but the sentence of death was
resolved on, and his bloodthirsty soul rejoiced over a new victim.

“My Lord Bishop of Winchester,” said the king, at length, “come hither.”

Gardiner drew near and placed himself by Anne Askew, who gazed at him
with angry, contemptuous looks.

“In the name of the law I command you to arrest this heretic, and hand
her over to the spiritual court,” continued the king. “She is damned and
lost. She shall be punished as she deserves!”

Gardiner laid his hand on Anne Askew’s shoulder. “In the name of the law
of God, I arrest you!” said he, solemnly.

Not a word more was spoken. The lord chief justice had silently followed
a sign from Gardiner, and touching Anne Askew with his staff, ordered
the soldiers to conduct her thence.

With a smile, Anne Askew offered them her hand, and surrounded by the
soldiers and followed by the Bishop of Winchester and the lord chief
justice, walked erect and proudly out of the room.

The courtiers had divided and opened a passage for Anne and her
attendants. Now their ranks closed again, as the sea closes and flows
calmly on when it has just received a corpse. To them all Anne Askew was
already a corpse, as one buried. The waves had swept over her and all
was again serene and bright.

The king extended his hand to his young wife, and, bending down,
whispered in her ear a few words, which nobody understood, but which
made the young queen tremble and blush.

The king, who observed this, laughed and impressed a kiss on her
forehead. Then he turned to his court; “Now, good-night, my lords and
gentlemen,” said he, with a gracious inclination of the head. “The feast
is at an end, and we need rest.”

“Forget not the Princess Elizabeth,” whispered Archbishop Cranmer, as he
took leave of Catharine, and pressed to his lips her proffered hand.

“I will not forget her,” murmured Catharine, and, with throbbing heart
and trembling with inward dread, she saw them all retire, and leave her
alone with the king.




CHAPTER VI. THE INTERCESSION.


“And now, Kate,” said the king, when all had withdrawn, and he was again
alone with her, “now let us forget everything, save that we love each
other.”

He embraced her and with ardor pressed her to his breast. Wearied to
death, she bowed her head on his shoulder and lay there like a shattered
rose, completely broken, completely passive.

“You give me no kiss, Kate?” said Henry, with a smile. “Are you then yet
angry with me that I did not comply with your first request? But what
would you have me do, child? How, indeed, shall I keep the crimson of my
royal mantle always fresh and bright, unless I continually dye it anew
in the blood of criminals? Only he who punishes and destroys is truly
a king, and trembling mankind will acknowledge him as such. The
tender-hearted and gracious king it despises, and his pitiful weakness
it laughs to scorn. Bah! Humanity is such a wretched, miserable thing,
that it only respects and acknowledges him who makes it tremble. And
people are such contemptible, foolish children, that they have respect
only for him who makes them feel the lash daily, and every now and then
whips a few of them to death. Look at me, Kate: where is there a king
who has reigned longer and more happily than I? whom the people love
more and obey better than me? This arises from the fact that I have
already signed more than two hundred death-warrants, [Footnote: Tytler,
p. 428. Leti, vol. i, p. 187.] and because every one believes that,
if he does not obey me, I will without delay send his head after the
others!”

“Oh, you say you love me,” murmured Catharine, “and you speak only of
blood and death while you are with me.”

The king laughed. “You are right, Kate,” said he, “and yet, believe me,
there are other thoughts slumbering in the depths of my heart, and
could you look down into it, you would not accuse me of coldness and
unkindness. I love you truly, my dear, virgin bride, and, to prove it,
you shall now ask a favor of me. Yes, Kate, make me a request, and,
whatever it may be, I pledge you my royal word, it shall be granted you.
Now, Kate, think, what will please you? Will you have brilliants, or a
castle by the sea, or, perhaps, a yacht? Would you like fine horses, or
it may be some one has offended you, and you would like his head? If so,
tell me, Kate, and you shall have his head; a wink from me, and it
drops at your feet. For I am almighty and all-powerful, and no one is
so innocent and pure, that my will cannot find in him a crime which will
cost him his life. Speak, then, Kate; what would you have? What will
gladden your heart?”

Catharine smiled in spite of her secret fear and horror. “Sire,” said
she, “you have given me so many brilliants, that I can shine and glitter
with them, as night does with her stars. If you give me a castle by the
sea, that is, at the same time, banishing me from Whitehall and your
presence; I wish, therefore, for no castle of my own. I wish only to
dwell with you in your castles, and my king’s abode shall be my only
residence.”

“Beautifully and wisely spoken,” said the king; “I will remember these
words if ever your enemies endeavor to send you to a dwelling and a
castle other than that which your king occupies. The Tower is also a
castle, Kate, but I give you my royal word you shall never occupy that
castle. You want no treasures and no castles? It is, then, somebody’s
head that you demand of me?”

“Yes, sire, it is the head of some one!”

“Ah, I guessed it, then,” said the king with a laugh. “Now speak,
my little bloodthirsty queen, whose head will you have? Who shall be
brought to the block?”

“Sire, it is true I ask you for the head of a person,” said Catharine,
in a tender, earnest tone, “but I wish not that head to fall, but to be
lifted up. I beg you for a human life--not to destroy it, but, on the
contrary, to adorn it with happiness and joy. I wish to drag no one to
prison, but to restore to one, dearly beloved, the freedom, happiness,
and splendid position which belong to her. Sire, you have permitted me
to ask a favor. Now, then, I beg you to call the Princess Elizabeth to
court. Let her reside with us at Whitehall. Allow her to be ever near
me, and share my happiness and glory. Sire, only yesterday the Princess
Elizabeth was far above me in rank and position, but since your
all-powerful might and grace have to-day elevated me above all other
women, I may now love the Princess Elizabeth as my sister and dearest
friend. Grant me this, my king! Let Elizabeth come to us at Whitehall,
and enjoy at our court the honor which is her due.” [Footnote: Leti,
vol. i. p. 147. Tytler. p. 410.]

The king did not reply immediately; but in his quiet and smiling air
one could read that his young consort’s request had not angered him.
Something like an emotion flitted across his face, and his eyes were
for a moment dimmed with tears. Perhaps just then a pale, soul-harrowing
phantom passed before his mind, and a glance at the past showed him the
beautiful and unfortunate mother [Footnote: Ann Boleyn] of Elizabeth,
whom he had sentenced to a cruel death at the hands of the public
executioner, and whose last word nevertheless was a blessing and a
message of love for him.

He passionately seized Catharine’s hand and pressed it to his lips. “I
thank you! You are unselfish and generous. That is a very rare quality,
and I shall always highly esteem you for it. But you are also brave and
courageous, for you have dared what nobody before you has dared; you
have twice on the same evening interceded for one condemned and one
fallen into disgrace. The fortunate, and those favored by me, have
always had many friends, but I have never yet seen that the unfortunate
and the exiled have also found friends. You are different from these
miserable, cringing courtiers; different from this deceitful and
trembling crowd, that with chattering teeth fall down and worship me
as their god and lord; different from these pitiful, good-for-nothing
mortals, who call themselves my people, and who allow me to yoke them
up, because they are like the ox, which is obedient and serviceable,
only because he is so stupid as not to know his own might and strength.
Ah, believe me, Kate, I would be a milder and more merciful king, if the
people were not such an utterly stupid and contemptible thing; a dog,
which is so much the more submissive and gentle the more you maltreat
him. You, Kate, you are different, and I am glad of it. You know, I have
forever banished Elizabeth from my court and from my heart, and still
you intercede for her. That is noble of you, and I love you for it, and
grant you your request. And that you may see how I love and trust you,
I will now reveal to you a secret: I have long since wished to have
Elizabeth with me, but I was ashamed, even to myself, of this weakness.
I have long yearned once again to look into my daughter’s large deep
eyes, to be a kind and tender father to her, and make some amends to her
for the wrong I perhaps may have done to her mother. For sometimes, in
sleepless nights, Anne’s beautiful face comes up before me and gazes at
me with mournful, mild look, and my whole heart shudders before it.
But I could not confess this to anybody, for then they might say that I
repented what I had done. A king must be infallible, like God himself,
and never, through regret or desire to compensate, confess that he is a
weak, erring mortal, like others. You see why I repressed my longing and
parental tenderness, which was suspected by no one, and appeared to be
a heartless father, because nobody would help me and make it easy for
me to be a tender father. Ah, these courtiers! They are so stupid, that
they can understand only just what is echoed in our words; but what
our heart says, and longs for, of that they know nothing. But you know,
Kate; you are an acute woman, and a high-minded one besides. Come, Kate,
a thankful father gives you this kiss, and this, ay, this, your husband
gives you, my beautiful, charming queen.”




CHAPTER VII. HENRY THE EIGHTH AND HIS WIVES.


The calm of night had now succeeded to the tempest of the day, and after
so much bustle, festivity, and rejoicing, deep quiet now reigned in the
palace of Whitehall, and throughout London. The happy subjects of King
Henry might, without danger, remain for a few hours at least in their
houses, and behind closed shutters and bolted doors, either slumber and
dream, or give themselves to their devotional exercises, on account of
which they had that day, perhaps, been denounced as malefactors. They
might, for a few hours, resign themselves to the sweet, blissful dream
of being freemen untrammelled in belief and thought. For King Henry
slept, and likewise Gardiner and the lord chancellor had closed their
watchful, prying, devout, murderous eyes, and reposed awhile from the
Christian employment of ferreting out heretics.

And like the king, the entire households of both their majesties were
also asleep and resting from the festivities of the royal wedding-day,
which, in pomp and splendor, by far surpassed the five preceding
marriages.

It appeared, however, as though not all the court officials were taking
rest, and following the example of the king. For in a chamber, not far
from that of the royal pair, one could perceive, from the bright beams
streaming from the windows, in spite of the heavy damask curtains which
veiled them, that the lights were not yet extinguished; and he who
looked more closely would have observed that now and then a human shadow
was portrayed upon the curtain.

So the occupant of this chamber had not yet gone to rest, and harassing
must have been the thoughts which cause him to move so restlessly to and
fro.

This chamber was occupied by Lady Jane Douglas, first maid of honor to
the queen. The powerful influence of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, had
seconded Catharine’s wish to have near her the dear friend of her youth,
and, without suspecting it, the queen had given a helping hand to
bring nearer to their accomplishment the schemes which the hypocritical
Gardiner was directing against her.

For Catharine knew not what changes had taken place in the character of
her friend in the four years in which she had not seen her. She did not
suspect how fatal her sojourn in the strongly Romish city of Dublin had
been to the easily impressible mind of her early playmate, and how much
it had transformed her whole being. Lady Jane, once so sprightly and
gay, had become a bigoted Romanist, who, with fanatical zeal, believed
that she was serving God when she served the Church, and paid unreserved
obedience to her priests.

Lady Jane Douglas had therefore--thanks to her fanaticism and the
teachings of the priests--become a complete dissembler. She could smile,
while in her heart she secretly brooded over hatred and revenge. She
could kiss the lips of those whose destruction she had perhaps just
sworn. She could preserve a harmless, innocent air, while she observed
everything, and took notice of every breath, every smile, every movement
of the eyelashes.

Hence it was very important for Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, to bring
his “friend” of the queen to court, and make of this disciple of Loyola
an ally and friend.

Lady Jane Douglas was alone; and, pacing up and down her room, she
thought over the events of the day.

