Let all women pity me!"
But now came many armed soldiers into the apartment. With spirit Queen
Jehane turned to meet them, and you saw that she was of royal blood,
for now the pride of many emperors blazed and informed her body as
light occupies a lantern. "At last you come for me, messieurs?"
"Whereas," the leader of these soldiers read from a
parchment--"whereas the King's stepmother, Queen Jehane, is accused by
certain persons of an act of witch-craft that with diabolical and
subtile methods wrought privily to destroy the King, the said Dame
Jehane is by the King committed (all her attendants being removed) to
the custody of Sir John Pelham, who will, at the King's pleasure,
confine her within Pevensey Castle, there to be kept under Sir John's
control: the lands and other properties of the said Dame Jehane being
hereby forfeit to the King, whom God preserve!"
"Harry of Monmouth!" said Jehane,--"ah, my tall stepson, could I but
come to you, very quietly, with a knife--!" She shrugged her
shoulders, and the gold about her person glittered in the sunlight.
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