by Byrd, Sandra
Anne’s face came to life. “Yes! Go fetch Elizabeth.” She was already in her quarters, having been brought from Hatfield for the celebration. I went to the princess’s chambers and brought her back to her mother, singing little songs to her along the way. Anne clung to the toddler when she arrived and Elizabeth entwined her little fingers in her mother’s hair. Anne kissed Elizabeth’s pretty pink cheeks a dozen times or more and cooed to her in French, and her daughter responded with uninhibited joy and love. Shortly thereafter, Anne sent for Elizabeth’s finest outfit, her carefully fitted hat, silk hose, and shoes.
“Where we go, maman?” Elizabeth asked prettily.
“To see Papa,” Anne replied. I tried to lighten the mood by teasing Anne that she was making Elizabeth a slave to fashion as she was herself, but she was now in no mood for joking. Already, I suspect, she knew what the stakes were and that she must use every tool at her disposal to save her life.
She scooped Elizabeth up and brought her outside of Greenwich proper, expecting the king to ride in from a hunt. When he did, he drew his horse near to them but did not dismount. I watched from the window as Anne pleaded with him, held their daughter to him, curtseyed to him, and cried. It seemed for naught. He slapped his horse’s flank with his gloves and headed back to the stable. Sir Nicolas Carewe, Anne’s traitorous cousin, had just been given the Order of the Garter promised to the now-overlooked George Boleyn. There were no surer sign for the courtiers who watched, unseen, from every window, that the king’s affections for Anne and her daughter had passed.
In my chambers, I cried for both of them, forsaken and forlorn on the castle green.
The next day, May Day, found the king in an unusually jovial mood. He had all of his favorites around him, both men and women. Anne’s brother was there, of course, as was Sir Henry Norris, who had well served the king for nigh on two decades. Afore that they had been brought up together. When Sir Norris’s charger stumbled, Henry graciously offered him the use of his own. Nicolas Carewe was there, and he’d brought along Jane Seymour.
Anne was regal in the queen’s box but she was thinner than ever and her dresses, though I’d had a care to have them taken in, still hung a bit about her. Her eyes, lovely jewels of black like the deep obsidian brought back from the Holy Land, still shone.
Lord, have a care for my friend through this treacherous passage.
After the match, Henry uncharacteristically asked six men to join him on a ride back to Whitehall. He had no intention of returning to Greenwich Palace, where we would. Henry Norris and George Boleyn were two of the six. The king slipped away without a word to Anne.
By midnight word had raced back to Greenwich. Lord Zouche had told his wife, Nan, what had transpired, and she ran to the queen’s chambers to wake and to tell us. Jane Rochford and Madge Shelton had been notably absent from the ladies since the afternoon.
“You have been accused of adultery with Mark Smeaton, Your Grace,” Nan told Anne. Anne sat on her bed.
“Smeaton? That whelp of a lute player? Surely Henry cannot believe—”
Nan held up her hand and then took Anne in her arms. “Not only Smeaton, lady, but Henry Norris. It seems that your cousin Madge Shelton had run to Carewe with the details of your disagreement of a few weeks back, claiming that it had been a lover’s spat centered about a hope for the king’s death.”
“And Henry believed her,” Anne said, her voice dull. “Where is Norris?”
“To be conducted to the Tower upon the morning tide, madam.” Lady Zouche indicated that I should sit on the other side of Anne. “The worst, my lady, is that they have accused you of adultery and incest with your brother.”
“George?” Anne stood up. “They have accused me of carnal knowledge of my brother, George? What evil fool brings this charge that it may even be considered?”
“His wife, Jane Rochford,” Nan whispered. Anne stood, turned her back to us, and then vomited on the floor.
TWENTY-FOUR
Year of Our Lord 1536
Greenwich Palace
The next morning guards were sent to take Anne to be interrogated before the council at Greenwich. I dressed her quickly in a gown that was both somber and regal and pulled her hair under one of her famous French hoods.
