The Autobiography Of Henry VIII

by Margaret George

  “What, in the mud?”

  “There was no mud. The ground was quite hard. I remember that the petals from the pears were lying quite dryly all around . . . there was no mud.”

  “Why did she not read my letter?” I must know every moment of what passed.

  “She examined the royal seal, then kissed it, but did not break it. She took the purse and opened it. But then she closed it all up again. She looked at me, as if in distress, and said, ‘Pray tell the King to consider that I am a gentlewoman of good and honourable parents without reproach. I have no greater riches in the world than my honour, which for a thousand deaths I would not hurt. If his Grace wishes to make me a present of money, I beg him to do it when God might have sent me a good and honest marriage.’ ”

  “Those were her exact words?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty. I took the liberty of writing them down immediately after quitting her presence, lest I forget.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it was foolish?”

  “No, no. You did well.” I appreciated caution and thoroughness. I opened the purse and gave him a sovereign. “We thank you.”

  I put the purse away, and the letter. Jane had shown herself to be all that I hoped for. Let this, then, silence the murmurs in my head. Let me not yield to the temptation to test her further. Let there remain some semblance of innocence and trust in me, lest I have nothing to offer Jane Seymour in myself.

  April. The very word has a green sound. April. It should have a green look and a green smell as well, and this year it did. A strange odour perfused the air, as a green wind swept over the land. It was a sharp odour, a deep odour, of warmth and primitive beginnings.

  I rode alone in the meadows when I smelled it. I would have had Jane beside me, but I could not seek her company unchaperoned, and so I did not. The pastures and meadows turned velvety emerald; and the woodlands were a display of pastel colours, as the baby leaves of a thousand trees uncurled: not green at all, in their first hours, but lavender, pink, red, gold.

  Cromwell had all in order. The arrests would be made on May Day, following the customary jousts.

  “Everyone will be all together then, and that should simplify matters,” he explained. “The ceremonial presence of the Yeomen of the Guard will serve to disguise their true purpose.”

  Disguise, true . . . the tortuous theme of the past half-year.

  “The arrests can be made unobtrusively. In the confusion and high spirits, no one will notice. They can be imprisoned by nightfall, all at once. Interrogation the next day, May second. Trial by May tenth. Execution by May fifteenth at the latest,” he said.

  “Good.” The sooner it was over, the better.

  “It will be necessary for you to attend with the Queen,” Cromwell said apologetically.

  “Quite so.” If she could play her part, so could I.

  We sat in the royal box, Anne and I. This was the first year I had not participated in the May Day tournament. The reason I gave out was my fall in the January jousts. Still, it was difficult to play the part of a spectator, as if I were an old King, one who existed only as a voyeur. It was a world with which I had no wish to acquaint myself, had always disdained and rejected.

  Humility, I thought. Being thought old and infirm and accepting it with grace is humility. Just as Christ pretended to be powerless before Pilate. (Although he could not resist the cryptic comment about only “allowing” Pilate to have power.) But comparing myself with Christ was pride. I extracted pride even from humility; I could squeeze it from any situation, like juice from an orange.

  Anne was in white, the same white she had worn, and so well, at her Coronation. She knew how fairly it set off her dark hair, her creamy skin; and such were her powers that for a few moments, as I sat beside her, I strained to believe her innocent, maligned, so lovely was she, so far from anything morbid. But I knew what I knew.

  We did not speak. Each of us waved to the spectators, to the participants. The sun was bright on the field, and shone on the knights’ armour. I longed to be with them, instead of penned up in this watching box.

  Anne’s lovers all rode in the contests. I watched her carefully out of the corner of my eye to see how she behaved toward them. Weston and Brereton caused her no notice—poor men! did they suspect how little she regarded them?—but she quivered with attention to her brother George, who performed well enough. (Not as a champion, but certainly passable.) Then Norris took his place, riding against Francis Bryan. Before beginning, he made the customary bow to the royal box.

  Suddenly Anne leaned forward and flagrantly dropped her handkerchief. He picked it up, kissed it, passed it along his brow, then handed it back up to her. Their hands met, caressed.

  This effrontery was a spark to my tinder. It was so brazen, so blatant, that I could not endure it. The insult was too great.

  I stood up and said softly to Anne, “So, Madam. You shall have your reward.” I looked my last at her. I should never see her again upon this earth.

  I left the royal box, and informed Cromwell that I was returning immediately to the palace. “Make the arrests as soon as this course is over,” I ordered him. “Do not delay.”

  The handkerchief had been the last liberty Anne would take with my folly of having loved her. There is required a small act to kill love utterly; for reasons known only to God, large, heinous acts do not do it. Perhaps they are too great, have too many chinks and explanations. Only a small act of malicious disregard can achieve the final killing. A lace-edged handkerchief did what even Smeaton’s confession had failed to do completely, that is, in every corner of my being.

