Still all was calm and quiet in the palace of Whitehall. Nothing was stirring, and nobody had heard how Lady Jane Douglas left her chamber and glided down the corridor.
No one has heard it, and no eye is awake, and none sees what is now taking place in the queen’s room. She is alone—all alone. The servants are all asleep in their chambers. The queen herself has bolted the doors of the anteroom on the inside, and no other door leads into her boudoir and bedroom, except through this anteroom. She is therefore perfectly secluded, perfectly secure.
Speedily and in haste she envelops herself in a long black mantle, the hood of which she draws well over her head and brow, and which completely covers and conceals her form.
And now she presses on a spring inserted in the frame of a picture. The picture flies back and shows an opening, through which a person can quite conveniently pass out.
Catharine does so. Then she carefully pushes the picture back to its place from the outside, and for a long time walks on in the passage hollowed out of the solid wall, till groping along she at last lays hold again of a knob in the wall. She presses on it; and now at her feet opens a trap-door, through which a feeble light forces its way and renders visible a small narrow staircase there situated. Catharine enters and descends the steps with winged feet. Now at the foot of the staircase she again presses on a secret spring; and again a door opens, through which the queen passes into a large hall.
“Oh,” whispered she, fetching a long breath, “the green summer house at last.”
She quickly traversed it and opened the next door.
“John Heywood?”
“I am here, queen!”
“Hush, hush! gently as possible, that the watch, who walks up and down just behind the door, may not hear us. Come, we still have a long walk—let us make haste.”
Again she pressed on a spring inserted in the wall; and again a door opens. But before Catharine bolts this door, she takes the lamp burning on the table there, which is to lighten the dark and difficult path through which they are now to wend their way.
Now she bolts the door behind them; and they enter a long, dark corridor, at the end of which is found still another staircase, and down which they both go. Numberless steps conduct them below; gradually the air becomes dense, the steps moist. The stillness of the grave is around them. No sound of life, not the least noise, is now perceptible.
They are in a subterranean passage, which stretches out in length before them farther than the eye can reach. Catharine turns to John Heywood; the lamp lights up her face, which is pale, but exhibits an expression firm and resolute.
“John Heywood, reflect once more! I ask not whether you have courage, for I know that. I only wish to know whether you will employ this courage for your queen?”
“No, not for the queen, but for the noble woman who has saved my son.”
“You must then be my protector to-day if we meet with dangers. But if it be God’s will, we shall encounter no dangers. Let us go.”
They go vigorously forward, silent all the way. At length they come to a place where the passage grows broader, and spreads out into a little open chamber, on the side walls of which a few teats are placed.
“We have now accomplished half of the journey,” said Catharine; “and here we will rest a little.”
She placed the lamp on the small marble table in the middle of the passage, and sat down, pointing to John Heywood to take a seat near her.
“I am not the queen, here,” said she; “and you are not the king’s fool; but I am a poor weak woman, and you are my protector. You may, therefore, well have the right to sit by me.”
But John shook his head with a smile, and sat down at her feet. “St. Catharine, savior of my son, I lie at thy feet, and devoutly return thanks to thee.”
“John, are you acquainted with this subterranean passage?” asked the queen.
John gave a sad smile. “I am acquainted with it, queen.”
“Ah, you know it? I supposed it was a secret of the king and queen.”
“Then you will readily conceive that the fool knows it. For the King of England and the fool are twin brothers. Yes, queen, I know this passage; and I once wended it in anguish and tears.”
“What! You yourself, John Heywood?”
“Yes, queen. And now I ask you, do you know the history of this underground passage? You are silent. Now, well for you that you do not know it. It is a long and bloody history, and if I should narrate to you the whole of it, the night would be too short for it. When this passage was built, Henry was still young, and possessed yet a heart. At that time, he loved not merely his wives, but his friends and servants also—specially Cromwell, the all-powerful minister. He then resided at Whitehall, and Henry in the royal apartments of the Tower. But Henry was always longing for his favorite; and so Cromwell one day surprised him with this subterranean passage, the construction of which had occupied a hundred men a whole year. Ah, ah, the king was then very much moved, and thanked his powerful minister for this surprise with tears and hugs. There passed scarcely a day that Henry did not go to Cromwell through this passage. So he saw each day how the palace of Whitehall became more and more splendid and glorious; and when he returned to the Tower, he discovered that this residence was altogether unworthy of a king; but that his minister lived by far more magnificently than the King of England. That, queen, was the cause of Cromwell’s fall! The king wanted Whitehall. The sly Cromwell noticed it, and made him a present of his gem, the palace on whose construction and decoration he had labored ten years. Henry accepted the present; but now Cromwell’s fall was irrevocable. The king could not, of course, forgive Cromwell for having dared to offer him a present so valuable, that Henry could not or would not repay it. He remained, therefore, Cromwell’s debtor; and since this tormented and vexed him, he swore Cromwell’s ruin. When Henry moved into Whitehall, it was concluded that Cromwell must ascend the scaffold. Ah, the king is such an economical builder! A palace costs him nothing but the head of a subject. With Cromwell’s bead be paid for Whitehall; and Wolsey died for Hampton Court.”
“Not on the scaffold, though, John.”
