She tried to be brave but she could not. She was not quite twenty years old, so young, so beautiful and in love with life; she was overtaken with hysteria, and wept continually and with such violence as was verging on madness.

In the streets people were murmuring against the King.

“What means this? Another Queen—and this time little more than a child to go to the block!”

“It is whispered that she has never done aught against even her enemies.”

“Is it not strange that a man should be so cursed in his wives?”

Gage returned to her and told her she would die the next day.

She said: “I am ready!” And she asked that they should bring the block to her that she might practice laying her head upon it.

“My cousin died most bravely I hear. I would follow her example. But she was a great lady and I fear I am not, nor ever were. What she could do naturally, I must practice.”

It was a strange request but he could not deny it, and the block was brought to her room, where she had them place it in the center thereof, and graciously she walked to it, looking so young and innocent that it was as though she played some child’s game of executions. She laid her head upon it, and kept it there a long time so that the wood was wet with her tears.

She said she was tired and would sleep awhile, and she fell into a deep, peaceful sleep almost as soon as she lay down. In sleep, her auburn hair fell into disorder, her brow was smooth and untroubled; her mouth smiling.

She dreamed she saw her cousin Anne who caressed her as she had done when she was a baby, and bid her be of good cheer for the death was easy. A sharp subtle pain and then peace. But Catherine could not be reassured, for it seemed to her that though she was innocent of adultery, she was in some measure to blame because of what had happened before her marriage. But her cousin continued to soothe her, saying: “Nay, I was more guilty than you, for I was ambitious and proud, and hurt many, while you never hurt any but yourself.”

She was comforted, and clung to her dream. She knew now that she, like Anne, was innocent of any crime deserving of death. Anne had been murdered; she was about to be. But the death was quick and there was nothing to fear.

In the early morning, when they aroused her, she said almost calmly: “I had forgotten what the day was. Now I know. Today I am to die.”

She walked with that slow dignity, which she had rehearsed last evening in her room, to the spot before the church where, six years before, Anne had died. She was dressed in black velvet, and was very pale. Her eyes were wide, and she tried to believe she saw her cousin, smiling at her from beyond the haze through which she herself must step. She thought as she walked, I must die like a queen, as Anne died.

She was accompanied by Jane Rochford, who was to die with her. Jane’s dignity was as complete as that of the Queen. Her eyes were calm, and all the madness had passed from her now; she could face death gladly, for it seemed to her that only by dying could she expiate the sin she had committed against her husband.

The early February air was cold and river-damp; the scene was ghostly. Catherine looked for her uncle’s face among those of the people who gathered there to see her die, and felt a rush of gratitude to know she would be spared seeing him there.

She muttered a little prayer for her grandmother. She would not pray for Thomas and Francis for they were now at peace. Had Anne felt this strange lightening of the heart when her death had been but a moment away; had she felt this queer feeling which had a touch of exultation in it?

She said she would speak a few words. Tears were in the eyes of many who beheld her, for she had none of that haughtiness which had characterized her tragic cousin. In her black velvet gown she looked what she was, a very young girl, innocent of any crime, whose tragedy was that she had had the misfortune to be desired by a ruthless man whose power was absolute. Some remembered that though Anne had been found guilty by a picked jury, she had had an opportunity of defending herself, and this she had done with a clarity, dignity and obvious truthfulness so that all unprejudiced posterity must believe in her innocence; but little Catherine Howard had had no such opportunity; contrary to English law she would be executed without an open trial, and there was but one word for such an execution, and that the ugly one of murder. Some must ask themselves what manner of man was this King of theirs, who twice in six years had sent a young wife to the block! They remembered that this Henry was the first King of England to shed women’s blood on the block and burn them at the stake. Was the King’s life so moral, they must ask themselves, that he dared express such horror at the frailty of this child?

But she was speaking, and her voice was so low that it was difficult to hear her, and as she spoke tears started from her eyes and ran down her smooth cheeks, for she was speaking of her lover Culpepper, the grisly spectacle of whose head all might see when crossing London Bridge.

She was trying to make these people understand her love for that young man, but she could not tell them how she had met and loved him when at Hollingbourne he had first come into her lonely life.

“I loved Culpepper,” she said, and she tried to tell them how he had urged her not to marry the King. “I would rather have him for husband than be mistress of the world....And since the fault is mine, mine also is the suffering, and my great sorrow is that Culpepper should have to die through me.”

Her voice faltered; now her words grew fainter and the headsman looked about him, stricken with sorrow at what he must do, for she was so young, but a child, and hardened as he was, it moved him deeply that his should be the hand to strike off her head.

She turned her brimming eyes to him and begged he would not delay. She cried, “I die a queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpepper. God have mercy on my soul. Good people...I beg you pray for me...”

She fell to her knees and laid her head on the block not so neatly as she had done it in her room, but in such a way as to make many turn away and wipe their eyes.

She was praying when the headsman, with a swift stroke, let fall the axe.

Her attendants, their eyes blinded with tears, rushed forward to cover the mutilated little body with a black cloth, and to carry it away where it might be buried in the chapel, close to that spot where lay Anne Boleyn.

There was none to feel much pity for Lady Rochford. This gaunt woman was a striking contrast to the lovely young Queen. Jane mounted the scaffold like a pilgrim who has, after much tribulation, reached the end of a journey.

She spoke to the watching crowd and said that she was guiltless of the crime for which she was paying this doleful penalty; but she deserved to die, and she believed she was dying as a punishment for having contributed to the death of her husband by her false accusation of Queen Anne Boleyn. Almost with exultation she laid her head on the block.

“She is mad,” said the watchers. “None but the insane could die so joyfully.”

Jane was smiling after the axe had fallen and her blood gushed forth to mingle with that of the murdered Queen.

In his palace at Greenwich, the King stood looking over the river. He felt himself to be alone and unloved. He had lost Catherine. Her mutilated body was now buried beside that of another woman whom he had loved and whom he had killed as he had now killed Catherine.

He was afraid. He would always be afraid. Ghosts would haunt his life...myriads of ghosts, all the men and women whose blood he had caused to be shed. There were so many that he could not remember them all, although among their number there were a few he would never forget. Buckingham. Wolsey. More. Fisher. Montague. Exeter and the old Countess of Salisbury. Cromwell. These, he could tell his conscience he had destroyed for England’s sake. But there were others he had tried harder to forget. Weston. Brereton. Norris. Smeaton. Derham. Culpepper. George Boleyn. Catherine...and Anne.

He thought of Anne, whom he had once loved so passionately; never had he loved one as he had her; nor ever would he; for his love for Catherine had been an old man’s selfish love, the love of a man who is done with roving; but his love for Anne had had all the excitement of the chase, all the urgency of passionate desire; all the tenderness, romance and dreams of an idyll.