  Norris had not ridden, after all. He had divested himself of his armour and left the grounds straightway, riding after me. He overtook me before I was in sight of Westminster, and rode boldly up to me. I refused to look at him.

  “Your Majesty, you are angry at me,” he said.

  I did not reply.

  “Pray tell me my offence, so that I may amend it.”

  “The handkerchief . . .” I began. “Was it necessary to mock me so? Or was that her doing?”

  “As God is my witness, I do not understand.”

  “Stop the pretence!” I hissed. “You are the Queen’s lover. I know the truth, and you shall die for it.”

  “It is not true!” His voice rose in terror. “It is not true! Never have I betrayed you with the Queen, in thought or deed!”

  “Come, Norris. She has betrayed us all; you are not alone.” He, too, was a victim. “Confess the truth, and you shall go free.” Suddenly I meant it. How could I punish him for a fault I shared with him?

  “Confess the truth!” I repeated. “Let someone, at last, speak truth to my face!”

  The whole truth was a different creature from the half-truth. I wanted him not to deny the accusation, for I knew the physical facts were true, but to somehow redeem it, to acknowledge the bald facts but to give them some interpretation I could live with and assimilate. I wanted it to be kinder and simpler than it sounded, and perhaps it was, but I needed his help in making it so. . . .

  “It is completely untrue, Your Majesty.”

  That was of no use. Norris, you did it, but you must have reasons, please explain them, please put some note of honour and cleanness in this by your very presence . . . your involvement. . . .

  “Confess! Confess and you’ll go free, be pardoned, I promise it!”

  “There is nothing to confess. And I am willing to undergo trial by combat to defend the Queen’s honour—”

  “She has no honour!” I cried. “Abandon this course, it is hopeless.”

  “True combat will reveal otherwise,” he insisted.

  Anne had blinded him, then. He was entirely her creature, ready to defend her to the death.

  Another victim, I thought. She has garnered another victim. The honourable ones made the easiest prey; they ensnared themselves in their own nets.

  “Arrest him!” I cried to my guards. “Arrest this man!” I reined my horse away from Norris, and
pointed at him.

  The Yeomen of the Guard closed in, and Norris vanished from my sight. All I saw was a clump of mounted horsemen in the clear spring sunlight, their weapons drawn and sparkling.

  LXXIII

  WILL:

  As night fell, Norris, Brereton, and Weston were all in the Tower. Smeaton had been taken there earlier in the day.

  Anne and her brother were still at liberty. It was the last night they would be so. Reportedly, Anne, distressed at the King’s behaviour at the jousts, had asked frightened questions and been met with silence. That something was wrong was clear from the deserted royal apartments and the ominous silence of Anne’s servitors at dinner. As representatives of the King, they customarily presented her dishes with the salute, “Much good may it do you!” This evening, however, they omitted the phrase.

  She was left to spend an apprehensive night by herself. Mark Smeaton had been taken away, she was told. He could not play for her. She attempted to send for her brother George, but was told “it was not meet.” Like one of the wild beasts in the Tower menagerie, she was to spend the night in a cage, prowling restlessly, not knowing why she was confined, or what awaited her.

  The King spent it weeping and storming. Those of us about him knew not whether to attempt to comfort him or to look away. In the end we chose to look away. Even a King needs to be ignored at times; indeed, he probably craves it.

  In the morning the King called first Cromwell, then the rest of the Privy Council, and explained the circumstances. They were to arrest the Queen and take her to the Tower, first setting forth the charges.

  Meanwhile, Anne ate her midday dinner and made jokes. “The King keeps this odd behaviour to test me. To test my courage,” she insisted.

  At about two in the afternoon a deputation of the Privy Council came to her chambers to speak with her and interview her household. It was led by her uncle the Duke of Norfolk, and by Cromwell.

  They came into her presence boldly, not deferentially.

  “You have committed adultery,” the Duke accused her, “with five known men. These men are already imprisoned and have confessed. You, too, must confess. There is no more need to hide and lie. All is known.” He also accused her of incest and intent to murder her husband.

  Anne angrily denied it. “I am clean from the touch of any man but my true wedded husband, the King!” she screeched.

  Her uncle shook his head sadly at her stubborn lie. Already the State Barge, which would convey her to the Tower, was waiting by the water-steps of the palace, manned by Kingston, the Constable of the Tower, and four enemy women spies chosen by Cromwell to report every word Anne uttered henceforth.

  “Tut, tut, tut,” murmured the Duke, shaking his head like the clapper of a bell.

  That afternoon Anne was rowed to the Tower, while the bright spring sunlight glanced off the Thames and common folk waved excitedly at the State Barge.

  When she was received at the entrance, she fell to her knees. “God help me!” she cried. “I am not guilty of the accusation!”

  Then Kingston and his men took her away—to the selfsame rooms she had lain in the night before her Coronation. There she would stay, alone, with no kind person nearby. Where there had been flatterers and singers that other May night three years ago, now there was silence and mystery.

