“One of the party slipped on the root of the oak, and his glass fell on a rock at his feet. The jesting stopped for an instant, and just at that moment came the boom of a cannon from the Tower. King Henry had forbidden the hour of the execution to be told, but every one guessed that the cannon was the signal that the head of Queen Anne had been struck off by the foreign swordsman. The king turned white and then red. I was nearest him, and I saw him tremble. I followed his eye, and he looked over the shoulder of the master of the hunt far away to the eastward. There was London, and up the spire of St. Paul’s a flag was slowly rising. It looked very small from that distance, but it was another signal that the stroke of the executioner had been a true one.”
“It is an awful thing to take the life of one who has worn the crown,” murmured Clarice. “Did the king speak?”
“He half opened his lips and again closed them. Then he gave a laugh that made me shiver, and he said, ‘One would think that the royal pantry could afford no extra glass. That business is finished. Unloose the dogs, and let us follow the boar.’ Greeting, Lady Margaret,” said Ralph to a lady who just then entered the room. He bowed before her with deep respect, and said in a low, earnest tone:—
“May you find comfort and courage in every trouble that comes to you.”
Lady Margaret’s eyes filled with tears as she said:—
“I thank you. Trouble has, indeed, come to me in these last few years. Where was the king yesterday—at the hour of noon, I mean? Had he the heart to stay in London?”
“He had the heart to go on a hunt, but it was a short one, and almost as soon as the cannon was fired, he set off on the hardest gallop that ever took man over the road from Epping Forest to Wiltshire.”
“To the home of Sir John Seymour?”
“The same. Know you not that this morning before the bells rang for noon Jane Seymour had taken the place of Anne Boleyn and become the wife of King Henry?”
“No, I knew it not,” answered Lady Margaret, “but what matters a day sooner or later when a man goes from the murder of one wife to the wedding of another?”