“Arise,” she said, in sweet, low tones; “arise, my girls, and do your last of duties for the mistress ye have served so well! Nay, start not up so wildly, nor blush that ye have slept while we were watching. Dear girls, the time has come—the time for which my soul so long has thirsted. Array me, then, as to a banquet, a glorious banquet of immortality! See,” she continued, scattering her long locks over her shoulders—“see, they were bright of yore as the last sunbeam of a summer day, yet I am prouder of them now, with their long streaks of untimely snow—for they now tell a tale of sorrows, borne as it becomes a queen to bear them. Braid them with all your skill, and place yon pearls around my velvet head-gear. We will go forth to die, clad as a bride; and now methinks the queen of France and Scotland owns but a single robe of fair device. Bring forth our royal train and broidered farthingale: it fits us not to die with our limbs clad in the garb of mourning, when Heaven knows that our heart is clothed in gladness!”
Tearless, while all around were drowned in lamentations, she strove to cheer them to the performance of this last sad office—not with the commonplace assurances, the miserable resources of earthly consolation, much less with aught of heartless levity, or of that unfeeling parade which has so often adorned the scaffold with a jest, and concealed the anxiety of a heart ill at ease beneath the semblance of ill-timed merriment—but by suffering them to read her inmost soul; by showing them the true position of her existence; by pointing out to them the actual hardships of the body, and the yet deeper humiliations of the soul, from which the door of her escape was even now unclosing.
Scarcely had she completed her attire, and tasted of the consecrated wafer—long ago procured from the holy Pius, and preserved for this extremity—when the tread of many feet without, and a slight clash of weapons at the door of the ante-chamber, announced that the hour had arrived.
Once and again, ere she gave the signal to unclose the door, she embraced each one of her attendants. “Dear, faithful friends, adieu, adieu,” she said, “for ever; and now remember, remember the last words of Mary. Weep not for me, and, if ye love me, shake not my steadfastness, which, thanks to Him who is the Father and the Friend of the afflicted, the fear of death can not shake, by useless fear or lamentation. We would die as a martyr cheerfully, as a queen nobly! Fare ye well, and remember!” With an air of royal dignity she seated herself, and, with her maidens standing around her chair, she bore the mien of a high sovereign awaiting the arrival of some proud legation, rather than that of a captive awaiting a summons to the block. “And now,” she said, as she arranged her draperies with dignified serenity, “admit their envoy.”
The doors were instantly thrown open as she spoke, the sheriff uttered his ordinary summons, and without a shudder she rose. “Lead on,” she said; “we follow thee more joyously than thou, methinks, canst marshal us. Sir Amias Paulet, lend us thine arm; it fits us not that we proceed, even to the death, without some show of courtesy. Maidens, bear up our train; and now, sir, we are ready.”
But a heavier trial than the axe awaited the unhappy sovereign; for as she set her foot on the first step of the stairs, Melville, her faithful steward, flung himself at her feet, with almost girlish wailings. Friendly and familiarly she raised him from the ground. “Nay, sorrow not for me,” she said, “true friend. Subject for sorrow there is none, unless thou grievest that Mary is set free—that for the captive’s weeds she shall put on a robe of immortality, and, for a crown of earthly misery, the glory of beatitude.”
“Alas! alas! God grant that I may die, rather than look upon this damned deed.”
“Nay, live, good Melville, for my sake live; commend me to my son, and say to him, Mary’s last thoughts on earth were given to France and Scotland, her last but these to him: say, that she died unshaken in her faith to God, unswerving in her courage, confident in her reward. Farewell, true servant, take from the lips of Mary the last kiss that mortal e’er shall take of them, and fare thee well for ever.”
At this moment the earl of Kent stepped forward, and roughly bade her dismiss her women also, “for the present matter tasked other ministers than such as these.” For a moment she condescended to plead that they might be suffered to attend her to the last; but when she was again refused, her ancient spirit flashed out in every tone, as she cried, trumpet-like and clear, “Proud lord, beware! I too am cousin to your queen—I too am sprung from the high-blood of England’s royalty—I too am an anointed queen. I say thou shalt obey, and these shall follow their mistress to the death, or with foul violence shall they force me thither. Beware! beware, I say, how thou shalt answer doing me this dishonor!”
Her words prevailed. Without a shudder she descended, entered the fatal hall, looked with an air of smiling condescension, almost of pity, on the spectators crowded almost to suffocation, and, mounting the scaffold, stood in proud and abstracted unconcern, while, in the measured sounds of a proclamation, the warrant for her death was read beside her elbow.