XII.
Whilst they were dancing at court, and sought, in dissipation of mind, to drown remorse of heart, a few leagues distant one of the victims of Henry VIII. lay on his death-bed, rapidly approaching his end.
The night before some travellers had knocked at the gate of Leicester Abbey. It was opened, and the Archbishop of York had alighted from his mule, on which he was no longer able to sustain himself. He was carried by the good monks to a chamber, and laid in bed, where he still remained confined and nigh unto death.
All was gloom around this bed; two wax lights only burned on a table at the extremity of the room, whilst several monks were on their knees praying for the dying. Not a sound disturbed the silence around them save the slight noise made by the rosary as they turned it in their hands, and the labored respiration of the sick man.
“Monsieur Kingston,” he suddenly cried in a broken voice, “I conjure you, say to the king that I have never betrayed him, that my enemies have misrepresented me, that I have always been faithful to him!… Tell him this, I conjure you!—ah! tell him this.”
But Sir William Kingston, lieutenant
of the Tower, had left the room and returned to the lower hall among his guards, with whom he had been sent, by order of the king, to seek his prisoner at the castle of the Count of Shrewsbury, and bring him to the Tower.
Fatigued by the journey, some of them were stretched on the floor, while others slept on their arms, leaning against the wall, as if death still required them to guard their prey.
Wolsey receiving no reply, turned himself over with a groan, and saw the shadow of a man standing near his bed.
“Who is that?” he asked.