by Karen Harper
“Jane, did Kat Champernowne tell you that she and I are friends from far back, when we both first came to court?”
“No, I did not know,” she said, shaking a scolding finger at me, but smiling. “My dear Kat, you must tell me all about my naughty brother,” she said with a little laugh. “Come on then. Tom, you need to wash off that mud, and I shall see you later.”
Ah, he was so good with the ladies, even his own sister. Since I’d been back at court, I had heard more than one pretty maid ask Jane when he would be back and heave a heartfelt sigh.
Jane took my hand. She was one for that, always patting or touching people she liked. But I felt I was going to throw up all over that gentle little hand. How dare that lickspittle Seymour taunt me when he had dared to attack me and then lie to Cromwell and who knows who else about my throwing myself at him!
“Come, come then, Kat,” Jane cried, and tugged me away from the others. She pulled me into an alcove where, no doubt, I was to be privily interrogated about my relationship with Tom. Perhaps, I thought, he had set this up as a test that I would not give out what he had done to me. But both Jane and I gasped, for there, peeking out from the velvet draperies, stood the king. Was I to be an unwilling chaperone for their planned tryst? But no—Jane looked completely surprised.
“Oh, Your Grace,” she cried, and managed a graceful curtsy before I could even react. It was obvious to me that he had been watching us, perhaps stalking Jane.
“Mistress Champernowne,” he said, kissing Jane’s lips first, lingeringly, and then quickly mine, “how nice to see you back at court. Lady Bryan speaks highly of your services to our Princess Elizabeth.”
“The princess is dear to me and certainly a compliment to Your Majesty.” I was tempted to add, as is the Princess Mary, but, even as besotted as he seemed, gazing at Jane and barely listening to me, I dared not.
“You may wait with the others,” he said to me while his eyes, so small in his broad, florid face, glittered possessively over Jane. “And say naught of my presence here.”
I curtsied again and took my leave. No matter what His Majesty said, I would have to tell the queen that the king had been following Jane and requested time alone with her, else someone would inform her first. I was back to pacing down the way with the others when I heard a distinctive tap-tap of the cork-heeled slippers the queen had taken a fancy to lately. Yes, she was striding toward us and would surely come upon the king and Jane in the alcove.
All four of us turned to look at her, but only I knew Jane wasn’t alone within. I almost called out, Oh, look, ladies, here comes the queen! as loudly as I could to warn Jane, but it was too late. And then came the blast.
Anne glanced into the alcove and screeched, “Get off his lap, you strumpet! Doxy!” To everyone’s horror, she leaped into the alcove with her fist raised.
A slap resounded. Had she struck the king? But Jane came flying out, her hand to her cheek, her skirts tumbling down from where they must have been lifted, her bodice slightly awry.
“Madam!” the king roared. “Leave off!”
“I’m carrying your prince, and you dare to dally!” Anne shrieked. “No wonder I suffer so, for want of you!”
Curses. Cries. The king’s booming voice. When Jane scurried past us, I hurried after her, hoping she wasn’t running straight for her damned brother Tom.
On the same day that Catherine of Aragon was interred, Anne, as I heard her own uncle Norfolk pointedly put it, “miscarried of her savior.” The fifteen-week-old fetus was formed enough to show it had been a boy. Anne blamed the king for the shock to her heart and soul. She insisted she had suffered when he was knocked unconscious at the tournament and that it was devastating to her health to see another woman being fondled by the man she loved so much.
And His Majesty’s reaction, so I heard from Madge and Joan: “You have caused the loss of my boy, madam! You will have no more sons from me!”
Lady Joan also told me that His Majesty had declared he had been seduced into wedding Anne by sorcery. After all, she did have the mark of a witch, that sixth finger on her left hand. God’s denying him a son was proof to him that their marriage was null and void.
“Null and void? And sorcery?” I repeated aghast to Joan. “What demented, desperate claims.”
“My Lord Anthony believes he is desperate to be rid of her,” she whispered.