“Oh, no; Henry preferred merely to break his heart, and not his head. First, he had that wonderful pleasure-villa, Hampton Court, with all its treasures, presented him by Wolsey; then he removed him from all his offices, and deprived him of all his honors. Finally, he was to go to the Tower as a prisoner; but he died on his way thither. No, you are right! Wolsey did not die on the scaffold, he was put to death much more slowly and more cruelly. He was not killed with the sword, but pricked to death with pins!”
“Did you not say, John, that you had travelled this way once before?”
“Yes, queen, and I did it to bid farewell to the noblest of men, and the truest of friends, Thomas More! I begged and besought Cromwell so long that he had compassion on my anguish, and allowed me to go through this passage to Thomas More, that I might at least receive the blessing and last kiss of affection of this saint. Ah, queen, speak no more of it to me! From that day I became a fool; for I saw it was not worth the trouble to be an honest man, when such men as More are executed as criminals. Come, queen, let us go on!”
“Yes, on, John!” said she, rising. “But do you know then whither we are going?”
“Ah, queen, do I not then know you? and did I not tell you that Anne Askew is to be stretched upon the rack to-morrow, unless she recant?”
“I see that you have understood me,” said she, giving him a friendly nod. “Yes, I am going to Anne Askew.”
“But how will you, without being seen and discovered, find out her cell?”
“John, even the unhappy have friends. Yes, the queen herself has a few; and so chance, or it may be even God’s will, has so arranged matters, that Anne Askew is occupying, just at this time, that small room in which the secret passage terminates.”
“Is she alone in that room?”
“Yes, all alone. The guard stands without before the door.”
“And should they hear you, and open the door?”
“Then without doubt I am lost, unless God supports me.”
They walked on in silence, both too much occupied with their own thoughts to interrupt them by conversation.
But this long, extended walk at length wearied Catharine. She leaned exhausted against the wall.
“Will you do me a favor, queen?” asked John Heywood. “Permit me to carry you. Your little feet can bear you no farther; make me your feet, your majesty!”
She refused with a friendly smile. “No, John, these are the passion-stations of a saint; and you know one must make the round of them in the sweat of his face, and on his knees.”
“Oh, queen, how noble and how courageous you are!” exclaimed John Heywood. “You do good without display, and you shun no danger, if it avails toward the accomplishment of noble work.”
“Yet, John,” said she, with a bewitching smile, “I dread danger; and just on that account I begged you to accompany me. I shudder at the long, desolate way, at the darkness and grave-like stillness of this passage. Ah, John, I thought to myself, if I came here alone, the shades of Anne Boleyn and Catharine would be roused from their sleep by me who wear their crown; they would hover about me, and seize me by the hand and lead me to their graves, to show me that there is yet room there for me likewise. You see, then, that I am not at all courageous, but a cowardly and trembling woman.”
“And nevertheless, you came, queen.”
“I reckoned on you, John Heywood. It was my duty to risk this passage, to save, perchance, the life of the poor enthusiastic girl. For it shall not be said that Catharine deserts her friends in misfortune, and that she shrinks back at danger. I am but a poor, weak woman, John, who cannot defend her friends with weapons, and, therefore, I must resort to other means. But see, John, here the path forks! Ah, my God! I know it only from the description that was given me, but no one said anything of this to me. John, which way must we now turn?”
“This way, queen; and here we are at the end of our journey. That path there leads to the torture-chamber, that is to say, to a small grated window, through which one can overlook that room. When King Henry was in special good-humor, he would resort with his friend to this grating to divert himself a little with the tortures of the damned and blasphemers. For you well know, queen, only such as have blasphemed God, or have not recognized King Henry as the pope of their Church, have the honor of the rack as their clue. But hush! here we are at the door, and here is the spring that opens it.”
Catharine set her lamp on the ground and pressed the spring.
The door turned slowly and noiselessly on its hinges, and softly, like shades, the two entered.
They now found themselves in a small, circular apartment, which seemed to have been originally a niche formed in the wall of the Tower, rather than a room. Through a narrow grated opening in the wall only a little air and light penetrated into this dungeon, the bald, bare walls of which showed the stones of the masonry. There was no chair, no table in the whole space; only yonder in that corner on the earth they had heaped up some straw. On this straw lay a pale, tender creature; the sunken, thin cheeks, transparently white as alabaster; the brow so pure and clear; the entire countenance so peaceful; the bare, meagre arms thrown back over the head; the hands folded over the forehead, the head bent to one side in quiet, peaceful slumber; the delicate, tender form wrapped in a long black dress, gently stretched out, and on her lips a smile, such as only the happy know.
That was Anne Askew, the criminal, the condemned—Anne Askew, who was an atheist only for this, because she did not believe in the king’s vast elevation and godlikeness, and would not subject her own free soul to that of the king.
“She sleeps,” whispered Catharine, deeply mored, Wholly involuntarily she folded her hands as she stepped to the couch of the sufferer, and a low prayer trembled on her lips.
“So sleep the gust!” said Hey wood. “Angels comfort them in their slumbers; and the breath of God refreshes them. Poor girl; how soon, and they will wrench these noble, fair limbs, and torture thee for the honor of God, and open to tones of distress that mouth which now smiles so peacefully!”
“No, no,” said the queen, hastily. “I have come to save her, and God will assist me to do it. I cannot spare her slumbers any longer. I must wake her.”
