A despot’s will is law. In preparing to obey it the masons came upon the wheel. The King, being informed of the discovery, roared like a wounded tiger.
“Burn the thing to ashes!” he thundered, and, on the very word, turned white and mumbled. “Nay,” he said, in a fallen voice, “put it where the arts of Satan may not prevail with it; hide it away in my royal chapel, and the fiend shall be baffled. And look you that none comes near me in the night again to choke me in my shroud.”
His mind was impaired; it was evident that he was approaching his end; yet through all his desperation and mental anguish the inflexible will, which had surmounted all other wills of half the world, remained true, as history knows, to its dogged traditions. Almost his last breath was given to confirm the death sentence passed on a great subject. If one bitterer pang than another rent his released spirit, it must have been that which showed him his final vengeance unaccomplished.
And, in the meanwhile, none dared approach him with the truth of his nearing dissolution. He had killed men in the past for prophesying his mortality. He had held death so cheaply, had carried it so lightly in the hollow of his hand, that he could not believe it capable of striking at his omnipotence.
But there came a time when the truth could be no longer withheld from him, and Sir Anthony Denny was the one deputed to break it. He approached his task with a very natural apprehension, the more so as his Majesty had that morning shown some increased signs of confidence in his own recovery. He greeted the physician’s return with a distorted smile.
“I shall live to plague mine enemies yet,” he said, “so I can pluck this cursed hornet from my brain. Look you, man, I see a cause. It is my mind accusing me of an over-harshness in the past. Poor Jane her nurse, that old demented fool! Well, she loved her; the debt is paid; let her go free, I say.”
The physician stood aghast. He had been half expecting this thunderbolt ever since the King’s sick fancy had raised the dust of a long-forgotten sentence.
“Your Majesty,” he whispered, “your Majesty! The beldame died in prison this very day se’nnight.”
“This day!” The King struggled into a sitting posture. His face was like nothing human. “This day se’nnight!” He battled for breath. “It was when the sound began. God’s mercy! the wheel!”
“Alas, your Majesty!” half whimpered the leech; “there be those who say they cannot hear themselves pray for its whirring. The chapel is deserted.”