by G Lawrence
That thought became as a prayer to me.
That day, the Council went to Lady Anne, and told her that her marriage was no more. From that day forth, they said, the King would call her sister, and he would be as a brother to her.
Later, some said she fainted in relief, but this was so unlike the Queen I knew I had no faith in the reports. Another source said she was calm and graceful, accepting her new title of King’s sister with pleasure, saying she consented to the annulment for it was the will of the King, and always it had been her duty and pride to do as he wished. “I am his servant,” she said. “And proudly will call myself sister to His Majesty.”
And she was rewarded for submission. She would have precedence over all women of England, besides the next Queen, his existing daughters and any legitimate ones he might sire in the future. She had four thousand pounds per year, a mighty fortune the like of which few could boast. Anne was granted manors, such as Bletchingly, Richmond and Hever Castle, once the childhood home of another Queen Anne. She had jewels, plate, furniture and a huge body of servants. She was now a woman of independent means, and since the King had insisted she was a virgin it would be easy for her to remarry if so she wished. She was the King’s honorary sister, a high catch for a wealthy lord. All this was hers as long as she did not pass beyond England’s seas. The King did not want her in another country, making trouble for him.
Anne was only too happy to remain in England. I think she was astounded she had come out of this so well, not only with a head on her shoulders, but with coin spilling from her purse. She was free in a way most women were not, had stepped from fear of abuse, shame and death, into liberty and independence.
Widows have the same freedom, I told myself.
Doctor Wotton was sent to inform the Duke of Cleves that his sister was no more England’s Queen, and the Lady Anne sent word, informing her brother she would remain in England. She loved England, she said, and its people. The King, her good brother, was her friend and she meant to remain in this land she adored.
In time, we heard back from the Duke, who said he was merely glad his sister had “fared no worse.” The King appeared mystified about this statement.
Within days the news was loose in Europe. The King of France and the Emperor said they thought the annulment was correct and right, but they were both courting the King’s friendship, so naturally that was their answer. Martin Luther was less kind. “Squire Harry wishes to be God,” he announced, “and do as he pleases!”
The King only hated him more for those words.
On the eleventh day of that month, the former Queen sent a letter to her new brother, telling him she formally acknowledged the dissolution of their marriage, and thanking him for his patience, grace and friendship. “Though this case must needs be both hard and sorrowful for me, for the great love which I bear to your most noble person,” she wrote, “I neither can nor will repute myself Your Grace’s wife, considering this sentence and Your Majesty’s pure and clean living with me.”
So clearly she did know what was supposed to happen in the bedchamber, I thought.
Lady Anne went on to say that she hoped the King would visit her. She thanked the King for all he had done for her, ending her letter by asking the Almighty to grant him long life and good health. It was signed “Your Majesty’s most humble sister and servant, Anne, the daughter of Cleves.”
“She is indeed a good woman,” murmured the King as he handed the note to me. “Understanding of duty, and loving towards me.”
“You show greatness, Your Majesty, in upholding her as a noble, now royal woman.”
“Henry,” he said, with a really quite charming smile. “How many times must I ask?”
“Henry,” I said, returning his smile with a burst of affection. I had been so fearful for my former mistress yet she had been treated kindly. It granted me hope for the future, for us, for me. “Perhaps all this will become real to me when we are married,” I said. “At the moment, it feels like a dream.”
“But a happy one,” he said. “And soon, you will need to dream no more, Catherine. Soon you will be mine.”
I concealed the shudder than ran through me. How I hated those words.
On the twelfth day, the marriage was formally annulled, and Parliament urged the King to marry again immediately, for the sake of his country. On the thirteenth day the former Queen was sent letters from the King and her brother, along with rich presents. On the seventeenth day the Queen’s household was disbanded, but told not to go far.
By the twentieth day of July, all England could speak of was the wonderful grace of the former Queen. Accustomed by that time to the cast-off wives of the King causing untold uproar, England was stunned by the Lady Anne’s calm acceptance, her gentility, and her happiness. She was merry, dining with the Council and laughing as though she had not a care in the world.
The King, suspicious, or perhaps affronted, sent men to warn her she was not to “play the woman” and change her mind, urging her brother into war on her behalf, but seemed quickly assured she was not of a mind to cause trouble. She expressed the desire to remain friends with her once-stepchildren, with whom she had a warm relationship now, even with Lady Mary, despite their past problems.
Anne was declared a private person by the King; no ministers were to call on or trouble her, and she was protected under the laws of his country, and the blanket of his love and gratitude. She won the love of the people too. Once she was Queen no more, the King and his people came to love her.
On the twenty-fifth day, I was shipped quietly from Lambeth in London to Oatlands Park in Surrey.
On the twenty-seventh day, the Bishop of London was sent for… to officiate at a wedding.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Oatlands Palace
July 28th 1540
I stood before the mirror, looking at a face I no longer seemed to know. The girl who stared back at me appeared solemn, her eyes lost in thoughts she tried to repress of the future, and the past.