She bent down and pressed a kiss on the young girl’s forehead. “Anne, awake; I am here! I will save you and set you free. Anne, Anne, awake!”
She slowly raised her large, brilliant eyes, and nodded a salutation to Catharine.
“Catharine Parr!” said she, with a smile. “I expected only a letter from you; and have you come yourself?”
“The guards have been dismissed, and the turnkeys changed, Anne; for our correspondence had been discovered.”
“Ah, you will write to me no more in future! And yet your letters were my only comfort,” sighed Anne Askew. “But that also is well; and perhaps it will only make the path that I have to tread still easier. The heart may move its pinions freely and easily, and return to God.”
“Hear me, Anne, hear,” said Catharine in a low and hurried voice. “A terrible danger threatens you! The king has given orders to move you, by means of the rack, to recant.”
“Well, and what more?” asked Anne, with smiling face.
“Unfortunate, you know not what you are saying! You know not what fearful agonies await you! You know not the power of pains, which are perhaps still mightier than the spirit, and may overcome it.”
“And if I did know them now, what would it avail me?” asked Anne Askew. “You say they will put me to the rack. Well, then, I shall have to bear it, for I have no power to change their will.”
“Yet, Anne, yet you have the power! Retract what you have said, Anne! Declare that you repent, and that you perceive that you have been deluded! Say that you will recognize the king as lord of the Church; that you will swear to the six articles, and never believe in the Pope of Rome. Ah, Anne, God sees your heart and knows your thoughts. You have no need to make them known by your lips. He has given you life, and you have no right to throw it away; you must seek to keep it so long as you can. Recant, then! It is perfectly allowable to deceive those who would murder us. Recant, then, Anne, recant! When they in their haughty arrogance demand of you to say what they say, consider them as lunatics, to whom you make apparent concessions only to keep them from raving. Of what consequence is it whether you do or do not say that the king is the head of the Church? From His heavens above, God looks down and smiles at this petty earthly strife which concerns not Him, but men only. Let scholars and theologians wrangle; we women have nothing to do with it. If we only believe in God, and bear Him to our hearts, the form in which we do it is a matter of indifference. But in this case the question is not about God, but merely about external dogmas. Why should you trouble yourself with these? What have you to do with the controversies of the priests? Recant, then, poor enthusiastic child, recant!”
While Catharine, in a low tone and with fluttering breath, thus spoke, Anne Askew had slowly arisen from her couch, and now stood, like a lily, so slender and delicate, confronting the queen.
Her noble countenance expressed deep indignation. Her eyes shot lightning, and a contemptuous smile was on her lips.
“What! Can you thus advise me?” said she. “Can you wish me to deny my faith, and abjure my God, only to escape earthly pain? And your tongue does not refuse to utter this, and your heart does not shrink with shame while you do it? Look at these arms; what are they worth that I should not sacrifice them to God? See these feeble limbs! Are they so precious that I, like a disgusting niggard, should spare them? No, no, God is my highest good—not this feeble, decaying body! For God I sacrifice it. I should recant? Never! Faith is not enveloped in this or that garb; it must be naked and open. So may mine be. And if I then am chosen to be an example of pure faith, that denies not, and makes profession—well, then, envy me not this preeminence. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ If I am one of the chosen, I thank God for it, and bless the erring mortals who wish to make me such by means of the torture of the rack. Ah, believe me, Catharine, I rejoice to die, for it is such a sad, desolate, and desperate thing to live. Let me die, Catharine—die, to enter into blessedness!”
“But, poor, pitiable child! this is more than death; it is the torture of earth that threatens you. Oh, bethink you, Anne, that you are only a feeble woman. Who knows whether the rack may not yet conquer your spirit, and whether you, with your mangled limbs, may not by the fury of the pain yet be brought to that point that you will recant and abjure your faith?”
“If I could do that,” cried Anne Askew, with flashing eyes, “believe me, queen, as soon as I came to my senses I would lay violent hands on myself, in order to give myself over to eternal damnation, as the punishment of my recantation! God has ordered that I shall be a sign of the true faith. Be His command fulfilled!”
“Well, then, so be it,” said Catharine resolutely. “Do not recant, but save yourself from your executioners! I, Anne, I, will save you! I cannot bear—I cannot think of it—that this dear noble form should be sacrificed to a vile delusion of man; that they will torture to the honor of God a noble likeness of the same God! Oh, come, come, I will save you! I, the queen! Give me your hand. Follow me out of this dungeon. I know a path that leads out of this place; and I will conceal you so long in my own apartments that you can continue your flight without danger.”
“No, no, queen, you shall not conceal her with you!” said John Heywood. “You have been graciously pleased to allow me to be your confidant; envy me not, then, a share in your noble work also. Not with you shall Anne Askew find refuge, but with me. Oh, come, Anne, follow your friends. It is life that calls you, that opens the doors to you, and desires to call you by a thousand names to itself! Do you not hear them, all those sweet and alluring voices; do you not see them, all those noble and smiling faces, how they greet you and beckon to you? Anne Askew, it is the noble husband that calls you! You know him not as yet, but he is waiting for you there in the world without. Anne Askew, there are your children, who are stretching their tender arms out to you. You have not yet borne them; but love holds them in her arms, and will bring them to meet you. It is the wife and the mother that the world yet demands of you, Anne. You ought not to shun the holy calling which God has given you. Come, then, and follow us—follow your queen, who has the right to order her subject. Follow the friend, who has sworn that he will watch over you and protect you as a father!”
