Your love and pity doth the impression fill,
Which vulgar scandal stamp'd upon my brow;
For what care I who calls me well or ill,
So you o'erskreen my bad—my good allow?
SHAKSPEARE.
On the fourth day of her restraint, imprisonment it could hardly be called. Lady Katherine was brought up to Westminster; she was carried in a close litter, and no familiar face or accustomed attendant came near. Her anxiety, her anguish weighed intolerably upon her—sleep had not visited her eyes; she lived in perpetual terror that each sound was freighted with fatal tidings. It was in vain that even reason bade her nourish hope—a stronger power than reason dwelt in her heart, turning all its yearnings to despair.
As she approached the city, she thought each step must reveal the truth of what she was to suffer. Lo! the palace was entered—her habitual chamber—silence and solitude alone manifested that some change was even now in its effect; she had no tear? to spend upon her grief; her changing colour, her quickened respiration showed that every faculty was possessed by terror. Two hours, each minute stretched to a long, long century,—two hours passed, when a little scroll was delivered to her; it came from the queen, and contained these words, "My White Rose! the tempest has past—leaving, alas! devastation: we yet remain to each other—come——"
These expressions spoke the worst to her fear-stricken mind—no subsequent agony might ever compare to the pang that made her very life-blood pause in her failing heart at that moment. Had the present and the future become void for him, to whom she was wedded heart and soul?—wedded in youth, when our hopes stretch themselves not merely to to-day and to-morrow, but even to eternity. In this state of human woe, we do not describe the disheartening and carking sorrows of those who lag on life's highway—but the swift, poignant, intolerable agonies of the young, to whom the aspiration for happiness is a condition of being. The queen had been accustomed to witness and admire Katherine's self-command and quiet fortitude; she was awe-struck on beholding the devastation of the last four days, and the expression of wild horror on her soft features. With feminine instinct she read her heart, her first words were, "Sweet love, he lives—and he will live—his life is spared, and we may still hope."
Tears at last flowed from the mourner's eyes, as she asked, "What then will be his fate?—Shall I ever see him more?"
"How can we guess the hidden purposes of the king? By your enforced solitude you have escaped his scowling brow, his violence, his sarcasms; again he smiles. My gentle Kate, my sweet, courageous sufferer, hitherto we have played with the lion's fangs—they are unsheathed in anger now—let us prepare: he will be here anon."
The princess desired not to exhibit too humiliating a spectacle of misery to her cruel foe—she checked her weeping—she endeavoured to forget the burning agony that tortured her beating heart. "Let him but live; let me but once more see him;" and the unbidden tears flowed again. The king soon broke in upon them; his look was haughty even to insolence: an expression of vulgar triumph was in his eyes, that baffled the eager scanning gaze of the hapless princess. He said, scoffingly (and was it in man's nature, or only in Henry's, to look on the sad, but lovely countenance of his victim, and to mock her woe?), "We congratulate you, lady, on the return of the gentle Perkin to our good city of Westminster—do not weep—he is in safe keeping now, very safe—it is no feathered shoe our Mercury wears this day."
"Holy Virgin!" cried Katherine, "your grace does not surely mean——"
"Fear not—he lives," continued Henry, his scorn growing more bitter as he spoke; "he lives, and shall live, till the White Rose acknowledge on what base stock she is grafted, or he twist the rope by some new sleight. Is Perkin's honoured dame satisfied?"