by Brandy Purdy
But Henry’s lips did not even twitch towards a smile. He turned his back on them and left the window.
Anne’s face fell and her eyes shut tight as she willed herself not to weep.
“Papa gone!” Elizabeth piped up. “He did not wave at me, so I did not wave at him!” There was a slight, sulky tremor in her voice as if she were about to cry.
“Weep not, my daughter,” Anne said, resting her cheek against the top of Elizabeth’s head. “If you remember only one thing I have taught you, remember this: No man is worth crying over! Guard your heart, Elizabeth, guard it as if it were your greatest treasure; keep it under lock and key, and be wary of who you let near it, lest you be betrayed. Let no man be your master; be mistress of your own fate instead. Never surrender!”
“Never!” Elizabeth echoed, throwing back her head and shaking her lion’s mane of red-gold curls.
I shivered at the proud conviction in her imperious little voice. I had no doubt that the precocious wench would remember every word, but how much, I wondered, did she understand?
Footsteps crunched upon the gravel and we all turned to see George approaching. Like Anne, he was dramatically clad in black satin, with the ruffled collar and cuffs of his white shirt encrusted with blackwork embroidery.
“Did you see?” Anne asked.
“Yes.” George nodded, smiling broadly and taking Elizabeth into his arms when she smiled and reached out for her “Uncle George.”
“It is over, George. He really has turned his back on me. His heart is set on Jane Seymour, and now, I fear, I shall go the way of Catherine.”
“You needn’t,” George replied. “What was Catherine’s mistake?”
“Her stubbornness and pride!” Anne answered promptly. “She was so determined to hold on, even when she knew all he wanted to do was push her away. I always said she should have taken the best terms he offered and left with her head held high.”
“Then why do you not take your own advice? If you must leave, Anne, do not go like a whipped dog with its tail tucked between its legs, but with your head held high like the queen you are! But do not wait for him to offer; make your own terms. Be reasonable and calm. Take him by surprise, for he shall be expecting tears and tempest. Surprise him; tell him you want to part as friends.”
“I shall retain my title of marquess, and I must have a sizable income; it shall cost him dearly to be rid of me, and I shall not go to a nunnery or some cold, crumbling castle in the marshlands….”
“France,” George interjected. “We shall go to France. We shall have a chateau and live in grand style and keep a court of our own, filled with the most amusing people!”
We! How that We stabbed at my heart! It stole the breath from me! I could not believe my ears. George intended to leave me, to run away to France with his disgraced sister and her bastard brat. He was going to leave me! No, oh no, this could not be!
“Yes!” Anne breathed excitedly. “Oh, George, do you mean…you will go with me, follow me into exile?”
“I would follow you anywhere!” George took a step closer and leaned his forehead against hers. “I do not care how far away, or if I have to brave fire, ice, savage winds, churning seas, or desert sands to get there; where you go I will go. Do you think I could live without my soul?”
“No, for no more could I, George. We are like one soul separated into two bodies—one male, one female.”
“Like two sides of a coin,” George said. “Gemini! Twin souls, though not twins by birth.”
It tore my heart out to see them standing thus, embracing with their foreheads touching, with Elizabeth nestled between them, posing the only barrier between their bodies, as if they were proud parents and she their very own child. The rage came surging up with such force I feared it would kill me. I could not breathe properly or even see clearly for the starry mist drifting before my eyes.
Then, as so often happens, reality intruded upon their charming little idyll. “But Elizabeth…” Anne glanced down worriedly at her daughter. “George, I cannot let her be declared a bastard!”
“No, that must not be,” George agreed. “She must retain her rights and keep her place in the succession; after any male heirs born of the King’s next marriage, of course.”
“George!” Anne pulled away from him and stamped her foot. “That whey-faced prude, that Seymour bitch! May she be barren or the whelping kill her! I would rather see her brats strangled at birth than take the place of my Elizabeth!”
