A few hours later, her three maids of honor, Lady Rochford, Mistress Gaynsford, and Betty, sat around the fire in the anteroom of the queen’s chamber, anxiously awaiting tidings of her condition. Within, an old and skilled nurse and Mrs. Wyatt labored to still Anne’s hysterics. For she had wept and laughed at intervals ever since she regained consciousness. They feared to call the court physician, lest the escapade should reach the ears of the king, and it was long before the royal patient sank into repose. Her cries and weird laughter had been hushed for half an hour, when the door opened silently, and Mary Wyatt came out with a look of horror on her face. So strange was her expression that it hushed the anxious inquiries upon the lips of the others. She came to the fire, and falling on her knees, gazed into it while she told her story in a strange voice, and the superstition of the age held her listeners in a spell of terror.
“She has told me all,” she said; “that evil man—that prince of devils—cast her horoscope, and told her that her end would be as much in shame and misery as her present state was lofty. This, pretending that he knew not the queen, the lying jackal! Then he caused her to look into that mirror—you saw it opposite the door—he told her that it was enchanted and would show her her life. He chanted an incantation while the poor lady looked and saw, she says, every event of her life; and some, she swears, were known to none. She saw her childhood at Hever; her journey to France with Queen Mary; her sojourn there at court, with Mary and with Queen Claude. She saw her life in Catherine’s court, the love of the gallant Percy, Wolsey’s interference; the visits of the king’s grace to Hever—she saith it was the king’s very face and walk before he had the swelling in his legs. Then she beheld the glorious pageant of her coronation; saw herself, young and lovely, kneeling to Cranmer for Saint Edward’s crown. After this a black veil hung over the mirror; the wizard knelt and mumbled, making passes, when of a sudden the veil lifted, and she saw—oh, heaven! why took I the queen to such a devil?” For a moment Mary Wyatt was choked by sobs, and then she whispered the rest, so low that the others knelt about her to hear, all their faces stricken with awe of the supernatural.
“She saw,” continued the sorrowful woman,—“she saw the Tower green, and by the block were my lord privy seal, the Duke of Norfolk, his grace of Richmond, the king’s son. From the Tower came Sir William Kingston leading—the queen herself. ’Twas her face, her form, her gait, her image, clad in black with a white cape upon her shoulders, and behind her came I and three others weeping. She saw herself speak, kneel down, and as the axe fell, she shrieked in mortal agony; and in a moment the mirror was blank, and no one with her but the conjurer.”
CHAPTER XVI
MY LADY CRABTREE TO THE RESCUE
In the gallery adjoining the apartments of the queen, Simon Raby waited for tidings of her condition, and also for a glimpse of Mistress Betty. Francis Bryan had been called away to attend upon the king. Henry had returned to Greenwich, but made no inquiry for his consort, for of late they had met only in public.
Raby walked alone in the lofty gallery, pacing to and fro, with his arms folded on his breast and his head bent in thought. He came of a brave race, and showed it in his gallant bearing and the fine expression of his face. Trained from boyhood for a soldier, as every English boy was in those days, he had seen service both in France and Ireland, and was esteemed a courageous and keen-witted officer, if somewhat reckless. Reared in a worldly school, he had led a gay and careless life; but there were too fine elements of manhood in him to be choked by the evil that in many natures, under such influences, shoots up more rapidly than the good. None of his family were living except his father, and death was soon to sever that last tie. Among all the beauties of the court who had won his fancy and even touched his heart, none had ever seemed so charming as the penniless orphan whom fate had made an attendant upon Queen Anne. His admiration kindled by the beauty of Betty’s face had swiftly grown into the proportions of a far deeper passion than he had ever known, and his generous nature, too, was touched by the peculiar hardships of her situation. For forgetting her lack of dower he deserved no great credit, since a man like Barton Henge could also be completely dazzled by the young girl’s personal loveliness.
As Raby walked there in the gallery, he gave no thought to his appointment with Henge; a duel was a matter of too common occurrence in his adventurous life to be of any particular moment. He was an expert swordsman, and his contempt for his adversary’s character was so great that he underrated his skill and regarded him as no very dangerous foe.
After the queen’s return, her shrieks were audible even in the place where Raby walked; but they were hushed at last, and in the stillness he heard the great clock of the palace striking twelve. He went to a casement, and throwing it open, looked out upon the night. The moon was setting and a few soft clouds drifted above it; below, the park was full of black shadows, and in the distance the hounds of the royal pack bayed in a melancholy monotone. The strange adventures of the evening might well have stirred hardier nerves, and Raby shared the superstitions of the times. The weird black and white outlines of the scene oppressed him; it seemed to him that a calamity hung over the palace, and the queen’s wild cries still rang in his ears. He closed the casement sharply and turned just as the door opened, and Mistress Carew came in alone. A glance at her pale face told him that something unusually painful had occurred.
“How fares the queen?” he asked eagerly.
“She sleeps at last,” Betty replied; “but she has been in a grievous state, crying and laughing like a mad woman, and would take no comfort. She told her fearful vision to Mistress Wyatt, and ’tis no wonder that she is so distressed;” and with an awed face and agitated voice she went on to tell Raby of the mirror and its dark revelations.