It was a bitter Sunday in January, 1484. A little dry snow fell from
time to time, and, so surely as its chill dust whitened the stones
about St. Paul’s Church, a wind, like an officious tipstaff, would
come and drive it away right and left, sweeping the pavement for bare
footsteps that were to follow.
It was all sad and grey and wintry. The over-gabled houses seemed to
totter with cold; the signboards cried with it; only the church
itself, half-shrouded in mist, loomed like some mighty mountain-crag,
soaring into one solitary pinnacle, spectral, stupendous, in its
midst. The Sabbath folk in the streets below, released from Mass,
wrung their frosty fingers as they lingered in dull excitement,
waiting for the show that was to follow. They gathered in a swarm
about the great west door; but mostly they flocked towards the north
side, where in an open place stood the cross of St. Paul’s,
surmounting the leaden roof of a little timber pavilion. This bothy,
or pulpit, was like a dovecot in shape, hexagonal, and with a window
in each of its six sides. That facing west was furnished with a
lectern for the preacher; and the whole building was reared on a
triple platform of stone, hexagonal like the other, and forming steps
to it.
Whether from the weather, or the day, or the occasion, the crowd was a
curiously quiet one. The weight of the new King’s authority, no doubt,
rested upon it heavily. A general air of numbness and stupefaction
appeared to prevail. Events of late had come, matured, and yielded to
others so rapidly. Edward’s death in April; the disappearance of the
young princes, his sons, in June; the new coronation in July;
Buckingham’s short abortive conspiracy and execution in October;
finally, in this very first month of the new year, the passing of the
_Titulus Regius_, or Act which bastardised the late King’s issue and
confirmed the crown to his usurper--such was the astonishing tale.
Nothing was evident for the moment but that this crooked fellow could
see clearly and strike quickly; that he was bold, unscrupulous, and
strong. He was not unpopular for that, or for certain manly attributes
which the crowd admire. The difficulty was, as in all sudden _coups
d’état_, to adapt oneself politicly to the fresh conditions, while
awaiting security from retaliation by the old. The twisted King was
not so firm in his seat as a Pope of Rome. There was a certain risk in
subscribing even to his pleasantries, among which the present show
might be counted.
No one had properly believed in the worser guilt of poor Mistress
Shore, the late Prince’s naughty, good-hearted mistress. The
indictment which charged her with complicity in the asserted attempt
of Lord Hastings, her second protector, to destroy the present King’s
life by witchcraft, had succeeded in proving nothing but her lovable
qualities of mind and heart; whereby the Court was obliged to fall
back upon her frailty, which was notorious and undeniable. It made no
point, indeed, of the real tragedy of her sinning, which lay in her
desertion of a young husband--a good, honest, uncorrupt fellow, a
prosperous goldsmith of Lombard Street--whose happiness she had done
her best to wreck, and whose name she had not had the grace to
exchange for another. It was really only concerned, at bottom, with
proving what an obnoxious libertine had been the fourth Edward, and
how sweetly the crooked one shone by contrast. And so, to make all
this clear, it washed, Pilate-like, its hands of the beautiful
frailty, and handed her over to the Churchmen for chastisement. They
were prompt to deliver it, and not altogether inhumanly. The concubine
was sentenced to make public confession of her fault, in the
prescriptive deshabille of sheet and candle, and thereafter depart in
peace and mend her ways. The penalty, in fact, was in process at the
moment.
There was not much gossip. The crowd, penned within the multitude of
low buildings which surrounded the old Cathedral, showed more
curiosity, even sympathy, than hostility towards the delinquent. Its
constituents were much the same as when it had listened six months
before to Dr. Shaw’s famous sermon at the Cross, and that truckling
divine had first broached the question of the last two Edwards’
illegitimacy. It had acquiesced then, in the insensibility following
exhaustion; it had not yet recovered from that condition. This present
matter, or the sin which had procured it, was not of a nature wont to
excite much comment or reproof; but the undoubted popularity of the
usurper was confusing all issues. It supposed he had a reason for
humiliating pretty Mrs. Shore, who had been as notable for her
kindness as her beauty; and so it accepted his ruling as part of the
perplexity of things, which some day must be going to lighten.
She came out in a minute, a half-dozen of acolytes preceding, a group
of priests following her. As she appeared on the steps, a waft of wind
took the hem of the white sheet, which was her sole drapery, and blew
it aside from her knees. Her face, which had been deadly pale, flushed
to an instant pink, which never thereafter deserted it. She clapped
down her hand in a haste which extinguished the taper she held;
whereat a cold voice halted the procession, and she must stand in her
shame while the light was being rekindled. And as they came on again
she hung her head and her lip trembled.
“Her stature,” says an eye-witness, “was meane [signifying short]; her
haire of a dark yellow; her face round and full; her eye grey,
delicate harmony between each part’s proportion, and each proportion’s
colour; her body white and smooth ... she went in countenance and pase
demure, so womanlie, that albeit she were out of all araie save her
kirtle onlie, yet went she so faire and lovelie, namelie, while the
woondering of the people cast a comelier rud in her cheeks (of which
she before had most misse), that hir great shame was hir much praise
among those that were more amorous of hir bodie than curious of hir
soule. And manie good folks that hated hir living (and glad were to
see sin corrected), yet pitied they more hir penance than rejoised
therein, when they considered that the King procured it more of a
corrupt intent, than anie virtuous affection.”
“Proper she was and fair; nothing in her body that you would have
changed, but if you would, have wished her somewhat higher”--no
romancer can better that description, and so it shall stand.