Now, that no one was observing her, she had laid aside that gentle,
serious mien, which one was wont to see about her at other times; her
countenance betrayed in rapid changes all the various sad and cheerful,
tempestuous and tender feelings which agitated her.

She who had hitherto had only one aim before her eyes, to serve the
Church, and to consecrate her whole life to this service; she whose
heart had been hitherto open only to ambition and devotion, she felt
to-day wholly new and never-suspected feelings springing up within her.
A new thought had entered into her life, the woman was awakened in her,
and beat violently at that heart which devotion had overlaid with a hard
coating.

She had tried to collect herself in prayer, and to fill her soul so
entirely with the idea of God and her Church, that no earthly thought
or desire could find place therein. But ever and again arose before her
mind’s eye the noble countenance of Henry Howard, ever and again she
fancied that she heard his earnest, melodious voice, which made her
heart shake and tremble like a magical incantation. She had at first
struggled against these sweet fancies, which forced upon her such
strange and undreamed-of thoughts; but at length the woman in her got
the better of the fanatical Romanist, and, dropping into a seat, she
surrendered herself to her dreams and fancies.

“Has he recognized me?” asked she of herself. “Does he still remember
that a year ago we saw each other daily at the king’s court in Dublin?”

“But no,” added she mournfully, “he knows nothing of it. He had then
eyes and sense only for his young wife. Ah, and she was beautiful and
lovely as one of the Graces. But I, am not I also beautiful? and
have not the noblest cavaliers paid me homage, and sighed for me in
unavailing love? How comes it, then, that where I would please, there
I am always overlooked? How comes it, that the only two men, for whose
notice I ever cared, have never shown any preference for me? I felt that
I loved Henry Howard, but this love was a sin, for the Earl of Surrey
was married. I therefore tore my heart from him by violence, and gave
it to God, because the only man whom I could love did not return my
affection. But even God and devotion are not able to entirely fill a
woman’s heart. In my breast there was still room for ambition; and since
I could not be a happy wife, I would at least be a powerful queen. Oh,
everything was so well devised, so nicely arranged! Gardiner had already
spoken of me to the king, and inclined him to his plan; and while I
was hastening at his call from Duma, hither, this little Catharine Parr
comes between and snatches him from me, and overturns all our schemes.
I will never forgive her. I will find a way to revenge myself. I will
force her to leave this place, which belongs to me, and if there is no
other way for it, she must go the way of the scaffold, as did Catharine
Howard. I will be Queen of England, I will--”

She suddenly interrupted her soliloquy, and listened. She thought she
heard a slight knock at the door. She was not mistaken; this knock was
now repeated, and indeed with a peculiar, significant stroke.

“It is my father!” said Lady Jane, and, as she resumed again her grave
and quiet air, she proceeded to open the door.

“Ah, you expected me, then?” said Lord Archibald Douglas, kissing his
daughter’s forehead.

“Yes, I expected you, my father,” replied Lady Jane with a smile. “I
knew that you would come to communicate to me your experiences and
observations during the day, and to give me directions for the future.”

The earl seated himself on the ottoman, and drew his daughter down by
him.

“No one can overhear us, can they?”

“Nobody, my father! My women are sleeping in the fourth chamber from
here, and I have myself fastened the intervening doors. The anteroom
through which you came is, as you know, entirely empty, and nobody can
conceal himself there. It remains, then, only to fasten the door leading
thence into the corridor, in order to be secure from interruption.”

She hastened into the anteroom to fasten the door.

“Now, my father, we are secure from listeners,” said she, as she
returned and resumed her place on the ottoman.

“And the walls, my child? know you whether or no the walls are safe?
You look at me with an expression of doubt and surprise! My God, what a
harmless and innocent little maiden you still are! Have I not constantly
reiterated the great and wise lesson, ‘Doubt everything and mistrust
everything, even what you see.’ He who will make his fortune at court,
must first of all mistrust everybody, and consider everybody his enemy,
whom he is to flatter, because he can do him harm, and whom he is to hug
and kiss, until in some happy embrace he can either plunge a dagger
into his breast wholly unobserved, or pour poison into his mouth. Trust
neither men nor walls, Jane, for I tell you, however smooth and innocent
both may appear, still there may be found an ambuscade behind the
smooth exterior. But I will for the present believe that these walls are
innocent, and conceal no listeners. I will believe it, because I
know this room. Those were fine and charming days in which I became
acquainted with it. Then I was yet young and handsome, and King Henry’s
sister was not yet married to the King of Scotland, and we loved each
other so dearly. Ah, I could relate to you wonderful stories of those
happy days. I could--”

“But, my dear father,” interrupted Lady Jane, secretly trembling at the
terrible prospect of being forced to listen yet again to the story of
his youthful love, which she had already heard times without number,
“but, my dear father, doubtless you have not come hither so late at
night in order to relate to me what I--forgive me, my lord--what I
long since knew. You will rather communicate to me what your keen and
unerring glance has discovered here.”

“It is true,” said Lord Douglas, sadly. “I now sometimes become
loquacious--a sure sign that I am growing old. I have, by no means, come
here to speak of the past, but of the present. Let us, then, speak of
it. Ah, I have to-day perceived much, seen much, observed much, and the
result of my observations is, you will be King Henry’s seventh wife.”

“Impossible, my lord!” exclaimed Lady Jane, whose countenance, in spite
of her will, assumed an expression of delight.

Her father remarked it. “My child,” said he, “I observe that you have
not yet your features entirely under your control. You aimed just now,
for example, to play the coy and humble, and yet your face had the
expression of proud satisfaction. But this by the way! The principal
thing is, you will be King Henry’s seventh wife! But in order to become
so, there is need for great heedfulness, a complete knowledge of
present relations, constant observation of all persons, impenetrable
dissimulation, and lastly, above all things, a very intimate and
profound knowledge of the king, of the history of his reign, and of his
character. Do you possess this knowledge? Know you what it is to wish
to become King Henry’s seventh wife, and how you must begin in order to
attain this? Have you studied Henry’s character?”

“A little, perhaps, but certainly not sufficiently. For, as you know, my
lord, worldly matters have lain upon my heart less than the holy Church,
to whose service I have consecrated myself, and to which I would have
presented my whole being, my whole soul, my whole heart, as a sacrifice,
had not you yourself determined otherwise concerning me. Ah, my father,
had I been allowed to follow my inclination, I would have retired into a
convent in Scotland in order to spend my life in quiet contemplation and
pious penances, and close my soul and ear to every profane sound. But
my wishes have not been regarded; and, by the mouth of His venerable and
holy priests, God has commanded me to remain in the world, and take upon
myself the yoke of greatness and regal splendor. If I then struggle
and strive to become queen, this is done, not because the vain pomp and
glory allure me, but solely because through me the Church, out of which
is no salvation, may find a fulcrum to operate on this weak and fickle
king, and because I am to bring him back again to the only true faith.”

“Very well played!” cried her father, who had stared her steadily in the
face while she was speaking. “On my word, very well played. Everything
was in perfect harmony, the gesticulation, the play of the eyes, and the
voice. My daughter, I withdraw my censure. You have perfect control over
yourself. But let us speak of King Henry. We will now subject him to a
thorough analysis, and no fibre of his heart, no atom of his brain
shall remain unnoticed by us. We will observe him in his domestic, his
political, and his religious life, and get a perfectly clear view of
every peculiarity of his character, in order that we may deal with him
accordingly. Let us, then, speak first of his wives. Their lives and
deaths afford you excellent finger-posts; for I do not deny that it is
an extremely difficult and dangerous undertaking to be Henry’s
consort. There is needed for it much personal courage and very great
self-control. Know you which, of all his wives, possessed these in
the highest degree? It was his first consort, Catharine of Aragon! By
Heaven, she was a sensible woman, and born a queen! Henry, avaricious as
he was, would gladly have given the best jewel in his crown, if he could
have detected but a shadow, the slightest trace of unfaithfulness in
her. But there was absolutely no means of sending this woman to the
scaffold, and at that time he was as yet too cowardly and too virtuous
to put her out of the way by poison. He, therefore, endured her long,
until she was an old woman with gray hairs, and disagreeable for his
eyes to look upon. So after he had been married to her seventeen
years, the good, pious king was all at once seized with a conscientious
scruple, and because he had read in the Bible, ‘Thou shalt not marry
thy sister,’ dreadful pangs of conscience came upon the noble and crafty
monarch. He fell upon his knees and beat his breast, and cried: ‘I
have committed a great sin; for I have married my brother’s wife, and
consequently my sister. But I will make amends for it. I will dissolve
this adulterous marriage!’--Do you know, child, why he would dissolve
it?”

“Because he loved Anne Boleyn!” said Jane, with a smile.

“Perfectly correct! Catharine had grown old, and Henry was still a young
man, and his blood shot through his veins like streams of fire. Hut he
was yet somewhat virtuous and timid, and the main peculiarity of his
character was as yet undeveloped. He was not yet bloodthirsty, that is
to say, he had not yet licked blood. But you will see how with each new
queen his desire for blood increased, till at length it has now become a
wasting disease. Had he then had the system of lies that he now has, he
would somehow have bribed a slanderer, who would have declared that
he was Catharine’s lover. But he was yet so innocent; he wanted yet to
gratify his darling lusts in a perfectly legal way. So Anne Boleyn must
become his queen, that he might love her. And in order to attain this,
he threw down the glove to the whole world, became an enemy to the
pope, and set himself in open opposition to the holy head of the Church.
Because the Holy Father would not dissolve his marriage, King Henry
became an apostate and atheist. He constituted himself head of his
Church, and, by virtue of his authority as such, he declared his
marriage with Catharine of Aragon null and void. He said that he had
not in his heart given his consent to this marriage, and that it had
not consequently been properly consummated.[Footnote: Burnet, vol. i, p.
37.] It is true, Catharine had in the Princess Mary a living witness of
the consummation of her marriage, but what did the enamored and selfish
king care about that? Princess Mary was declared a bastard, and the
queen was now to be nothing more than the widow of the Prince of Wales.
It was strictly forbidden to longer give the title and to show the honor
due to a queen, to the woman who for seventeen years had been Queen of
England, and had been treated and honored as such. No one was permitted
to call her anything but the Princess of Wales; and that nothing might
disturb the good people or the noble queen herself in this illusion,
Catharine was banished from the court and exiled to a castle, which
she had once occupied as consort of Arthur, Prince of Wales. And Henry
likewise allowed her only the attendance and pension which the law
appoints to the widow of the Prince of Wales.[Footnote: Burnet, vol. i,
p. 120.]

“I have ever held this to be one of the most prudent and subtle acts
of our exalted king, and in the whole history of this divorce the king
conducted himself with admirable consistency and resolution. But this
is to say, he was excited by opposition. Mark this, then, my child, for
this is the reason why I have spoken to you of these things so much at
length. Mark this, then: King Henry is every way entirely unable to bear
contradiction, or to be subjected to restraint. If you wish to win him
to any purpose, you must try to draw him from it; you must surround
it with difficulties and hinderances. Therefore show yourself coy and
indifferent; that will excite him. Do not court his looks; then will he
seek to encounter yours. And when finally he loves you, dwell so long on
your virtue and your conscience, that at length Henry, in order to quiet
your conscience, will send this troublesome Catharine Parr to the block,
or do as he did with Catharine of Aragon, and declare that he did not
mentally give his consent to this marriage, and therefore Catharine
is no queen, but only Lord Neville’s widow. Ah, since he made himself
high-priest of his Church, there is no impediment for him in matters of
this kind, for only God is mightier than he.

