The Last Wífe of Henry VIII

by Carolly Erickson

  “Your majesty,” I said in the most tender tone I could manage, “I ask your humble pardon for any wrongs I may have done you. I meant nothing but your good, and England’s. If I am in error teach me the truth. But I beg you to spare my laundress, and show her mercy. She is of the greatest help to me. She is reformed, I swear it. Many years ago she lived a thoughtless, wanton life, but no longer. I will vouch for her sinlessness. The bishop knows this well, for I have told him.”

  “Is this true?”

  Bishop Gardiner shrugged. “Both are at fault. Each vouches for the other.”

  I felt Henry’s back stiffen at the accusation aimed at me. “Until I received your letters telling me how she was conducting herself as regent, and warning me that she was attempting to take power for herself, I never thought ill of my Cat. She has always been blameless. She has never been self-seeking. Look at her, kneeling there like a penitent child! Does this look like the posture of a woman who wants to take power?”

  “Often those we trust most are devious. Remember your last wife, Catherine Howard. Remember Mistress Boleyn!”

  Henry rose to his feet, his anger crackling once again.

  “Get out! Get out! How dare you mention those hateful names! How dare you compare those women to my faithful Cat!”

  My head was bowed, and I could not observe what was going on in the room, but I heard the rapid shuffling of feet and surmised that the bishop was leaving. My heart was pounding. Henry was acting erratically, first suspecting me and trusting Bishop Gardiner’s warnings, now defending me and turning on the bishop in fury. I thought, yet again, what a very dangerous man he was.

  I heard the doors click open, and then the noise of the shuffling feet ceased. The bishop had paused in the doorway.

  “Just remember, sire, that I have observed sin in the queen’s apartments. I have prayed about it, and the Lord is leading me to speak out against it, lest the punishment of barrenness fall upon this queen as it did upon the last one.”

  Barrenness! The word fell with chill force upon us, as startling and as frightening as the king’s sudden appearance in our midst. Bishop Gardiner had implanted a fearsome new suspicion in the king’s mind: that the reason I had not given him a son was that I was sinful.

  From now on, I sensed, Henry’s superstition and fear of divine punishment would work with even greater effect on his unsettled mind, a worm of doubt boring deeply into his every thought. And I knew, in my heart, that as long as Henry lived, I would never again know peace.

  38

  THEY CAME FOR ANNE ONE NIGHT IN THE DARK HOURS JUST AFTER midnight, twelve armed guardsmen and a pitiless jailer who entered the wing of the palace where my servants slept and made their way to the small chamber under the stairs where Anne had her modest room. Her children were not with her, fortunately. They stayed in the country, and she visited them when she could. She was alone in her room when the men came for her, bursting in and waking her, seizing her roughly and binding her hands and forcing her out into the night to take her to the dungeon.

  I awoke to the sound of cries of protest and doors opening and shutting and commotion in the corridor. My first thought was, has the king died? He was away at Romford on a hunting trip, staying at a manor house two days’ ride from the palace. Had he fallen from his horse, and had a messenger come to give me the dire news? Or was Edward ill? He had been sickly all winter. Was he having trouble breathing again, and did he need my help?

  Hurriedly I threw a cloak over my nightdress and went out into the corridor, where my sister and some of my other maids and ladies-in-waiting had gathered.

  “They have taken away that woman who calls herself your laundress,” Nan said. “She is seized for heresy. And about time too.”

  Ignoring Nan’s scornful remark I rushed along the passage and down two flights of stairs to the old section of the palace near the scullery where Anne’s room was. The door was wide open. No one was inside.

  “Oh, your highness,” cried a young maid from the kitchen nearby, her face tearstained, “they’ve taken her away. She tried to fight them but they were too strong for her. Oh, how she screamed! She’s so brave. And now we’ll never see her again.”

  “Hush! The king won’t let anything happen to her. I promise. Say your prayers.”

