“Yet, Anne, yet you have the power! Retract what you have said, Anne! Declare that you repent, and that you perceive that you have been deluded! Say that you will recognize the king as lord of the Church; that you will swear to the six articles, and never believe in the Pope of Rome. Ah, Anne, God sees your heart and knows your thoughts. You have no need to make them known by your lips. He has given you life, and you have no right to throw it away; you must seek to keep it so long as you can. Recant, then! It is perfectly allowable to deceive those who would murder us. Recant, then, Anne, recant! When they in their haughty arrogance demand of you to say what they say, consider them as lunatics, to whom you make apparent concessions only to keep them from raving. Of what consequence is it whether you do or do not say that the king is the head of the Church? From His heavens above, God looks down and smiles at this petty earthly strife which concerns not Him, but men only. Let scholars and theologians wrangle; we women have nothing to do with it. If we only believe in God, and bear Him to our hearts, the form in which we do it is a matter of indifference. But in this case the question is not about God, but merely about external dogmas. Why should you trouble yourself with these? What have you to do with the controversies of the priests? Recant, then, poor enthusiastic child, recant!”
While Catharine, in a low tone and with fluttering breath, thus spoke, Anne Askew had slowly arisen from her couch, and now stood, like a lily, so slender and delicate, confronting the queen.
Her noble countenance expressed deep indignation. Her eyes shot lightning, and a contemptuous smile was on her lips.
“What! Can you thus advise me?” said she. “Can you wish me to deny my faith, and abjure my God, only to escape earthly pain? And your tongue does not refuse to utter this, and your heart does not shrink with shame while you do it? Look at these arms; what are they worth that I should not sacrifice them to God? See these feeble limbs! Are they so precious that I, like a disgusting niggard, should spare them? No, no, God is my highest good—not this feeble, decaying body! For God I sacrifice it. I should recant? Never! Faith is not enveloped in this or that garb; it must be naked and open. So may mine be. And if I then am chosen to be an example of pure faith, that denies not, and makes profession—well, then, envy me not this preeminence. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen.’ If I am one of the chosen, I thank God for it, and bless the erring mortals who wish to make me such by means of the torture of the rack. Ah, believe me, Catharine, I rejoice to die, for it is such a sad, desolate, and desperate thing to live. Let me die, Catharine—die, to enter into blessedness!”
“But, poor, pitiable child! this is more than death; it is the torture of earth that threatens you. Oh, bethink you, Anne, that you are only a feeble woman. Who knows whether the rack may not yet conquer your spirit, and whether you, with your mangled limbs, may not by the fury of the pain yet be brought to that point that you will recant and abjure your faith?”
“If I could do that,” cried Anne Askew, with flashing eyes, “believe me, queen, as soon as I came to my senses I would lay violent hands on myself, in order to give myself over to eternal damnation, as the punishment of my recantation! God has ordered that I shall be a sign of the true faith. Be His command fulfilled!”
“Well, then, so be it,” said Catharine resolutely. “Do not recant, but save yourself from your executioners! I, Anne, I, will save you! I cannot bear—I cannot think of it—that this dear noble form should be sacrificed to a vile delusion of man; that they will torture to the honor of God a noble likeness of the same God! Oh, come, come, I will save you! I, the queen! Give me your hand. Follow me out of this dungeon. I know a path that leads out of this place; and I will conceal you so long in my own apartments that you can continue your flight without danger.”
“No, no, queen, you shall not conceal her with you!” said John Heywood. “You have been graciously pleased to allow me to be your confidant; envy me not, then, a share in your noble work also. Not with you shall Anne Askew find refuge, but with me. Oh, come, Anne, follow your friends. It is life that calls you, that opens the doors to you, and desires to call you by a thousand names to itself! Do you not hear them, all those sweet and alluring voices; do you not see them, all those noble and smiling faces, how they greet you and beckon to you? Anne Askew, it is the noble husband that calls you! You know him not as yet, but he is waiting for you there in the world without. Anne Askew, there are your children, who are stretching their tender arms out to you. You have not yet borne them; but love holds them in her arms, and will bring them to meet you. It is the wife and the mother that the world yet demands of you, Anne. You ought not to shun the holy calling which God has given you. Come, then, and follow us—follow your queen, who has the right to order her subject. Follow the friend, who has sworn that he will watch over you and protect you as a father!”
“Father in heaven, protect me!” exclaimed Anne Askew, falling on her knees and stretching her hands upward. “Father in heaven! they would tear away Thy child, and alienate my heart from Thee! They are leading me into temptation and alluring me with their words. Protect me, my Father; make my ear deaf, that I may not hear them! Give me a sign that I am Thine; that no one has any longer power over me, save Thou alone! A sign, that Thou, Father, callest me!”
And as if God had really heard her prayer, a loud knocking was now perceived at the outer door, and a voice cried: “Anne Askew, awake! and hold yourself ready! The high chancellor and the Bishop of Winchester come to fetch you away!”