  “Where is my sweet brother?” she cried.

  “I left him at York Place,” Kingston answered. The truth was that George Boleyn had been taken to the Tower that very morning.

  “I hear say that I shall be accused with five men; and I can say no more but nay without I should open my body,” she cried, flinging open her skirt hysterically. No one understood her words.

  “O Norris, hast thou accused me?” she asked the air. “Thou art in the Tower together, and thou and I will die together; and Mark, thou art here too.”

  When the King heard how she called upon her brother, Norris, and Smeaton, he wept.

  Cromwell knew the Queen well. He knew that she was “as brave as a lion,” as someone had once described her, but that even a lion needs an adversary. Without an adversary, without a clear-cut accuser, she would nervously babble and betray herself. He directed every word she spoke to be recorded. Anne Boleyn had never known how to keep silent. Cromwell, who had heard the “I have a longing to eat apples” speech, knew well how to exploit her fatal weakness.

  The very first day he reaped a bountiful harvest. She recalled her conversation with Weston in which he had professed his love. She compared him with Norris. “I more fear Weston,” she said, and explained why.

  The next day she came to her brother. Her spies had told her that he had been arrested.

  “I am very glad that we both be so nigh together,” she said.

  Kingston confirmed that five men had been arrested and now lay in the Tower because of her.

  “Mark is the worst treated,” volunteered one of the women. “He is chained in irons.”

  “That is because he is no gentleman,” said Anne, callously. She looked about. “They shall make ballads of me now,” she said dreamily. “But there is none but my brother to do so. Shall he die?” she asked Kingston.

  At his refusal to answer, she descended to threats. “We shall have no rain until I am delivered out of the Tower!” she cried.

  Kingston shrugged, unmoved. “I pray it may be shortly because of the fair weather,” he replied.

  In the meantime the King stormed and screamed. He was wilder than Anne. The night after Anne had been taken to the Tower, his natural son, Henry Fitzroy, had come to call upon him and bid him good night. The distracted, sorrowing King fell on his thin shoulders and cried, “God be praised you are safe from that cursed and venomous whore, who was determined to poison you!”

  The bewildered, coughing Fitzroy merely held him fast: son comforting father.

  Then an eerie silence descended. The Queen and all her accused paramours and conspirators were held behind the stone walls of the Tower. Juries were being assembled, and formal accusations drawn up. Parliament was prorogued, not to meet again for a month. The King forbade any mail or ships to leave England. The outside world wondered what was happening there. They knew it must be something terrible and momentous.

  HENRY VIII:

  I started receiving letters. First Cranmer wrote me, in amazement and condolence:

  And I am in such a perplexity, that my mind is clean amazed; for I never had better opinion in woman than I had in her; which maketh me to think she should not be culpable. And again, I think that Your Highness would not have gone so far, except she had surely been culpable.

  Now I think that Your Grace best knoweth, that next unto Your Grace I was most bound unto her of all creatures living. Wheretofore I most humbly beseech Your Grace to suffer me in that which both God’s law, nature, and also her kindness, bindeth me unto; that is that I may with Your Grace’s favour wish and pray for her, that she may declare herself inculpable and innocent. And if she be found culpable, I repute him not Your Grace’s faithful servant and subject, that would not desire the offence without mercy to be punished.

  Then Anne took pen in hand to persuade me. But the letter venomously accused me of shortcomings rather than addressing her own:

  Your Grace’s displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, that what to write, or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. Whereas you send to me such a one, whom you know to be mine ancient professed enemy; I no sooner received this message by him, than I rightly conceived your meaning; and if as you say, confessing a truth indeed may procure my safety, I shall, with all willingness and duty, perform your command.

  But let not Your Grace ever imagine your poor wife will ever be brought to acknowledge a fault, where not so much as a thought ever proceeded. And to speak a truth, never a prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn—with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself if God and Your Grace’s pleasure had
so pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation, or received Queenship, but that I always looked for such alteration as I now find; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than Your Grace’s fancy, the least alteration was fit and sufficient (I knew) to draw that fancy to some other subject.

  You have chosen me from a low estate to be your Queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire; if then you found me worthy of such honour, good Your Grace, let not any light fancy or had counsel of my enemies withdraw your princely favour from me, neither let that stain—that unworthy stain—of a disloyal heart toward your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on me and on the infant Princess your daughter Elizabeth.

  Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial, and let not my sworn enemies sit as my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shames; then shall you see either mine innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. So that whatever God and you may determine of, Your Grace may be at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me, as an unfaithful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party, Mistress Seymour, for whose sake I am now as I am; whose name I could some good while since have pointed unto:—Your Grace being not ignorant of my suspicions therein.

  But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you to the joying of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin herein, and, likewise, my enemies, the instruments thereof, and that He will not call you to a strait account for your unprincely and cruel usage of me at His general judgment-seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear; and in whose just judgment, I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me) mine innocency shall be openly known and sufficiently cleared.