“OH, mistress!”
A voice that had music in it sounded from the top of the high wall.
Anne had spent a dreadful night of pain and misery in one of the milder of the Castle dungeons. That is to say, it was above the ground. Also it was free of vermin, it was tolerably well lit, and was provided with a small inclosed yard open to the sky, but surrounded by a high wall garnished with spikes. Her first night of womanhood had been of a bitterness she had not thought it possible to know. There had only been a crust of bread, a jug of water and a bare pallet to assuage her tears. She had crept out of her cell in the darkness, and at last, quite exhausted, had fallen asleep under the April stars, with but a slab of icy stone to ease her hurts.
But now the dawn was come, and from far overhead a charming voice saluted her waking ears.
She looked up. A fair head crowned with morning was thrust between the close-set spikes. A young man with the bravest eyes in the world was gazing down compassionately upon her.
“Oh, mistress!”
Almost involuntarily she drew the cloak which had been given her the closer about her aches. But it was not possible to conceal her pathetic, her terrible distress.
“Oh, mistress!”
For the third time the charming voice saluted her ears, not mockingly, not unkindly, not even curiously. In it was a gentleness, a subtle power of sympathy that, do as she would, started her tears anew. She drew the cloak closer about her shoulders, as if by so doing she could conceal the fact that she had been used very grievously.
“You have been a-weeping, mistress.”
It was idle to deny a fact so plain.
Yesterday she would have met this boldness in a very different way. But that was past. In one long night of intolerable anguish her very nature had suffered a change.
“For why do you weep, mistress?”
Again was the voice like music. She could not forbear to look up into the dawn, which framed with its golden rose a fair head and a pair of brave, honest and gentle eyes.
“Is it for a grievous fault? Nay, but I am sure it is not.”
The tone was all kindness, all concern. Besides, there was some strange magic in it that had never sounded in her ears until that hour.
“Never tell me, mistress, that you are to have your head cut off on Tuesday by order of the Queen.”
The words were spoken in a manner almost whimsical. But as, startled and perhaps a little terrified, she gazed up to meet those eyes she suddenly saw that unutterable things lay behind their laughter.
The words, the look seemed almost to sicken her. And then like a strong wine a thrill of compassion ran in her veins. She rose to her feet unsteadily. Her body was so weak that she had to lean it against the wall. A thousand intolerable aches returned. She opened her lips to speak, but her voice was mute.
Looking down upon her distress, the eyes of the young man were as full of compassion as her own. The face of the girl was stained and swollen with tears; she could hardly check a groan when she moved; the cloak slipping from her shoulders revealed under the torn bodice the cruel marks of the whip.
“Oh, mistress!” The voice was tender as the missel-thrush. “What was your fault that this should have been done to you? But whatever it was, sweet mistress, you have had savage payment.”
Even as she hid her own she knew that the gentle eyes were brimming with pity.
But what were these slight aches of hers in the comparison with his own grim pass? On Tuesday he was to have his head cut off by order of the Queen. Suddenly a wild flood of anguish surged at her heart. Could such a thing be under the light of heaven? He so fair, so kind, with the fire of youth in his eyes, must the rich and glad life be torn from him in a manner so unspeakable within a space of four short days?
Again she sought to speak. This time words came; at first few and fitful, but warm from a heart all broken with pity. “They will kill you on Tuesday?” she said.
The horror that ran like ice in her veins thrilled in her voice.
“Yes, mistress. The Queen has signed the warrant. And I have done as little to deserve death as this fair April morning that I cannot bear to lose. But no matter. I have had three-and-twenty years of this golden life, so I have no ground of complaint.”
His courage spoke to her like a noble action.
“For why will they kill you?” Her heart was choking her.
“They say I was concerned with Money the Papist in the Woodgate House plot against the Queen’s life. Two subtle knaves have sworn it, but as I desire to go to heaven I am an entirely innocent man.”
She never doubted him. It was impossible to doubt such eyes, such a voice, such a noble bearing.
“I know not Money nor Woodgate House, and so far from desiring the life of the Queen I am the faithfullest if I am also the least of her Majesty’s servants.”
“Oh, it must not be!” she cried in a kind of passion.