“The beautiful Anne Boleyn, Henry’s second wife, proved this. I have
seen her often, and I tell you, Jane, she was of wondrous beauty.
Whoever looked upon her, could not but love her, and he whom she smiled
upon felt himself fascinated and glorified. When she had borne to the
king the Princess Elizabeth, I heard him say, that he had attained the
summit of his happiness, the goal of his wishes, for the queen had borne
him a daughter, and so there was a regular and legitimate successor to
his throne. But this happiness lasted only a brief time.

“The king conceived one day that Anne Boleyn was not, as he had hitherto
believed, the most beautiful woman in the world; but that there were
women still more beautiful at his court, who therefore had a stronger
vocation to become Queen of England. He had seen Jane Seymour, and she
without doubt was handsomer than Anne Boleyn, for she was not as yet the
king’s consort, and there was an obstacle to his possession of her--the
Queen Anne Boleyn. This obstacle must be got out of the way.

“Henry, by virtue of his plentitude of power, might again have been
divorced from his wife, but he did not like to repeat himself, he wished
to be always original; and no one was to be allowed to say that his
divorces were only the cloak of his capricious lewdness.

“He had divorced Catharine of Aragon on account of conscientious
scruples; therefore, some other means must be devised for Anne Boleyn.

“The shortest way to be rid of her was the scaffold. Why should not Anne
travel that road, since so many had gone it before her? for a new
force had entered into the king’s life: the tiger had licked blood! His
instinct was aroused, and he recoiled no more from those crimson rills
which flowed in the veins of his subjects.

“He had given Lady Anne Boleyn the crimson mantle of royalty, why then
should she not give him her crimson blood? For this there was wanted
only a pretext, and this was soon found. Lady Rochfort was Jane
Seymour’s aunt, and she found some men, of whom she asserted that they
had been lovers of the fair Anne Boleyn. She, as the queen’s first lady
of the bed-chamber, could of course give the most minute particulars
concerning the matter, and the king believed her. He believed her,
though these four pretended lovers of the queen, who were executed for
their crime, all, with the exception of a single one, asseverated that
Anne Boleyn was innocent, and that they had never been in her presence.
The only one who accused the queen of illicit intercourse with him was
James Smeaton, a musician. [Footnote: Tytler.] But he had been promised
his life for this confession. However, it was not thought advisable to
keep this promise, for fear that, when confronted with the queen, he
might not have the strength to sustain his assertion. But not to be
altogether unthankful to him for so useful a confession, they showed him
the favor of not executing him with the axe, but the more agreeable and
easier death of hanging was vouchsafed to him.[Footnote: Burnet, vol. i,
p. 205.]

“So the fair and lovely Anne Boleyn must lay her head upon the block.
The day on which this took place, the king had ordered a great hunt, and
early that morning we rode out to Epping Forest. The king was at first
unusually cheerful and humorous, and he commanded me to ride near him,
and tell him something from the chronique scandaleuse of our court. He
laughed at my spiteful remarks, and the worse I calumniated, the merrier
was the king. Finally, we halted; the king had talked and laughed so
much that he had at last become hungry. So he encamped under an oak,
and, in the midst of his suite and his dogs, he took a breakfast, which
pleased him very much, although he had now become a little quieter
and more silent, and sometimes turned his face toward the direction of
London with visible restlessness and anxiety. But suddenly was heard
from that direction the dull sound of a cannon. We all knew that this
was the signal which was to make known to the king that Anne Boleyn’s
head had fallen. We knew it, and a shudder ran through our whole frames.
The king alone smiled, and as he arose and took his weapon from my hand,
he said, with cheerful face, ‘It is done, the business is finished.
Unleash the dogs, and let us follow the boar.’ [Footnote: The king’s
very words. Tytler, p. 383. The oak under which this took place is
still pointed out in Epping Forest, and in fact is not less remarkable
as the oak of Charles II.]

“That,” said Lord Douglas, sadly, “that was King Henry’s funeral
discourse over his charming and innocent wife.”

“Do you regret her, my father?” asked Lady Jane, with surprise. “But
Anne Boleyn was, it seems to me, an enemy of our Church, and an adherent
of the accursed new doctrine.”

Her father shrugged his shoulders almost contemptuously. That did not
prevent Lady Anne from being one of the fairest and loveliest women of
Old England. And, besides, much as she inclined to the new doctrine,
she did us essential good service, for she it was who bore the blame
of Thomas More’s death. Since he had not approved her marriage with the
king, she hated him, as the king hated him because he would not take the
oath of supremacy. Henry, however, would have spared him, for, at that
time, he still possessed some respect for learning and virtue, and
Thomas More was so renowned a scholar that the king held him in
reverence. But Anne Boleyn demanded his death, and so Thomas More must
be executed. Oh, believe me, Jane, that was an important and sad hour
for all England, the hour when Thomas More laid his head upon the block.
We only, we gay people in the palace of Whitehall, we were cheerful
and merry. We were dancing a new kind of dance, the music of which was
written by the king himself, for you know the king is not merely an
author, but also a composer, and as he now writes pious books, so he
then composed dances. [Footnote: Granger’s “Biographical History of
England,” vol. I, p. 137. of Tytler, p. 354.] That evening, after we
had danced till we were tired, we played cards. Just as I had won a few
guineas from the king, the lieutenant of the Tower came with the tidings
that the execution was over, and gave us a description of the last
moments of the great scholar. The king threw down his cards, and,
turning an angry look on Anne Boleyn, said, in an agitated voice, ‘You
are to blame for the death of this man!’ Then he arose and withdrew to
his apartments, while no one was permitted to follow him, not even the
queen. [Footnote: Tytler, p. 354] You see, then, that Anne Boleyn had
a claim on our gratitude, for the death of Thomas More delivered Old
England from another great peril. Melanchthon and Bucer, and with them
several of the greatest pulpit orators of Germany, had set out to come
to London, and, as delegates of the Germanic Protestant princes, to
nominate the king as head of their alliance. But the terrible news of
the execution of their friend frightened them back, and caused them to
return when half-way here. [Footnote: Tytler, p. 357. Leti, vol. I, p.
180. Granger, vol. I, p. 119.]

“Peace, then, to the ashes of unhappy Anne Boleyn! However, she was
avenged too, avenged on her successor and rival, for whose sake she was
made to mount the scaffold--avenged on Jane Seymour.”

“But she was the king’s beloved wife,” said Jane, “and when she died the
king mourned for her two years.”

“He mourned!” exclaimed Lord Douglas, contemptuously. “He has mourned
for all his wives. Even for Anne Boleyn he put on mourning, and in his
white mourning apparel, the day after Anne’s execution, he led Jane
Seymour to the marriage altar! This outward mourning, what does it
signify? Anne Boleyn also mourned for Catharine of Aragon, whom she had
pushed from the throne. For eight weeks she was seen in yellow mourning
on account of Henry’s first wife; but Anne Boleyn was a shrewd woman,
and she knew very well that the yellow mourning dress was exceedingly
becoming to her.”

“But the king’s mourning was not merely external,” said Lady Jane.
“He mourned really, for it was two years before he resolved on a new
marriage.”

Earl Douglas laughed. “But he cheered himself during these two years
of widowhood with a very beautiful mistress, the French Marchioness
de Montreuil, and he would have married her had not the prudent beauty
preferred returning to France, because she found it altogether too
dangerous to become Henry’s consort. For it is not to be denied, a
baleful star hovers over Henry’s queens, and none of them has descended
from the throne in a natural way.”

“Yet, father, Jane Seymour did so in a very natural way; she died in
childbed.”

“Well, yes, in childbed. And yet by no natural death, for she could have
been saved. But Henry did not wish to save her. His love had already
grown cool, and when the physicians asked him whether they should save
the mother or the child, he replied, ‘Save the child, and let the mother
die. I can get wives enough.’ [Footnote: Burnet.] Ah, my daughter, I
hope you may not die such a natural death as Jane Seymour did, for whom,
as you say, the king mourned two years. But after that period, something
new, something altogether extraordinary happened to the king. He fell
in love with a picture, and because, in his proud self-conceit, he was
convinced that the fine picture which Holbein had made of him, was not
at all flattered, but entirely true to nature, it did not occur to him
that Holbein’s likeness of the Princess Anne of Cleves might be somewhat
flattered, and not altogether faithful. So the king fell in love with
a picture, and sent ambassadors to Germany to bring the original of
the portrait to England as his bride. He himself went to meet her at
Rochester, where she was to land. Ah, my child, I have witnessed many
queer and droll things in my eventful life, but the scene at Rochester,
however, is among my most spicy recollections. The king was as
enthusiastic as a poet, and deep in love as a youth of twenty, and so
began our romantic wedding-trip, on which Henry disguised himself and
took part in it, assuming the name of my cousin. As the king’s master of
horse, I was honored with the commission of carrying to the young queen
the greeting of her ardent husband, and begging her to receive the
knight, who would deliver to her a present from the king. She granted my
request with a grin which made visible a frightful row of yellow teeth.
I opened the door, and invited the king to enter. Ah, you ought to
have witnessed that scene! It is the only farcical passage in the bloody
tragedy of Henry’s married life. You should have seen with what hasty
impatience the king rushed in, then suddenly, at the sight of her,
staggered back and stared at the princess. Slowly retiring, he silently
thrust into my hand the rich present that he had brought, while at the
same time he threw a look of flaming wrath on Lord Cromwell, who had
brought him the portrait of the princess and won him to this marriage.
The romantic, ardent lover vanished with this look at his beloved. He
approached the princess again--this time not as a cavalier, but, with
harsh and hasty words, he told her he was the king himself. He bade her
welcome in a few words, and gave her a cold, formal embrace. He then
hastily took my hand and drew me out of the room, beckoning the rest
to follow him. And when at length we were out of the atmosphere of this
poor ugly princess, and far enough away from her, the king, with
angry countenance, said to Cromwell: ‘Call you that a beauty? She is a
Flanders mare, but no princess.’ [Footnote: Burnet, p. 174. Tytler,
p. 417.] Anne’s ugliness was surely given her of God, that by it, the
Church, in which alone is salvation, might be delivered from the great
danger which threatened it. For had Anne of Cleves, the sister, niece,
granddaughter and aunt of all the Protestant princes of Germany, been
beautiful, incalculable danger would have threatened our church. The
king could not overcome his repugnance, and again his conscience, which
always appeared to be most tender and scrupulous, when it was farthest
from it and most regardless, must come to his aid.

“The king declared that he had been only in appearance, not in his
innermost conscience, disposed to this marriage, from which he now
shrank back, because it would be, properly speaking, nothing more than
perfidy, perjury, and bigamy. For Anne’s father had once betrothed her
to the son of the Duke of Lorraine, and had solemnly pledged him his
word to give her as a wife to the young duke as soon as she was of age;
rings had been exchanged and the marriage contract already drawn up.
Anne of Cleves, therefore, was virtually already married, and Henry,
with his tender conscience, could not make one already married his wife.
[Footnote: Burnet.] He made her, therefore, his sister, and gave her
the palace at Richmond for a residence, in case she wished to remain
in England. She accepted it; her blood, which crept coldly and quietly
through her veins, did not rise at the thought of being despised and
repudiated. She accepted it, and remained in England.

