“Why not, my Lord? Oh, why this strict and stern refusal? Oh, deign to tell me what makes you thus cruelly dismiss me?”
“It were to commit evil against thy cousin’s soul, and to defeat the ends of public justice; I can tell by thy lofty eyes thou wilt carry him the means of death.”
Katharine rose from her low posture with a look of reproof to the suspicious usurper at once dignified and solemn.
“Francis Heywood, my Lord, is of a nobler spirit than to tarnish his brave life by an end so mean, and hath too holy a trust in his Redeemer’s mercy to shrink from his appointed trial. But were he other, and I found him so, and with a poison cup at his lips, this friendly hand should dash it from them.”
“You speak of what you know not: the most valiant heart that ever beat might yet shrink from the shame and dishonours of the scaffold.”
“Shame and dishonours! Where are they? ’Tis not the place or manner of a death can make them; besides, the scaffold hath now become a dying place of kings, and meaner men may hold themselves ennobled by suffering like end. I promise by all my love towards my gallant cousin, by all my truth, and all my hopes of heaven, to hold no word of conference with him on any matters save our private love as cousins, and our common faith as Christians.”
Just at this moment a door leading to the wing which Cromwell inhabited slowly opened, and a lady, with a gracious but most pensive face entered a little way and gently called him. He turned: the gloominess which had gathered over his brow at Katharine’s last speech was dissipated at the sound of her soft voice: he went to her, but before Katharine could address an appeal to her she had left the chamber; and Cromwell, returning to the table, took a pen, and wrote on the back of her petition an order for her admission to the Tower, and to the prison of Francis Heywood; then, with a grave and not an unkind look, he put it into her hand.
She glanced at the writing:—“Add another word, my good Lord,—the body:—Oh, grant me that! When the bloody axe hath done its work, let the body be my care:—we grew together in our youth,—I would not have his precious remains buried by executioners.” Cromwell took back the paper, and, without uttering a word, wrote the permission.