  I rushed down the long cold halls toward the exit to the inner courtyard. But I was too late. A party of horsemen was going out the far gate, at a gallop. I had no doubt that Anne was with them.

  I knew where they were taking her. Bishop Gardiner’s London residence had a dungeon deep below ground where suspected heretics were interrogated and tortured. For years I had heard stories of men taken there—strong men—reduced to gibbering wretches by the terrible pain of the cruel mechanical devices that rent their flesh and drove them out of their minds with fear.

  I returned to my own apartments, called for my chamber women and dressed quickly in a simple gray gown and black cloak. Taking my basket of medicines I went out into the night—sending away my usual escort—and told the driver of the waiting coach to take me at once to the episcopal palace.

  It was dawn when I arrived.

  “Open these gates in the king’s name,” I said to the liveried gatekeepers who stood barring the entrance.

  “Who asks?”

  “Catherine the queen.”

  The sleepy gatekeeper nearest me blinked and stared at me. I did not look like a queen, modestly dressed as I was and without an escort of soldiers in the red royal livery. I had arrived in a coach, however, and that was evidence enough that I was a woman of rank.

  After a delay they admitted me. I insisted upon being taken to the dungeon but was shown into a salon draped with gold curtains bearing Bishop Gardiner’s escutcheon.

  I was not kept waiting long. An elderly priest came in.

  “Your highness,” he said in an oily voice and with a bow, “you honor us with your presence in this house.”

  “Take me to Anne Daintry at once.”

  “To whom, your highness?”

  “You know perfectly well. To the servant from my household who was taken from the palace an hour or two ago.”

  The priest spread his hands. “But your highness, I have no idea who that is. You must be mistaken.”

  “Where is Bishop Gardiner?”

  “I believe he is detained on the king’s business.”

  “Tell him the queen requires his presence here immediately.”

  “I will do my best, your highness, but I’m not certain I can find him. He may be at his prayers, or he may be breaking his fast—”

  “Where is his oratory? We will go together.”

  With a grimace the priest led me to a small dark chapel, empty of worshipers, and then to a grand salon where, at the head of a long table of polished wood, the bishop sat eating. When he saw me come in he was so startled that he practically jumped from his bench.

  “Casparo! What are you thinking! What is she doing here?”

  “I have come for Anne Daintry.”

  “For whom?”

  “Don’t pretend that she isn’t here. Your men came for her at the palace last night.”

  “Whether this woman is here or not is a matter of church law and church jurisdiction. It does not concern you.”

  “I will decide what does and does not concern me, especially in the king’s absence.”

  “I am acting on the king’s orders.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Casparo, show her the order.”

  The oily priest went out and, after a few moments, came back into the grand room with a document, which he handed to me with a fawning smile. It was signed by Chancellor Wriothesley and stamped with the king’s seal. It authorized the arrest of Anne Daintry on a charge of heresy.

  As I read it, my heart was in my throat. Had the king truly done this without telling me? Or was it a plot by Gardiner and Wriothesley, using the royal seal but in fact acting on their own?

  “I am going to
confirm this by sending a messenger to the king.”

  “As you wish,” Gardiner said, and went on with his breakfast.

  “For now, I demand to be taken to see Anne.”

  “She is not here.”

  “Where is she then?”

  “She has been taken to a place of safety.”

  “A dungeon, you mean.”

  The bishop said nothing, but wiped his mouth on a linen napkin edged in gold.

  I remembered the strength I had summoned to preside at council meetings, and drew myself up to my full height. In my most commanding voice I said, “If you do not take me to Anne Daintry immediately, I will send for my own guardsmen and have your lackey here arrested for offending my royal person.”

  It was an empty threat, for I had no guardsmen outside and it would have taken me at least an hour to send to the palace for armed men. But the bishop capitulated. With a look of extreme annoyance he threw down his napkin and got to his feet.