“Anne, stop raging at me; you know better; you know me better than that! That is merely what you tell Henry, to placate him; be amicable and agreeable. Now, calm yourself and think; review the situation: two wives, two acknowledged mistresses, and all the tumbles on the side, and how many sons does he have? Bessie Blount’s boy is puny and consumptive—he’ll not see twenty, I wager. Already they say he coughs up blood. As for our sister Mary’s boy…well, none can say for certain whether he is the King’s or Will Carey’s son. So what makes you think Jane Seymour will fare any better than you or Catherine? She is but five years younger than you, so she has not extreme youth upon her side. Let things be for now, Anne. I promise you Elizabeth shall not be forgotten. But get the best terms you can now, while there is still time. Let Henry feel he is being generous, and plot strategy later when the time is right. He’ll not live forever, and may not be capable of siring more children; and if, when he perishes, he has no legitimate male heir…”
“There is always Elizabeth, healthy and vibrant and so like him! And around her, I think—despise me though they do—many shall rally! Look at that red hair, George, and that mutinous scowl, and see the way she grips so possessively. She is a Tudor through and through—none could ever doubt it!”
I jumped at the sudden and unexpected touch of a hand upon my shoulder and spun round to find Thomas Cromwell standing behind me.
“Forgive me for startling you, my lady, but I find it very sad that you must watch from afar rather than be yourself at the heart of such a loving family.”
His voice was as silky soft and knowing as the hiss of the serpent who tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden must have been. “Look at them,” he hissed as, without asking permission, he settled his bulk beside me on the bench.
Anne and George were now walking away with Elizabeth toddling hand in hand between them, and Anne was prattling about how clever her redheaded brat was, how she already knew her letters and had started her first embroidery stitches.
“Look at them,” Cromwell hissed insinuatingly in my ear. “Did one not know otherwise, one would think they were lovers.”
I started at his words—had I not said, had I not thought, the same thing myself?
“They are as close as lovers; would you not say so, Lady Rochford?”
My head whipped round to boldly meet his dark, emotionless gaze.
“They are lovers!” I exclaimed, the blood sizzling in my veins.
There it was; the lie was upon my lips, but in my heart I believed it. And so the die was cast, even though it was loaded with malice.
“They are lovers!” I repeated. “None ever existed more devoted than they are!” Thus I reiterated my words with greater firmness and conviction, when I should have taken them back. But I did not. I chose to let them stand. At the time, it felt so good and so right. It was high time that someone understood and condoled with how I felt, even if it was that loathsome, treacherous creature Cromwell. Sometimes, anyone is better than no one.
Cromwell heaved his heavy body up and held out an ink-stained hand to me.
I sat there and stared up at that loathsome creature, that oily, poisonous toad of a man, who was entirely the King’s creature. None was more devious or devoid of feeling than Thomas Cromwell, and there was not a lawyer anywhere who was more ruthless, unscrupulous, or cunning. Oil glistened from every pore on his fat, inscrutable face, bull neck, and on every strand of his thick, chin-length dark hair. Oh yes, he was an ugly, oozing creature, and I hated him, but he ga
ve me exactly what I needed, and for that I shall be forever grateful.
The next thing I knew we were in his bedchamber. As he deftly peeled each garment from me, pausing to kiss the curve of a shoulder, the crook of an elbow, or the uneven bump on the back of my hand where the little bone had broken and failed to properly mend, showering me with such pleasant little attentions that no man had ever before given me, he condoled with me, and consoled me, layering my soul with the balm of sympathy.
Anne, he said, should be shut away in a nunnery. Not some light, fashionable order where she could keep lapdogs and lovers and buy herself the rank of abbess, but a strict order with a rigorous routine of fasting, prayer, and silence; where the nuns wore coarse habits, with hair shirts to mortify their flesh underneath, and were shaven bald beneath their wimples.
“Oh, yes!” I sighed meltingly. “Yes! She should be locked away from the world of men!” But what I really meant was that she should be locked away from George. Then he would be all mine and, in time, he would forget, and then he would turn to me, and I would be there waiting for him with my arms open wide and my heart gushing with love for him.
