That night the little Prince was born; and thereafter the wreck from which he had been delivered settled down, and on the twelfth day it sank into the fathomless deeps.
The King was sorry for a while; but he had his heir to reward him for the sacrifice he had made. Mary Tudor, a girl of twenty, and already as sour as crabs, was the little dead queen’s chief mourner. The trumpets brayed her obsequies, the laureate sang them in execrable verse, the baby—a pinched atom—screamed them. Only the old nurse sat dumb and dry-eyed, taking no notice of anything.
She would have nothing to do with the Prince, craved or claimed no part in his rearing. But presently she took her spinning-wheel to the little dark room by the chapel which had been allotted her; and there she would sit all day drawing flax from the distaff.
One noon, the door being open, the King in passing saw her thus occupied, and went in. She neither moved nor acknowledged his presence, but went on with her spinning. His eyes began to redden in the way all knew.
“What spinnest thou?” he demanded.
“Flax,” she answered, grim and quiet, without stopping in her work.
“For what?” he roared.
“Thy shroud,” she said, “and that of all thy house.”
Those with him thought the roof would have fallen. He raised his own blazing eyes to it, as if in momentary doubt of his omnipotence. But when he spoke at last it was noted with amazement that his words were temperate.
“That shall we see, old dotard,” he said. “Dispart her wheel and her.”