ho was of royal blood to
begin with and still bore the title of Queen. That she seems to have had
no protection from her royal kindred is probably explained by the fact
that Henry VI was never very potent or secure upon his throne, and that
the Wars of the Roses were threatening and demanding the whole attention
of the English Government. Wounded in her efforts to protect her husband
by her own person, seeing him slaughtered before her eyes, there could
not be a more terrible moment in any woman's life, hard as were the
lives of women in that age of violence, than that which passed over Jane
Beaufort's head in the Blackfriars Monastery amid the blood and tumult
of that fatal night. The chroniclers, occupied by matters more weighty,
have no time to picture the scene that followed that cruel and horrible
murder, when the distracted women, who were its only witnesses, after
the tumult and the roar of the murderers had passed by, were left to
wash the wounds and compose the limbs of the dead King so lately taking
his part in their evening's pastime, and to look to the injuries of the
Queen and the torn and broken arm of Catherine Douglas, a sufferer of
whom history has no further word to say. The room with its imperfect
lights rises before us, the wintry wind rushing in by those wide-open
doors, waving about the figures on the tapestry till they too seemed to
mourn and lament with wildly tossing arms the horror of the scene--the
cries and clash of arms as the caterans fled, pausing no doubt to pick
up what scattered jewels or rich garments might lie in their way: and by
the wild illumination of a torch, or the wavering leaping flame of the
faggot on the hearth, the two wounded ladies, each with an anxious group
about her--the Queen, covered with her own and her husband's blood; the
girl, with her broken wrist, lying near the threshold which she had
defended with all her heroic might. They were used to exercise the art
of healing, to bind up wounds and bring back consciousness, these
hapless ladies, so constantly the victims of passion and ambition. But
amid all the horrors which they had to witness in their lives, horrors
in which they did not always take the healing part, there could be none
more appalling than this. Neither then nor now, however, is it at the
most terrible moment of life, when the revolted soul desires it most,
that death comes to free the sufferer. The Queen lived, no doubt, to
think of the forlorn little