Execution.

Jane Grey watched out the window of her rooms in the Tower of London as her husband walked up the steps of the scaffold that had been built the previous day. Guilford Dudley, charged alongside his wife, was to be executed that morning on the charges of high treason. His wife, still a mere sixteen years old, would be following him shortly; but for now, it was Guildford who was out there for all to see on the Tower Green.

Jane had promised herself that she would watch him until the end. She considered it a mark of respect for her husband, though the two teenagers had only been married for little over eight months. Guilford now stood before the crowd who had come to watch the execution; his lips moved, though of course Jane couldn't hear what he was saying. It seemed to be only a couple of words. Jane thought that Guilford would not want to betray his fear by making a long speech, during which his voice would be likely to shake.

Though his wife up in the Tower did not know it, Guilford cried to the crowd:

"Pray for me!"

And this was exactly what Lady Jane Grey did, though she had not heard her husband's words. It was odd to think that her mother had had to beat her until she consented to marry Guilford. She knew that her time would come all too soon to face the executioner's axe, and the unavoidable consequences that occur when one puts their head on the chopping block. She was vaguely aware of the presence of her maid beside her, and Jane felt the girl's arms around her shoulders.

By this time, Guilford was leaning over, with his neck placed carefully and hesitantly on the block, the black-cloaked executioner looming ominously behind him like Death. He was glad that his wife, whom he had told to be strong for him, could not see the tears splashing on the wooden block beneath him. He fastened on the blindfold, knowing that the last thing he would see was the jeering crowd on the Tower Green. Guilford knew that Jane would be strong; it was just hypocrisy to show his own fear, when she would be facing the same fate in less than half an hour.

He didn't see the axeman raise his tool, though his wife up in her rooms did. He was only aware that his death was imminent for the tiniest fraction of a second, when he heard the whistling of the axe being swept through the air. The friction of his curly hair being sliced through by the axe, a slight pain in the back of his neck - and then it was over. Up in the Tower, Jane Grey's maid buried her head in her mistress's shoulder, wailing. Jane herself was biting her lip, determined not to let tears escape her eyes, nor cry out. The head of her husband fell gruesomely into the basket that awaited to catch it. Blood spurted from the stump of a neck that remained on Guildford's body; his vividly scarlet blood drenched the hay that surrounded the chopping block, and the wooden scaffold was slick, slippery and stained. Jane's determination to be strong waned as her husband's body was carted away from the Green.

"Oh, Guilford, Guilford!"

But Jane was not disappointed in herself; she had watched his death till the grizzly end, unlike her squeamish maid. Still no tears leaked from her eyes, and none ever would again. So absorbed was Jane in the watching of Guilford Dudley's execution that she forgot that her own was imminent. She guessed that she had maybe ten minutes before the guards would call her out of her rooms, and down to the Tower Green.

Living up to her reputation as one of the finest female minds of her time, and one of the most educated, she shrugged off her maid, and called for a book to read. There was only one book fitting for Jane to read in her last moments; the writings of the woman to whom she had once been a ward. Sitting down demurely on her bed, she looked pointedly and her still sniffling maid. The girl trotted off at once, wiping her eyes, and returned to Jane with a book under her arm: "Lamentacions of a Synner" by Catherine Parr.

And Jane whiled away the last minutes of her life, reading, with her maid still sitting beside her. So when the guards knocked on the door about a half hour after the death of Guilford, they were surprised to find Jane sitting calmly, absorbed in her reading. As the guards entered her room, she looked up, looking vaguely both surprised and disappointed, as though being forced to put down a good book just before one reaches the climax.

Jane followed willingly behind the guards; there was no real point putting up a fight, and no point in hoping that that bitch Mary would give her a last minute pardon. Her maid, however, was starting to sob in earnest already. What a useless girl, Jane thought, shaking her head slightly. She refused to think that the girl would only have to be tolerated for a few minutes longer. She barely noticed the rooms that she was passing; she kept her eyes on the back of the head of the guard in front of her as she was lead outside into the glorious fresh air, and onto the Tower Green.
When she reached the place of her execution, Jane refused to look at the crowd that had come to watch her die; though this was a much more polished crowd that Guilford's, mainly made up of courtiers.

The former Queen's eyes were drawn immediately to the chopping block and the executioner that stood beside it, dressed all in black. Her maid, still sniffing, followed her up the steps of the scaffold. Jane, so far, had managed to remain composed. Finally, she wrenched her gaze from the block, and turned to face the crowd, standing confident in the face of imminent death. The crowd murmured; they had not expected that the sixteen year old would make a speech. Jane spotted the Catholic priest that Mary had sent to her, John Feckenham, also standing at the edge of the scaffold. Jane took a deep breath, trying to ignore the disconcerting cries of her maid, the whispers of the crowd and the stare of the priest, Feckenham. 

"Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen's highness was unlawful, and the consenting thereunto by me: but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocency, before God, and the face of you, good Christian people, this day."

Then she recited her favourite psalm of all, Miserere mei Deus, in English, and her voice did not break once, of which she was proud. Turning to her maid, she handed the girl her pair of gloves, and a handkerchief, which the insolent child then used to wipe her own eyes. Ignoring this audacity, Jane Grey gave the girl a smile as she received her blindfold and tied it on herself. She then faced the executioner, and looked Death squarely in the face as well as she could through the black cloth that now enveloped her head.

"I pray you dispatch me quickly. Will you take this off before you lay me down?"

Jane wanted to be able to see as she was executed. But the axeman replied in the negative. She kneeled, groping for the block. But it was not there! Panic rose up like a wave from her stomach, engulfing her. Her palms began to sweat, and her heart raced. She felt dizzy, despite not being able to see anything apart from the rough dark fabric in front of her eyes. Jane had promised to be dignified, and die the death that befitted a Queen of England. But her plan was failing; all at once she was merely a scared, sixteen year old girl about to die.

"What shall I do? Where is it?"

Her voice had a slightly hysterical, opprobrious air to it now. She heard steps coming from the direction in which John Feckenham had been standing. Hands guided her to the block, and her dignity was retained, and she was a Queen once more. Her white neck was placed down upon the wood, and it chafed against her soft skin. She raised her hand, to stay the axeman, and reached beneath her hair and flicked it up off the nape of her neck. The bubble of hope that Jane had been harbouring unwillingly in her stomach that Mary would pardon her at the last minute was abruptly punctured. She realised that the executioner was raising his sharpened, shining axe above her neck.

"Lord, into thy hands I commend my spirit!"

One quick stroke - and the traiter-heroine of the Reformation was dead.