by Jean Plaidy
“Did the thought occur to you that her condition might have something to do with the beer?”
“Well… there have been rumors…Yes, the thought did occur to me that it might have had something to do with the beer. But it would have been an unusual substance … not one which would be recognized as a poison.”
“Ah,” I said. “So the thought did occur to you.”
He was silent.
Then he went on, “After she died …” He paused. Evidently he was trying to decide how much he should tell me. He seemed to come to a decision. “Eight hours after she died she was embalmed and her body enclosed in lead. I was not allowed to be present… nor was her confessor.”
“It seems as though they were in something of a hurry.”
He lapsed into silence.
I wanted to ask him outright if he believed she had been poisoned, but I could see how uneasy he was. One simple remark could lose him his life.
I felt I could ask no more; but the suspicion remained in my mind.
How had she died? Had she been poisoned? Heaven knew her health was in a sorry state, and those who wanted to be rid of her would surely not have had to wait very long.
The thought hung over me, and I felt it always would. I should never know the truth now.
I was angry and desperately unhappy. I had lost the one I loved most in the world, and I should never recover from that loss. But she would be happy now. She had lived a saintly life; she would be at peace in Heaven. It was what she had been craving for over the last years.
ONE OF MY MAIDS came to tell me the news. My father had had an accident. It was at Greenwich during a joust. He had been riding a great warhorse when suddenly the creature had fallen to the ground, taking my father with him.
There was terrible consternation. Everyone present thought my father had been killed, for he lay unconscious on the ground. They carried him to his bed and gathered round it. It would seem that this was the situation which had been most feared. The King dead… and no heir to take his place except the baby Elizabeth. And might there not be some to think that she was not the true heir to the crown?
He was not dead and very soon recovered but this incident did stress the need for the King to live a good many more years until a healthy son could appear to take over from him. At such a time as this, his death would cause great trouble in the country.
No one would have thought that my father could be near to death. He was strong and could still outride all his friends; he was always the champion of the games—though perhaps there was a little contriving to reach that result, and the most agile always managed to fall in just behind him. To win in a paltry game would be foolish if by doing so the winner risked the King's displeasure. But this did bring home the fact that even one as hale and hearty as my father could be struck down at a moment's notice.
There had been the usual murmurings. This was God's revenge for the manner in which he had treated his wife. This was his punishment for raising up his harlot and living in sin with her while his poor wife was neglected and left to die.
But that was soon over. Within a day or so he was his exuberant self again.
My mother was given a dignified funeral. My father dared not further offend the Emperor by giving her anything less. It had to be remembered that after all she was the daughter of the late King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.
I longed to go, though I knew it would be a harrowing experience; but that was not permitted.
She was to be buried at Peterborough, in the abbey church there, and three weeks after her death her body was conveyed there by two stages. I should have been there. I was the one who mourned her more than any. I wished that I could have shared my grief with the Countess of Salisbury, but I was denied that comfort. The daughter of Mary Tudor and the Duke of Suffolk were the chief mourners in my place. The King's sister had always been a friend to my mother and had deplored the manner in which my father had put her from him. It seemed fitting therefore, that if I could not be there, her daughter should take my place. The procession rested for a night at Sawtry Abbey before proceeding to Peterborough; and there my mother was solemnly laid to rest.
Perhaps it was better that I should not be there, for the bishop who delivered the funeral sermon stated that on her deathbed my mother had admitted that her marriage to the King was no true marriage.
All those who had been close to her were shocked by this, for they knew it was a lie. I was deeply hurt that my father could do this. Was it not enough that she was dead, brought to an early grave through his cruelty?
It was almost like a sign from Heaven. First my father had his accident, which some would say was a warning to him; and on the very day of my mother's funeral Anne Boleyn miscarried. And to make matters worse, the three-month fetus was proved to be a boy.
How did she feel, I wondered, lying there? All her hopes had been on this boy. And it had happened again. It was a sign of Heaven's displeasure, I was sure. Anne Boleyn was doomed from that moment.
There were many to report the King's reception of the news that he had lost his longed-for son. He had not been able to hide his fury and disgust. He blamed her, of course. That was because now he wanted to be rid of her, as once before he had wanted to be rid of my mother.
It was emerging as a terrifying pattern. I exulted. The concubine would be put from him… just as my mother had been.
He had told Anne Boleyn, as she lay there exhausted from her ordeal, weighed down as she must have been with anxiety and fear of the future, “You will get no more boys from me.”
Everyone knew we were on the edge of great events and were waiting to see what would happen next.
LADY SHELTON WAS no longer insolent but mildly placating. I treated her coolly but I was not so foolish as to reject my new concessions. Her attitude told me a great deal about the rapidly declining importance of Anne Boleyn.
Eustace Chapuys came to see me. I was amazed that he had been allowed to do so, and my delight was profound.
