by G Lawrence
I walked about the chamber, my footsteps echoing in the oppressive silence. My God, Norris! I thought. What have you told them? Had he spoken of his feelings for me? Of mine for him? And what had Smeaton said? I could think of nothing I had ever said to the young lad that might be construed as treason, or evidence of adultery. Norris had told me that Smeaton thought himself in love with me… had this fantasy turned into reality in his mind?
They brought dinner to me. Only three ladies served and they shuffled about, silent as death, not meeting my eyes. Henry’s messenger did not arrive to wish me his best, as was normal. I could eat nothing. I stared at the food until it was taken away.
That afternoon, I sank down on my throne. I could feel nothing but pure terror.
How could Henry believe this of me?
He believes because he wants to believe, said Katherine.
They came for me just after my dismal dinner, entering with a warrant for my arrest. Almost the whole Council had come. Until the moment I saw Henry’s signature on the warrant, I had thought all this might just be a trick. It was then I knew it was not. I wanted to think it was a forgery… that someone else had commanded this, but I knew Henry’s signature. Even if someone else had convinced him to sign, he had put his name to this paper.
I was not given leave to pack belongings, or take any money, but was told everything would be provided.
“If this is the King’s pleasure,” I said, thinking that if I cooperated, if I was submissive, Henry might see reason. “I am ready to obey.”
I will never know how I stayed so calm. I think I was numb, numb with shock. My blood was frozen, my mind was deadened. There was no sensation in me. Common noises, my breathing, the sound of my heart, were so loud, so intense. I followed the guards like a little puppy; subservient and obedient… everything Henry had always wanted me to be, I became. Perhaps it was a shame that he was not present to witness his victory over me.
As I walked from the chamber, I caught Cromwell’s eye. He was not standing at the back, but near the front, next to Audley. There was nothing in his eyes that suggested he was behind this, but I knew he was. I could feel a sense of excitement and apprehension wafting from him, perfume on his skin.
It was then I knew.
Henry did not mean to abandon me, leave me, desert me… I would not be sent to a castle like Katherine. I would not be offered a life in a convent. Henry did not mean to merely cast me aside.
He was going to kill me.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
The Tower of London
May 2nd 1536
The waters of the Thames lapped at the side of the little boat. They seemed to whisper, taunting me. Trapped, trapped, trapped, they murmured as they flowed past. Trapped, trapped, trapped.
A hare caught in a snare. A doe chased into a corner. A woman, accused of the vilest of sin, the rankest of living, being taken to a prison where once she had stayed before being made Queen.
Just as I had learned to stand, Henry had pushed me to my knees. Just as I had found my strength, he took it from me. And how would he ensure that I never rose to stand against him again? He would take my life.
Once, I had sworn I would never again be made a victim, as I had in France. In all the years that had passed, I had left victimised Anne behind. I had become a survivor, taking revenge in living my life, in restoring my soul. But my husband had made me a victim again. He had stolen my power. He had taken it from me, just as that monster had tried to in the arbour on that dark night. Once more I was rendered powerless, helpless. Once more my soul was in peril of being stolen from my body.
I stared at the water. The afternoon light was grainy and thin. The sun was high in the heavens, but its warmth did not reach me. Banks of clouds held it back, mist swathed it in a veil of white. There was no warmth left for me in this world.
It was usual for prisoners of rank to go to the Tower under cover of darkness. Not so for me. My enemies wanted the world to witness my disgrace, shame and fear. They sent me in broad daylight.
Not quite three years ago I had taken this same route, travelling by barge from Greenwich to the Tower before my coronation. Had my enemies sent me by water to remind me of those days of glory? To remind me how far I had fallen?
I knew what happened to people who went to the Tower under the shadow of treason. Once, it had been but a royal residence, but now, with the ghosts of Fisher and More, with the wailing wraiths of the monks in its dungeons, with phantoms of all those accused of heresy and treason trapped inside its stone confines, it was a place not of royal, sumptuous living, but of common, ugly death.
And now the Queen would join those ghosts.
Crowds had gathered at the river banks. News of my arrest had spread, and everyone who had ever hated me had turned out to jeer as my barge passed by. Norfolk stood at one end of the boat, with Oxford, Henry’s Great Chamberlain, and Sandys, the Lord Chamberlain. Norfolk had attempted to lecture me as we set off, saying that my paramours had confessed, and I might as well do the same. I turned my face from him. I could not bear the glee in my uncle’s eyes.
I had heard tales of mystical night creatures who fed on blood. I had never heard of one who supped on pain and fear.
I told myself not to stare at my hands, to keep my head up and my eyes fixed on the waters ahead. I did not look at the crowds. I did not look at my uncle to witness his barely concealed relish at my distress. A sinner would look at their hands, I told myself. I had done nothing wrong. Everyone must see there was no guilt in me.