“I hear my uncle Norfolk will be on council,” she said. “Mayhap he will bring some reason to the questions. ’Tis not so long ago he were an official at my coronation and the birth of Elizabeth.”
“Yes, Your Majesty, we may pray ’tis so,” I said, but held little hope in the constancy of Norfolk’s affections.
“Fitzwilliam will be there too,” Nan Zouche said. “Have a care. Have a care.” Fitzwilliam had been an especial friend to Wolsey and had always held Anne responsible for his death. For which among us could serve a master we believed to order the slaughter of innocents? No, no, ’twas far better to scapegoat someone to the side so that we might continue to shut our eyes and serve in peace.
With the hour news came back to us that while Anne had not been condemned, yet she would be taken by boat to the Tower. I quickly packed several of her gowns, and her prayer books, Bible, and letter-writing materials. Her hair combs. I left the royal jewels in her box but took her personal items out, some strings of pearls and a dual locket ring, afore racing down to my own rooms.
“Edithe!” I handed the jewels over to her. “Quickly. I want you to leave Greenwich and go to Hever. Find Roger and get him, and your son still at home, and leave Hever. Go to My Lord Asquith’s home, however you may get there. I do not know what will happen at Hever but you need to find safe employment and ’twill not be here nor there.”
I handed the bundle to her. “Do not open this, stash it in your saddle bag, and be gone. Give it to Will when you reach him. He will find service for you in his household, with his lady, or in his family. Go! Now!”
“What has happened to the queen, my lady? Where is Anne?” she asked me, wringing her red hands.
“She is to be taken to the Tower.”
“Oh no. No!” Edithe cried. “And you, mistress. Where will you go?”
“I shall stay here until I am allowed to join the queen. My place is to be with my friend and offer her whatever comfort and love I may.”
“No, ma’am, please. You must to your sister’s house. Or Allington. Edmund will take you, given the circumstances.”
“Go,” I said to her firmly. I held her to me, hugged her one last time, and left for Anne’s rooms.
She was there when I arrived. “It went poorly. My uncle Norfolk was no help at all. He simply said ‘tut tut’ and shook his finger at me. In a haste to return to his rooms and dally with his mistress, I suppose.”
“We shall not need his help,” I said defiantly. “There are surely others.”
“You’re not to come with me, Meg,” she said. “Lady Kingston, the wife of the lieutenant of the Tower, will be in charge of the four ladies I may take with me. Mrs. Stonor, the mother of the maid who has ‘witnessed’ much of my illicit goings-on, will come. My aunt Lady Boleyn, favorite of Katherine of Aragon, is come to twist the sword. As is Jane Rochford.”
“Jane?”
“I suspect to keep me from talking,” Anne said. Her eyes were red and rimmed but she’d regained her dignity and I would not do or say anything to unsettle it. “Thank you for packing my things, dearest. And, and should I not see you again….”
I ran to her and held her tightly in my arms. “I shall follow anon. I shall find a way to get to you. I will not leave you in any manner. I will be there shortly. Depend upon it.”
She nodded and said no more, nor did I. We both needed to believe that it would happen.
That night word filtered back to Greenwich that Henry, still at York Place, alternated wandering about the palace bemoaning his bad luck to all who would hear with festive, flirtatious merriment with Jane Seymour. He’d taken to carrying a small book in which he had written down all of the ways Anne had tricked and bewitched him, pressing it upon all
who would read it and agree. His capacity at table was surpassed only by his appetite for self-pity. His maudlin moaning drew silent disgust from all listeners, even those who wished to see his daughter Mary reinstated in the succession. If he’d stuck simply with Anne’s perhaps having had one lover, some may have believed him. But when he claimed that she had had more than one hundred secret lovers in three years, including her brother, even her enemies knew to disbelieve him.
That night, afore his baseborn son the Duke of Richmond went to sleep, he stopped by his father’s chambers. Word came that Henry kissed his son violently on each cheek and told him, weeping, “You and your sister Mary owe God a great debt for having escaped the hands of that cursed and poisoning whore who had planned to poison you both.” One can only imagine what Richmond, whose wife, Mary Fitzroy, was an especial favorite of Anne, thought of this rant.