He told me that there would almost certainly be a change in my position. He understood my deep sorrow at the death of my mother, but that event had made my position safer. There were rumors about Anne Boleyn. She would be removed in some way, there was no doubt of that. The King was working toward it.
“We do not know,” went on Chapuys, “what method the King will choose. Anne Boleyn has no royal relations to make things difficult for him. Her family owe their elevated position to the King's favors through Anne and her sister Mary before her. They will be put down as easily as they have been raised up. Her fall is imminent. The Seymours are promoting their sister. Edward and Thomas are a pair of very ambitious gentlemen, and Jane is a quiet, pale creature … a marked change from Anne Boleyn. But rest assured, events will move fast and we must be prepared.”
“Yes,” I answered.
“If the King puts Anne Boleyn from him, his next move will be to marry again. If his plan is to declare the marriage to Anne invalid, then his marriage to Queen Katharine was a true one and you are his legitimate daughter. We cannot guess how he will do it, but in any case it seems your status must change. There is a rumor that he had been seduced by witchcraft and now is free from it. We must hold ourselves in readiness for whichever way he turns.”
The intrigue was helpful to me in a way. It lifted me out of my overwhelming sorrow and imposed itself on the despondency which had enveloped me.
It was action … and whatever happened seemed preferable to sitting alone in my room brooding on the death of my mother.
I was now hearing more because I could have visitors
Anne Boleyn blamed her miscarriage on her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, because he had broken the news of the King's accident to her too suddenly. She had been so worried about the King that the shock had brought on the premature birth of her child.
It did not help her. Nothing could help her now. The King was as determined to be rid of her as he had once been to possess her.
I had thought the last two years, when I had been more or less a prisoner, were the two most eventful through which I had lived. But there was more to come.
It was a relief to me to be able to talk to Chapuys and to learn that the Emperor's concern for me had been great and that he had always been eager to seize an opportunity to help me.
Now it seemed there was a chance.
“If you were out of this country, in Spain or Flanders … under the Emperor's care, he would be happier,” said Chapuys. “The King, your father, has shown himself to be capable of any rash act which momentarily serves his purpose. He broke with Rome so that he might marry Anne Boleyn. To take such an unprecedented step for such a reason must give us all some concern. Whether Queen Katharine was poisoned—and poisoned at his command, we cannot be sure, but it is a possibility which we must not lose sight of. The Emperor would feel happier if you were out of the country.”
“My father would never let me go.”
“Certainly he would not. It would be a great blow to him if he thought you were with the Emperor, for if he declared his marriage to Anne Boleyn nall and void, you are the heir to the throne.”
“But he has declared his marriage to my mother was no true one, and it was said by the bishop at her funeral service that she admitted it, which was a lie, I know … but it was all done at my father's command.”
“That was before he knew that Anne Boleyn had lost the child. All is different now. Her reign is over.”
“They say that he plans to put another in her place.”
He nodded. “We cannot be sure which way events will turn but you must be prepared.”
“What do you suggest?”
“This is highly secret. If it were mentioned outside these walls, it could cause trouble…great trouble. It would cost you your life and there would be little I could do to save it. I should immediately be sent back to Spain. You understand the importance of secrecy?”
“I do.”
He nodded. “My plan is to get you out of this place. There will be horses waiting to take us to the coast, and there we shall cross to Flanders.”
“I shall be taken to my cousin?”
He nodded.
“Now, we must plan. Could you get away without your women's knowledge?”
“I have few servants now, you know.”
“That is good.”
“There are some whom I can trust.”
Chapuys shook his head. “Trust no one. You must slip away unseen. No one must know that you have gone until you are on the sea.”
“They are here. They would see me leave. Unless I gave them a sleeping draught.”
“Would that be possible?”
“I think so…if I had the draught.”
“That would be an easy matter.”
“I should have to avoid Lady Shelton.”
“Would that be difficult?”
“Less so now. She is not so watchful as she once was. She no longer acts like my jailer.”
“This sounds plausible. We should have horses waiting. We could get to Gravesend easily from here… and there embark. You will be hearing more of this from me.”
After he had gone, I lay in my bed thinking of it. I should be taken to my cousin. I remembered so well that occasion—years and years ago it seemed now—when my mother had held my hand and we had stood on the steps at Greenwich while the barge came along. I could see my dazzling father and beside him the young man in black velvet with the gold chain about his neck… the young man with whom I had been told I was in love.
He had broken our engagement, but I had forgiven him that now. I understood that monarchs such as he were governed by expediency. I forgave him for that and for not coming to my rescue as a knight of chivalry and romance would have done, however difficult.
I was no longer romantic. Events had made me cynical, yet still there was a softness in me. I was capable of loving deeply, which was clear by the sorrow the loss of my mother was causing me.
SO WE PLANNED and Chapuys visited me often. Lady Shelton made no objection. Chapuys was deeply anxious that all should go well, for if it did not, there would be dire consequences.
