The only question was, who that one was for whom the brilliant comedy of this evening was to be changed to so sad a drama.
John Heywood felt his heart oppressed with an unaccountable apprehension, and the king’s extraordinary tenderness toward the queen terrified him.
As now he smiled on Catharine, as he now stroked her cheeks, so had the king smiled on Anne Boleyn in the same hour that he ordered her arrest; so had he stroked Buckingham’s cheek on the same day that he signed his death-warrant.
The fool was alarmed at this brilliant feast, resounding music, and the mad merriment of the king. He was horrified at the laughing faces and frivolous jests, which came streaming from all those mirthful lips.
O Heaven! they laughed, and death was in the midst of them; they laughed, and the gates of the Tower were already opened to admit one of those merry guests of the king into that house which no one in those days of Henry the Eighth left again, save to go to the stake or to ascend the scaffold!
Who was the condemned? For whom were the soldiers below at the carriage waiting? John Heywood in vain racked his brain with this question.
Nowhere could he spy a trace that might lead him on the right track; nowhere a clew that might conduct him through this labyrinth of horrors.
“When you are afraid of the devil, you do well to put yourself under his immediate protection,” muttered John Heywood; and sad and despondent at heart, he crept behind the king’s throne and crouched down by it on the ground.
John Heywood had such a little, diminutive form, and the king’s throne was so large and broad, that it altogether concealed the little crouching fool.
No one had noticed that John Heywood was concealed there behind the king. Nobody saw his large, keen eyes peeping out from behind the throne and surveying and watching the whole hall.