All the Catherines who had been before stretched backwards, a line of girls in my eyes; little, scared Catherine watching bloody sheets taken from her mother’s bed; Catherine of the tight, wasted dress running behind Joan; grey-faced Catherine, terrified and confused by the touch of her music master and then of a man of two natures; Catherine the wild finding pleasure in a bed of possession; foolish Catherine, losing her heart to a man she could not have.
And then this last one, the one upon my face. Catherine the mask. A girl playing the part of a woman. Catherine who had captured the King.
I was sixteen but felt sixty, old before my time.
Ladies fussed about me, Jane chief amongst them. Sent for to guide me on this important day, she was pleased to be back in the thick of court for this auspicious occasion.
My wedding day.
Today I would be married to the kind of man I had always thought I would be, but not the one of which I had dreamed. As Mary had said so long ago, our husbands would be old and we young. They would have had wives before, and children older than us. There was no young, romantic handsome knight for me. I would marry a king, but in my bed there would be an old man.
From the window I could see Oatlands park. Within the Chase of Hampton Court this palace nestled, bought by my soon-to-be husband only three years before and improved upon for his then wife, now his royal sister.
The palace was fronted with warm red brick, and the King had added new wings, façades, an arched bridge over the moat and an octagonal tower. Riding up to it only days ago, I had seen the moat had been filled in to make a new courtyard. The hooves of my horse clattering upon cobblestones, I had been helped from my saddle by servants and taken inside. Every courtesy had been extended, but my greatest pleasure came when Jane arrived. She made me feel more grounded. Sometimes it seemed I might float away, so insubstantial did I feel.
I tried to lose myself in Jane’s talk and in the beauty of the palace. We walked through the rich chambers of this
once-modest manor, talking of all that had passed, all that would come. Our voices muted, the heat-shimmering air close, we wandered through the three courtyards, gazing up at the looming tower. We went into orchards where parched trees stood, leaves crisping upon stalks. Men watered them at night, I had seen them, wooden buckets in their hands, clay dippers riddled with holes plunged in and taken out so water might drizzle upon flowers in the raised beds of walled gardens and feed the parched trees. Fountains fed other gardens, keeping them lush and green, but I could feel the thirst of the earth, a scream from the belly of the world itself, calling out, bonding with the whispers of my cousin’s ghost who wandered at my side.
I tried to lose myself, to forget all that had been and my fears of the future. We rode into the hunting park, spying deer sat under the trees, sheltering from the sun. They did not even try to run as we came near. Too tired to flee, they watched us, knowing we meant no harm by the quiet, unhurried way we rode. They would know when to expend energy, when to run.
Ten thousand acres stretched about this palace, a hunting route linking several royal residences and lodges, completed only recently for the King. No longer able to ride and hunt as once he had, tiring many horses in pursuit of game, the King now needed his sport brought to him, so he could shoot his longbow, crossbows and guns from towers within the park as deer were herded past.
I had barely seen the King for days, so busy had he been in London, pulling apart the last strands of the end of his fourth marriage and weaving the first of his fifth. The King would say he had only been married once, to Queen Jane, and all other marriages, dissolved by law, were not lawful. But if he counted them not, everyone else did. When the King married me that day, he would become the most married monarch of Christian history. I was the fifth Queen of Henry VIII. Our marriage was to be even more private than his last, the one I had attended in the gallery at Greenwich. And this time, it would be me promising to obey him, him swearing to protect me.
I knew already he could not shelter me from everything. My family had tried to protect me from rumours, swilling like dirt, about me, but when Jane had come to Oatlands I had heard all. It was not in her nature to hold back. In some ways I was grateful. I needed to know what was being said, no matter how awful. It was whispered I was already with child, and that was why the King was marrying this noble woman, of a good house certainly, but not its best blood. Others, Jane said, spoke of my extraordinary beauty and of the King’s abiding love, but they were not heard as well as those insinuating I was a whore, that I was with child.
If only I was with child, I thought. Then, I might feel secure.
I stared at the park, stretching out in shades of green, yes, but increasingly of brown and ash. Gardens could be watered, but not the whole park. It had not rained since June. The country was starting to yellow. Cattle were dying in the fields and pigs collapsing in sties, red-skinned and blistered, already roasted for the table. The plague had come, rendering London bare as some stayed inside and others fled to the country. Reports from France said there it had rained blood, a stream of crimson falling from the skies for seven hours. Some said it was God weeping, for what would be done.
For the day of my wedding was to be marked by blood. At Oatlands, I would marry. In London, Cromwell would die.
*
As I left my rooms at nine of that morning, Cromwell left his prison in the Tower, walking out to the open space just north of the Tower walls. Not for him a private, quiet death as my cousin was granted. No… Cromwell had been stripped of his titles and would die a commoner, crowds of thousands screaming hatred in his ears.
As he died the King would wed another of Howard blood, as though with Cromwell’s death what was thought lost had come to live anew. Anne’s revenge completed, through me.
