by G Lawrence
When it was done, I lay on the bed with my face turned to the wall. Hangings of crimson cloth of gold surrounded me. The colour made me feel sick. One hundred and eighty badges bearing Henry’s arms and mine watched me. Two great arms of the King and Queen were joined in a garland and topped with an Imperial crown. Fringes of Venice gold and silver twinkled in the candlelight. I was surrounded by symbols of our unity, but I knew I was utterly alone.
Silence fell.
I knew silence now. We were old companions. Silence was within me and without. It surrounded me, suffocating my heart. Everything was dead… my children, my hope, my love. I was no more of the living, but of the dead.
Numbly, I went to the table and looked down at the unmoving form. I swayed, weak upon my unsure feet. My baby was tiny, no bigger than the span of my hand. His head was impossibly large. His skin was smooth, but a horrific blue-grey colour; the skin of death. His hands and feet were formed, and there was just enough evidence to tell that my child would have been a son.
My son who had died as he felt my heart expire.
I wanted to take him in my arms, to hold him close and to tell him I was sorry. Sorry for all the pain and fear he must have experienced through me. Sorry for the life I had promised that he would never have. Sorry for his death, and sorry for not saving him. But they took me away. Away to stare at the wall. They bundled my son into blankets and took him away too.
The broken one became strong. She lusted to be set free. The shell of Anne Boleyn encased her, just, but my control over the darkness within was about to be tested.
Henry came to me later, limping on one leg. He stood over me in silence as I lay curled up, like a baby, weeping bitter tears. “I see that God will not give me male children,” he said. “When you are up I will speak with you.”
“God took our child,” I whispered, turning to him.
Henry shrank from my accusing glare. “You were not careful enough,” he said.
“It was your fall!” I cried out. “It was my fear that you were dead and the way my uncle told me.” I paused, seeing his face darken. “And it was my love for you,” I whispered. “My heart died to see you loved others.”
Henry looked away.
“Our child died for your sin,” I said, half-rising in bed and pointing a shaking finger at him. “Your sin, Henry.”
“I have committed no sin.”
“You have sinned against me and all you swore to me,” I said, my voice harsh. “You murdered our child, for how could my heart feed him when it died within me to see you in the arms of another?”
“You are without sense,” he said, his cheeks flaming. “I will see you when you are well.”
“Your sin,” I said again, mad with grief. “Your sin killed our boy.”
“You will get no more boys from me,” he said and without another word, he left.
I listened to the sound of him thumping along the corridor, and the cane he carried pounding along with his steps. It sounded like two hearts beating in unison. Like the two hearts Henry and I had once been.
But no more. No more.
I fell into dreams of blood and dust. Of the tower and arid planes. As I watched blood stream down the tower, and saw the dusty earth break and crack under my feet, I held a bundle in my arms.
Another child. Another sorrow. Another reason for my heart to dry and crisp under the unyielding sun.
*
How strong are the hearts of mankind that when one suffers as much as I had, they continue to beat?
In the days that followed my child’s death, I rose from my bed and picked up my embroidery. These garments would not keep my child warm, but they might keep another safe. My ladies, seeing me return to my work, thought I had lost my mind, and tried to take the tiny garments away.
“I will give them to Elizabeth Browne,” I said, speaking of my friend who was with child. “I will have to unpick the royal symbols, but they should be used. We cannot let them go to waste.”
Numbness was my refuge. My salvation. It was the only thing keeping the broken woman imprisoned.
Mary Howard ducked down beside me, her face crumpled with grief. “Madam,” she said, disturbed by my hollow voice. “Are you sure?”
I looked up at her and the others. I marvelled that they should hold some of my sorrow. Perhaps the strand they held was what kept me clinging on to sanity. Were if not for them sharing my grief, as my husband evidently did not, I might have lost my wits.
“Do not grieve,” I said gently. “It is better that this child, conceived when Katherine still lived, did not survive. I shall be sooner with child again, and this time none will doubt my son, because Katherine is gone.”
They were amazed to hear me comfort them at such a time, and took to their duties in silence. Later on, I heard Margaret Douglas return. Apparently she had been to Henry.
“I told His Majesty that his wife needs him,” she whispered to Mary Howard and Bess Holland. “And that her courage extended even as far as to comfort us in her time of need.”
“What said the King?” asked Mary.
“He said his Queen was the strongest, most courageous woman he had ever known,” she said. “And then he turned from me and wept. He promised to see her tomorrow.”
And he did. I heard his shambling steps in the corridor before he entered, his cane clipping against the wooden boards under their herb and rush matting. He sent away my women and sat beside me as I sewed. I greeted him blankly but then fell silent, picking out the royal acorns and ciphers from the linen cloth.
“Others could do that for you,” he said gently.
“The task is mine, as is my sorrow,” I said, looking up. “And none can take it from me. If this was the last of our children I am to bear, allow me to grieve, husband. Do not steal my sorrow from me, as you did with our other children.”