“Father in heaven, protect me!” exclaimed Anne Askew, falling on her knees and stretching her hands upward. “Father in heaven! they would tear away Thy child, and alienate my heart from Thee! They are leading me into temptation and alluring me with their words. Protect me, my Father; make my ear deaf, that I may not hear them! Give me a sign that I am Thine; that no one has any longer power over me, save Thou alone! A sign, that Thou, Father, callest me!”
And as if God had really heard her prayer, a loud knocking was now perceived at the outer door, and a voice cried: “Anne Askew, awake! and hold yourself ready! The high chancellor and the Bishop of Winchester come to fetch you away!”
“Ah, the rack!” groaned Catharine, as with a shudder she buried her face in her hands.
“Yes, the rack!” said Anne, with a blissful smile. “God calls me!”
John Heywood had approached the queen and impetuously seized her hand. “You see it is in vain,” said he, urgently. “Make haste then to save yourself! Hasten to leave this prison before the door there opens.”
“No,” said Catharine, firmly and resolutely. “No, I stay. She shall not surpass me in courage and greatness of soul! She will not deny her God; well, then, I also will be a witness of my God. I will not in shame cast my eyes to the ground before this young girl; like her, I will frankly and openly profess my faith; like her I will say: ‘God alone is Lord of his Church,’ God—”
There was a movement without; a key was heard to turn in the lock.
“Queen, I conjure you,” besought John Heywood, “by all that is holy to you, by your love, come, come!”
“No, no!” cried she, vehemently.
But now Anne seized her hand, and stretching the other arm toward heaven, she said in a loud, commanding voice: “In the name of God, I order you to leave me!”
While Catharine drew back wholly involuntarily, John Heywood pushed her to the secret door, and urging her out almost with violence, he drew the door to behind them both.
Just as the secret door had closed, the other on the opposite side opened. “With whom were you speaking?” asked Gardiner, peering around the room with a sharp look.
“With the tempter, that wished to alienate me from God,” said she—“with the tempter, who at the approach of your footsteps wanted to fool my heart with fear, and persuade me to recant!”
“You are, then, firmly resolved? you do not retract?” asked Gardiner; and a savage joy shone in his pale, hard countenance.
“No, I do not recant!” said she, with a face beaming with smiles.
“Then, in the name of God and of the king, I take you into the torture-chamber!” cried Chancellor Wriothesley, as he advanced and laid his heavy hand on Anne’s shoulder. “You would not hear the voice of love warning you and calling you, so we will now try to arouse you from your madness by the voice of wrath and damnation.” He beckoned to the attendants on the rack, who stood behind him in the open door, and ordered them to seize her and carry her to the torture-chamber.
Anne, smiling, turned them back. “Nay, not so!” said she. “The Saviour went on foot, and bore His cross to the place of execution. I will tread His path. Show me the way, I follow you. But let no one dare touch me. I will show you that not by constraint, but gladly and freely, I tread the path of suffering, which I shall endure for the sake of my God. Rejoice, oh my soul!—sing, my lips! for the bridegroom is near, and the feast is about to begin.”
And in exultant tones Anne Askew began to sing a hymn, that had not died away when she entered the torture-chamber.
The king sleeps. Let him sleep! He is old and infirm, and God has severely punished the restless tyrant with a vacillating, ever-disquieted, never-satisfied spirit, while He bound his body and made the spirit prisoner of the body; while He made the ambitious king, struggling for the infinite, a slave to his own flesh. How high soever his thoughts soar, still the king remains a clumsy, confined, powerless child of humanity; how much soever his conscience harasses him with disquiet and dread, yet he must be calm and endure it. He cannot run away from his conscience; God has fettered him by the flesh. The king is sleeping! But the queen is not; and Jane Douglas is not; neither is the Princess Elizabeth. She has watched with heart beating high. She is restless, and, pacing her room up and down in strange confusion, waited for the hour that she had appointed for the meeting. Now the hour had arrived. A glowing crimson overspread the face of the young princess; and her hand trembled as she took the light and opened the secret door to the corridor. She stood still for a moment, hesitating; then, ashamed of her irresolution, she crossed the corridor and ascended the small staircase which led to the tower-chamber. With a hasty movement she pushed open the door and entered the small slip that was at the end of her journey, and Thomas Seymour was already there.
As she saw him, an involuntary trepidation came over her, and for the first time she now became conscious of her hazardous step.
As Seymour, the ardent young man, approached her with a passionate salutation, she stepped shyly back and pushed away his hand.
“How! you will not allow me to kiss your hand?” asked he, and she thought she observed on his face a slight, scornful smile. “You make me the happiest of mortals by inviting me to this interview, and now you stand before me rigid and cold, and I am not once permitted to clasp you in my arms, Elizabeth!”
Elizabeth! He had called her by her first name without her having given him permission to do so. That offended her. In the midst of her confusion, that aroused the pride of the princess, and made her aware how much she must have forgotten her own dignity, when another could be so forgetful of it.
She wished to regain it. At this moment she would have given a year of her life if she had not taken this step—if she had not invited the earl to this meeting.
She wanted to try and regain in his eyes her lost position, and again to become to him the princess.