“She was rejected because she was ugly; and now the king selected
Catharine Howard for his fifth consort, because she was pretty. Of this
marriage I know but little to tell you, for, at that time, I had already
gone to Dublin as minister, whither you soon followed me. Catharine was
very beautiful, and the king’s heart, now growing old, once more flamed
high with youthful love. He loved her more warmly than any other of
his wives. He was so happy in her that, kneeling down publicly in the
church, with a loud voice he thanked God for the happiness which his
beautiful young queen afforded him. But this did not last long. Even
while the king was extolling it, his happiness had reached its highest
point, and the next day he was dashed down into the abyss. I speak
without poetical exaggeration, my child. The day before, he thanked God
for his happiness, and the next morning Catharine Howard was
already imprisoned and accused, as an unfaithful wife, a shameless
strumpet.[Footnote: Tytler, p. 432.] More than seven lovers had preceded
her royal spouse, and some of them had accompanied her even on the
progress through Yorkshire, which she made with the king her husband.
This time it was no pretence, for he had not yet had time to fall in
love with another woman, and Catharine well knew how to enchain him and
ever to kindle new flames within him. But just because he loved her, he
could not forgive her for having deceived him. In love there is so much
cruelty and hatred; and Henry, who but yesterday lay at her feet, burned
to-day with rage and jealousy, as yesterday with love and rapture. In
his rage, however, he still loved her, and when he held in his hand
indubitable proof of her guilt, he wept like a child. But since he could
no longer be her lover, he would be her hangman; since she had spotted
the crimson of his royal mantle, he would dye it afresh with her own
crimson blood. And he did so. Catharine Howard was forced to lay her
beautiful head upon the block, as Anne Boleyn had done before her; and
Anne’s death was now once more avenged. Lady Rochfort had been Anne
Boleyn’s accuser, and her testimony had brought that queen to the
scaffold; but now she was convicted of being Catharine Howard’s
assistant and confidante in her love adventures, and with Catharine,
Lady Rochfort also ascended the scaffold.

“Ah, the king needed a long time to recover from this blow. He searched
two years for a pure, uncontaminated virgin, who might become his queen
without danger of the scaffold. But he found none; so he took then Lord
Neville’s widow, Catharine Parr. But you know, my child, that
Catharine is an unlucky name for Henry’s queens. The first Catharine he
repudiated, the second he beheaded. What will he do with the third?”

Lady Jane smiled. “Catharine does not love him,” said she, “and I
believe she would willingly consent, like Anne of Cleves, to become his
sister, instead of his wife.”

“Catharine does not love the king?” inquired Lord Douglas, in breathless
suspense. “She loves another, then!”

“No, my father! Her heart is yet like a sheet of white paper: no single
name is yet inscribed there.”

“Then we must write a name there, and this name must drive her to the
scaffold, or into banishment,” said her father impetuously. “It is your
business, my child, to take a steel graver, and in some way write a name
in Catharine’s heart so deep and indelibly, that the king may some day
read it there.”




CHAPTER VIII. FATHER AND DAUGHTER.


Both now kept silent for a long time. Lord Douglas had leaned back on
the ottoman, and, respiring heavily, seemed to breathe a little from the
exertion of his long discourse. But while he rested, his large, piercing
eyes were constantly turned to Jane, who, leaning back on the cushion,
was staring thoughtfully into the empty air, and seemed to be entirely
forgetful of her father’s presence.

A cunning smile played for a moment over the countenance of the earl as
he observed her, but it quickly disappeared, and now deep folds of care
gathered on his brow. As he saw that Lady Jane was plunging deeper and
deeper into reverie, he at length laid his hand on her shoulder and
hastily asked, “What are you thinking of, Jane?”

She gave a sudden start, and looked at the earl with an embarrassed air.

“I am thinking of all that you have been saying to me, my father,”
 replied she, calmly. “I am considering what benefit to our object I can
draw from it.”

Lord Douglas shook his head, and smiled incredulously. At length he said
solemnly: “Take care, Jane, take care that your heart does not deceive
your head. If we would reach our aim here, you must, above all things,
maintain a cool heart and a cool head. Do you still possess both, Jane?”

In confusion she cast down her eyes before his penetrating look. Lord
Douglas noticed it, and a passionate word was already on his lips. But
he kept it back. As a prudent diplomat, he knew that it is often more
politic to destroy a thing by ignoring it, than to enter into an open
contest with it. The feelings are like the dragons’ teeth of Theseus.
If you contend with them, they always grow again anew, and with renewed
energy, out of the soil. Lord Douglas, therefore, was very careful not
to notice his daughter’s confusion. “Pardon me, my daughter, if, in my
zeal and my tender care for you, I go too far. I know that your dear and
beautiful head is cool enough to wear a crown. I know that in your heart
dwell only ambition and religion. Let us, then, further consider what we
have to do in order to attain our end.

“We have spoken of Henry as a husband, of Henry as a man; and I hope
you have drawn some useful lessons from the fate of his wives. You have
learned that it is necessary to possess all the good and all the bad
qualities of woman in order to control this stiff-necked and tyrannical,
this lustful and bigoted, this vain and sensual man, whom the wrath of
God has made King of England. You must, before all things, be perfect
master of the difficult art of coquetry. You must become a female
Proteus--today a Messalina, to-morrow a nun; to-day one of the
_literati_, to-morrow a playful child; you must ever seek to surprise
the king, to keep him on the stretch, to enliven him. You must never
give way to the dangerous feeling of security, for in fact King Henry’s
wife is never safe. The axe always hangs over her head, and you must
ever consider your husband as only a fickle lover, whom you must every
day captivate anew.”

“You speak as though I were already queen,” said Lady Jane, smiling;
“and yet I cannot but think that, in order to come to that, many
difficulties are to be overcome, which may indeed perhaps be
insuperable.”

“Insuperable!” exclaimed her father with a shrug of the shoulders. “With
the aid of the holy Church, no hinderance is insuperable. Only, we must
be perfectly acquainted with our end and our means. Do not despise,
then, to sound the character of this king ever and again, and be certain
you will always find in him some new hidden recess, some surprising
peculiarity. We have spoken of him as a husband and the father of a
family, but of his religious and political standing I have as yet told
you nothing. And yet that, my child, is the principal point in his whole
character.

“In the first place, then, Jane, I will tell you a secret. The king, who
has constituted himself high-priest of his Church--whom the pope once
called ‘the Knight of the Truth and the Faith’--the king has at the
bottom of his heart no religion. He is a wavering reed, which the wind
turns this way to-day, and that way to-morrow. He knows not his own
will, and, coquetting with both parties, to-day he is a heretic, in
order to exhibit himself as a strong, unprejudiced, enlightened man;
to-morrow a Catholic, in order to show himself an obedient and humble
servant of God, who seeks and finds his happiness only in love and
piety. But for both confessions of faith he possesses at heart
a profound indifference; and had the pope at that time placed no
difficulties in his way, had he consented to his divorce from Catharine,
Henry would have always remained a very good and active servant of
the Catholic Church. But they were imprudent enough to irritate him by
contradiction; they stimulated his vanity and pride to resistance; and
so Henry became a church reformer, not from conviction, but out of pure
love of opposition. And that, my child, you must never forget, for, by
means of this lever, you may very well convert him again to a devout,
dutiful, and obedient servant of our holy Church. He has renounced the
pope, and usurped the supremacy of the Church, but he cannot summon up
courage to carry out his work and throw himself wholly into the arms
of the Reformation. However much he has opposed the person of the pope,
still he has always remained devoted to the Church, although perhaps he
does not know it himself. He is no Catholic, and he hears mass; he has
broken up the monasteries, and yet forbids priests to marry; he has the
Lord’s supper administered under both kinds, and believes in the real
transubstantiation of the wine into the Redeemer’s holy blood. He
destroys the convents, and yet commands that vows of chastity, spoken by
man or woman, must be faithfully kept; and lastly, auricular confession
is still a necessary constituent of his Church. And these he calls his
six articles, [Footnote: Burnet, vol. I, p. 259. Tytler, p. 402.
Mioti, vol. I, p. 134.] and the foundation of his English Church. Poor,
short-sighted and vain man! He knows not that he has done all this, only
because he wanted to be the pope himself, and he is nothing more than an
anti-pope of the Holy Father at Rome, whom he, in his blasphemous pride,
dares call ‘the Bishop of Rome.’”

“But, for this audacity,” said Jane, with looks of burning rage, “the
anathema has struck him and laid a curse upon his head, and given him up
to the hatred, contempt, and scorn of his own subjects. Therefore,
the Holy Father has justly named him ‘the apostate and lost son,
the blaspheming usurper of the holy Church.’ Therefore, the pope has
declared his crown forfeited, and promised it to him who will vanquish
him by force of arms. Therefore, the pope has forbidden any of his
subjects to obey him, and respect and recognize him as king.”

“And yet he remains King of England, and his subjects still obey him in
slavish submission,” exclaimed Earl Douglas, shrugging his shoulders.
“It is very unwise to go so far in threats, for one should never
threaten with punishment which he is not likewise able to really
execute. This Romish interdict has rather been an advantage to the
king, than done him harm, for it has forced the king into haughtier
opposition, and proved to his subjects that a man may royally be under
an interdict, and yet in prosperity and the full enjoyment of life.”

“The pope’s excommunication has not hurt the king at all; his throne
has not felt the slightest jar from it, but the apostasy of the king has
deprived the Holy See at Rome of a very perceptible support; therefore
we must bring the faithless king back to the holy Church, for she needs
him. And this, my daughter, is the work that God and the will of His
holy representative have placed in your hands. A noble, glorious, and at
the same time profitable work, for it makes you a queen! But I repeat,
be cautious, never irritate the king by contradiction. Without their
knowing it, we must lead the wavering where salvation awaits them.
For, as we have said, he is a waverer; and in the haughty pride of his
royalty, he has the presumption to wish to stand above all parties,
and to be himself able to found a new Church, a Church which is neither
Catholic nor Protestant, but Ms Church; to which, in the six articles,
the so-called ‘Bloody Statute’ he has given its laws.

“He will not be Protestant nor Catholic, and, in order to show his
impartiality, he is an equally terrible persecutor of both parties. So
that it has come to pass that we must say, ‘In England, Catholics are
hanged, and those not stich are burned.’ [Footnote: Leti, vol. I, p.
144. f Tytler, p. 38.] It gives the king pleasure to hold with steady
and cruel hand the balance between the two parties, and on the same day
that he has a papist incarcerated, because he has disputed the king’s
supremacy, he has one of the reformed put upon the rack, because he has
denied the real transubstantiation of the wine, or perhaps has disputed
concerning the necessity of auricular confession. Indeed, during the
last session of Parliament, five men were hanged because they disputed
the supremacy, and five others burned because they professed
the reformed views! And this evening, Jane--this, the king’s
wedding-night--by the special order of the king, who wanted to show his
impartiality as head of the church, Catholics and Protestants have been
coupled together like dogs, and hurried to the stake, the Catholics
being condemned (as traitors, and the others as heretics!)

“Oh,” said Jane, shuddering and turning pale, “I will not be Queen of
England. I have a horror of this cruel, savage king, whose heart is
wholly without compassion or love.”