“How did I steal your sorrow?”
“By commanding me not to think or speak of them,” I said. “By running into the arms of other women. By betraying all that was good between us.”
I reached for a cushion of pins and he shrank from me. “You shrink from my touch?” I asked. “Do you think me cursed, as Katherine was?”
His face crumpled and he put it into his hands. From behind his fingers I heard a noise of hollow, bleak grief. It was the same sound I had made to see him with Jane. I reached out and touched his hand, and this time he did not shy away.
“Join your sorrow to mine,” I said. “And let us fear no more to speak of our children. Only together, Henry, may we master this.”
He said nothing, but pulled me into his arms. There we sat and there we stayed, a huddled mass of arms and legs, as we wept. When he was called away to have his dressings changed, he took my hand. “Bid me do anything for you,” he said.
“Ask my brother to come,” I said. “I would have his company until I might have yours again.”
“I will send him.” He paused as he was about to leave. “This is not the last child we will have, Anne,” he said. “I was angry and sad when I said that. I meant it not.”
“That brings me comfort,” I said, although nothing could really reach my heart but sadness.
“Soon, we will have a son,” he said. “One that Katherine cannot curse.”
I wondered at his tone, but when my brother arrived he told me that Henry had taken up a new refrain; Katherine had laid a curse upon us whilst she lived, and the death of our child was the last sting in its tail. Henry had taken my idea, and claimed it as his own.
“Many couples suffer setbacks,” said my brother, his hand warm on my shoulder. “It does not mean you are under a curse.”
“It is strange, is it not, that Henry does not refer to the old curse,” I said. “The one they say was placed on the house of York by the Poles when King Edward killed his own brother.”
“He blames Katherine.”
“Because he does not want to accept blame.” I stared at the wall. Where the tapestry ended there was a gap befo
re the next hanging, where crumbling plaster could be seen. It reminded me of the desert in my dreams.
“It was an accident, more than likely brought on by the stress of hearing the King was dead.”
I nodded, but my heart was full of resentment at Henry and at God. I had done all that God had asked. I had heard His voice in the wilderness and sought to bring a truer faith to His people. Was the loss of my children a sign that my union to Henry was not lawful in the eyes of God? I knew that Henry, too, must be thinking the same. And that scared me. If Henry came to truly believe that I was not his lawful wife, as Katherine had not been, would I be put aside too?
Henry’s demons had returned. I had seen them in his eyes. He had witnessed this pattern too often with Katherine to allow it to pass unnoticed, and Henry was a deeply superstitious man. Was God frowning on our union? I was sure Henry was questioning everything; me, his faith, his standing with God. His accident had driven home the fact that he was young no more. He was forty-four, I thirty-five. Our time for bearing children was waning. I had little time left.
Would Henry grant me that time? Would we indeed have another chance to make a son? He said so, but what did he whisper when my back was turned? Did he tell tales of witchcraft and magic, saying I had seduced him into marriage? The thought was laughable. I had never pursued him. He had hunted me. But the truth was not a constant to Henry. It was flexible, bending to his will. He believed what he wanted to believe.
Witchcraft, in itself, was not seen as a crime. There were many who practised arts akin to those of witches; cunning men and women, alchemists, doctors, scholars… there was only a penalty for witchcraft if a person had done actual harm, of which there was evidence. In cases brought against high-ranking people, like the Duke of Buckingham, witchcraft was a crime because it was linked to treason. Three royal women had been imprisoned in the past for wielding the dark arts. Joan of Navarre had been held for three years on charges of sorcery by her stepson, Henry V, but everyone knew those accusations had been brought about as he wanted her money. Eleanor Cobham, the Duchess of Gloucester, had been accused of practising harmful witchcraft on Henry VI and was sent to the Isle of Wight for the rest of her life. Most people believed Eleanor was guilty as charged. And Jacquetta of Luxembourg, the Duchess of Bedford, and mother of Elizabeth Wydville, Henry’s grandmother, had been accused of witchcraft to bring about the union of Elizabeth and Edward … but the case against her had been crushed, and she had been released.
But treason was not what Henry was accusing me of, if he had indeed accused me. He seemed to think I had cast a spell upon him… or perhaps this was what my enemies thought… thought no woman could have power unless she turned to Satan.
But there was another reason. Canon law provided means for a man to escape his marriage if sorcery could be proved.
I leaned on George. He was my rock, my safe harbour, the one person I knew I could rely on. My father had no sympathy, only worry and a look in his eyes that accused me of murdering my own child. But Henry was sweet. He came to me, often finding my brother reading to me.
My male family members visited in secret, permitted by Henry to come to my chambers through private routes, guarded and designed only for royalty. Until churched, I was not allowed male visitors, but seeing my sadness, Henry granted permission for George to come to me.