As he laid bare my body, I in turn laid bare my heart, pouring into that cunning weasel’s ear all my bitterness, hate, jealousy, and spite. The only detail I omitted was George’s occasional forays into sodomy, as the punishment for that was a fiery death chained to the stake, but all else I told him. Every act of intimacy and affection I had witnessed between him and Anne I recounted; and, calling forth all my hatred and resentment of his friends, I named names, four of them to be precise—Francis Weston, Henry Norris, William Brereton, and his melancholy little plaything, Mark Smeaton.
When Cromwell lowered me onto the bed and I spread my legs wide to welcome him, I betrayed my husband with my body as well as with my words. Which was the greater sin I leave for others to decide.
27
After that it all happened very quickly.
“So what happens now?” I asked as Cromwell, fully dressed again in his heavy black garments and gold chain of office, stood behind me, lacing me back into my boiled leather stays.
“I go to my house in London. I have a dinner engagement with a very important guest,” he said as he left me, without a kiss or farewell, coolly ordering his valet to fetch a maid to help me finish dressing while I stood shivering in my petticoats over what I had just done. I couldn’t take it back; I couldn’t undo it, even if I wanted to. The truth was, I didn’t want to. Despite my twinge of nerves and foreboding, my conscience was clear; I felt no qualms about what I had just done because I knew deep down in my heart that all I had said was true. Their love was incestuous—it might have been chaste, but it was incest and unseemly and unnatural and a sin, and it was up to me to quash it out since no one else would do it, and now…now I had Cromwell on my side, a man known for getting things done! As for the other men—Weston, Norris, Brereton, and Smeaton—they were fools, weak fools, and they deserved to be punished. They also had come between me and my husband, and they all loved Anne Boleyn.
When I entered the Great Hall that night, everyone was speculating about Cromwell’s “very important guest.” It was none other than Mark Smeaton. Cromwell had no love for music, so why would he invite a lowly musician to sit at table with him like an equal?
The court was rife with rumors, as word trickled out that Smeaton had been bound to his chair at the dinner table. A cord with strategically placed knots had been tied around his skull and twisted ever tighter by the insertion of a stick, while Cromwell calmly questioned him and enjoyed a dinner of roast chicken followed by three large helpings of custard.
The knots bit deep, and Smeaton’s skin—as fair and delicate as a female’s—split, and the pressure upon his eyeballs was unendurable. He moaned and screamed and wept in agony, until, driven nearly mad by the pain and fear, the poor boy named names—three to be precise: Francis Weston, Henry Norris, and William Brereton.
The next morning King Henry left abruptly after the first joust of the May Day tournament. He ordered Norris, still panting and dripping with sweat, to doff his armor and ride with him to London.
Norris never returned to court. His loyal valet rode back, weeping and near collapse, and told us that his master was now a prisoner in the Tower of London.
All the way to London, Henry had pleaded, berated, cajoled, and threatened, promising Norris his freedom, forgiveness, and riches galore if he would only confess that he had committed adultery with Anne, and thus help Henry rid himself of “that she-devil” so he would be free to marry Jane Seymour without any protracted legal battle.
“Never!” was Norris’s answer. “I will not lie and besmirch her honor or mine!”
A chivalrous man to the last, he even offered to act as the Queen’s champion and defend her honor in armed combat against the King himself or the proxy of his choice.
All Henry’s attempts at bribery and coercion failed, and he ordered the guards to take Norris to the Tower.
“Perhaps a brief stay there will change your mind!”
“Even if I stayed a thousand years it would not change my mind!” Norris shouted to his sovereign’s back. Then, shaking off the guards, he walked, bold and proud, into the Tower of London with his head held high.
Seized by terror, I ran to warn George, but someone had gotten there before me—his father.