Her father laughed. “Do you not then know, child, how you can make the
hyena gentle, and the tiger tame? You throw them again and again a fresh
prey, which they may devour, and since they love blood so dearly, you
constantly give them blood to drink, so that they may never thirst for
it. The king’s only steady and unchanging peculiarity is his cruelty and
delight in blood; one then must always have some food ready for these,
then he will ever be a very affectionate and gracious king and husband.

“And there is no lack of objects for this bloodthirstiness. There are
so many men and women at his court, and when he is precisely in a
bloodthirsty humor, it is all the same to Henry whose blood he drinks.
He has shed the blood of his wives and relatives; he has executed those
whom he called his most confidential friends; he has sent the noblest
men of his kingdom to the scaffold.

“Thomas More knew him very well, and in a few striking words he summed
up the whole of the king’s character. Ah, it seems to me that I see now
the quiet and gentle face of this wise man, as I saw him standing in
yonder bay-window, and near him the king, his arms around the neck of
High-Chancellor More, and listening to his discourse with a kind of
reverential devotion. And when the king had gone, I walked up to Thomas
More and congratulated him on the high and world-renowned favor in which
he stood with the king. ‘The king really loves you,’ said I. ‘Yes,’
replied he, with his quiet, sad smile, ‘yes, the king truly loves me.
But that would not for one moment hinder him from giving my head for
a valuable diamond, a beautiful woman, or a hand’s breadth of land
in France.’ [Footnote: Leti, vol. i, p 194.] He was right, and for a
beautiful woman, the head of this sage had to fall, of whom the most
Christian emperor and king, Charles V., said: ‘Had I been the master
of such a servant, of whose ability and greatness we have had so much
experience for many years; had I possessed an adviser so wise and
earnest as Thomas More was, I would rather have lost the best city of my
realm, than so worthy a servant and counsellor.’ [Footnote: Tytler, p.
354.]

“No, Jane, be that your first and most sacred rule, never to trust
the king, and never reckon on the duration of his affection and the
manifestations of his favor. For, in the perfidy of his heart, it often
pleases him to load with tokens of his favor those whose destruction he
has already resolved upon, to adorn and decorate with orders and jewels
to-day those whom to-morrow he is going to put to death. It flatters his
self-complacency, like the lion, to play a little with the puppy he
is about to devour. Thus did he with Cromwell, for many years his
counsellor and friend, who had committed no other crime than that of
having first exhibited to the king the portrait of the ugly Anne of
Cleves, whom Holbein had turned into a beauty. But the king took good
care not to be angry with Cromwell, or to reproach him for it. Much
more--in recognition of his great services, he raised him to the earldom
of Essex, decorated him with the Order of the Garter and appointed him
lord chamberlain; and then, when Cromwell felt perfectly secure and
proudly basked in the sunshine of royal favor, then all at once the king
had him arrested and dragged to the tower, in order to accuse him of
high treason. [Footnote: Ibid, p. 423.] And so Cromwell was executed,
because Anne of Cleves did not please the king, and because Hans Holbein
had flattered her picture.

“But now we have had enough of the past, Jane. Now let us speak of the
present and of the future, my daughter. Let us now first of all devise
the means to overthrow this woman who stands in our way. When she is
once overthrown, it will not be very difficult for us to put you in her
place. For you are now here, near the king. The great mistake in our
earlier efforts was, that we were not present and could work only
through go-betweens and confidants. The king did not see you, and since
the unlucky affair with Anne of Cleves he mistrusts likenesses; I very
well knew that, for I, my child, confide in no one, not even in the most
faithful and noblest friends. I rely upon nobody but ourselves. Had we
been here, you would now be Queen of England instead of Catharine
Parr. But, to our misfortune, I was still the favorite of the Regent
of Scotland, and as such, I could not venture to approach Henry. It was
necessary that I should fall into disgrace there, in order to be again
sure of the king’s favor here.

“So I fell into disgrace and fled with you hither. Now, then, here
we are, and let the fight begin. And you have to-day already taken an
important step toward our end. You have attracted the notice of the
king, and established yourself still more securely in the favor of
Catharine. I confess, Jane, I am charmed with your prudent conduct.
You have this day won the hearts of all parties, and it was wonderfully
shrewd in you to come to the aid of the Earl of Surrey, as you at the
same time won to you the heretical party, to which Anne Askew belongs.
Oh, it was indeed, Jane, a stroke of policy that you made. For the
Howard family is the most powerful and greatest at court, and Henry,
Earl of Surrey, is one of its noblest representatives. Therefore we have
now already a powerful party at court, which has in view only the
high and holy aim of securing a victory for the holy Church, and which
quietly and silently works only for this--to again reconcile the king
to the pope. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, like his father, the Duke of
Norfolk, is a good Catholic, as his niece Catharine Howard was; only
she, besides God and the Church, was a little too fond of the images of
God--fine-looking men. It was this that gave the victory to the other
party, and forced the Catholic to succumb to the heretical party at
court. Yes, for the moment, Cranmer with Catharine has got the better of
us, but soon Gardiner with Jane Douglas will overcome the heretics, and
send them to the scaffold. That is our plan, and, God permitting, we
will carry it out.”

“But it will be a difficult undertaking,” said Lady Jane, with a sigh.
“The queen is a pure, transparent soul; she has a shrewd head and a
clear glance. She is, moreover, guileless in her thoughts, and recoils
with true maidenly timidity from every sin.”

“We must cure her of this timidity, and that is your task, Jane. You
must despoil her of these strict notions about virtue. With flattering
voice you must ensnare her heart, and entice it to sin.”

“Oh, that is an infernal plot!” said Lady Jane, turning pale. “That,
my father, would be a crime, for that would be not only destroying her
earthly happiness, but also imperilling her soul. I must entice her to a
crime; that is your dishonorable demand! But I will not obey you! It is
true, I hate her, for she stands in the way of my ambition. It is true
I will destroy her, for she wears the crown which I wish to possess;
but never will I be so base as to pour into her very heart the poison
by which she shall fall. Let her seek the poison for herself; I will not
hold back her hand; I will not warn her. Let her seek the ways of sin
herself: I will not tell her that she has erred; but I will, from afar,
dog her, and watch each step, and listen for every word and sigh, and
when she has committed a crime, then I will betray her, and deliver her
up to her judges. That is what I can and will do. I will be the demon to
drive her from paradise in God’s name, but not the serpent to entice her
in the devil’s name to sin.”

She paused, and, panting for breath, sunk back upon the cushion; but
her father’s hand was laid upon her shoulder with a convulsive grip, and
pale with rage and with eyes flashing with anger, he stared at her.

A cry of terror burst from Lady Jane. She, who never had seen her father
but smiling and full of kindness, scarcely recognized that countenance,
distorted with rage. She could scarcely convince herself that this man,
with eyes darting fire, scowling eyebrows and lips quivering with rage,
was really her father.

“You will not?” exclaimed he, with a hollow, threatening voice. “You
dare rebel against the holy commands of the Church? Have you, then,
forgotten what you promised to the Holy Fathers, whose pupil you are?
Have you forgotten that the brothers and sisters of the Holy League are
permitted to have no other will than that of their masters! Have you
forgotten the sublime vow which you made to our master, Ignatius Loyola?
Answer me, unfaithful and disobedient daughter of the Church! Repeat to
me the oath which you took when he received you into the holy Society of
the Disciples of Jesus! Repeat your oath, I say!”

As if constrained by an invisible power, Jane had arisen, and now stood,
her hands folded across her breast, submissive and trembling before her
father, whose erect, proud, and wrathful form towered above her.

“I have sworn,” said she, “to subject my own thought, and will, my life,
and endeavors, obediently to the will of the Holy Father. I have sworn
to be a blind tool in the hands of my masters, and to do only what they
command and enjoin. I have vowed to serve the holy Church, in which
alone is salvation, in every way and with all the means at my command;
and I will despise none of these means, consider none trifling, disdain
none, provided it leads to the end. For the end sanctifies the means,
and nothing is a sin which is done for the honor of God and the Church!”

“Ad majorem Dei gloriam!” said her father, devoutly folding his hands.
“And you know what awaits you, if you violate your oath?”

“Earthly disgrace and eternal destruction await me. The curse of all my
brethren and sisters awaits me--eternal damnation and punishment. With
thousands of torments and tortures of the rack, will the Holy Fathers
put me to death; and as they kill my body and throw it as food to
the beasts of prey, they will curse my soul and deliver it over to
purgatory.”

“And what awaits you if you remain faithful to your oath, and obey the
commands given you?”

“Honor and glory on earth, besides eternal blessedness in heaven.”

“Then you will be a queen on earth and a queen in heaven. You know,
then, the sacred laws of the society, and you remember your oath?”

“I remember it.”

“And you know that the holy Loyola, before he left us, gave the Society
of Jesus, in England, a master and general, whom all the brethren and
sisters must serve and submit to, to whom they owe blind obedience and
service without questioning?”

“I know it.”

“And you know, likewise, by what sign the associates may recognize the
general?”

“By Loyola’s ring, which he wears on the forefinger of his right hand.”

“Behold here this ring!” said the earl, drawing his hand out of his
doublet.

Lady Jane uttered a cry, and sank almost senseless at his feet.

Lord Douglas, smiling graciously, raised her in his arms. “You see,
Jane, I am not merely your father, but your master also. And you will
obey me, will you not?”

“I will obey!” said she, almost inaudibly, as she kissed the hand with
the fatal ring.

“You will be to Catharine Parr, as you have expressed it, the serpent,
that seduces her to sin?”

“I will.”

“You will beguile her into sin, and entice her to indulge a love which
must lead her to destruction?”

“I will do it, my father.”

“I will now tell you whom she is to love, and who is to be the
instrument of destruction. You will so manage the queen that she will
love Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.”

Jane uttered a scream, and clung to the back of a chair to keep from
falling.

Her father observed her with penetrating, angry looks. “What means this
outcry? Why does this choice surprise you?” asked he.

Lady Jane had already gained her self-possession. “It surprised me,”
 said she, “because the earl is betrothed.”

A singular smile played about the earl’s lips. “It is not the first
time,” said he, “that even a man already married has become dangerous
to a woman’s heart, and often the very impossibility of possession adds
fuel to the flames of love. Woman’s heart is ever so full of selfishness
and contradiction.”

Lady Jane cast down her eyes, and made no reply. She felt that the
piercing and penetrating look of her father was resting on her face. She
knew that, just then, he was reading her soul, although she did not look
at him.

“Then you no longer refuse?” asked he, at length. “You will inspire the
young queen with love for the Earl of Surrey?”

“I will endeavor to do it, my father.”

“If you try, with a real and energetic determination to succeed, you
will prevail. For, as you said, the queen’s heart is still free; it is,
then, like a fruitful soil, which is only waiting for some one to sow
the seed in it, to bring forth flowers and fruit. Catharine Parr does
not love the king; you will, then, teach her to love Henry Howard.”

“Yet, my father,” said Lady Jane, with a sarcastic smile, “to bring
about this result, one must, before all things, be acquainted with a
magic spell, through the might of which the earl will first glow with
love for Catharine. For the queen has a proud soul, and she will never
so forget her dignity as to love a man who is not inflamed with an
ardent passion for her. But the earl has not only a bride, but, as it is
said, a mistress also.”