As I stood with the King, Cromwell stood in the full light of that summer’s day, blinking against the sun. One thousand of the King’s guard stood about his place of execution. There was no escape. Did he think of Anne Boleyn, brought to death in disgrace, her name defiled and honour ruined? For now the same was so of him. He was a traitor, a heretic and an unholy friend to the King, his master. I doubt the irony of fate escaped this man who had laughed so easily with friends.
I wondered too, if he thought of his past, rising from the poor streets of Putney to become a mercenary and a lawyer; of his days in the household of the great Cardinal Wolsey, and then to become a man of the King, and his personal patron, Queen Anne. From commoner to noble. From poverty to riches so vast no man could guess what had poured into the King’s coffers upon Cromwell’s fall.
Cromwell faced the crowds.
There were noblewomen wearing veils, both to shelter delicate skin and hide their identities. There were noblemen, bare-cheeked and undisguised, unafraid to see him fall. There were commoners, resentful of his policies, his destruction of the monasteries, of his treatment of Queen Katherine, and, perhaps of his treatment of the disgraced Queen Annes both. And they were there, too, because they hated him for once being one of them and failing to dwell in poverty as they did. They despised him for the favour he had won and the talent he had possessed. Burning as the sun in the skies, Cromwell could feel the blazing hatred of the people. But he would die well, as was his right. Others, his enemies, had done so before him. To their example would he bend. He comforted the man who was to die with him, Lord Hungerford, condemned for four counts deserving death, including sodomy, witchcraft and treason.
In a dry, emotionless voice, he addressed the crowds.
“Good people, I am come here to die and not to purge myself, as some may think I will, for if I should do so, I would be a wretch and a miser. I am by the law condemned, and thank my Lord God that has appointed me to this death for my offence. For since the time that I have had years of discretion, I have lived as a sinner and have offended my Lord God, for which I ask Him heartily for forgiveness. And it is not unknown to many of you that I have been a great traveller in the world, but being of base degree, was called to high estate. Since the time I came thereunto, I have offended my prince, for which I also ask him for hearty amnesty. I beseech you all to pray to God with me that he will forgive me. O Father, forgive me, O Son, forgive me, O Holy Ghost, Forgive me. O Three Persons and one God, forgive me.
“And now I pray you that be here to bear record, that I die in the Catholic faith, not doubting any article of my faith, no, nor doubting any Sacrament of the Church.”
At Oatlands, I answered Bishop Bonner, addressing my King and husband. “I, Catherine, take thee to my wedded husband, to have and hold from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonny and buxom in bed and at board, till death do us part, and thereto I pledge thee my troth.”
Cromwell, interrupted several times by Hungerford, who was calling for the executioner to put him out of his misery, finished by saying, “Gentlemen, you should all take warning from me, who was, as you know, from a poor man made by the King into a great gentleman and I, not contented with that, not with having the kingdom at my orders, presumed to a still higher state. My pride has brought its punishment.”
Thomas Cromwell knelt, praying to the Almighty to accept his soul. When he rose to make for the block, he saw Thomas Wyatt crying for him. “Gentle Wyatt, goodbye and pray for me,” he said. “Do not weep, for if I were no more guilty than you were when they took you, I should not be in this pass.”
He asked the headsman to take his head off with one blow, so he would not suffer. Sadly, the man was unable to comply. When Cromwell knelt, his head on the block, lips muttering his last prayers, and the man swung, the aim was poor. He may, in fact, have been chosen for his lack of experience, or paid to make a poor job of it by Cromwell’s foes. He bit deep into the back of Cromwell’s head. It took several blows to take the head off. Some said Cromwell was alive, gurgling in pain until the last.
Hungerford died swift, and clean.
As Cromwell’s corpse was dragged fr
om the scaffold, the King slipped the ring upon my finger.
I was his property. His to command. I had no separate identity. In many ways I ceased to be not on the day of my death, but on that day.
My marriage began as it was to end. In blood and in death.
Epilogue
The Tower of London
February 12th 1542
Shadows stretch. Night becomes old, and still I kneel, my head upon the block. Still tears fall, rolling from my soft cheeks to polished wood, falling quietly to the rushes upon the floor.
Still I stay. Where else do I have to go, but here? Here where my life will end. Here where I will go to God. This is where I belong, where always I have been, dying from the moment of birth, out of control of my own self.
Shadows stretch, those from outside drifting in and those inside me reaching out, fingers of darkness caressing, becoming one. The shadow is upon me and about me, claiming me. Never was I my own. Always I belonged to someone else.
That is fate, I have decided, the understanding that all you thought yours, even bone, sinew and blood is not yours. Child of fate I was, thrown into life without preparation, without warning, left to stumble as a new-born doe upon the slippery surface of the world. But less protected than a doe, nurtured less than any creature of forest or fen. Thought protected by blood, I emerged, and found no shelter. Thought protected by the adoration of an old man I married, and found myself here.