We landed at the Water Gate, and I was greeted by Master Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower. Once, Henry had been here to meet me. He had taken me in his arms and kissed me, one hand upon the lump of our daughter on my front. But there was no husband waiting with love in his eyes. Now there was only Kingston. They called him the Angel of Death.
Trapped, trapped, trapped, said the little waves of the river as they broke against the boat. Trapped, trapped, trapped.
My mind was seething. Thoughts swarmed, blood rushed, and mindless, heedless, raw and naked panic washed over me.
Kingston helped me from the boat and I stumbled against him, weakened by terror. “Master Kingston,” I said, my voice shaking. “Shall I be taken to a dungeon?”
“No, madam,” he said, holding me up. “You shall go to the royal lodgings that you lay in at your coronation.”
“It is too good for me,” I cried, faint with relief that I would not see the inside of a grim cell. “Jesu, have mercy on me!”
I fell to my knees and started to pray. My words fell over each other, bursting from my mouth in panicked breaths. My hands were trembling, clasped together. Every drop of blood in my body quaked, an earthquake inside me. “God in Heaven protect me,” I said. “Sweet Lord Jesus, help me. God in Heaven hear me. Cast Your light upon me.”
Prayers became jumbled in my brain. I could not call any one psalm to mind. They had become as one. “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help… But be not far from me, O Lord; O my strength, hasten Thee to help me. Deliver my soul from the sword… O my God, I trust in thee, let me not be ashamed, let not my enemies triumph over me… The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?... Deliver me not over into the will of mine enemies; for false witnesses are risen up against… Forsake me not, O Lord. O my God be not far from me. Make haste to help me, O Lord, my salvation… They have sharpened their tongues like a serpent, adder’s poison is under their lips. Keep me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked; preserve me from the violent man…”
I looked up. No rain had fallen that day. Small clouds, like tousled wool, drifted in the skies. The Tower was bathed in the red light of the sun, breaking through the clouds. As I stared at it, I seemed to see the tower that had come to my dreams, oh, so many times.
The tower of blood stood in the sandy desert.
A cannon sounded, telling the wo
rld that a prisoner of high rank had been brought to the Tower. I wept and then I started to laugh. I could not stop.
Everyone stared at me. Everyone looked. The shell of Anne Boleyn cracked. The broken one crashed free.
Waves of strange, shattered laughter spilled from my mouth, drifting over the Tower, over the walls, shattering against stone, breaking into dust.
Dust of my dreams. Dust of my love. All was dust and ashes. All was burned and destroyed.
*
“Mistress Aucher,” I breathed as the ladies who were to serve me were brought into the dim chamber I had been taken to. Her familiar face was a boon to my ruptured spirits. The women brought to me that day were all creatures of Cromwell, save her.
Mistress Stoner was the wife of Sir Walter, Henry’s Sergeant-at-arms. Elizabeth Wood, Lady Boleyn, was my aunt, but her husband, James, my father’s younger brother, was a staunch supporter of Lady Mary. Lady Shelton was the mother of Mary and Margaret, but she had turned against me long ago because of my endless demands about chastising Lady Mary, and perhaps, too, because I had made her daughter a whore. Mistress Margaret Coffin, a hideously appropriate name, was wife to William, my Master of Horse, but no friend to me, and Mary Scrope, Lady Kingston, was the wife of Sir William Kingston. She had once served Katherine.
They were all hostile. I could feel aggression emanating from them. The only exception was Mistress Aucher, and she, a mere chamberer, was not permitted to speak to me.
“You may speak only when my wife is present, madam,” Kingston said as I was ushered in.
“Why?” My voice sounded so light, as though it were already an echo.
“So that all you might say can be recorded. For the sake of your honesty, and for what may come in your trial, madam.”
“The King seeks to test me,” I said, hysterically groping in the tangle of my mind for a reason I was sent here. “I think the King seeks to prove me. He tests my love and the courage of my love. I will show him I am true.”
I did not know what I was saying. My mind was unravelling. Twisted, long, dark spirals and spindles of lurid misery were loose inside my head. Disjoined horror, unreal, unreal suffused me. There was nothing structured, nothing of sense. My mind succumbed to the labyrinth of perdition I had kept locked away. It was a twisted knot of dark tunnels, pits and traps, spiralling out from one central core where I, a quivering, huddled creature, lay curled about myself like an infant. Outside the labyrinth, keening winds howled, screaming at me. Thoughts, memories, events… they all raced past me on the wings of the wind. Bare trees heaved against infinite blackness, their branches thrashing the ground, snapping into the air. The skies above were grey and dark. There was no sun in my world.
A world of nightmares washed over me, claiming my wits. Everything was strange and unnatural, yet too uncontrolled, too uncompromising to be fiction. There is nothing so strange as life. Books must make sense. Tales must flow as the straightest, most clement of streams. There was nothing of that now. Life is not as pretty as tales told to children. Life is chaos; dawn, dusk, twilight and moon, bound and bonded together as one.