After two more months of tension at court, I asked the queen if I could not be sent back to Hatfield to help care for Elizabeth. She seized my hand so hard she hurt me and, looking not at me but beyond while Mark Smeaton strummed some frenzied music across the room, whispered, “Not yet, not yet. I need those loyal about me.”
At least I managed to avoid Tom Seymour. The king had sent Jane from court to her family home of Wolf Hall in Wiltshire, and since Edward was needed at court, Tom was sent as her guardian. Wolf Hall, I thought. How appropriate a spawning place for that flap-mouthed lewdster, that wolf in sheep’s clothing. But if Anne thought she’d won a victory by getting rid of Jane, she was much mistaken, for the king had only sent his beloved away to protect her from the dreadful coming events he and Cromwell were covertly hatching.
At the annual May Day tournament at Greenwich, the powder keg exploded, and it was only then that we learned the trap for the queen had long been laid. I was not present that day, for I had the green sickness and was nauseous. [As I looked back on my absence years later, I thought it was perhaps for the best. From her formative years, Elizabeth privily pestered me for any memories of her mother, and it was hard to hold things back. But I had not seen her mother’s arrest, so had an excuse for not telling her of that dreadful day. As for other terrible times to come, I lied to my sweet girl that I had not been there, for I could not bear for her to know the things I had been privy to.]
Anne was arrested at the May Day tournament and taken immediately by barge to the Tower, where at least she was lodged in the royal apartments and not in some wretched cell. The charges included witchcraft, treason and adultery with four of the king’s closest men—yes, he was willing to sacrifice his boon companions—including her own brother George, which meant a charge of incest.
My stomach churns even now to recall the explicit accusations: that Anne and George did put their tongues in each other’s mouth in the lewd French fashion, et cetera. Cromwell had taken and tortured Mark Smeaton until he admitted to carnal relations with the queen, while the other four men denied such to the death. The poet and courtier Thomas Wyatt was in the Tower too, but evidently for questioning, as he was not charged. I thought again of the passionate poem I’d seen from him to Anne years ago, and wondered if she had lain with him or Percy in her youth, though I could not fathom she’d be unfaithful with any of the others.
Cromwell’s clever, bloodstained handwriting was on the wall, but I blamed the king even more. Sorcery and witchcraft indeed! As unwise and heedless of danger as Anne had been, I never believed one word of the worst charges. The entire thing made me vomit all the harder and longer, until I was so weak I could hardly stand.
Unfortunately, Cromwell summoned me to meet him in the rose garden to the east of the palace. Awaiting me was almost as great a shock as all else: John Ashley stood there, holding three horses, one of them Brill, the large chestnut horse he had ridden the day we met. I was so surprised that my legs almost buckled. I stepped back into the roses and snagged my skirts and cloak on the thorns.
“I did not mean to startle you,” he said with that deep, resonant and strangely comforting voice I hadn’t heard for so long but had yearned to. “Did not Lord Cromwell tell you of our mission? Here, I’ve brought you a favorite horse of mine to ride—Ginger,” he went on in a rush, patting the reddish mare next to the two larger mounts. “She’s Brill’s favorite, too, and bore him a foal last summer.”
I nodded, then blurted, “I did not know you were back!” Wondering if he meant some message in telling me that I would ride Brill’s mate, I tried to unhook myself from severa
l especially nasty canes. “I assumed with the fall of the Boleyns, you would not return.”
He came close now, bending to unsnag my petticoat and, to my further amazement, cut a red rose for me, which I took in my trembling hand. “My father is better, and I could not stay away now,” he explained. “I returned in honor of my mother’s Howard kin and to help our queen, though she’s obviously beyond help now. They will hold her trial at the Tower, and Cromwell says she’s doomed.”
“He ought to know,” I said, unable to keep the contempt from my voice. But I instinctively trusted this man not to betray me. Though I had felt ill and weak for nearly a fortnight, energy and excitement poured through my veins to be near him. “But what mission do you speak of that concerns Cromwell and us?” I asked.