Pride in her was still mightier than love. She meant her lover should at the same time bow before her as her favored servant.
Therefore she gravely said: “Earl Thomas Seymour, you have often begged us for a private conversation; we now grant it to you. Speak, then! what matter of importance have you to bring before us?”
And with an air of gravity she stepped to an easy-chair, on which she seated herself slowly and solemnly like a queen, who gives audience to her vassals.
Poor, innocent child, that in her unconscious trepidation wished to intrench herself behind her grandeur, as behind a shield, which might conceal her maidenly fear and girlish anxiety!
Thomas Seymour, however, divined her thoughts; and his proud and cold heart revolted against this child’s attempt to defy him.
He wanted to humble her; he wished to compel her to bow before him, and implore his love as a gracious gift.
He therefore bowed low to the princess, and respectfully said: “Your highness, it is true I have often besought you for an audience; but you have so long refused me, that at last I could no longer summon up courage to solicit it; and I let my wish be silent and my heart dumb. Therefore seek not now, when these pains have been subdued, to excite them again. My heart should remain dead, my lips mute. You have so willed; and I have submitted to your will. Farewell, then, princess, and may your days be happier and more serene than those of poor Thomas Seymour!”
He bowed low before her, and then went slowly to the door. He had already opened it and was about to step out, when a hand was suddenly laid on his shoulder and drew him with vehement impetuosity back into the room.
“Do you want to go?” asked Elizabeth, with fluttering breath and trembling voice. “You want to leave me, and, flouting me, you want now, it may be, to go to the Duchess of Richmond, your mistress, and relate to her with a sneer that the Princess Elizabeth granted you an interview, and that you have flouted her?”
“The Duchess of Richmond is not my mistress,” said the earl, earnestly.
“No, not your mistress; but she will very soon be your wife!”
“She will never be my wife!”
“And why not?”
“Because I do not love her, princess.”
A beam of delight passed over Elizabeth’s pale, agitated face. “Why do you call me princess?” asked she.
“Because you have come as a princess to favor your poor servant with an audience. But, ah, it would be greatly abusing your princely grace did I want to protract this audience still further. I therefore retire, princess.”
And again he approached the door. But Elizabeth rushed after him, and, laying hold of his arms with both her hands, she wildly pushed him back.
Her eyes shot lightning; her lips trembled; a passionate warmth was manifested in her whole being. Now she was the true daughter of her father, inconsiderate and passionate in her wrath, destroying in her ferocity.
“You shall not go,” muttered she, with her teeth firmly set. “I will not let you go! I will not let you confront me any longer with that cold, smiling face. Scold me; cast on me the bitterest reproaches, because I have dared to brave you so long; curse me, if you can! Anything but this smiling calmness. It kills me; it pierces my heart like a dagger. For you see well enough that I have no longer the power to withstand you; you see well enough that I love you. Yes, I love you to ecstasy and to desperation; with desire and dread. I love you as my demon and my angel. I am angry, because you have so entirely crushed the pride of my heart. I curse you, because you have made me so entirely your slave; and the next moment I fall on my knees and beseech God to forgive me this crime against you. I love you, I say—not as those soft, gentle-hearted women love, with a smile on the lip; but with madness and desperation, with jealousy and wrath. I love you as my father loved Anne Boleyn, whom, in the hatred of his love and the cruel wrath of his jealousy, he made to mount the scaffold, because he had been told that she was untrue to him. Ah, had I the power, I would do as my father did; I would murder you, if you should dare ever to cease to love me. And now, Thomas Seymour, now say whether you have the courage to desire to leave me?”
She looked bewitching in the naming might of her passion; she was so young, so ardent; and Thomas Seymour was so ambitious! In his eyes Elizabeth was not merely the beautiful, charming maiden, who loved him: she was more than that: she was the daughter of Henry the Eighth, the Princess of England, perchance some day the heiress of the throne. It is true, her father had disinherited her, and by act of Parliament declared her unworthy of succeeding to the throne.[Footnote: Burnet, vol. i, p. 138] But Henry’s vacillating mind might change, and the disowned princess might one day become queen.
The earl thought of this as he gazed on Elizabeth—as he saw her before him, so charming, so young, and so glowing with passion. He thought of it as he now clasped her in his arms, and pressed on her lips a burning kiss.
“No, I will not go,” whispered he. “I will never more depart from your side, if you do not wish me to go. I am yours!—your slave, your vassal; and I will never be anything else but this alone. They may betray me; your father may punish me for high treason; yet will I exult in my good fortune, for Elizabeth loves me, and it will be for Elizabeth that I die!”
“You shall not die!” cried she, clinging fast to him. “You shall live, live at my side, proud, great, and happy! You shall be my lord and my master; and if I am ever queen, and I feel here in my heart that I must become so, then will Thomas Seymour be King of England.”
“That is to say, in the quiet and secrecy of your chamber I should perhaps be so!” said he with a sigh. “But there without, before the world, I shall still be ever only a servant; and at the best, I shall be called the favorite.”
“Never, never, that I swear to you! Said I not that I loved you?”
“But the love of a woman is so changeable! Who knows how long it will be before you will tread under your feet poor Thomas Seymour, when once the crown has adorned your brow.”
She looked at him well-nigh horrified. “Can this be, then? Is it possible that one can forget and forsake what he once loved?”
