CHAPTER XXVI
Lady Jane's Execution
The fatal day of the execution dawned at last, and I would that I could draw a veil over its direful happenings. But my lady's charge is upon me to tell everything exactly as I saw it occur, and so I cannot pick and choose.
It was February 12, a dull, cold morning, and within the Tower people went about with dismal faces, as well they might, for most were sorry for my poor young mistress.
She had passed a great part of the night—her last night—in prayer, and it was only at my earnest entreaty that she at length lay down for an hour or two before morning broke. Then she slept as sweetly as a little child, and Mistress Ellen and I stole on tiptoe to the bedside to look at her, as those look who will not see the loved face any more.
I could fancy once that her lips moved in her sleep, pronouncing the name of Dudley, and doubtless even her sleeping thoughts were with her young husband, who was also that day to suffer the same extreme penalty of the law, but not at the same place. He was to die upon Tower Hill, where the authorities dared not execute his poor young wife, lest the sight should appeal to the hearts of the people, causing them to rise in a mass to prevent the double execution. She therefore was to die upon the scaffold erected before St. Peter's Chapel on the Green, within the Tower.
When the time came for her to rise we shrank from awaking her to such a fate, but at length were obliged to do so; and though for a moment a look of terror crossed her face, it quickly changed to one of the sweetest resignation. She thanked us gently for not allowing her to sleep too long, and, except that she was pale, her manner appeared to be much as usual.
At her request we dressed her in black velvet, with a drooping collar of white lace falling low from her slender neck.
'There is not much of it to sever,' she said pathetically, encircling it for a moment with her right hand, but desisting and throwing her arms round me as she saw my look. 'It will be over so soon,' she said. 'One moment, and then the gates of heaven will open wide, and for my Saviour's sake I, sinful I, washed in His blood, clothed in His righteousness, will be permitted to enter in.'
That was her belief. And the comfort and the glory of it spread a veil over and shed a halo round all that was coarse and revolting in the manner of her death.
It had been arranged that Sir Thomas Brydges, the lieutenant of the Tower, in whose house we were, was to escort her to the scaffold, but first he had the melancholy task of conducting her husband, Lord Guildford Dudley, out of the Tower to the more public scaffold on Tower Hill, where a vast concourse of people were assembled.