“Ah! you consider it, then, perfectly unworthy of a woman to love a man
who does not adore her?” asked the earl, in a significant tone. “I am
rejoiced to hear this from my daughter, and thus to be certain that she
will not fall in love with the Earl of Surrey, who is everywhere else
called ‘the lady-killer.’ And if you have informed yourself in so
surprising a manner as to the earl’s private relations, you have done
so, without doubt, only because your sagacious and subtle head has
already guessed what commission I would give you with respect to the
earl. Besides, my daughter, you are in error: and if a certain high,
but not on that account the less very unfortunate lady, should happen
to really love the Earl of Surrey, her lot will, perhaps, be the common
one--to practise resignation.”

An expression of joyful surprise passed over the countenance of Lady
Jane, while her father thus spoke; but it was forced to instantly give
way to a deathly paleness, as the earl added: “Henry Howard is destined
for Catharine Parr, and you are to help her to love so hotly this proud,
handsome earl, who is a faithful servant of the Church, wherein alone is
salvation, that she will forget all considerations and all dangers.”

Lady Jane ventured one more objection. She caught eagerly at her
father’s words, to seek still for some way of escape.

“You call the earl a faithful servant of our Church,” said she, “and yet
you would implicate him also in your dangerous plot? You have not, then,
my father, considered that it is just as pernicious to love the queen as
to be loved by her? And, without doubt, if love for the Earl of Surrey
bring the queen to the scaffold, the head of the earl will fall at the
same time, no matter whether he return her love or not.”

The earl shrugged his shoulders.

“When the question is about the weal of the Church and our holy
religion, the danger which, thereby, it may be, threatens one of our
number, must not frighten us back. Holy sacrifices must be always
offered to a holy cause. Well and good, then, let the earl’s head fall,
provided the only saving Church gains new vigor from this blood of
martyrs. But see, Jane, the morning already begins to dawn, and I must
hasten to leave you, lest these courtiers, ever given to slandering, may
in some way or other take the father for a lover, and cast suspicion on
the immaculate virtue of my Jane. Farewell, then, my daughter! We both,
now, know our rôles, and will take care to play them with success. You
are the friend and confidante of the queen, and I the harmless courtier,
who tries, now and then, to gain a smile from the king by some kind and
merry jest. That is all. Good-morning, then, Jane, and good-night. For
you must sleep, my child, so that your cheeks may remain fresh and your
eyes bright. The king hates pining pale-faces. Sleep, then, future Queen
of England!”

He gently kissed her forehead, and left the room with lingering step.

Lady Jane stood and listened to the sound of his footsteps gradually
dying away, when she sank on her knees, wholly crushed, utterly stunned.

“My God, my God!” murmured she, while streams of tears flooded her face,
“and I am to inspire the queen with love for the Earl of Surrey, and
I--I love him!”




CHAPTER IX. LENDEMAIN.


The great levée was over. Sitting beside the king on the throne,
Catharine had received the congratulations of her court; and the king’s
smiling look, and the tender words which, in undertone, he now and
then addressed to the queen, had manifested to the prudent and expert
courtiers that the king was to-day just as much enamored of his young
consort as he had been yesterday of his bride. Therefore, every one
exerted himself to please the queen, and to catch every look, every
smile, which she let fall, like sunbeams, here and there, in order to
see for whom they were intended, so that they might, perchance, by this
means, divine who were to be the future favorites of the queen, and be
the first to become intimate with them.

But the young queen directed her looks to no one in particular. She
was friendly and smiling, yet one felt that this friendliness was
constrained, this smile full of sadness. The king alone did not notice
it. He was cheerful and happy, and it seemed to him, therefore, that
nobody at his court could dare sigh when he, the king, was satisfied.

After the grand presentation, at which all the great and noble of the
realm had passed in formal procession before the royal pair, the king
had, according to the court etiquette of the time, given his hand to his
consort, led her down from the throne and conducted her to the middle
of the hall, in order to present to her the personages in waiting at her
court.

But this walk from the throne to the centre of the hall had greatly
fatigued the king; this promenade of thirty steps was for him a very
unusual and troublesome performance, and the king longed to change to
something else more agreeable. So he beckoned to the chief master of
ceremonies, and bade him open the door leading into the dining-room.
Then he ordered his “house equipage” to be brought up, and, seating
himself in it with the utmost stateliness, he had the sedan kept at the
queen’s side, waiting impatiently till the presentation should at last
conclude, and Catharine accompany him to lunch.

The announcements of the maids of honor and female attendants had been
already made, and now came the gentlemen’s turn.

The chief master of ceremonies read from his list the names of those
cavaliers who were, henceforth, to be in waiting near the queen, and
which names the king had written down with his own hand. And at each new
appointment a slight expression of pleased astonishment flitted across
the faces of the assembled courtiers, for it was always one of the
youngest, handsomest, and most amiable lords whom the master of
ceremonies had to name.

Perhaps the king proposed to play a cruel game at hazard, in surrounding
his consort with the young men of his court; he wished to plunge her
into the midst of danger, either to let her perish there, or, by her
avoiding danger, to be able to place the unimpeachable virtue of his
young wife in the clearest light.

The list had begun with the less important offices, and, ever ascending
higher, they now came to positions the highest and of greatest
consequence.

Still the queen’s master of horse and the chamberlain had not been
named, and these were without doubt the most important charges at the
queen’s court. For one or the other of these officers was always very
near the queen. When she was in the palace, the lord of the chamber
had to remain in the anteroom, and no one could approach the queen but
through his mediation. To him the queen had to give her orders with
regard to the schemes and pleasures of the day. He was to contrive
new diversions and amusements. He had the right of joining the queen’s
narrow evening circle, and to stand behind the queen’s chair when the
royal pair, at times, desired to sup without ceremony.

This place of chief chamberlain was, therefore, a very important
one; for since it confined him a large part of the day in the queen’s
presence, it was scarcely avoidable that the lord chamberlain should
become either the confidential and attentive friend, or the malevolent
and lurking enemy of the queen!

But the place of master of horse was of no less consequence. For as soon
as the queen left the palace, whether on foot or in a carriage, whether
to ride in the forest or to glide down the Thames in her gilded yacht,
the master of horse must be ever at her side, must ever attend her.
Indeed, this service was still more exclusive, still more important.
For, though the queen’s apartments were open to the lord chamberlain,
yet, however, he was never alone with her. The attending maids of honor
were always present and prevented there being any têtes-à-têtes or
intimacy between the queen and her chamberlain.

But with the master of horse it was different--since many opportunities
presented themselves, when he could approach the queen unnoticed, or at
least speak to her without being overheard. He had to offer her his hand
to assist her in entering her carriage; he could ride near the door of
her coach; he accompanied her on water excursions and pleasure rides,
and these last were so much the more important because they afforded
him, to a certain extent, opportunity for a tête-à-tête with the queen.
For only the master of horse was permitted to ride at her side; he even
had precedence of the ladies of the suite, so as to be able to give the
queen immediate assistance in case of any accident, or the stumbling of
her horse. Therefore, no one of the suite could perceive what the queen
said to the master of horse when he rode at her side.

It was understood, therefore, how influential this place might be.
Besides, when the queen was at Whitehall, the king was almost always
near her; while, thanks to his daily increasing corpulency, he was not
exactly in a condition to leave the palace otherwise than in a carriage.

It was therefore very natural that the whole company at court awaited
with eager attention and bated breath the moment when the master of
ceremonies would name these two important personages, whose names had
been kept so secret that nobody had yet learned them. That morning,
just before he handed the list to the master of ceremonies, the king had
written down these two names with his own hand.

Not the court only, but also the king himself, was watching for
these two names. For he wished to see the effect of them, and, by the
different expression of faces, estimate the number of the friends of
these two nominees. The young queen alone exhibited the same unconcerned
affability; her heart only beat with uniform calmness, for she did not
once suspect the importance of the moment.

Even the voice of the master of ceremonies trembled slightly, as he
now read, “To the place of high chamberlain to the queen, his majesty
appoints my Lord Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey.”

An approving murmur was heard, and almost all faces manifested glad
surprise.

“He has a great many friends,” muttered the king. “He is dangerous,
then!” An angry look darted from his eyes upon the young earl, who was
now approaching the queen, to bend his knee before her and to press to
his lips the proffered hand.

Behind the queen stood Lady Jane, and as she beheld thus close before
her the young man, so handsome, so long yearned for, and so secretly
adored; and as she thought of her oath, she felt a violent pang, raging
jealousy, killing hatred toward the young queen, who had, it is true,
without suspecting it, robbed her of the loved one, and condemned her to
the terrible torture of pandering to her.

The chief master of ceremonies now read in a loud solemn voice, “To the
place of master of horse, his majesty appoints my Lord Thomas Seymour,
Earl of Sudley.”

It was very well that the king had at that moment directed his whole
attention to his courtiers, and sought to read in their appearance the
impression made by this nomination.

Had he observed his consort, he would have seen that an expression
of delighted surprise flitted across Catharine’s countenance, and a
charming smile played round her lips.

But the king, as we have said, thought only of his court; he saw only
that the number of those who rejoiced at Seymour’s appointment did not
come up to that of those who received Surrey’s nomination with so much
applause.

Henry frowned and muttered to himself, “These Howards are too powerful.
I will keep a watchful eye upon them.”

Thomas Seymour approached the queen, and, bending his knee before her,
kissed her hand. Catharine received him with a gracious smile. “My
lord,” said she, “you will at once enter on service with me, and indeed,
as I hope, in such manner as will be acceptable to the whole court. My
lord, take the fleetest of your coursers, and hasten to Castle Holt,
where the Princess Elizabeth is staying. Carry her this letter from her
royal father, and she will follow you hither. Tell her that I long to
embrace in her a friend and sister, and that I pray her to pardon me if
I cannot give up to her exclusively the heart of her king and father,
but that I also must still keep a place in the same for myself. Hasten
to Castle Holt, my lord, and bring us Princess Elizabeth.”




CHAPTER X. THE KING’S FOOL.


Two years had passed away since the king’s marriage, and still Catharine
Parr had always kept in favor with her husband; still her enemies were
foiled in their attempts to ruin her, and raise the seventh queen to the
throne.

Catharine had ever been cautious, ever discreet. She had always
preserved a cold heart and a cool head. Each morning she had said to
herself that this day might be her last; that some incautious word,
some inconsiderate act, might deprive her of her crown and her life.
For Henry’s savage and cruel disposition seemed, like his corpulency,
to increase daily, and it needed only a trifle to inflame him to the
highest pitch of rage, rage which, each time, fell with fatal stroke on
him who aroused it.

A knowledge and consciousness of this had made the queen cautious. She
did not wish to die yet. She still loved life so much. She loved it
because it had as yet afforded her so little delight. She loved it
because she had so much happiness, so much rapture and enjoyment yet to
hope from it. She did not wish to die yet, for she was ever waiting for
that life of which she had a foretaste only in her dreams, and which her
palpitating and swelling heart told her was ready to awake in her, and,
with its sunny, brilliant eyes, arouse her from the winter sleep of her
existence.

It was a bright and beautiful spring day. Catharine wanted to avail
herself of it, to take a ride and forget for one brief hour that she was
a queen. She wanted to enjoy the woods, the sweet May breeze, the song
of birds, the green meadows, and to inhale in full draughts the pure
air.