“Ah, did I hear my name?” The man who was, no doubt, the mastermind behind Anne’s fall—anything at the king’s bidding—emerged from behind the horses. “Good, you have a hood on that cloak,” he said to me in way of greeting. “Pull it up, and I’ll explain to both of you on the way.”
I stood my ground. “I need to know where I am going first,” I dared.
He and John had pulled hoods up too. Surely the May wind, even on the river, was not so cold. As John gave Cromwell a boost up on the third horse, the older man said down at me, “I believe you, like Ashley here, still care for Anne Boleyn in all this, do you not? We go to do her a favor, that is all, so come along. We are not taking a royal barge where we might be noted, but riding to the bridge and then across, just three travelers ahorse, that is us, so keep up, Kat, and hold your tongue.”
The windy journey, including the first time I had ever ridden across busy London Bridge, passed in a blur. The queen had asked to see me, and Cromwell must have made some sort of bargain with her. That is all I really knew. I was frightened to enter the portals of the Tower, to ride across the moat and dismount in the place where three years ago Anne and her women had so happily awaited her parade and coronation.
Once we were inside the massive walls and had dismounted, Cromwell spoke with the Tower constable, Master Kingston, tall and somber, then led the way with me following, next John and the constable. I was grateful John took my elbow, because my legs shook, and not from the long ride. We climbed to the second story, then traversed a maze of corridors, silent, dusty and dim with closed draperies and cloth-shrouded furniture. Yes, these were the very chambers where we had so happily awaited the parade into London and Anne’s coronation.
“Have her women been sent out?” Cromwell asked the guard at a door.
“Yes, my lord,” he said, and stepped aside to open it, his eyes wary as they went over us. So, I thought, Cromwell was a familiar visitor here, and the guards knew how to address him correctly. The king had named Cromwell Vicar General so that he could carry out punishments for those who had refused to sign the Oath of Allegiance; he had also been named to the important post of Lord Privy Seal, and it was whispered he would soon be elevated to the peerage.
I still had my hood up over my head, but cast it back when we stepped inside what looked to be an empty chamber. It appeared familiar with its paneled walls and stone hearth, though there was no fire and a certain chill clung to the slightly stale air. A canopied bed stood in one corner. There was even a view toward the Thames out the narrow window. Had she gazed outside much onto that watery gray road to freedom? Yes, no doubt, for she emerged from the shadows there.
“Thank you, Cromwell,” she said, omitting his proper address and coming forward to pull me toward her with both hands holding mine. Her skin was cold and clammy. She nodded to John over my shoulder, then bent her head toward me. “Kat, I—”
Cromwell interrupted, “We have a bargain, Your Grace, and a bargain has two sides, two parts.”
She turned her head to look at him. I was amazed she seemed so in control. “I told you,” she said, “I will speak my own careful version of your words. Give the speech to me, then.” She snatched a paper from his hand and turned back to me. “John,” she said, “do you have the ring for her?”
“I do, Your Grace.”
For one tottering, insane moment, I thought—I wished—that for some strange reason she had brought John and me here for a troth-plight or even a marriage. John stepped forward and handed her a small blue satin box, which she opened eagerly. It held a locket ring, for she opened the hinged ruby top of it and I saw inside, painted in miniature, a double portrait. The exterior of the ring was crafted with ivory, gems and beaten gold. When she held it up to the wan window light, I saw one painted head-and-shoulders miniature was of the little Elizabeth, the other facing portrait a charming one of Anne herself. A tear fell on the painting of her daughter, but she shook it off.
Cromwell crowded close to look at it, but Anne snapped it shut. “It is lovely,” she told John, shouldering Cromwell out. “Katherine Champernowne,” she said, putting it on the ring finger of my right hand, “I give you this in trust for my daughter. For her, when she is older, so she won’t lose it—so she understands and so she can know that I loved her. Cromwell, you swear to me again that Kat will be sent wherever Elizabeth goes, at least until her majority—you vowed it.”
“I did, Your Grace.”
“And since I cannot see my girl”—I could not help but think that she had kept Queen Catherine from her daughter—“you will have Kat and that ring there at the end, Cromwell.”