Sir Thomas Boleyn, though always a coldhearted, calculating man, was also an eminently practical one, who never let sentiment blind him. I prayed fervently that he would be able to persuade George to do the right thing. After all, if her own father could so easily abandon Anne and turn his back on her without the slightest twinge of remorse or shame, why could her brother not do the same?
“This is no time for sentiment, you fool! Abandon her publicly, and do it now, while you still have the chance. Save yourself! Leave her; go to Hever, Beaulieu, Grimston, Rochford Hall, wherever you will, as long as you go, and stay away—from the court and from her!”
“She is my sister!” George exclaimed.
“And you are my son, my only son,” said Thomas Boleyn, “and I would save you if I could. This is your last chance, George, your only chance; for the love of Christ, boy, see reason and seize it!”
“Devil take you and your precious reason!” George shouted. “You go! Go on; scurry away like the coward you are. Go back to Hever or to Hell for all I care! But I will not follow you. I will not forsake her as long as there is breath within my body. I will stand by Anne until the last drop of blood is wrung from my body!”
“Then you are doomed. Good-bye, George,” Thomas Boleyn said curtly, nodding briefly to me as he went out. He was a man who knew when to cut his losses.
“George!” I rushed in and flung myself at his feet. “Please! Listen to your father! They are all deserting her. Resist her, George—just this once, resist! If you don’t, in the end it will kill you! I know it will, I know!”
“Woman, cease this detestable blabbering. We are talking about my sister! Yes, they are all abandoning her; even our own father and mother turn tail and run, but, by Heaven, I will not!”
He started for the door and I flung myself down and caught hold of his ankle.
“You are going to her?”
“Of course I am going to her! Do you think anything in this world could keep me from it? She needs me.”
“I need you too!” I sobbed. “Oh, George, please! Don’t go!”
“Let go of me, Jane.” He shook free of me and walked quickly out the door.
Weeping wildly, I scampered after him on my hands and knees, lunging and grasping at his ankles, so that he had to pause every few steps to shake me off before I lunged and grabbed again.
“Don’t leave me, George!” I sobbed. “Without your love I am nothing!”
“Then you are nothing,” he retorted without pause.
At the top of the stairs he called to the guards, “Restrain my wife; she is distraught!”
While I s
truggled and screamed in their arms, my husband ran down the stairs and out of my life.
He never reached her. Anne was already taken.
Her uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, personally conveyed her to the Tower. The people of London thronged both banks of the Thames, spitting down onto the barge and jeering “The Goggle-Eyed Whore” on her way.
Through it all, Anne said not a word. Not even when it began to rain.
“See, even the heavens weep for your shame!” Norfolk shook his head in disgust.
But Anne merely sat there, staring straight ahead, as if she were blind and deaf to all around her.
Master Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, was there to meet her when the barge docked at Traitor’s Gate.
“Master Kingston, shall I die without justice?” she asked plaintively.
“The poorest subject of the King hath justice, Madame,” he answered.
At that, Anne threw back her head and laughed like one deranged, until she slumped breathlessly against the damp-oozing stone wall, hugging herself, as tears poured down her face. She knew better than anyone what kind of justice she could expect from the King.
George was taken at Whitehall, fighting to reach the King and protest Anne’s arrest. He very nearly succeeded. He made it all the way to the privy chamber door before he was caught and dragged away to join the other prisoners in the Tower.
Weston and Brereton were taken the next day. To make plain their disdain for the charges laid against them, they did not allow being arrested to disrupt their dice game; they simply scooped up their dice and coins and took them with them in the barge. They played all the way to Traitor’s Gate.
Thomas Wyatt was the last to be arrested, but it was merely a ploy to ensure his silence. Cromwell had all the evidence he needed, and Henry had no intention of harming so fine a poet. But no one must be allowed to go free who would dare speak out in Anne’s defense, especially not a man with Wyatt’s gift for words. Ironically, of the men accused, Wyatt was the only one who was truly guilty of carnality with Anne; he was the one who had taken her virginity, and I don’t think he ever stopped loving her.