She wanted to ride. Nobody suspected how much secret delight and hidden
rapture lay in these words. No one suspected that for months she had
been looking forward with pleasure to this ride, and scarcely dared
to wish for it, just because it would be the fulfilment of her ardent
wishes.

She was already dressed in her riding-habit, and the little red velvet
hat, with its long, drooping white feather, adorned her beautiful head.
Walking up and down the room, she was waiting only for the return of the
lord chamberlain, whom she had sent to the king to inquire whether he
wished to speak with her before her ride.

Suddenly the door opened, and a strange apparition showed itself on the
threshold. It was a small, compact masculine figure, clad in vesture of
crimson silk, which was trimmed in a style showy and motley enough, with
puffs and bows of all colors, and which, just on account of its motley
appearance, contrasted strangely enough with the man’s white hair, and
earnest and sombre face.

“Ah, the king’s fool,” said Catharine, with a merry laugh. “Well, John,
what is it that brings you here? Do you bring me a message from the
king, or have you made a bold hit, and wish me to take you again under
my protection?”

“No, queen,” said John Heywood, seriously, “I have made no bold hit,
nor do I bring a message from the king. I bring nothing but myself. Ah,
queen, I see you want to laugh, but I pray you forget for a moment that
John Heywood is the king’s fool, and that it does not become him to wear
a serious face and indulge sad thoughts like other men.”

“Oh, I know that you are not merely the king’s fool, but a poet also,”
 said Catharine, with a gracious smile.

“Yes,” said he, “I am a poet, and therefore it is altogether proper for
me to wear this fool’s cap, for poets are all fools, and it were better
for them to be hung on the nearest tree instead of being permitted to
run about in their crazy enthusiasm, and babble things on account
of which people of sense despise and ridicule them. I am a poet, and
therefore, queen, I have put on this fool’s dress, which places me under
the king’s protection, and allows me to say to him all sorts of things
which nobody else has the courage to speak out. But to-day, queen, I
come to you neither as a fool nor as a poet, but I come to you because I
wish to cling to your knees and kiss your feet. I come because I wish
to tell you that you have made John Heywood forever your slave. He will
from this time forth lie like a dog before your threshold and guard you
from every enemy and every evil which may press upon you. Night and day
he will be ready for your service, and know neither repose nor rest, if
it is necessary to fulfil your command or your wish.”

As he thus spoke, with trembling voice and eyes dimmed with tears, he
knelt down and bowed his head at Catharine’s feet.

“But what have I done to inspire you with such a feeling of
thankfulness?” asked Catharine with astonishment. “How have I deserved
that you, the powerful and universally dreaded favorite of the king,
should dedicate yourself to my service?”

“What have you done?” said he. “My lady, you have saved my son from the
stake! They had condemned him--that handsome noble youth--condemned him,
because he had spoken respectfully of Thomas More; because he said
this great and noble man did right to die, rather than be false to his
convictions. Ah, nowadays, it requires such a trifle to condemn a man to
death! a couple of thoughtless words are sufficient! And this miserable,
lick-spittle Parliament, in its dastardliness and worthlessness, always
condemns and sentences, because it knows that the king is always thirsty
for blood, and always wants the fires of the stake to keep him warm. So
they had condemned my son likewise, and they would have executed him,
but for you. But you, whom God has sent as an angel of reconciliation on
this regal throne reeking with blood; you who daily risk your life
and your crown to save the life of some one of those unfortunates whom
fanaticism and thirst for blood have sentenced, and to procure their
pardon, you have save my son also.”

“How! that young man who was to be burned yesterday, was your son?”

“Yes, he was my son.”

“And you did not tell the king so? and you did not intercede for him?”

“Had I done so, he would have been irretrievably lost! For you well
know the king is so proud of his impartiality and his virtue! Oh, had
he known that Thomas is my son he would have condemned him to death, to
show the people that Henry the Eighth everywhere strikes the guilty
and punishes the sinner, whatever name he may bear, and whoever may
intercede for him. Ah, even your supplication would not have softened
him, for the high-priest of the English Church could never have pardoned
this young man for not being the legitimate son of his father, for not
having the right to bear his name, because his mother was the spouse of
another man whom Thomas must call father.”

“Poor Heywood! Yes, now I understand. The king would, indeed, never have
forgiven this; and had he known it, your son would have inevitably been
condemned to the stake.”

“You saved him, queen! Do you not believe now that I shall be forever
thankful to you?”

“I do believe it,” said the queen, with a pleasant smile, as she
extended her hand for him to kiss. “I believe you, and I accept your
service.”

“And you will need it, queen, for a tempest is gathering over your head,
and soon the lightning will flash and the thunders roll.”

“Oh, I fear not! I have strong nerves!” said Catharine, smiling. “When
a storm comes, it is but a refreshing of nature, and I have always seen
that after a storm the sun shines again.”

“You are a brave soul!” swirl John Heywood, sadly.

“That is, I am conscious of no guilt!”

“But your enemies will invent a crime to charge you with. Ah, as soon as
it is the aim to calumniate a neighbor and plunge him in misery, men are
all poets!”

“But you just now said that poets are crack-brained, and should be hung
to the first tree. We will, therefore, treat these slanderers as poets,
that is all.”

“No, that is not all!” said John Heywood, energetically. “For slanderers
are like earth-worms. You cut them in pieces, but instead of thereby
killing them, you multiply each one and give it several heads.”

“But what is it, then, that I am accused of?” exclaimed Catharine,
impatiently. “Does not my life lie open and clear before you all? Do I
ever take pains to have any secrets? Is not my heart like a glass house,
into which you can all look, to convince yourselves that it is a soil
wholly unfruitful, and that not a single poor little flower grows
there?”

“Though this be so, your enemies will sow weeds and make the king
believe that it is burning love which has grown up in your heart.”

“How! They will accuse me of having a love-affair?” asked Catharine, and
her lips slightly trembled.

“I do not know their plans yet; but I will find them out. There is a
conspiracy at work. Therefore, queen, be on your guard! Trust nobody,
for foes are ever wont to conceal themselves under hypocritical faces
and deceiving words.”

“If you know my enemies, name them to me!” said Catharine, impatiently.
“Name them to me, that I may beware of them.”

“I have not come to accuse anybody, but to warn you. I shall, therefore,
take good care not to point out your enemies to you; but I will name
your friends to you.”

“Ah, then, I have friends, too!” whispered Catharine, with a happy
smile.

“Yes, you have friends; and, indeed, such as are ready to give their
blood and life for you.”

“Oh, name them, name them to me!” exclaimed Catharine, all of a tremble
with joyful expectation.

“I name first, Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. He is your true and
staunch friend, on whom you can build. He loves you as queen, and
he prizes you as the associate whom God has sent him to bring to
completion, here at the court of this most Christian and bloody king,
the holy work of the Reformation, and to cause the light of knowledge
to illuminate this night of superstition and priestly domination.
Build strongly on Cranmer, for he is your surest and most invariable
supporter, and should he sink, your fall would inevitably follow.
Therefore, not only rely on him, but also protect him, and look upon him
as your brother; for what you do for him, you do for yourself.”

“Yes, you are right,” said Catharine, thoughtfully. “Cranmer is a noble
and staunch friend; and often enough already he has protected me, in the
king’s presence, against those little pin-prickings of my enemies, which
do not indeed kill, but which make the whole body sore and faint.”

“Protect him, and thus protect yourself.”

“Well, and the other friends?”

“I have given Cranmer the precedence; but now, queen, I name myself as
the second of your friends. If Cranmer is your staff, I will be your
dog; and, believe me, so long as you have such a staff and so faithful
a dog, you are safe. Cranmer will warn you of every stone that lies in
your way, and I will bite and drive off the enemies, who, hidden behind
the thicket, lurk in the way to fall upon you from behind.”

“I thank you! Really, I thank you!” said Catharine, heartily. “Well, and
what more?”

“More?” inquired Heywood with a sad smile.

“Mention a few more of my friends.”

“Queen, it is a great deal, if one in a lifetime has found two friends
upon whom he can rely, and whose fidelity is not guided by selfishness.
You are perhaps the only crowned head that can boast of such friends.”

“I am a woman,” said Catharine, thoughtfully, “and many women surround
me and daily swear to me unchanging faithfulness and attachment. How!
are all these unworthy the title of friends? Is even Lady Jane Douglas
unworthy; she, whom I have called my friend these many long years, and
whom I trust as a sister? Tell me, John Heywood, you who, as it is said,
know everything, and search out everything that takes place at court,
tell me, is not Lady Jane Douglas my friend?”

John Heywood suddenly became serious and gloomy, and looked on the
ground, absorbed in reflection. Then he swept his large, bright eyes all
around the room, in a scrutinizing manner, as if he wished to convince
himself that no listener was really concealed there, and stepping close
up to the queen, he whispered: “Trust her not; she is a papist, and
Gardiner is her friend.”

“Ah, I suspected it,” whispered Catharine, sadly.

“But listen, queen; give no expression to this suspicion by look, or
words, or by the slightest indication. Lull this viper into the belief
that you are harmless; lull her to sleep, queen. She is a venomous and
dangerous serpent, which must not be roused, lest, before you suspect
it, it bite you on the heel. Be always gracious, always confidential,
always friendly toward her. Only, queen, do not tell her what you would
not confide to Gardiner and Earl Douglas likewise. Oh, believe me, she
is like the lion in the doge’s palace at Venice. The secrets that you
confide to her will become accusations against you before the tribunal
of blood.”

Catharine shook her head with a smile. “You are too severe, John
Heywood. It is possible that the religion which she secretly professes
has estranged her heart from me, but she would never be capable of
betraying me, or of leaguing herself with my foes. No, John, you are
mistaken. It would be a crime to believe thus. My God, what a wicked
and wretched world it must be in which we could not trust even our most
faithful and dearest friends!”

“The world is indeed wicked and wretched, and one must despair of it,
or consider it a merry jest, with which the devil tickles our noses. For
me, it is such a jest, and therefore, queen, I have become the king’s
fool, which at least gives me the right of spurting out upon the
crawling brood all the venom of the contempt I feel for mankind, and of
speaking the truth to those who have only lies, by dripping honey, ever
on their lips. The sages and poets are the real fools of our day, and
since I did not feel a vocation to be a king, or a priest, a hangman, or
a lamb for sacrifice, I became a fool.”

“Yes, a fool, that is to say, an epigrammatist, whose biting tongue
makes the whole court tremble.”

“Since I cannot, like my royal master, have these criminals executed, I
give them a few sword-cuts with my tongue. Ah, I tell you, you will much
need this ally. Be on your guard, queen: I heard this morning the first
growl of the thunder, and in Lady Jane’s eyes I observed the stealthy
lightning. Trust her not. Trust no one here but your friends Cranmer and
John Heywood.”

“And you say, that in all this court, among all these brilliant women,
these brave cavaliers, the poor queen has not a single friend, not a
soul, whom she may trust, on whom she may lean? Oh, John Heywood, think
again, have pity on the poverty of a queen. Think again. Say, only you
two? No friend but you?”

And the queen’s eyes filled with tears, which she tried in vain to
repress.

John Heywood saw it and sighed deeply. Better than the queen herself
perhaps, he had read the depths of her heart, and knew its deep wound.
But he also had sympathy with her pain, and wished to mitigate it a
little.

