“So, you cannot pick up the lute which a noble lady has fingered, forsooth! Wait a few days, and we shall see you creeping on your knees for the honor, instead of standing there with a look as stubborn as your own iron bars. Go, bring in the case of essence bottles, if that does not prove too heavy a task, and then take yourself off, for a clumsy cur; a pretty serving-man you would make, I trow!”
The man, on whom the old woman’s eloquence was exercised, seemed very willing to obey her last command. He brought in the case which she had desired, and, placing it on the table, left the dungeon and was about to lock the door, but just as he was closing it a clear cheerful voice was heard in conversation with him. After a moment’s delay, the half-closed door was swung open again to admit a handsome boy in the king’s livery, who carried a casket under his arm.
“That was well thought of, my pretty page,” said the nurse, approaching to take the casket, “but who has found courage to break the new protector’s seal? If it was you, boy, I only hope that handsome head may be firm on your shoulders six weeks hence. I would as soon have touched a red-hot coal as the bit of wax sticking to the smallest cabinet in the palace, and I saw all my lady’s jewels counted and locked up weeks ago.”
As she spoke, the old nurse allowed the Lady Jane to escape from her embrace, while she advanced to the page, and would have taken the casket from under his arm, but he stepped aside, with a roguish toss of the head, and dropping on his knee before the young lady, placed the casket in her hand. Bewildered, and as one in a dream, she gazed first upon the casket, then, wonderingly, on the handsome boy at her feet.
“What means this?” she said at last, looking doubtfully toward the duchess, who sat gazing upon the scene with equal wonder. “Our crest is upon the lid, but underneath are the royal arms of England.”
The duchess arose, and, taking the casket from her daughter’s hand, touched a spring. The lid flew open, and, with an exclamation of surprise, the ladies saw, not their own jewels, but a magnificent suite of diamonds which had once belonged to Jane Seymour, the Queen of Henry the Eighth; a young creature who had perished in giving birth to the present king—fortunate, perhaps, in being taken from her earthly state before she had learned how terrible a thing it was to “outlive her husband’s liking.”
“What means this—whence came the jewels?” exclaimed both ladies at once, turning their eyes from the gems that flashed and glowed in the lamplight, to the boy who had risen from his knees, and, with his plumed cap, was brushing away the dust which his vestments had caught from the floor.
“They were entrusted to me by my royal master, the king,” replied the boy, who paused in his occupation and gazed upon the casket, as he spoke, fascinated by the rich hues that played and quivered about it. “I was bade to deliver them to the Lady Jane Seymour—to say that the king desired that she would mingle them with the adornments of her fair person before she placed herself under the escort of the lieutenant, who will be here anon to bring farther orders from the Lord Protector.”
Before the astonished ladies could question him farther, he had obeyed some signal given him from the door, and left the dungeon.
It was in vain the noble duchess questioned the nurse and the tyring-woman. They were too much elated to gratify the anxiety of their mistress, even if they had not been as much mystified as herself. All they could say was, that a messenger had been sent from the Duke of Northumberland with orders to convey them to the tower; that they were commanded to take from the wardrobe, in the palace, every thing necessary for the toilet of their ladies. Though scarcely half an hour was allowed them for a choice, they had filled a coffer, and, with a few things hastily collected, were hurried into a barge and so to the dungeon of their mistress, scarcely realizing how it had all been brought about.