“I do not share your sentiments, Jane,” said the king; “but I admire them, as they show the tenderness of your disposition. For my own part, while hunting or hawking, I become so excited that I feel little for beast or bird. I have small liking for angling, I must needs confess, for that sport does not excite me, but I read by the river-side while my preceptors ply the rod and line. But, as I just now said, I will have a grand chase in Windsor Forest, which my uncle, Sir Thomas Seymour, shall conduct; and you shall come and see it, if you list, sweet cousin.”
“I pray your Majesty to hold me excused,” replied Jane. “I have more hunting than I care for at Bradgate. But I should delight in roaming through Windsor Forest, which, they tell me, is a right noble wood.”
“Have you not seen it?” cried Edward. “Nay, then, there is a great pleasure in store for you, sweet coz. Marry, there are no such groves and glades at Bradgate as you shall find there.”
“That I can readily believe,” rejoined Jane; “and the castle itself hath much interest to me.”
“I shall not visit it until after a sad ceremony hath taken place in Saint George’s Chapel,” observed Edward, with much emotion, “and the king, my lamented father—on whose soul may Jesu have mercy!—hath been placed by the side of my sainted mother in its vaults. But when this season of gloom is past, when I have been crowned at Westminster, when the lord protector and the council will let me remove my court to Windsor, then, sweet cousin, you must come to the castle. Marry, it will content you. ‘Tis far better worth seeing than this grim old Tower, which looks more like a dungeon than a palace.”
“Nay, my liege,” replied Jane, “Windsor Castle, however grand and regal it may be, can never interest me more than this stern-looking fortress. Within these walls what tragedies have been enacted! what terrible occurrences have taken place! It must be peopled by phantoms. But I will not dwell longer on this theme, and I pray you pardon the allusion. Strange to say, ever since I set foot within the Tower, I have been haunted with the notion, which I cannot shake off, that I myself shall, one day, be a prisoner in its cells, and lose my life on its green.”
“That day will not occur in my time, sweet cousin,” replied Edward. “It is not a place to inspire lively thoughts or pleasant dreams, and I must needs own that I slept ill myself last night. I dreamed of the two children of my namesake, Edward V., and their murder in the Bloody Tower. I hope you had no such dreams, Jane?”
“Indeed, my liege, I had—dreams more terrible, perchance, than your own,” she rejoined. “You will guess what I dreamed about when I tell you that, on awaking, I was rejoiced to find my head still on my shoulders. Hath your Grace any faith in omens?”
“Not much,” answered Edward. “But why do you ask, sweet coz?”
“Your Majesty shall hear,” she returned. “When I entered the Tower yesterday with the noble lord my father, and your Grace’s loving cousin my mother, we crossed the inner ward on our way to the palace, and amongst the crowd assembled on the green I noticed a singularly ill-favored personage, whose features and figure attracted my attention. The man limped in his gait, and was clad in blood-red serge, over which he wore a leathern jerkin. Black elf-locks hung on either side of his cadaverous visage, and there was something wolfish and bloodthirsty in his looks. On seeing me notice him, the man doffed his cap, and advanced towards me, but my father angrily ordered him back, and struck him with his horsewhip. The man limped off, glaring malignantly at me with his red, wolfish eyes, and my father then told me it was Mauger, the headsman, and, as it was deemed unlucky to encounter him, he had driven him away. Doth not your Majesty think that the meeting with such a man, on such a spot, was an ill-omen?”