Greenwich was in a silent panic. No one knew whether to go, to stay, who would be next, or what was happening at the Tower. I moved in with my sister, Alice, and shared her lady maid, who, because of her long affiliation with the Rogers family, would not be tainted by us Wyatts. It was a good thing Alice and I were together because on May 8 our brother Thomas was conducted to the Tower under suspicion of adultery with Anne.
I allowed myself the indulgence of letting my mind wander for a moment to consider what life would have been like had Anne married Thomas and I married Will. I ached with the wishing of it and turned my thoughts away.
“I had not a chance to bid Thomas good-bye!” I wailed in her chambers. This time I let myself cry and Alice did too. Even Edmund, mayhap with an eye to our family name if not for fraternal devotion, tried to get Cromwell to speak on Thomas’s behalf. It was no use. The king’s bloodlust had been stirred beyond restraint, and, I fear, he viewed this as a chance to rid himself of all who may have irritated him for any reason at all.
My father had been told of Thomas’s arrest and aroused himself from stupor long enough to say, “If he be a true man, as I trust he is, his truth will him deliver.” Then he fell asleep. Edmund said he would prevail upon Father to write a letter on Thomas’s behalf to the king.
I sat down one night, after Alice had gone to bed, and prayed. Lord Jesus, please let me go to Anne. Her trial, if there even be one, will happen quickly. She needs comfort and love and that means me. And surely, Lord, of all the bishops she has placed on Your behalf in England, one could be spared to soothe and console her?
A picture came to mind. Lambeth Palace. I would speak, if I could, to Archbishop Cranmer.
I confess it was not easy to find Cranmer, but now that I had no duties to Anne I was free to make my way. I took my steed and rode to Lambeth Palace. I’m sure I looked a sight when I arrived, and his servants were loath to let me in.
“Wait—’tis Lady Blackston,” one of them pointed out. I was glad to be recognized and nodded as I shook off my hood. They let me in and I pleaded for a moment with Cranmer.
When I was ushered into his chamber he greeted me kindly but coolly. None of us knew whom to trust and whom to keep at arm’s length.
“Archbishop,” I said, “thank you for seeing me.”
“Gladly, my lady,” he said. “I know you are the aunt of John Rogers, devoted to the cause. And, of course, great friend to the queen. I am, even now, writing to the king on her behalf.”
I could barely stop the sobs from coming forth. “So you will champion her, then?” I asked.
I saw the look on his face and knew that he would not go as far as she needed him to, and my voice grew pointed. “She needs your assistance, sir, as she readily offered it to you in placing you to this position. Have you no shame or sense of honor?”
“I do what I can, my lady. I offer the king a letter in which I explain that I have never had a better opinion of a woman than I did in her, which makes me think that she should not be culpable. But,” he added to me, “of course His Highness would not have gone so far except she surely had been culpable.”
“You cannot think that!” I said. “You know that is untrue.”
He flinched. He was a man conflicted in the job he never wanted; I suspected he would like nothing more than to retreat to a small country home with his secret wife. But it was not to be.
“None of us chose to be here but, Bishop Cranmer, as we find ourselves in this time and in this place, you must play the man and do your part.”
“You shall not scold me, madam,” he said. “I tell the king, herein”—he tapped the letter—“that I love her not a little, for the love which I judge her to bear toward God and His gospel. But if she be culpable of these things, then no one should but hate her because of the way she has mistreated the gospel.”
“I understand now. You are going to allow Anne to take a fall to save the reform.” He did not deny it. “How does your letter finish, sir?”
He looked down upon it. “I tell him that I trust His Grace will bear no less entire favor to the gospel because he was not led to it by affection to her but by zeal unto the truth.”
“If there is one thing made plain, Archbishop, in this entire matter, it is not that His Majesty has zeal unto the truth.”
He looked at me, stricken, as I said that, realizing that by my saying it and his hearing it we could both be judged guilty of treason. “Is there anything further I can do for you, madam?”