“Do you ask, Elizabeth? Has not your father already his sixth wife?”
“It is true,” said she, as mournfully she dropped her head upon her breast. “But I,” said she, after a pause, “I shall not be like my father in that. I shall love you eternally! And that you may have a guaranty of my faithfulness, I offer myself to you as your wife.”
Astonished, he looked inquiringly into her excited, glowing face! He did not understand her.
But she continued, passionately: “Yes, you shall be my lord and my husband! Come, my beloved, come! I have not called you to take upon yourself the disgraceful role of the secret lover of a princess—I have called you to be my husband. I wish a bond to unite us two, that is so indissoluble that not even the wrath and will of my father, but only death itself, can sever it. I will give you proof of my love and my devotion; and you shall be forced to acknowledge that I truly love you. Come, my beloved, that I may soon hail you as my husband!”
He looked at her as though petrified. “Whither will you lead me?”
“To the private chapel,” said she, innocently. “I have written Cranmer to await me there at daybreak. Let us hasten, then!”
“Cranmer! You have written to the archbishop?” cried Seymour, amazed. “How! what say you? Cranmer awaits us in the private chapel?”
“Without doubt he is waiting for us, as I have written him to do so.”
“And what is he to do? What do you want of him?”
She looked at him in astonishment. “What do I want of him? Why, that he may marry us!”
The earl staggered back as if stunned. “And have you written him that also?”
“Nay, indeed,” said she, with a charming, childlike smile. “I know very well that it is dangerous to trust such secrets to paper. I have only written him to come in his official robes, because I have an important secret to confess to him.”
“Oh, God be praised! We are not lost,” sighed Seymour.
“But how, I do not understand you?” asked she. “You do not extend me your hand! You do not hasten to conduct me to the chapel!”
“Tell me, I conjure you, tell me only this one thing: have you ever spoken to the archbishop of your—no—of our love? Have you ever betrayed to him so much, as a syllable of that which stirs our hearts?”
She blushed deeply beneath the steady gaze which he fixed on her. “Upbraid me, Seymour,” whispered she. “But my heart was weak and timorous; and as often as I tried to fulfil the holy duty, and confess everything honestly and frankly to the archbishop, I could not do it! The word died on my lips; and it was as though an invisible power paralyzed my tongue.”
“So, then, Cranmer knows nothing?”
“No, Seymour, he knows nothing as yet. But now he shall learn all; now we will go before him and tell him that we love each other, and constrain him, by our prayers, to bless our union, and join our hands.”
“Impossible!” cried Seymour. “That can never be!”
“How! What do you say?” asked she in astonishment.
“I say that Cranmer will never be so insane, nay, so criminal, as to fulfil your wish. I say that you can never be my wife.”
She looked him full and square in the face. “Have you not then told me that you loved me?” asked she. “Have I not sworn to you that I loved you in return? Must we then not be married, in order to sanctify the union of our hearts?”
Seymour sank his eyes to the ground before her pure innocent look, and blushed for shame. She did not understand this blush; because he was silent, she deemed him convinced.
“Come,” said she, “come; Cranmer is waiting for us!”
He again raised his eyes and looked at her in amazement, “Do you not see, then, this is all only a dream that can never become reality? Do you not feel that this precious fantasy of your great and noble heart will never be realized? How! are you then so little acquainted with your father as not to know that he would destroy us both if we should dare to set at naught his paternal and his royal authority? Your birth would not secure you from his destroying fury, for you well know he is unyielding and reckless in his wrath; and the voice of consanguinity sounds not so loud in him that it would not be drowned by the thunder of his wrath. Poor child, you have learned that already! Remember with what cruelty he has already revenged himself on you for the pretended fault of your mother; how he transferred to you his wrath against her. Remember that he refused your hand to the Dauphin of France, not for the sake of your happiness, but because he said you were not worthy of so exalted a position. Anne Boleyn’s bastard could never become Queen of France. And after such a proof of his cruel wrath against you, will you dare cast in his face this terrible insult?—compel him to recognize a subject, a servant, as his son?”
“Oh, this servant is, however, the brother of a Queen of England!” said she, shyly. “My father loved Jane Seymour too warmly not to forgive her brother.”
“Ah, ah, you do not know your father! He has no heart for the past; or, if he has, it is only to take vengeance for an injury or a fault, but not to reward love. King Henry would be capable of sentencing Anne Boleyn’s daughter to death, and of sending to the block and rack Catharine Howard’s brothers, because these two queens once grieved him and wounded his heart; but he would not forgive me the least offence on account of my being the brother of a queen who loved him faithfully and tenderly till her death. But I speak not of myself. I am a warrior, and have too often looked death in the face to fear him now. I speak only of you, Elizabeth. You have no right to perish thus. This noble head must not be laid upon the block. It is destined to wear a royal crown. A fortune still higher than love awaits you—fame and power! I must not draw you away from this proud future. The Princess Elizabeth, though abused and disowned, may yet one day mount the throne of England. The Countess Seymour never! she disinherits herself! Follow, then, your high destiny. Earl Seymour retires before a throne.”
“That is to say, you disdained me?” asked she, angrily stamping the floor with her foot. “That is to say, the proud Earl Seymour holds the bastard too base for his coronet! That is to say, you love me not!”