  “Send for my coach.” Rudely he walked past me without any further acknowledgment and turned his back on me as he left the room. Before long he returned, dressed for travel and wearing long black boots.

  “Bring her,” he said to the priest he had called Casparo. Together we made our way to the courtyard and entered the bishop’s spacious, beautifully painted and gilded coach with the carved red episcopal hat at its apex. Six matching grays pulled the coach, and two postilions rode out ahead of it.

  By now morning had broken and dull sunshine illumined the road we were traveling. Neither the bishop nor his oily acolyte spoke during our journey, not even to answer me when I asked how far we had to go. I realized, too late to take any action, that if he wanted to, Bishop Gardiner could confine me in some obscure dungeon along with Anne, and leave both of us to die there. No one would know where we were. We would never be found, not even after our bodies had decayed. No doubt our lifeless bodies would be thrown into the river secretly at night, along with the household slops.

  I tried to keep such thoughts from my mind as we went on, traveling west as I could tell from the position of the sun. Henry, in his hunting lodge, was away to the east of the capital. With every mile I was going further away from him. Further away from any potential help. Yet I had to do what I could for Anne, I had no doubt she was in grave danger, and I had to go to her, to rescue her, if I could.

  Eventually the coach pulled into a courtyard and we alighted. I could tell at a glance that the building we entered had once been a monastery. It had the look of a cloister, a haven from the world. Yet it appeared neglected and unoccupied, and there were few servants in the courtyard—a sure sign that no one of importance had been living in the main house or adjacent buildings for some time. There were broken windows and crumbling masonry, untrimmed bushes and hedges, paving stones missing and a pond covered in green scum.

  I followed the bishop and the priest in through the high carved doors and along dusty corridors that led to several flights of stone steps. Lanterns were lit and we made our way in semi-darkness. I stumbled, and cried out, but no one helped me.

  The deeper we went the more cold, frightened and alone I felt. The fearsome thoughts that had come to me in the coach now rose again in my mind. What if I was being led to my own imprisonment? What if I never saw daylight again?

  If I did come to harm, would Tom ever find me? Would he liberate me? Or if he did find me, would it be too late?

  I became aware of a powerful smell that grew stronger the deeper I descended, until it made me cough. My eyes watered. I was thirsty. And very cold.

  I had smelled the strong and terrible odor before, of that I was certain. But where? Now Bishop Gardiner and the priest were coughing as well, and I saw both men produce scented pomanders and hold them to their noses. The scents of cinnamon and rose leaves came to me, faint odors within the all-encompassing stench.

  With a shock I remembered where and when I had encountered that smell before. In the slaughterhouse at Gainesborough Hall, in the fall when the pigs were driven in to be killed and their flesh salted in brine for the winter.

  It was the stench of blood. Of pain. Of death.

  39

  HERE IS YOUR LAUNDRESS,” BISHOP GARDINER SAID IRRITABLY AS A heavy door was unlocked and thrown open. A lantern was hung from a peg protruding from the wall and the door was slammed shut and the lock refastened.

  The tiny room was freezing cold. I rubbed my arms, my teeth were chattering. By the meager flickering light of the lantern I could see walls of crudely cut uneven stone, damp with slime, a pile of filthy straw and, in the far corner, a human form.

  “Anne?”

  She screamed in fear, blinking against the light, one hand in front of her face.

  “Anne, it’s Cat. It’s only Cat.”

  “Water?” she asked, her voice faint. “Have you brought me water?”

  “No, dear. But I’ll get it for you.”

  I pounded on the thick door. “Jailer! Come here!”

  I waited. There was no response. I called out again. My God, I thought, are they going to leave me here, just as I feared?

  My pounding brought a chorus of feeble cries from other unseen wretches, confined like Anne.

  “Help! Help!” came the pitiful voices. “For the love of God, help!”

  Jesus have mercy on them, I prayed silently.

  “It’s no good,” Anne said. “I’ve pounded on that door till my fists were bloody. No one ever comes.”