“It is part of our bargain.”
Shivers shot through me. I was honored but horrified. Did she mean I was to be present if she was executed? And wearing this ring? I wanted to ask, but Anne was talking again. “I still intend to proclaim my innocence at the trial, however trumped-up the charges are. You understand that, Cromwell? I am innocent and will say so.”
“Your speech there is your concern—within reason.”
“Reason!” she said with a bitter laugh. “Begone now, before I lose control. I must not—cannot—lose control.”
I thought sadly that her entire life had now gone from her control. At the last moment, when I squeezed her hand and started to turn away, she reached out, pulled me to her and hugged me hard. “For my precious, bright girl over the years, Kat,” she whispered, and kissed my cheek.
“Yes, Your Majesty. I vow I will be a good teacher and friend to her always.”
Cromwell hustled us out. I heard a sharp sniff before the door closed behind us and wondered if Anne would collapse in tears.
“So that speech you gave her is not for her trial, my lord?” John asked as we remounted in the courtyard.
Even the sharp cry of a gull from the river could not cloak Cromwell’s muttered words. “No. For the scaffold.”
After what I considered to be a sham of a trial [I heard later that during it, one of her judges, her first love, Henry Percy, now Duke of Northumberland, fainted and had to be carried out], Anne was convicted of all charges. The men with whom she was accused were sentenced to die on Tower Hill outside the walls and Anne on Tower Green within. To avoid both possible protests and gawkers, Cromwell kept the day and timing of her death vague, but because of his bargain with Anne, I was ordered to attend. How often I prayed no one would ever tell Elizabeth that I had been present to see her mother die.
John was a great comfort and strength to me. I was grateful Cromwell let him accompany me to the Tower that May 19. We rode on one of the barges from Whitehall, which held those who were to witness the queen’s beheading, for the king had shown her a sort of mercy at the end. Though he could have had her burned to death for adultery and treason, he had commuted that to beheading—the first woman ever to face that. And when she requested a French swordsman instead of an ax man, he had allowed that too.
I knew that Cromwell would be there, of course, and we had heard some civic dignitaries as well as Lord Chancellor Audley, the Duke of Suffolk, would be in attendance as well as the Duke of Richmond, the king’s illegitimate son by his former mistress Bessie Blount.
None of the queen’s remaining
family was allowed, not her parents nor her sister Mary, who had been the king’s mistress before he knew Anne. Mary Boleyn, now Mary Stafford, was now safely ensconced in the countryside with a husband she had dared to choose for herself. I heaved a huge sigh at the mere thought of that. How I wished that I were so fortunate, away from the cruel court with a husband I loved, though I would be loath to leave Elizabeth.
We had been told, too, that today the king himself was on the other side of the city, waiting to hear the Tower cannons boom to tell him he was free—free to become betrothed to Jane Seymour the very next day. The Seymours at least showed the good taste not to attend and gloat, but they were all busy playing broker between Henry and his next queen.
I felt the spring sun and soft river breeze as we went into the Tower through the water gate, but it seemed dark and airless within the walls. We waited a long time; it was nearly noon. I recalled a poem by Anne that was being surreptitiously circulated at court, smuggled out of the Tower by someone unnamed. I hoped that vile Cromwell would not think me the messenger, if he heard it. Some of the lines were “Defiled is my name, full sore, through cruel spite and false report . . . O Death, rock me asleep, Bring me to quiet rest . . . I prayed desperately that day that Anne would not lose control as she had feared when I saw her last.
And she did not. She managed to parrot the speech Cromwell had given her in their bargain that day John and I went to the Tower. I dared, for we stood in the last row, to hold up my hand that wore the portrait ring and saw her nod at me in recognition and thanks. Poor Elizabeth, like her half sister before her, had now been declared a bastard, so Anne took that to her grave too. That dreadful day, I vowed silently to serve Elizabeth well, to protect her as best I could from such tyrannical rule by men. At least Anne Boleyn was going to a better place.
CHAPTER THE NINTH