This must be real, I thought, for it is too strange and wild to be a story.
“Now abideth faith, hope and love,” I muttered, quoting the Bible as though it could save me. “But the chief of these is love.” I stared with glazed eyes at Lady Kingston, who glanced at her husband in fright. “Corinthians chapter one, verse thirteen,” I said. “Chief of these is love.”
I knew not what I was saying. The broken one was not a creature of reason, but of chaos. I thought Henry was trying to test me, trying to punish me. My mind was wild, lost and shattered. The light from the candles was too bright, so was that from the windows. I could not look at it. My eyes flickered from one woman to the next, searching for any scrap of compassion. I found none.
Mistress Aucher clasped my shaking hand, but Lady Kingston drove her away. As her hand dropped, I saw barren fright in my old nurse’s eyes. They would not let her comfort me, but I felt the love within her heart. It was good to feel something other than hate, for that was all the others bore for me.
“My bishops and chaplains will speak for me,” I said, gabbling on, even though I had just been informed my words would be recorded. “They will speak. They will tell the King I am an honest woman, who has done no wrong. They will speak for me.”
They just stared.
“Will you bring the Sacrament to my chambers?” I asked Kingston, suddenly serene at the thought. I knew not that I was hysterical. “I would have the comfort of God within me. I will pray for mercy, for I am as clear from the company of any man as I am clear from you. I am the King’s true, wedded wife.”
“Such a request will have to go through the King,” he told me.
“And as with Fisher, it will be denied.” I stared at Kingston and then my eyes flickered to the ceiling. “My God, bear witness there is no truth in these charges, for I am as clear from the company of man as from sin. I am clear of sin. I am free of sin.”
Reason abandoned me. I had only held a thread of it in my hands for a moment, and it was gone. I started to talk. I could not stop. “Why am I here?” I asked. “For what I said to Norris? It was nothing. The King cannot suspect me. I cannot be accused on slight words. I cannot.”
I stared at the window. For a moment, there was silence.
“Master Kingston,” I said turning to him. He stepped back as he saw my glittering, unhinged eyes. “Why am I here?”
The man thought I had lost my senses. I could feel the blankness on my face. I must have looked like a witless fool.
“Madam, I know not why,” he said. “But it is my office to guard and tend to you.”
“When saw you last the King?”
“At the Tiltyard at Greenwich,” he said.
“I pray you, Master Kingston, tell me where my husband is?”
“At Whitehall, madam.”
“Where is my lord father?”
“At court, my lady.”
“And my brother? Where is my sweet brother?”
“Also at Whitehall, my lady.”
“My brother will speak for me,” I said, a burst of relief flooding through me. “He will tell the King I am a good woman, without sin of which I am accused. He will tell the King. He will. My good brother would never abandon me. He would always protect me. O, where is my sweet brother? I left him at Whitehall but I know not why he is not here.”
I looked about wildly. My hands went to my gown and started to tear at the crimson silk and cloth of gold, ripping it from me as though in escaping it, I could flee my doom. Kingston tried to stop me, but I went on, my hands as claws, rending the fabric at my breast. “I hear I am accused of three men,” I wailed. “Three! I can say no more but if I should open my body and reveal my heart.”
Kingston tried to take hold of me and I fell across his arm. “Oh, Norris!” I cried. “Hast thou accused me? Thou art here in this Tower, and thou and I shall die together!”
“Mark, thou art here too,” I murmured, thinking of that young, handsome man who had wanted nothing more than to be allowed into the ring of bright people at court. “My mother will die of sorrow!” I cried out. “She is not well, and this will end her! My friend, Elizabeth Browne, my Lady of Worcester… will her child not stir in her body to hear of my fate?” Sobbing, I lay across his arm.
“What should be the cause of that?” asked Lady Kingston.
“It was for the sorrow she took of me,” I murmured. “When I lost my baby. Her child has not quickened, for sadness for me, and now it will not live within her.”
The ladies exchanged loaded glances. There was great suspicion in their eyes. What I had said might have sounded like prophecy… as a witch would make.
“Will I know no justice?” I asked Kingston.
“Even the meanest subject in this kingdom receives the King’s justice, madam.”
I stared into his face for a moment, and again I started to laugh. Eerie a
nd strange, mirth burst from me, and once unleashed, I could not hold it back. I slipped from his hands and landed with a dull thud on the floor. I sat there laughing, demented, lost and utterly alone.
They gathered me up from the floor, almost carrying me into my coronation chambers. I was still laughing.
Justice… was that what I would receive? I knew it was not so. I had no access to legal counsel. There would be no one to speak for me unless my brother could reach Henry. And Henry… he was a mass of paranoia at the best of times. What would he do in the throes of this anger and rage, of jealousy and lies? Never before had an English Queen been arrested in such a way for adultery and treason; never had one been imprisoned like this. And they would not stop there. I was too dangerous to be left alive. Henry would be kept from me, and my enemies would destroy me.