She came down the steps so shamed that she seemed insensible to the
weather. It was snowing again, and the flakes kissed her pink feet as
if in pity, and kissed her neck, and cried into her cold bosom. She
tried to shake her long, loose hair before her face.
Round by the north side they turned; and so to the pulpit, where she
knelt; and all the way the people were silent. And the Bishop mounted
into the tribune, and, sheltered in his snuggery, delivered a long
harangue on the iniquity of loose living. And at the end he demanded
of her if she confessed and repented; whereat she answered, in a voice
all little and shrunken: “I do own my fault, and ask pardon for it.”
At which he raised his tone and bade her depart where she would, and
mend her ways and live cleanly; only first he pronounced the King’s
mandate, that no man should relieve or succour her on pain of death,
which set many marvelling over the reason which could deliver with one
hand and deprive with the other.
Now, Jane Shore rose like one dazed, and the lighted taper fell from
her hand, and she looked hither and thither, as if seeking where she
could escape in her misery and confusion. And all of a sudden the cold
seemed to smite her, and she gathered the sheet about her tender limbs
and gave a single cry like a lamb. And in its very utterance she had a
desperate inspiration, which was to follow a tall man who all this
time had stood close by among the crowd. Something--the shadow of a
gesture, the look in his eyes, close under which his hand had gathered
his cloak--had seemed to invite her, and when he moved, without
appearing to pursue him she followed--on the road to clean living. But
was she the first or the only woman helplessly abandoned to the
paradoxes of life?
The crowd made way for her, and no man durst follow. Soon she was upon
the outskirts of the throng, soon quit of it altogether. Some
whispered ribaldries, some rude touches she had to endure, and that
was all. She believed that the lure would not have let her lose sight
of him; and sure enough there he was going on in front, a noble by
token of his jewelled bonnet, with the long pendant gathered from it
about his neck, and the rich scarlet hose which showed under his
cloak. She thought well, desperate as she was, not to compromise him,
and she followed at a distance. He went round by the deserted east end
of the church, through the place that was called Old Change, and so,
turning sharp down towards the river, made a sudden twist among the
confusion of buildings there, and wheeled into a narrow way known as
Sermon Lane, where he loitered just sufficiently to enable her to see
him disappear into a certain house. Clutching her sheet about her, and
watchful of suspicious eyes, she stole on, hesitated a moment, and
hurried in his footsteps. She may have been observed or not; in any
case she was a contagion whom all avoided. The door closed behind her
as she entered and sank against the wall.
“Rise, madam,” he whispered. He was close beside her. His voice was
quick and strange.
She burst into tears at once, passionate, heart-rending, exhausting.
He let her weep herself out, while she crouched against the wall.
Presently, the storm subsiding, she looked half up.
“Will you not give me your cloak?” she said. “I am cold.”
“For no other reason?” he asked.
She slunk down again.
“No,” she said. “That were a poor pretence, and meet for your mockery.
I must barter a private place with you against raiment. Even a whore
must go covered.”
He stooped and took her, unresisting, in his arms, though she held her
face averted. He carried her impassive up the stairs of that dark,
unknown house, and all the way there was passion in his hold and grief
in his labouring sighs. She knew that they had entered a warm room,
that he had shut the door, had placed her gently on a couch by the
fire.
“Jane!” he said.
She uttered a quick, wild cry, and started erect, so that the sheet
fell from her shoulders.
“Cover them, in mercy to me,” he said.
She stared at him a moment, then went into a sudden hysteric laugh. It
stabbed him to the heart to hear her, for her voice had ever been
merry and sweet.
“O!” she cried, “that a woman should be so used by her own husband!”
“Nay,” said he--“but that I might know you still not dead to shame.”
The ripple of her laugh stopped as it had begun.
“Why are you so richly dight, Harry?” she said.
“A lure,” he answered, “to lead thee hither. Who would win a King’s
mistress must borrow peacock’s plumes.”
She shivered a little, looking down, then whispered hoarse:
“Well, I am well answered. Yet you look like a noble. O, Harry, speak
like one!”
“God forbid it, Jane! I will speak like Harry Shore.”
“He loved me once.”
“Aye; he is risking death to prove it.”
She looked up quickly; but before she could speak the door opened, and
a little boy peeped into the room. He was caught away in a moment by
an unseen hand, and the door closed; but in that instant the woman had
snatched her drapery about her nakedness, shamed as she had never been
yet.
“A wretch!” she said, her face on fire.
“Saw’st thou his blue eyes and pretty curls?” said the goldsmith. “He
is son to my master-setter, whose house this is. I had dreamed once of
such a babe, mine own and thine.”
She rose and crept to him, looking in his face. It was a bronzed and
honest one, though drawn with pain.
“Harry,” she whispered, “find me clothes and bid me begone--in memory
of our once kisses, Harry.”
“They are here,” he said. “Everything is prepared for thee--the means
to lead a blameless life henceforth. Summon the woman when I’m gone. I
would not have them say I left my wife to starve.”
He put out his arms, passion in his eyes, but withdrew them
resolutely.
“Nay,” he said; “in heaven--not yet.”
He fell back a little, and cried out suddenly:
“Your foot, Jane! Poor foot; it bleeds!”
He motioned her to the couch, knelt, lifted the wounded limb, and with
his napkin staunched the trickling blood. He held it to his breast,
and at last, with a long, yearning sigh, put his lips to it.
“This hath atoned,” he said--“so far I shame myself,” and he rose.
“Little sinful wife,” he whispered, “he loved thee once; he loves thee
ever; else could he leave thee thus? Now, let me never hear thy name
again--for love’s sake do I ask it.”
She had buried her face in the cushions. And there she lay, long after
he had gone, weeping out her soul.