“What was that?”
“Madam, it was the snow falling from the roof.”
“Methought it was a footstep.”
“No, madam.”
“There, heard you it not--the sound of some one running?”
“But a rat behind the wainscot. Your Grace’s ears deceive you.”
“What, for ever? Poor ears, so curst to lies and flattery!”
“Your Highness is overwrought.”
“Will some one speak the truth to me before I die? God, how my bones
ache! No step? Go look in the gallery, child.”
The girl to whom she spoke, leaving her embroidery-frame, stepped
lightly to the door, glanced this way and that, and returned. Her
young eyes shone humid between pity and awe.
“No, indeed, madam,” she said low. “The corridor is empty.”
The Queen, without answering, crossed to the window and stood staring
from it. It looked upon the privy garden of Whitehall, now one carpet
of quiet, sad-coloured snow with the river ruled across its far end
like an inky mourning border. A motionless fog brooded over the trees
and over the palace buildings trooped to right and left. There seemed
no sign of life anywhere.
Within, a glare of fire burning on a great stone-hooded hearth dashed
the wainscoting with red, and crimsoned the hands and faces of the
figures in the panels of tapestry, and touched the gold groining of
the ceiling and the fresh rushes on the floor with smears like blood.
The old eyes, gazing so fixedly across the snow, seemed streaked with
the same ruddy hue, but reflected from another and an inward fire. As
to the first, she was ever disdainfully insensible to cold, this
gaunt, strong old Tudor woman.
Two ladies-in-waiting, a mother and her daughter, had their places by
the hearth, where they embroidered together, the former seated, the
child bending over. They were the Queen’s only attendants for the
moment, since her Majesty was in that tortured frame of mind when her
own sole company was but less terrible to her than the thought of an
officious suite, veiling curiosity under devotion. Human
neighbourhood, silent, tactful, unobtrusive, was the balm her torn
soul most needed; any ostentatious sympathy would have maddened her.
She could abandon herself to herself beside this gentle pair, as if
they were no more than inarticulate animals--wistful dumb affections
on which she could lean her voluble heart, certain of their
unconscious understanding.
Now the younger lady, returning to her place, stood awe-struck a
moment, then bent and whispered to her mother: “O, madam, the Tower
gun! How shall we close her Grace’s ears to it?”
The Queen, hearing the whisper but not its import, started, and, with
a deep flurried sigh, turned round. The wild tumult of thoughts in her
mind found expression in detached and broken questions, abstractions,
self-communings.
“‘All wounds have scars but that of fantasy, all affections their
relenting but that of womankind.’ Who writ those words? Not the
mutinous boy. ’Twas Raleigh--he that saw us like Dian, the gentle wind
blowing the hair from our face. Essex never spoke such balm. He was no
courtier--the worse for him. Am I like Dian?”
The elder lady had arisen hurriedly, and stood, her daughter clinging
to her arm, to answer to the voice, which appeared to have addressed
her.
“Yes, madam,” she whispered low.
“He never flattered, I say,” went on the Queen. “He was too
honest--the devil damn honesty! What day is it?”
“Your Highness,” was the tremulous answer, “it is the twenty-fifth day
of February.”
She had known it well enough. All night within her haunted brain the
horror of this coming day had brooded--this ghastly morning when on
Tower Hill the young Earl of Essex--he was but thirty-four--was to pay
the penalty of his madness. She stood staring before her, like one
tranced.
“Never flattered,” she repeated--“a bad policy where a woman reigns.
The twenty-fifth, is it? Let us know if my Lord of Essex sends or
writes.”
“Yes, madam--O, yes, indeed!”
The girl, leaning to her mother, buried her pale face in her shoulder.
“Hush!” whispered the Queen; “was not that a step?”
“Indeed, madam, I cannot hear a sound.”
“A stubborn, relentless dog!” muttered the Queen hoarsely. “Let the
axe convince him. He will see clearer being dead--no longer dub my
mind as crooked as my body; learn that the soul’s glory waxeth with
the years, striving to slough its vesture, like a snake. A fool, that
cannot penetrate that crackling veil, and see, other than a boy, how
Truth abhors externals. Raleigh is older; Raleigh can look deeper.
Shall I not be Dian still to him?”
She faced her frightened witnesses with the enormous challenge--an
old, arid, charmless woman of sixty-eight. Her withered, clay-white
face was latticed with countless wrinkles; her nose was high and
pinched; her thin, bloodless lips parted to show a ruin of blackened
teeth--little spoiled and broken gravestones recording dead memories.
Her gullet pursed; her eyes were bloodshot; the red periwig on her
poll glowed like a dull flame over expiring ashes. Even her sloven
dress betrayed the sickness of her spirit.
“Yes, indeed, madam,” said the mother.
