Seeing he was in earnest, Xit thought fit to capitulate. A rope was thrown him which he fastened to the vane, and after bowing to the assemblage, waving his cap to the giants, and performing a few other antics, he slid down to the leads in safety. He was then seized by Nightgall, and though he promised to march as before between his guards, and make no further attempt to escape, he was carried, much to his discomfiture—for even in his worst scrapes he had an eye to effect—to the Constable Tower, and locked up in the lower chamber.
“So, it has come to this,” he cried, as the door was barred outside by Nightgall. “I am now a state prisoner in the Tower. Well, I only share the fate of all court favourites and great men—of the Dudleys, the Rochfords, the Howards, the Nevills, the Courtenays, and many others whose names do not occur to me. I ought rather to rejoice than be cast down that I am thus distinguished. But what will be the result of it? Perhaps, I shall be condemned to the block. If I am, what matter? I always understood from Mauger that decapitation was an easy death, and then what a crowd there will be to witness my execution—Xit’s execution—the execution of the famous dwarf of the Tower! The Duke of Northumberland’s will be nothing to it. With what an air I shall ascend the steps, how I shall bow to the assemblage, how I shall raise up Mauger when he bends his lame leg to ask my forgiveness, how I shall pray with the priest, address the assemblage, take off my ruff and doublet, and adjust my head on the block! One blow and all is over. One blow—sometimes, it takes two or three—but Mauger understands his business, and my neck will be easily divided. That’s one advantage, among others, of being a dwarf. But to return to my execution. It will be a glorious death, and one worthy of me. I have half a mind to con over what I shall say to the assembled multitude. Let me see. Hold! it occurs to me that I shall not be seen for the railing. I must beg Mauger to allow me to stand on the block. I make no doubt he will indulge me—if not, I will not forgive him. I have witnessed several executions, but I never yet beheld what I should call a really good death. I must try to realise my own notions. But I am getting on a little too fast. I am neither examined, nor sentenced yet. Examined! that reminds me of the rack. I hope they won’t torture me. To be beheaded is one thing—to be tortured another. I could bear anything in public, where there are so many people to look at me, and applaud me, but in private it is quite another affair. The very sight of the rack would throw me into fits. And then suppose I should be sentenced to be burnt like Edward Underhill—no, I won’t suppose that for a moment. It makes me quite hot to think of it. Fool that I was, to be seduced by the hope of rank and dignity held out to me by the French ambassador, to embark in plots which place me in such jeopardy as this! However, I will reveal nothing. I will be true to my employer.”
Communing thus with himself, Xit paced to and fro within his prison, which was a tolerably spacious apartment, semi-circular in form, and having deep recesses in the walls, which were of great thickness. As he glanced around, an idea occurred to him. “Every prisoner of consequence confined within the Tower carves his name on the walls,” he said. “I must carve mine to serve as a memorial of my imprisonment.”
The only implement left him was his dagger, and using it instead of a chisel, he carved, in a few hours, the following inscription, in characters nearly as large as himself:—
By the time he had finished his work, he was reminded by a clamorous monitor within him that he had had no supper, and he recalled with agonising distinctness the many glorious meals he had consumed with his friends the giants. He had not even the common prisoners’ fare, a loaf and a cup of water, to cheer him.