The bishop of Peterborough then drew nigh, and, in a loud voice and inflated style, harassed her ears with an oration, which, whatever might have been its merits, was at that time but a barbarous and useless outrage.
“Trouble not yourself,” she broke in at length, disgusted with his intemperate eloquence, “trouble not yourself any more about this matter, for I was born in this religion, I have lived in this religion, and in this religion I am resolved to die.” Turning suddenly aside, as if determined to hear no further, she knelt apart, fervently prayed, and repeatedly kissed the sculptured image which she bore of Him who died to save. As she arose from her orisons, the earl of Kent, her constant and unrelenting persecutor, with heartless cruelty burst into loud revilings against “that popish trumpery” which she adored. “Suffer me now,” she said, gazing on him with an expression of beautiful resignation, that might have disarmed the malice of a fiend, “suffer me now to depart in peace. I have come hither, not to dispute on points of doctrine, but to die.”
Without another word she began to disrobe herself; but once, as her maidens hung weeping about her person, she laid her finger on her lips, and repeated emphatically the word “Remember.” And once again, as the executioner would have lent his aid to remove her upper garments, “Good friend,” she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness, “we will dispense with thine assistance. The queen of Scotland is not wont to be disrobed before so many eyes, nor yet by varlets such as thou.”
All now was ready. The lovely neck was bared. The wretch who was to perform the deed of blood stood grasping the fatal axe, and the fierce earl of Kent beat the ground with his heel in savage eagerness. Without a sigh she knelt; without a sign of trepidation, a quicker heave of her bosom, or a brighter flush on her brow, she laid down her innocent head, and without a struggle, or convulsion of her limbs, as the axe flashed, and the life-blood spouted, did her spirit pass away.
A general burst of lamentation broke the silence; but amidst that burst the heavy stride of Kent was heard, as he sprang upon the scaffold, and raised the ghastly visage, the eyes yet twinkling, and the lips quivering in the death-struggle. A single voice, that of the zealot bishop, cried aloud, “Thus perish all the foes of Queen Elizabeth.” But ere the response had passed the lips of Kent, a shriller cry rang through the hall—the sharp yell of a small greyhound, the fond companion of the queen’s captivity. Bursting from the attendants, who vainly strove to hold her back, with a short, sharp cry she dashed full at the throat of the astonished earl; but ere he could move a limb the danger, if danger there were, was passed. The spirit was too mighty for the little frame. The energies of the faithful animal were exhausted, its heart broken, in that death-spring. It struck the headless body of its mistress as it fell, and in an agony of tenderness, died licking the hand that had fed and cherished it so long. Wonderful, that when all men had deserted her, a brute should be found so constant in its pure allegiance! And yet more wonderful, that the same blow should have completed the destiny of the two rival sovereigns! and yet so it was! The same axe gave the death-blow to the body of the Scottish, and to the fame of the English queen! The same stroke completed the sorrows of Mary, and the infamy of Elizabeth.
ELIZABETH’S REMORSE.
——“Guilty! guilty!
I shall despair! There is no creature loves me:
And, if I die, no soul will pity me!
Nay, wherefore should they? since I myself
Find in myself no mercy to myself!”—King Richard III.
The twelfth hour of the night had already been announced from half the steeples of England’s metropolis, and the echoes of its last stroke lingered in mournful cadences among the vaulted aisles of Westminster. It was not then, as now, the season of festivity, the high-tides of the banquet and the ball, that witching time of night. No din of carriages or glare of torches disturbed the sober silence of the streets, illuminated only by the waning light of an uncertain moon; no music streamed upon the night-wind from the latticed casements of the great, who were contented, in the days of their lion-queen, to portion out their hours for toil or merriment, for action or repose, according to the ministration of those great lights which rule the heavens with an indifferent and impartial sway, and register their brief career of moments to the peer as to the peasant by one unvarying standard.
A solitary lamp burned dim and cheerlessly before a low-browed portal in St. Stephen’s; and a solitary warder, in the rich garb still preserved by the yeomen of the guard, walked to and fro with almost noiseless steps—his corslet and the broad head of his shouldered partisan flashing momentarily out from the shadow of the arch, as he passed and repassed beneath the light which indicated the royal residence—distinguished by no prouder decorations—of her before whose wrath the mightiest of Europe’s sovereigns shuddered. A pile of the clumsy fire-arms then in use, stacked beneath the eye of the sentinel, and the dark outlines of several bulky figures outstretched in slumber upon the pavement, seemed to prove that some occurrences of late had called for more than common vigilance in the guarding of the place.