“No, it means that I love you more than myself—better and more purely than any other man can love you; for this love is so great that it makes my selfishness and my ambition silent, and allows me to think only of you and your future.”
“Ah,” sighed she, mournfully, “if you really loved me, you would not consider—you would not see the danger, nor fear death. You would think of nothing, and know nothing, save love.”
“Because I think of love, I think of you,” said Seymour. “I think that you are to move along over the world, great, powerful, and glorious, and that I will lend you my arm for this. I think of this, that my queen of the future needs a general who will win victories for her, and that I will be that general. But when this goal is reached—when you are queen—then you have the power from one of your subjects to make a husband; then it rests with your own will to elevate me to be the proudest, the happiest, and the most enviable of all men. Extend me your hand, then, and I will thank and praise God that he is so gracious to me; and my whole existence will be spent in the effort to give you the happiness that you are so well entitled to demand.”
“And until then?” asked she, mournfully.
“Until then, we will be constant, and love each other!” cried he, as he gently pressed her in his arms. She gently repelled him. “Will you also be true to me till then?”
“True till death!”
“They have told me that you would marry the Duchess of Richmond, in order thereby to at length put an end to the ancient hatred between the Howards and Seymours.”
Thomas Seymour frowned, and his countenance grew dark. “Believe me, this hatred is invincible,” said he; “and no matrimonial alliance could wash it away. It is an inheritance from many years in our families; and I am firmly resolved not to renounce my inheritance. I shall just as little marry the Duchess of Richmond, as Henry Howard will my sister, the Countess of Shrewsbury.”
“Swear that to me! Swear to me, that you say the truth, and that this haughty and coquettish duchess shall never be your wife. Swear it to me, by all that is sacred to you!”
“I swear it by my love!” exclaimed Thomas Seymour, solemnly.
“I shall then at least have one sorrow the less,” sighed Elizabeth. “I shall have no occasion to be jealous. And is it not true,” she then said, “is it not true we shall often see each other? We will both keep this secret of this tower faithfully and sacredly; and after days full of privation and disappointment, we will here keep festival the nights full of blissful pleasure and sweet transport. But why do you smile, Seymour?”
“I smile, because you are pure and innocent as an angel,” said he, as he reverently kissed her hand. “I smile, because you are an exalted, godlike child, whom one ought to adore upon his knees, and to whom one ought to pray, as to the chaste goddess Vesta! Yes, my dear, beloved child, here we will, as you say, pass nights full of blissful pleasure; and may I be reprobate and damned, if I should ever be capable of betraying this sweet, guileless confidence with which you favor me, and sully your angel purity!”
“Ah, we will be very happy, Seymour!” said she, smiling. “I lack only one thing—a friend, to whom I can tell my happiness, to whom I can speak of you. Oh, it often seems to me as if this love, which must always be concealed, always shut up, must at last burst my breast; as if this secret must with violence break a passage, and roar like a tempest over the whole world. Seymour, I want a confidante of my happiness and my love.”
“Guard yourself well against desiring to seek such a one!” exclaimed Seymour, anxiously. “A secret that three know, is a secret no more; and one day your confidante will betray us.”
“Not so; I know a woman who would be incapable of that—a woman who loves me well enough to keep my secret as faithfully as I myself; a woman who could be more than merely a confidante, who could be the protectress of our love. Oh, believe me, if we could gain her to our side, then our future would be a happy and a blessed one, and we might easily succeed in obtaining the king’s consent to our marriage.”
“And who is this woman?”
“It is the queen.”
“The queen!” cried Thomas Seymour, with such an expression of horror that Elizabeth trembled; “the queen your confidante? But that is impossible! That would be plunging us both inevitably into ruin. Unhappy child, be very careful not to mention even a single word, a syllable of your relation to me. Be very careful not to betray to her, even by the slightest intimation, that Thomas Seymour is not indifferent to you! Ah, her wrath would dash to pieces you and me!”
“And why do you believe that?” asked Elizabeth, gloomily. “Why do you suppose that Catharine would fly into a passion because Earl Seymour loves me? Or how?—it is she, perhaps, that you love, and you dare not therefore let her know that you have sworn your love to me also? Ah, I now see through it all; I understand it all! You love the queen—her only. For that reason you will not go to the chapel with me; for that reason you swore that you would not marry the Duchess of Richmond; and therefore—oh, my presentiment did not deceive me—therefore that furious ride in Epping Forest to-day. Ah, the queen’s horse must of course become raving, and run away, that his lordship, the master of horse, might follow his lady, and with her got lost in the thicket of the woods!—And now,” said she, her eyes flashing with anger, and raising her hand to heaven as if taking an oath, “now I say to you: Take heed to yourself! Take heed to yourself, Seymour, that you do not, even by a single word or a single syllable, betray your secret, for that word would crush you! Yes, I feel it, that I am no bastard, that I am my father’s own daughter; I feel it in this wrath and this jealousy that rages within me! Take heed to yourself, Seymour, for I will go hence and accuse you to the king, and the traitor’s head will fall upon the scaffold!”
She was beside herself. With clenched fists and a threatening air she paced the room up and down. Tears gushed from her eyes; but she shook them out of her eyelashes, so that they fell scattering about her like pearls. Her father’s impetuous and untractable nature stirred within her, and his blood seethed in her veins.
But Thomas Seymour had already regained his self-command and composure. He approached the princess and despite her struggles clasped her in his arms.
