“I have the King’s pardon in my pocket. It is hers if she will recant. I wish to let the people know that pardon awaits her if she will see reason.”

“Have it sent to her before the sermon starts.”

Anne received the message while, about her body, they were fixing the chain which would hold her to the stake.

“I come not hither,” she said, “to deny my Lord and Master.”

She saw that the three men who were to die with her received similar messages.

They were brave, but they lacked her spirit. They turned their agonized eyes to her, and she saw how their apprehensive bodies longed to recant, although their spirits would firmly ignore the frailty of the flesh.

She said: “My friends, we have suffered…I more than any of you. I am happy now. I long for death. I long to feel the flames. To deny your God now, would mean that you would loathe the life offered you on such terms.”

She smiled and looked almost lovingly at the faggots about her maltreated legs.

Then the men smiled with her and tried to emulate her courage.

“They are beginning the sermons,” she said. “There is Dr. Shaxton. He will preach to us, he who a short while ago was one of us. Now he has denied his faith. He has chosen life on Earth in place of the life everlasting. Do not envy him, my friends, for very soon now you and I will be in paradise. We are to die, and we die for truth. We die in the Lord. God bless you, my friends. Have no fear; for I have none.”

She held the cross in her hands. She lifted her eyes to Heaven, seeming to be unaware of the flickering flames. She heard the shrieks of agony about her; but she was smiling as the flames crept up her tortured body.

Soon there was silence, and a pall of smoke hung above Smithfield Square.

CHAPTER