“There is no means to prevent it,” said the young man. “The judges would not hear my book oath. But I think my peace is made with God. I am already composed for the scaffold, as I hope and believe, although it is bitterly sore to me to leave a world such as this. Yet if I complain I shall be unworthy of my twenty-three years of glorious life. But tell me, mistress, of your own case. What have you done that they should use you so cruelly? It cuts me to the soul to see you like this.”
But she could give no heed now to her own pains. Her mind was filled with horror, with a rage of pity. His bearing was so noble, so full of an instant tenderness, and in four brief days he must die by the ax in the pride and splendor of his youth.
“Oh, I cannot bear it,” she cried. “I cannot think of you as at the point of death.”
The potent wine of youth in her own veins rendered the thought intolerable. Such a rush of anguish came upon her young heart as made even the long miseries of the night seem of no account.
“No, no, it cannot be. I must speak to my father.”
“Pray, who is your father, mistress?”
“My father is Sir John Feversham, the Constable of this Castle.”
“Alas! mistress, it is he who read to me the Queen’s warrant. He of all men cannot help me, for it is he who is pledged to do the Queen’s will.”
She who yesterday had ventured to proclaim herself the equal of all men was now shaken with a storm of weeping. “I will go myself to the Queen and swear to her your innocence.”
“Alas! mistress, there is no time. Besides, she would not heed you. A subtle enemy has done his work, and I have given up all hope of life. But by God’s grace on Tuesday I am determined to die well.”
Her sorrow for this brave man was a thing to see. The proud heart was wrung with a distress that her own cruel suffering may have rendered more poignant. Yesterday, in the hour of her shallow arrogance, compassion for his fate might have irked her less. But since then she had known the dark night of the soul. Something seemed to have broken inside her heart. Henceforward in her plastic woman’s nature would be a subtle kinship with all great suffering, since she herself had known it.
“Is there naught I may do to save you?”
“There is nothing, mistress. Yet I love you for your pitiful heart, and I’ll promise you that on Tuesday I’ll walk the firmer for it. But do not consider me, I pray you. I do not think I am unhappy. I would that you were not, sweet mistress. Tell me why you have been used so cruelly?”
His voice was grave and beguiling, like one whose soul has deep places in it. In despite of the slow agony of her tears she had no choice but to heed it. There was in his tender speech a quality that melted her resolve as though it had been but a flake of snow.
“Tell me, sweet mistress, I pray you.”
How could she tell him of her frowardness? How could she tell him of the setting up of her stubborn will and of the grievous fashion of its breaking? How could she tell him that in a single night she was cured forever of the folly of holding herself other than she was?
But his gentle insistence was beyond her power to put off.
“I have been beaten,” she said with utter humility. “And all that has been done to me is no more than my merit.”
It was the elemental woman breaking from the soul that yesterday was so vainglorious. The young man looking upon her from his precarious coign felt his heart leap to her in her abasement. In the delicacy of her youth she was the fairest thing upon which ever he had set his eyes. It hurt him keener than his own fate that a beauty so rare should, whatever its faults, have been chastened so cruelly.
All that there was of chivalry in his tender soul went out to her in her desolation. In his three-and-twenty years of life he had never known love, but by God’s grace was it given that he would not have to die without tasting the rarest of all mortal experiences.
“Mistress”—his heart leaped in his throat so that he could hardly breathe—“Give me your name, sweet mistress, and I will promise as God is in His heaven that on Tuesday morning when Gervase Heriot comes to die by the ax he shall pass with your name upon his lips.”
Like wells of soft light her eyes shone up to him. “My name is Anne,” she said, with a simplicity that yesterday had not been hers.
“Mistress Anne, will you pray for me when I am passing?”
He could not hear her answer, yet he knew what it was.
“God keep you, sweet mistress! God keep you forever! I will bear your name on my lips through all the wide fields of eternity.”
These high-vaunting words were his last. No longer could he keep his precarious hold on the top of the wall. The strain on arms and knees was too much. Suddenly the eyes so full of courage and pity were lost to her.
Anne was left to reel against the wall of her prison, shaken with an anguish more terrible than any the long night had known.