men who were hanged by the neck, and then revived that they might feel the knife that ripped their bodies, that they might feel the agony of their burning entrails.
Blessed blackness closed in on him, and the stroke of the axe which severed his head was like a gentle caress.
Jane Rochford was back in the Tower. She had been calm enough when they took her there, but now her eyes were wild, her hair hung loose about her face; she did not know why she was there; she talked to those who were not there.
“George! You here, George!” She went into shrieks of crazy laughter. “So we meet here, George. It is so just that we should...so just.”
She paused as though listening to the conversation of another; then she went into wild laughter that was followed by deep sobbing. Lady Rochford had gone mad.
She looked from her window and saw the Thames.
She said, “Why should you come in your pomp and I be here a prisoner? You have everything; I have nothing. The King loves you. George loves you. Oh, George, do not stand there in the shadows. Where is your head, George? Oh, yes, I remember. They took it off.”
There was none who dared stay with her. It was uncanny to hear her talking to those who were not there. It was eerie to watch her eyes as she looked into space.
“Is it the ghost of George Boleyn she talks to?” it was whispered. “Is he really there and we see him not? Is he haunting her because she sent him to his death?”
Her shrieks terrified all those who heard them, but after a while a calmness settled on her, though the madness was still in her eyes.
She said quietly, “He has come to mock me now. He says that all my wickedness has but led me to the block. He puts his hands to his head and lifts it off to show me that he is not really George but George’s ghost. He says the axe that killed him was wielded by me and it was called vindictiveness. And he says that the axe that will kill me will be wielded by me also and it is called folly. He says I am twice a murderess because I killed him and now I kill myself.”
She flung herself against the window seat, her hands held up in supplication to an empty space.
Her attendants watched her fearfully; they were frightened by the uncanny ways of the mad.
Out of Sion House and down the river to the Tower passed the Queen’s barge. She was composed now and looked very beautiful in her gown of black velvet. She thanked God that darkness had fallen and that she might not see the decomposing, fly-pestered heads of the men who had loved her. The suspense was over. Thomas was dead; Francis was dead; there but remained that Catherine should die. She thought with deep compassion of her poor old grandmother who was suffering imprisonment in the Tower. She thought of Manox and Damport and Lord William, who, with members of her family and her grandmother’s household, had come under suspicion through her. She had heard that Mary Lassells had been commended for her honesty in bringing the case against the Queen to light; she had heard that the King, whose grief and rage had been great, was now recovering, and that he was allowing himself to be amused with entertainments devised by the most beautiful ladies of the court.
Catherine felt calm now, resenting none except perhaps her uncle Norfolk, who now, to save himself, was boasting that it was due to him that the old Dowager Duchess had been brought to her present state. For him, Catherine could feel little but contempt; she remembered her grandmother’s telling her how cruel he had been to Anne Boleyn.
Lady Rochford was with Catherine; her madness had left her for a while though it would keep returning, and it was never known when she would think she saw visions. But there was some comfort for Catherine in having Jane Rochford with her, for she had been a witness of, and participator in, Anne’s tragedy. She would talk of that sad time which was but six years ago, and Catherine gained courage in hearing how Anne had nobly conducted herself even to the block.
Sir John Gage, who had taken the place of Sir William Kingston as Constable of the Tower, came to her on the second day in the fortress.
“I come to ask that you prepare yourself for death,” he told her solemnly.
She tried to be brave but she could not. She was not quite twenty years old, so young, so beautiful and in love with life; she was overtaken with hysteria, and wept continually and with such violence as was verging on madness.
In the streets people were murmuring against the King.
“What means this? Another Queen—and this time little more than a child to go to the block!”
“It is whispered that she has never done aught against even her enemies.”
“Is it not strange that a man should be so cursed in his wives?”
Gage returned to her and told her she would die the next day.
She said: “I am ready!” And she asked that they should bring the block to her that she might practice laying her head upon it.
“My cousin died most bravely I hear. I would follow her example. But she was a great lady and I fear I am not, nor ever were. What she could do naturally, I must practice.”
It was a strange request but he could not deny it, and the block was brought to her room, where she had them place it in the center thereof, and graciously she walked to it, looking so young and innocent that it was as though she played some child’s game of executions. She laid her head upon it, and kept it there a long time so that the wood was wet with her tears.
She said she was tired and would sleep awhile, and she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep almost as soon as she lay down. In sleep, her auburn hair fell into disorder, her brow was smooth and untroubled; her mouth smiling.
She dreamed she saw her cousin Anne who caressed her as she had done when she was a baby, and bid her be of good cheer for the death was easy. A sharp subtle pain and then peace. But Catherine could not be reassured, for it seemed to her that though she was innocent of adultery, she was in some measure to blame because of what had happened before her marriage. But her cousin continued to soothe her, saying: “Nay, I was more guilty than