Court was alive with gossip. I could hear it even through the walls. They said I could not give the King a child, that I had a defective constitution, that I was being punished by God. They ignored all the strain I had been under this time, and the sickness I had endured the last. They blamed me.
Should I have expected anything else? The same had happened to Katherine. The same curse, the same loss… We were as one, she and I. Finally I understood what she had meant when she had told me in my dreams I was her sister of Fate.
It was true. We were joined. Bonded by the same nightmare. Twisted into the same grief.
When I rose, people barely bothered to drop their voices when speaking of my inability to give Henry a son. Every word hurt. Every voice bore deeper into my gaping wounds. People had often thought I was without a heart. It was not so. Never, in all my years, had I been so aware of my heart. My three lost children were within it. Grief consumed the rest of me.
I was an eaten woman, being slowly consumed from within.
I saw a dark tunnel opening before me. I knew that darkness well. It was the space in which my horrors waited for me; those I suffered now and all those I had shoved into the recesses of my mind. It was where the broken one waited.
I turned from the tunnel. I swallowed my heart. I brought out the fiction of Anne Boleyn once more, and plastered her upon my face. Quiet and subdued I was, for the first days after my loss, and then, as I started to find it easier to throw my sorrows and nightmares so deep into my mind that I could not access them, it was easier for the old Anne, this construct of me I had made to protect myself, to come forth.
But darkness does not leave us. If we do not confront it, it simply lingers. It settles down to wait for its chance. A chance to break through the armour we have built about it. A chance to rise again, to swallow us, to eat us… to claim us.
The broken one waited. Waited for her chance.
Chapter Fifty
Greenwich Palace
January 1536
“The Emperor has written to the King from his seat at Naples,” said George, taking several plump red grapes from a glazed bowl and popping them into his mouth.
“To say he is desirous of friendship?”
“Indeed.” My brother swallowed, washing the grapes down with their fermented counterparts. “He told Chapuys to inform His Majesty that he was sorrowed by Katherine’s death, but wished for better relations with England to stand against France.”
“It pleases me to think of François sweating upon his throne.”
“It seems the Emperor may be willing to accept you as Queen.”
“Now that he has no other option.” I ran my hands over my gown of green silk. Once more, I did not want to wear red. “And Lady Mary must be accepted as legitimate before he agrees to sanction our union.” I rolled my eyes. “Which does my daughter no good, or me. Legitimizing Mary is the same as saying I have lived as a whore with Henry these past few years. As good as saying he was always married to Katherine, and all we have done has been wasted. The King’s pride will never endure that and I shall not accept it.”
I shifted uncomfortably. The pads awash with herbs between my legs were bulky and awkward. I was still bleeding. Mistress Aucher had fed me little more than beef, beans and herbs known for their restorative qualities for days, trying to build up my strength and restore my blood, but I was still weak. I wished my mother was with me, but she had been taken ill at Hever and could not come. My doctors assured me I was not in danger of my life anymore. They were saturated with relief about this. For a time, they had thought I would die.
I sat back, putting a cloth to my forehead. I was feverish. Out of danger I might be, but my miscarriage had brought scorching heat to my flesh along with grief. “The Emperor called Henry’s resolve to keep Mary a bastard his ‘theological error’,” I said. “Henry was not best pleased.”
“There is more. Charles proposed marriage between Lady Mary and his brother-in-law, Dom Luis of Portugal.”
“Henry will never agree. He has grown more suspicious than ever and this is simply a move to ally Spain with Portugal. With such friends Mary might take the throne.”
“Few would support a woman.”
“They would not be supporting a woman, would they? Mary would sit upon the throne, ruled by her husband and cousin. She would be simply the blood giving lawful right to the throne, not the master of it.”
*
Two weeks later there was further news. The Emperor wrote that he had convinced Pope Paul not to proceed with the declaration of Henry’s privation of his throne. This had been done, Charles wrote, to show Henry that he desired friendshi
p.
In light of this, Henry showed kindness to Mary. He sent her money, and ordered her moved to another residence, one that was better kept, but also further inland… demonstrating he remained worried about her potential for escape. He sent more coin for her to distribute as alms as she travelled, along with messages of comfort and love.
I could understand Henry’s wish to bring Mary solace, but the death of another child had put me in a fragile position. Seeing this attention, people might think he revered Mary above Elizabeth. As it was there were far too many people in the world who thought Katherine’s daughter a princess and mine a bastard without Henry adding fuel to the fire.
In many ways, Mary was a greater threat to me now Katherine was dead. With Katherine alive, those who supported Mary’s legitimacy had fallen on rough ground. To assert Mary’s claim, Katherine’s would have had to be upheld too, by association. But now Katherine was gone, this problem was no more. Mary could be declared legitimate in virtue of the length and honesty of her parents’ union. If Henry accepted Mary was born in good faith, she could be restored to the succession, and, since my only living child was, too, a girl, Mary, as the elder, could supplant Elizabeth as heir.