There she stood in the court. That dreadful black pile above there, in the midst of this square crowded with men—that was the scaffold. Yonder she beheld him prostrate on his knees. She beheld the axe in the headsman’s hand; she saw him raise it for the fatal stroke.
She was a woman no longer, but a lioness! Not a drop of blood was in her cheeks. Her nostrils were expanded and her eyes darted lightning.
She drew out a dagger that she had concealed in her bosom, and made a path through the amazed, frightened, yielding crowd.
With one spring she had rushed up the steps of the scaffold. She now stood by him on the top of it—close by that kneeling figure.
There was a flash through the air. She heard a peculiar whiz—then a hollow blow. A red vapor-like streak of blood spurted up, and covered Jane Douglas with its crimson flood.
“I come, Henry, I come!” cried she, with a wild shout. “I shall be with thee in death!” And again there was a flash through the air. It was the dagger that Jane Douglas plunged into her heart.
She had struck well. No sound—no groan burst from her lips. With a proud smile she sank by her lover’s headless corpse, and with a last dying effort she said to the horrified headsman: “Let me share his grave! Henry Howard, in life and in death I am with thee!”
CHAPTER XXXIII. NEW INTRIGUES.
Henry Howard was dead; and now one would have thought the king might be satisfied and quiet, and that sleep would no longer flee from his eyelids, since Henry Howard, his great rival, had closed his eyes forever; since Henry Howard was no longer there, to steal away his crown, to fill the world with the glory of his deeds, to dim the genius of the king by his own fame as a poet.