“You lie!” cried Elizabeth fiercely. “He is false like the rest. His
eyes betray his lips. Their love-light is the gilding on my crown.
When he looks beneath I see mine image in them, an old and loveless
woman--barren, and old, and loveless. Do you not hear my heart cry? It
turns on a dry axle. O, I would give my queenhood to weep! So utterly
alone--no child, no heir, no hope. They say that Charles of Valois
wasted and died of poison. What could he expect? Was he not a prince
and curst to flattery?”
She strode up and down once or twice in intolerable anguish.
“Truth!” she cried--“truth! And yet when it was mine at last, I turned
and struck it down.”
“Not truth, your Grace, but jealousy,” ventured the trembling lady.
“Jealousy!” exclaimed the Queen, stopping suddenly. She stared at the
speaker, her breath falling from hard to soft. “Was he jealous, think
you?”
“O! madam,” said the other, “is it not thy player, Master Shakespeare,
that calleth jealousy ‘green-eyed,’ like as with sour bile that clouds
the vision. The distempered speak distempered thoughts, and often turn
the most against their most-beloved. I count it green-eyed jealousy
with him because he saw your Highness so distorted--not to extenuate
the grievous crimes upon which his passions launched him. O, pardon
me, madam!”
The Queen stood with her eyes still fixed upon the speaker, but it was
evident that their vision took no heed of her, though her ears
regarded the import of her speech.
“Jealous!” she said, with a tremulous sigh. “Mayhap like a silly quean
I gave him cause, sporting with my troth-ring till it rolled into the
well. He was too sure and bold, forgetting who had lifted him, and who
could cast him down. But, jealous? Does not his hair curl sweetly on
his forehead, child?”
“O, madam! Your Grace!”
“And his eyes so frank and fearless. Fear! He knows it not, the rash
and headstrong fool! To think to overbear us!--teach our displeasure
a lesson! O, a venture once too often! Because he can boast a strain
of royal blood in his veins to dare to lift his head at us! to stamp,
and cry: ‘Now, madam, do you hear me?’ or ‘I would have it thus, or
thus and thus.’ Such presumption! And yet to see the pretty lord--his
lip thrust out in scorn of sycophancy--a man of men, brave, honest,
generous, and a fool.”
“Rash and foolish indeed, your Highness.”
“Those are but virtues in reverse. Had he no cause to doubt the love
that made him but to ruin?”
“I cry your Grace’s mercy.”
“What for?”
“The ruin followed on the treachery.”
“Was he a traitor?”
“O, Madam! did he not curry favour with the King of Scotland, and plot
and league to win him the succession?”
“Yes, he’s a traitor.”
“Your Grace forgive me.”
“And I’m a woman.”
“Madam!”
“At the last I yield him all my pride and self-will. He hath so much
of me, ’twere idle to reserve that little. Who is that coming?”
“’Twas but the wind in the corridor, Madam.”
“I swear I heard him.”
“No, Madam.”
“Pride! Will he not meet us so far--but to crave our clemency? He
knows the way, and, not taking it, must die. What o’clock is it? O,
God, he shall not die! Send for my lord Keeper; have horses ready.
Hush! he’s coming! Should I not know his footfall?”
She drew herself erect and away; a flush came to her withered cheek;
she was the Queen again, aloof, haughty, self-contained. The two
terrified women, shrunk together into the shadows by the hearth, saw
her eyes gaze into vacancy, heard her lips address some apparition
beyond their ken:
“What imports this visit, my Lord of Essex? Who gave you leave to
come? Our Constable of the Tower shall be roundly questioned, trust to
us. What! are you so pale at last to meet offended majesty? Will you
not speak? Will you not pray the mercy you have abused in us too long?
A viper in our bosom--O, my lord, that loved and trusted you! What can
we think or say, God help us! But we will hear what is to hear. So
pale?--the sickness of the stones hath chilled thy fiery blood. Why, I
would have come to you, you know well, if you had sent it. Why did you
not send it--prouder than thy Queen? Where is the ring? Give it me. O,
I have waited, dear my love--have waited dying for this token.
Speak--utter one word of sorrow, and I will forgive thee. Aye, kneel
so and bow thy comely head----”
A burning log on the hearth fell with a crash and a spurt of flame; a
shrill agonised cry broke from the lips of the Queen; she flung her
hands before her eyes:
“O, God in heaven! The falling head! They are killing my love!”
Weeping and trembling, the two women crept from their corner. At that
instant a dull boom, coming from down the river, shook the glass of
the casement. The Queen dropped her hands.
“What was that?” she crowed. Her face was all distorted.
“Your Majesty!”
“What was that, I say? My Lord of Essex! He was here but now! Where is
he?”
“In heaven, by God’s mercy, madam. It was the Tower gun.”
The Queen sank down moaning where she stood.