“Little fool!” said he, between his kisses. “Sweet, dear fool, how beautiful you are in your anger, and how I love you for it! Jealousy is becoming to love; and I do not complain, though you are unjust and cruel toward me. The queen has much too cold and proud a heart ever to be loved by any man. Ah, only to think this is already treason to her virtue and modesty; and surely she has not deserved this from us two, that we should disdain and insult her. She is the first that has always been just to you; and to me she has ever been only a gracious mistress!”
“It is true,” murmured Elizabeth, completely ashamed; “she is a true friend and mother; and I have her to thank for my present position at this court.”
Then, after a pause, she said, smiling, and extending her hand to the earl: “You are right. It would be a crime to suspect her; and I am a fool. Forgive me, Seymour, forgive my absurd and childish anger; and I promise you in return to betray our secret to no one, not even to the queen.”
“Do you swear that to me?”
“I swear it to you! and I swear to you more than that: I will never again be jealous of her.”
“Then you do but simple justice to yourself and to the queen also,” said the earl, with a smile, as he drew her again to his arms.
But she pushed him gently back. “I must now away. The morning dawns, and the archbishop awaits me in the royal chapel.”
“And what will you say to him, beloved?”
“I will make my confession to him.”
“How! so you will then betray our love to him?”
“Oh,” said she, with a bewitching smile, “that is a secret between us and God; and only to Him alone can we confess it; because He alone can absolve us from it. Farewell, then, Seymour, farewell, and think of me till we see each other again! But when—say, when shall we meet again?”
“When there is a night like this one, beloved, when the moon is not in the heavens. Oh, then I could wish there were a change of the moon every week,” said she, with the charming innocence of a child. “Farewell, Seymour, farewell; we must part.”
She clung to his tall, sturdy form as the ivy twines around the trunk of an oak. Then they parted. The princess slipped again softly and unseen into her apartments, and thence into the royal chapel; the earl descended again the spiral staircase which led to the secret door of the garden.
Unobserved and unseen he returned to his palace; even his valet, who slept in the anteroom, did not see him, as the earl crept past him lightly on his toes, and betook himself to his sleeping-room.
But no sleep came to his eyes that night, and his soul was restless and full of fierce torment. He was angry with himself, and accused himself of treachery and perfidy; and then again, full of proud haughtiness, he still tried to excuse himself and to silence his conscience, which was sitting in judgment on him.
“I love her—her only!” said he to himself. “Catharine possesses my heart, my soul; I am ready to devote my whole life to her. Yes, I love her! I have this day so sworn to her; and she is mine for all eternity!”
“And Elizabeth?” asked his conscience. “Have you not sworn truth and love to her also?”
“No!” said he. “I have only received her oath; I have not given her mine in return. And when I vowed never to marry the Duchess of Richmond; when I swore this ‘by my love,’ then I thought only of Catharine—of that proud, beautiful, charming woman, at once maidenly and voluptuous; but not of this young, inexperienced, wild child—of this unattractive little princess!”
“But the princess may one day become a queen,” whispered his ambition.
“That, however, is very doubtful,” replied he to himself. “But it is certain that Catharine will one day be the regent, and if I am at that time her husband, then I am Regent of England.”
This was the secret of his duplicity and his double treachery. Thomas Seymour loved nothing but himself, nothing but his ambition. He was capable of risking his life for a woman; but for renown and greatness he would have gladly sacrificed this woman.
For him there was only one aim, one struggle: to be come great and powerful above all the nobles of the kingdom—to be the first man in England. And to reach this aim, he would be afraid of no means; he would shrink from no treachery and no sin.
Like the disciples of Loyola, he said, in justification of himself, “the end sanctifies the means.”
And thus for him every means was right which conducted him to the end; that is to say, to greatness and glory.
He was firmly convinced that he loved the queen ardently; and in his nobler hours he did really love her. Depending on the moment, a son of the hour, in him feeling and will varied with the rapidity of lightning, and he ever was wholly and completely that with which the moment inflamed him.
When, therefore, he stood before the queen, he did not lie when he swore that he loved her passionately. He really loved her, with double warmth, since she had to his mind in some sort identified herself with his ambition. He adored her, because she was the means that might conduct him to his end; because she might some day hold in her hands the sceptre of England. And on the day when this came to pass, he wished to be her lover and her lord. She had accepted him as her lord, and he was entirely certain of his future sway.
Consequently he loved the queen, but his proud and ambitious heart could never be so completely animated by one love as that there should not be room in it for a second, provided this second love presented him a favorable chance for the attainment of the aim of his life.
Princess Elizabeth had this chance. And if the queen would certainly become one day Regent of England, yet Elizabeth might some day perchance become queen thereof. Of course, it was as yet only a perhaps, but one might manage out of this perhaps to make a reality. Besides, this young, passionate child loved him, and Thomas Seymour was himself too young and too easily excitable to be able to despise a love that presented him with such enticing promises and bright dreams of the future.
“It does not become a man to live for love alone,” said he to himself as he now thought over the events of the night. “He must struggle for the highest and wish to reach the greatest, and no means of attaining this end ought he to leave unemployed. Besides, my heart is large enough to satisfy a twofold love. I love them both—both of these fair women who fetch me a crown. Let fate decide to which of the two I shall one day belong!”