“I recollect,” said he, gently and mournfully--“yes, I recollect, you
have yet a third friend at this court.”

“Ah, a third friend!” exclaimed Catharine, and again her voice sounded
cheery and joyous. “Name him to me, name him! For you see clearly I am
burning with impatience to hear his name.”

John Heywood looked into Catharine’s glowing countenance with a strange
expression, at once searching and mournful, and for a moment dropped his
head upon his breast and sighed.

“Now, John, give me the name of this third friend.”

“Do you not know him, queen?” asked Heywood, as he again stared steadily
in her face. “Do you not know him? It is Thomas Seymour, Earl of Sudley.”

There passed as it were a sunbeam over Catharine’s face, and she uttered
a low cry.

John Heywood said, sadly: “Queen, the sun strikes directly in your face.
Take care that it does not blind your bright eyes. Stand in the shade,
your majesty, for, hark! there comes one who might report the sunshine
in your face for a conflagration.”

Just then the door opened, and Lady Jane appeared on the threshold. She
threw a quick, searching glance around the room, and an imperceptible
smile passed over her beautiful pale face.

“Your majesty,” said she solemnly, “everything is ready. You can begin
your ride when it pleases you. The Princess Elizabeth awaits you in the
anteroom, and your master of horse already holds the stirrup of your
steed.”

“And the lord chamberlain?” asked Catharine, blushing, “has he no
message from the king to bring me?”

“Ay!” said the Earl of Surrey as he entered. “His majesty bids me
tell the queen that she may extend her ride as far as she wishes. The
glorious weather is well worth that the Queen of England should enjoy
it, and enter into a contest with the sun.”

“Oh, the king is the most gallant of cavaliers,” said Catharine, with a
happy smile. “Now come, Jane, let us ride.”

“Pardon me, your majesty,” said Lady Jane, stepping back. “I cannot
to-day enjoy the privilege of accompanying your majesty. Lady Anne
Ettersville is to-day in attendance.”

“Another time, then, Jane! And you, Earl Douglas, you ride with us?”

“The king, your majesty, has ordered me to his cabinet.”

“Behold now a queen abandoned by all her friends!” said Catharine
cheerily, as with light, elastic step she passed through the hall to the
courtyard.

“Here is something going on which I must fathom!” muttered John Heywood,
who had left the hall with the rest. “A mousetrap is set, for the cats
remain at home, and are hungry for their prey.”

Lady Jane had remained behind in the hall with her father. Both had
stepped to the window, and were silently looking down into the yard,
where the brilliant cavalcade of the queen and her suite was moving
about in motley confusion.

Catharine had just mounted her palfrey; the noble animal, recognizing
his mistress, neighed loudly, and, giving a snort, reared up with his
noble burden.

Princess Elizabeth, who was close to the queen, uttered a cry of alarm.
“You will fall, queen,” said she, “you ride such a wild animal.”

“Oh, no, indeed,” said Catharine, smiling; “Hector is not wild. It is
with him as with me. This charming May air has made us both mettlesome
and happy. Away, then, my ladies and lords! our horses must be to-day
swift as birds. We ride to Epping Forest.”

And through the open gateway dashed the cavalcade. The queen in front;
at her right, the Princess Elizabeth; at her left, the master of horse,
Thomas Seymour, Earl of Sudley.

When the train had disappeared, father and daughter stepped back from
the window, and looked at each other with strange, dark, and disdainful
looks.

“Well, Jane?” said Earl Douglas, at length. “She is still queen, and the
king becomes daily more unwieldy and ailing. It is time to give him a
seventh queen.”

“Soon, my father, soon.”

“Loves the queen Henry Howard at last?”

“Yes, he loves her!” said Jane, and her pale face was now colorless as a
winding-sheet.

“I ask, whether she loves him?”

“She will love him!” murmured Jane, and then suddenly mastering
herself, she continued: “but it is not enough to make the queen in love;
doubtless it would be still more efficient if some one could instill a
new love into the king. Did you see, father, with what ardent looks his
majesty yesterday watched me and the Duchess of Richmond?”

“Did I see it? The whole court talked about it.”

“Well, now, my father, manage it so that the king may be heartily bored
to-day, and then bring him to me. He will find the Duchess of Richmond
with me.”

“Ah, a glorious thought! You will surely be Henry’s seventh queen.”

“I will ruin Catharine Parr, for she is my rival, and I hate her!” said
Jane, with glowing cheeks and flashing eyes. “She has been queen long
enough, and I have bowed myself before her. Now she shall fall in the
dust before me, and I will set my foot upon her head.”




CHAPTER XI. THE RIDE.


It was a wondrous morning. The dew still lay on the grass of the
meadows, over which they had just ridden to reach the thicket of the
forest, in whose trees resounded the melodious voices of blithe birds.
Then they rode along the banks of a babbling forest stream, and spied
the deer that came forth into the glade on the other side, as if they
wanted, like the queen and her train, to listen to the song of the birds
and the murmuring of the fountains. Catharine felt a nameless, blissful
pleasure swell her bosom. She was to-day no more the queen, surrounded
by perils and foes; no more the wife of an unloved, tyrannical husband;
not the queen trammelled with the shackles of etiquette. She was a free,
happy woman, who, in presageful, blissful trepidation, smiled at
the future, and said to each minute, “Stay, stay, for thou art so
beautiful!”

It was a sweet, dreamy happiness, the happiness of that hour. With
glad heart, Catharine would have given her crown for it, could she have
prolonged this hour to an eternity.

He was at her side--he of whom John Heywood had said, that he was among
her most trustful and trusty friends. He was there; and even if she did
not dare to look at him often, often to speak to him, yet she felt his
presence, she perceived the glowing beams of his eyes, which rested on
her with consuming fire. Nobody could observe them. For the court rode
behind them, and before them and around them was naught but Nature
breathing and smiling with joy, naught but heaven and God.

She had forgotten however that she was not quite alone, and that
while Thomas Seymour rode on her left, on her right was Princess
Elizabeth--that young girl of fourteen years--that child, who, however,
under the fire of suffering and the storms of adversity, was early
forced to precocious bloom, and whose heart, by the tears and experience
of her unhappy childhood, had acquired an early ripeness. Elizabeth,
a child in years, had already all the strength and warmth of a woman’s
feelings. Elizabeth, the disowned and disinherited princess, had
inherited her father’s pride and ambition; and when she looked on the
queen, and perceived that little crown wrought on her velvet cap in
diamond embroidery, she felt in her bosom a sharp pang, and remembered,
with feelings of bitter grief, that this crown was destined never
to adorn her head, since the king, by solemn act of Parliament, had
excluded her from the succession to the throne. [Footnote: Tytler,
p. 340] But for a few weeks this pain had been more gentle, and less
burning. Another feeling had silenced it. Elizabeth who was never to be
queen or sovereign--Elizabeth might be a wife at least. Since she
was denied a crown, they should at least allow her instead a wife’s
happiness; they should not grudge her the privilege of twining in her
hair a crown of myrtle.

She had been early taught to ever have a clear consciousness of all her
feelings; nor had she now shrunk from reading the depths of her heart
with steady and sure eye.

She knew that she loved, and that Thomas Seymour was the man whom she
loved.

But the earl? Did he love her in return? Did he understand the child’s
heart? Had he, beneath the childish face, already recognized the
passionate, proud woman? Had he guessed the secrets of this soul, at
once so maidenly and chaste, and yet so passionate and energetic?

Thomas Seymour never betrayed a secret, and what he had, it may be, read
in the eyes of the princess, and what he had, perhaps, spoken to her in
the quiet shady walks of Hampton Court, or in the long, dark corridors
of Whitehall, was known to no one save those two. For Elizabeth had a
strong, masculine soul; she needed no confidant to share her secrets;
and Thomas Seymour had feared even, like the immortal hair-dresser of
King Midas, to dig a hole and utter his secret therein; for he knew very
well that, if the reed grew up and repeated his words, he might, for
these words, lay his head on the block.

Poor Elizabeth! She did not even suspect the earl’s secret and her own
were not, however, the same; she did not suspect that Thomas Seymour,
if he guessed her secret, might, perhaps, avail himself of it to make
thereof a brilliant foil for his own secret.

He had, like her, ever before his eyes the diamond crown on the head of
the young queen, and he had noticed well how old and feeble the king had
become of late.

As he now rode by the side of the two princesses, he felt his heart
swell with a proud joy, and bold and ambitious schemes alone occupied
his soul.

The two women understood nothing of this. They were both too much
occupied with their own thoughts; and while Catharine’s eyes swept with
beaming look the landscape far and wide, the brow of the princess was
slightly clouded, and her sharp eye rested with a fixed and watchful
gaze on Thomas Seymour.

She had noticed the impassioned look which he had now and then fastened
on the queen. The slight, scarcely perceptible tremor of his voice, when
he spoke, had not escaped her.

Princess Elizabeth was jealous; she felt the first torturing motions of
that horrible disease which she had inherited from her father, and in
the feverish paroxysms of which the king had sent two of his wives to
the scaffold.

She was jealous, but not of the queen; much more, she dreamed not that
the queen might share and return Seymour’s love. It never came into
her mind to accuse the queen of an understanding with the earl. She
was jealous only of the looks which he directed toward the queen; and
because she was watching those looks, she could not at the same time
read the eyes of her young stepmother also; she could not see the gentle
flames which, kindled by the fire of his looks, glowed in hers.

Thomas Seymour had seen them, and had he now been alone with Catharine,
he would have thrown himself at her feet and confided to her all the
deep and dangerous secrets that he had so long harbored in his breast;
he would have left to her the choice of bringing him to the block, or of
accepting the love which he consecrated to her.

But there, behind them, were the spying, all-observing, all-surmising
courtiers; there was the Princess Elizabeth, who, had he ventured to
speak to the queen, would have conjectured from his manner the words
which she could not understand; for love sees so clearly, and jealousy
has such keen ears!

Catharine suspected nothing of the thoughts of her companions. She alone
was happy; she alone gave herself up with full soul to the enjoyment of
the moment. She drew in with intense delight the pure air; she drank in
the odor of the meadow blossoms; she listened with thirsty ear to the
murmuring song which the wind wafted to her from the boughs of the
trees. Her wishes extended not beyond the hour; she rested in the full
enjoyment of the presence of her beloved. He was there--what needed she
more to make her happy?

Her wishes extended not beyond this hour. She was only conscious how
delightful it was thus to be at her beloved’s side, to breathe the same
air, to see the same sun, the same flowers on which his eyes rested, and
on which their glances at least might meet in kisses which were denied
to their lips.

But as they thus rode along, silent and meditative, each occupied with
his own thoughts, there came the assistance for which Thomas Seymour had
prayed, fluttering along in the shape of a fly.

At first this fly sported and buzzed about the nose of the fiery,
proud beast which the queen rode; and as no one noticed it, it was
not disturbed by Hector’s tossing of his mane, but crept securely and
quietly to the top of the noble courser’s head, pausing a little here
and there, and sinking his sting into the horse’s flesh, so that he
reared and began loudly to neigh.

But Catharine was a bold and dexterous rider, and the proud spirit of
her horse only afforded her delight, and gave the master of horse an
opportunity to praise her skill and coolness.

Catharine received with a sweet smile the encomiums of her beloved.
Bu

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