  “We must get you out of here.” I went closer and knelt down beside Anne, and saw that she was covered in bruises. Her face, her neck and bare arms were a mass of blue and yellow marks and weals.

  “What have they done to you?”

  “I am condemned. I am condemned as a heretic.” She swallowed. “They said that I denied that Jesus is present in the bread and the wine. That I am guilty of reading heretical books. Books you gave me, Cat.”

  She raised her eyes to my face. She did not have to say any more.

  “Never mind that. It is only a wicked plot. The king will see through it. He is not easily deceived. He will free you and punish your captors.”

  I tried to sound confident but my cold hands shook as I uncovered my basket of medicines and, taking out a pot of salve, began spreading it on the worst of Anne’s bruises and sores.

  “Where is the king? Why have you come alone?”

  “He is hunting in the country. But he will return shortly. In a few days at most.”

  Anne’s head drooped. “They will never let me go.”

  “Of course they will. They must.”

  “I am condemned,” she whispered. “And you are condemned with me.”

  “What?”

  She nodded, swallowing again in a vain effort to assuage her severe thirst.

  “They tried to make me tell them things about you.”

  “What things?”

  “That you do not believe in purgatory.”

  “It’s true, I don’t.”

  “That you read heretical books.”

  “I read the writings of the reformers, yes. As the king well knows. He reads them too, and we discuss them.”

  “They know about you and Tom Seymour.”

  My stomach heaved and my mind reeled.

  “They don’t. They couldn’t.”

  Anne swallowed. “They said to me, you will tell us what you know of the queen. Of her disloyalty to the king.”

  Now it was my turn to swallow. My mouth was suddenly dry. “What did you say?”

  “I can’t remember. They were beating me so hard I think I fainted.”

  I tried to think. If Anne had been forced into telling the truth about me and Tom, would I be allowed in to her cell? Wouldn’t I be manacled and put into a cell of my own?

  Quietly, I moved toward the door and stood with my ear to the scratched and scarred old wood. I thought I could hear breathing on the other side. They were listening to us talk. They hoped we would say something that would betray me.r />
  Suddenly I pounded as hard as I could on the door once again and was gratified to hear someone cry out in surprise.

  “Jailer! I demand to see the jailer!”

  I heard footsteps retreating outside. Presently the footsteps came closer. Several pairs of footsteps.

  A key was put into the lock and the door was flung open. Chancellor Wriothesley stood there, looking much as he had at the council table when I was regent. Grave, unsmiling, forceful even in his silence.

  “I demand food and water for the prisoner. At once.”

  Wriothesley turned to the servant who stood behind him. “See to it.”

  “And I demand that the prisoner be released, once she has slaked her thirst and satisfied her hunger.”

  “Your highness may leave at any time. The prisoner is in the hands of the Heresy Commission. She has been examined and found guilty. She is condemned.”

  “And if the king orders otherwise?”

  “When I see an order from the king, I will obey it.”

  “Take me to the king at once.”

  “Your highness may go anywhere you like, though I cannot spare any men to escort you just now. But if you leave, you will not be allowed to return. Condemned heretics are not allowed visitors, lest they infect them with their dangerous beliefs.”

  I opened my mouth to retort but before I could get my words out Wriothesley interrupted me.

  “And those who attempt to interfere with the just punishment of heretics are subject to the condemnation of the court.”

  The threat hung in the air between us like a malignant vapor. In the silence I heard the drip, drip, drip of rank water running down the walls of Anne’s cell. I knew that I ought to leave, yet I couldn’t bring myself to abandon Anne. The minute I leave, I told myself, they will do their worst.

  A servant brought in a small pitcher of water and a stale-looking loaf of bread. Anne drank the water greedily and noisily. Wriothesley watched her, his face impassive, then took his leave. Once again I heard the heavy door shut and lock, and my heart sank. Was I making a terrible mistake? Ought I to have left?