“Yes.” I drew my cloak about my riding habit. “You can convince Master Cromwell to replace Anne’s ladies with friends who love her and will bring her care and comfort in her last days. ’Tis the least you can do. Find a way to get me to the Tower.”
He nodded. I expected that he would not act upon it. But he did.
Within days the council began to break up Anne’s household. It would be disbanded by the thirteenth of May. Anne had not yet had her trial. Would she have one at all? The fact that her household was being broken up indicated that the king had already concluded that she would not be coming back to court. The courtiers who had gained so much by her favor now fled and, like Saint Peter, denied in every manner possible knowledge of her at all.
The king, for his part, made several romantic rendezvous to Beddington, wherein Mistress Seymour lodged with Sir Nicolas Carewe, chief perpetrator of the case against Anne. Even the fishwives of London, we’d heard, the same stout matrons who had hurled dung and insults at her carriage three years past, now stood by her in righteous indignation. The king had not a care for their, or anyone else’s, opinion of the matter.
“My lady,” said a messenger come from Cromwell’s. I had been packing my things, supposing that Edmund would, compelled by duty or at least not wanting to shame the Wyatt name, take me in for a short while if I could not lodge with Alice for a spell.
“Yes?” I said.
“’Tis orders.” He handed a scroll to me. “You, your sister, and Lady Zouche are commanded to the Tower. These men”—he indicated four burly guards standing behind him—“are to escort you on the tide.”
“Do we go as…. prisoners?” I swallowed back my fear.
“You go first to serve the queen,” he said tautly. “After that, I know not.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Year of Our Lord 1536
The Tower of London
There are many ways to arrive at the Tower of London, though there are few ways out. Kings and queens ride in before a coronation, retinue trailing like a train of ermine. Prisoners, however, arrive on foot, shoved through one cavernous gate or another by the wardens, who live, as all do, at the mercy of a merciless king. Some unfortunate few are delivered to the Tower by water.
The Thames lapped against our boat as it stopped to allow for the entry gate to be raised. The metal teeth lifted high enough for the oarsmen to row us into the Tower’s maw, called Traitor’s Gate. This beast never ate its fill and, like all beasts of prey, ate only flesh. It brought to mind the words of King David: My soul is among lions: I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arr
ows, and their tongue a sharp sword.
I glanced up as Lady Zouche caught a sob in her handkerchief. I then looked to my older sister, Alice, for comfort. She held my gaze with a somber shake of her head. Our falsely accused brother was even now waiting, being digested in the belly within. For the first time Alice had no comfort to offer me, no tonic of hope.
Momentarily we bumped up against the stone stairways leading out of the water and were commanded to quickly disembark.
I had half expected Henry to quarter her in some kind of dungeon, but no, Sir William Kingston informed us upon our arrival that Anne was staying at the Queen’s Lodging, which had been refurbished to her tastes just three years past, in advance of her coronation. We walked up the green and to the doors that led to her apartments. Four armed burly guards stood in front of the door. When we arrived, they parted like the Red Sea and let us through.
I opened the door and went in first. Her receiving room was simpler than when we were last there: one bed and several pallets, now pushed up against the wall. A study desk. Cold stone walls—no tapestries to warm nor cheer had been sent. A pitcher of water sat on a basin. There was a privy pot squatting under her bed. Then I saw Anne, in the corner of the receiving room, sitting on her bed, her hair pulled back but not done, her shoulders back, not wilting in defeat. Her aunt, Lady Norfolk, gossiped in a corner with Jane Rochford. Clearly neither was there to serve.
“We’ve come, darling,” I said, rushing to her bed and taking her into my arms. She fell into them for a moment, then regained her composure.
“I’m so glad you’ve arrived,” she said. Her voice and her hands tremored slightly. “The ladies here will want a break from their strenuous service, for certes.” At that she began to laugh, not the low, husky laugh I was accustomed to hearing from her but one with the high pitch of hysteria hiding just behind the jollity. “If you’re allowed to me then it must be done and over with. What of the king’s council? Why have they not questioned me to see if there needs be a trial?”