He told me that he was making arrangements with the utmost secrecy and would bring the sleeping draught to me when it was to be administered. I had practiced what I must do. I had made a careful study of how I should go without passing Lady Shelton's window. We must wait for a moonless night when all would be ready.
Lady Shelton came to me the day after I had had a visit from Chapuys and he had told me that, as soon as the moon waned, we would put our plan into action.
She said; “Madam, my lady, we have orders. We leave tomorrow for Hunsdon.”
“But …” I cried, “why?”
She lifted her shoulders. “Orders,” she said tersely.
After she had gone, I sat on my bed and stared at the window. This would change everything. We could not go tonight for the moon was too bright. Someone would almost certainly see me creeping across the garden. Besides, the horses would not be ready. Everything had to be perfect. Had someone heard? How could I be sure? There were spies everywhere. I could not believe that it would be someone in my household.
Chapuys came to see me in some consternation.
“Hunsdon,” he said.
“Hunsdon! It will be too difficult from Hunsdon. We could not do it in a night. We should have to ride through the countryside. We should have to change horses. We should be detected. Everything depends on the closeness to Gravesend.”
“What do you suggest that we do? That we give up the plan?”
“Not give it up. Postpone. You will be moved again perhaps. Let us hope it will be back here. One thing I am certain of: we cannot do it from Hunsdon.”
I was not sure how disappointed I was. Now that I had lost my mother, I often thought I had lost my interest in life and my reason for living.
So the plan was set aside and in due course I came to my home at Hunsdon.
I HAD CEASED to brood on what my fate would have been if the escape plot had proceeded, for events were moving very fast at Court. The rift between the King and Anne Boleyn was widening; his feelings for Jane Seymour were deepening; and people were rallying to the Seymour family as before they had to the Boleyns. Chapuys was excited. He believed that the marriage was about to be declared invalid, and he considered what that would mean to me. But if my father was enamored of Jane Seymour, his desire would be to get a son from her; he could still do that if he divorced Anne, for now that my mother was dead he would be free to marry, even in the eyes of the Pope—though my father did not have to care for his opinions now. We all knew that he could without much difficulty cast off Anne Boleyn. He only had to trump up a charge against her. Adultery was the most likely for, according to reports, she was always surrounded by admiring young men, and her attitude was inclined to be flirtatious with them.
Chapuys was watching the situation closely, and his visits to me were more frequent. He told me that my father had people looking into the possibility of a divorce.
“There seem to be some difficulties,” said the ambassador. “All the proceedings were so closely linked to his marriage with your mother, and he does not want that brought out again. It will remind people of his quarrel with the Pope. He just wants to rid himself of Anne Boleyn as simply and speedily as possible.”
“What do you think he will do?”
“He might try charging her with adultery, which would have farreaching effects. Treason to himself… foisting a bastard on the nation as the King's child… all good reasons for getting rid of her.”
It was long since I had thought of the child Elizabeth. How I had resented her when we were both at Hatfield and I was more or less a member of her household. Poor baby, it was no fault of hers. Yet I had hated her. That was just because I had been insulted by her taking precedence over me. Now I thought: Poor child, is she to be treated as I was? What will become of her?
The winter was over, an
d spring had come; and my father was still married to Anne Boleyn. I heard rumors of the quarrels between them, how she had discovered him with Jane Seymour behaving like lovers, how she had raged and ranted against him and had been told she must take what her betters had before her. So he remembered my mother and admitted the anguish he had caused her. And the proud, brazen Anne Boleyn, how would she take that?
Everyone knows what happened on that May Day, how they were together at the joust at Greenwich, how the King did not speak to Anne as she sat beside him in the royal lodge, how she took out a handkerchief, wiped her brow and allowed it to flutter to the ground, how one of the courtiers—Norris, I think—picked it up on his lance and held it to her with a bow, how the King suddenly turned away in anger and so the joust ended.
That was the beginning. My father must have staged it, for he had already set Cromwell to question those about her. He had decided that, as it would be difficult to arrange a divorce, he would accuse her of adultery. His love had been intense, and no doubt that made his hatred the more fierce. Greatly he had disliked my mother but never with the same venom that he turned on Anne Boleyn. He was going to accuse her of adultery, treason to the King, which carried the penalty of death.
Cromwell wrung a confession from Mark Smeaton, one of her musicians, through torture, most people thought; the young men closest to her— Norris, Francis Weston and William Brereton—were all arrested and sent to the Tower. Most shocking of all, her brother George was accused of incest with her, and there was even a suggestion that Elizabeth was his daughter.
I had always hated her, as she had hated me. We had been the bitterest of enemies; but when I thought of all the indignity and humiliation which had been heaped on my mother, and realized that Anne Boleyn was now the object of my father's fury, I could feel sorry for her.
She was found guilty with those who were accused with her. Of course she was. It was intended.
Norris, Weston and Brereton were taken out to Tower Hill and beheaded. George Boleyn and his sister would follow.
The day before her execution, Lady Kingston, in whose care Anne Boleyn had been placed in the Tower, came to me.