by Jean Plaidy
I should never regret leaving the Court. The emptiness of life there was very clear to me now. I never wanted to see Henry again. But there was one of whom I thought constantly: my daughter. What would become of her now? Who would care for her? Her mother disgraced, burned or beheaded, branded a harlot. What of my little baby?
Did she know of this? She would wonder why I had not been to see her. She was bright, full of questions. I could trust Lady Bryan. She loved the child and was a good, sensible woman. Why had I thought I wanted to die, when Elizabeth was there… needing me?
If I could take my child to Antwerp with me, perhaps we could live there simply… like an ordinary mother and daughter.
I was soon to discover the meaning of this hope and why it had been put to me.
The very next day I received a summons to appear at Lambeth to answer certain questions as to the validity of my marriage with the King.
The pattern was getting more and more like Katharine's—except, of course, that, being the aunt of the Emperor, she could not be condemned to death.
In a chapel in Cranmer's house in Lambeth I was confronted by Cranmer and others and urged to admit that there had been a contract of marriage between Henry Percy and me, before I married the King.
Cranmer had hinted that, if I agreed to this, not only could I save my life and leave the country with my daughter but the lives of the gentlemen might be saved.
How could I do anything but agree? We had talked of marriage, I said. If the King had not prevented us, we should have married and none of this would have happened.
It is easy to be wise after the event. I agreed. And Cranmer pronounced the marriage between the King and myself null and void.
I felt a little better; the remoteness of reality was lifting. I could plan. If I had not been married to the King, the adultery of which I was accused could not be called treason. The men would be free. I should be free. I should still be an encumbrance but if I were out of the country I could be forgotten.
I slept a little better that night.
How could I have been so foolish? It seemed that even now I did not know my husband.
The lives of other people meant nothing to him. All those young men who had been his friends, who had joked and laughed and hawked and hunted with him, meant nothing to him, and if their death could help him to his goal, he would have no compunction in sweeping them aside.
What a terrible day that was! The most wretched of my life.
They had erected a scaffold on Tower Hill. My brother went first— my dear, sweet brother, whom I had loved so dearly, the one of all on Earth whom I trusted completely. They said he died calmly and most bravely.
Poor Francis Weston. His family was desolate. His wife and mother entreated the King to spare his life. They were rich and they offered 100,000 crowns for him. Henry rejected the offer.
And Weston, Norris and Brereton submitted their heads to the ax.
Mark Smeaton was hanged. I had hoped he would retract his admission of guilt on the scaffold.
“Has he cleared me?” I asked.
They told me he had not.
“His soul will suffer for the false witness he has borne,” I said.
Mary Wyatt laid a hand on my shoulder, and when I lifted my eyes, I saw tears on her cheeks.
“Do not weep, Mary,” I said. “My brother and the rest are now, I doubt not, before the great King, and I shall follow tomorrow.”
When death is close, one thinks back over the past, and what looms large in one's mind are the actions one regrets.
I wished that I had been a better person. I could see clearly now my folly at every turn. I am not sure whether any action of mine could have altered my fate. I was dealing with a man who was corrupted by the great power he possessed, a mean, selfish man, a monster of a man, a murderer.
I had never really wanted him. He had forced himself upon me. I had been enamored of pomp and power, I admit. I had grasped at those things in life which had seemed the greatest prizes, for I had been blinded by the glitter of all that had been laid before me. I had been tempted, as Christ was by Satan, but I had not had the good sense to turn away from temptation.
And I had done many cruel things.
I had hated Katharine. I had hated the Princess Mary. True, they had been no good friends to me. How could they be, when I was the one whom they accused of robbing them of their rights?
But I could have been kinder to Mary.
How I had disliked that girl. I had wanted to humiliate her. I wanted her out of the way because I wanted her position for my daughter.
I asked Lady Kingston to come to me.
I made her sit, which she was reluctant to do. She still regarded me as the Queen, and that was my chair in which nobody sat but myself.
I said: “My title has gone. I am condemned to death. All I wish now is to clear my conscience.”
So I forced her to sit and I knelt before her. I asked her, as in the presence of God and His angels, to go from me to the Princess Mary and to kneel before her as I now knelt before her, and ask her forgiveness for the wrongs I had done her.
“Until that is done, my conscience cannot be stilled,” I told her.
She promised me she would do this, and I knew she would, for Lady Kingston was a good woman.
This is my last day on Earth. Tomorrow I shall be gone. I am twenty-nine years of age. It is young to die.
I have lost my beloved brother. I shall never see my child again. I pray for her and I have exhorted Lady Bryan to care for her. She will know what to say when Elizabeth asks why I do not come to her.
A sword has arrived, especially for me. It comes from France. I did not want the ax. It is a last concession from the King.
Kingston came to see me.
I said to him: “I hear I shall die before noon tomorrow. I am sorry. I had hoped to be dead by this time and past my pain.”
“The pain is very little, Madam,” he told me. “It is over in an instant. The executioner is very good.”
I put my hands about my neck and laughed. “And I have a little neck,” I said.
He turned away. I think he was moved by my calm acceptance of death.
I wondered whether I should request to see Elizabeth. Would that request be granted? I wondered. Henry would have decided.
What should I say to her? How does one say goodbye to a child? “My darling, I shall not see you again. Tomorrow they are going to cut off my head. Your father, in the great goodness of his heart, has allowed me to escape the terrible death by fire. He will be content to have my head removed by a very fine sword which has been sent from France for the purpose.”
Now I was getting hysterical.
I must not see Elizabeth. I could trust Lady Bryan.
I wrote a letter—not to the King but to be shown to him. I would ask Mary to give it to one of the gentlemen of the Privy Chamber.
“Commend me to His Majesty and tell him that he hath been ever constant in his career of advancing me; from private gentlewoman he made me a marquess; from a marquess to a queen; and now he hath no higher honor of degree, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.”
I hoped these words would make a mark on that conscience of his. I hoped they would be so telling that he would not be able to shrug them aside. I hoped he would be haunted by them for a long time to come.
There were moments when I longed to see him, that I might say to him what was in my mind, tell him that I saw clearly behind the mask of geniality—though that had been used less and less as time passed. Bluff King Hal was Henry the all-powerful, the selfish monster, the murderer.
I did not so much hate as despise him. He would be remembered throughout the ages to come as the King who, because of his carnal desires, had discarded the wife of twenty years on a trumped-up charge; and having succeeded in that he murdered his second. I wondered what would be the fate of the next… and the next… and the next…
But I must calm myself. I must prepare myself
for departure.
I would dress with care. I should be elegant to the end. I should wear a robe of black damask with a white cape, and my hat with ornamental coifs under it.
I would calm myself. Indeed—but for leaving Elizabeth—I should have gone gratefully to my death. I would not want to live again through the last year of my life.
Perhaps I shall not be forgotten, but remembered as the Queen who was murdered because she stood in the way of one who had the power, cruelly and most unjustly, to murder those who were an encumbrance to him.
I did not retire that night. What use? Tomorrow I should no longer need sleep.
I was inspired to express my feelings in verse.
Oh, death rock me to sleep [I wrote]
Bring on my quiet rest,
Let pass my very guiltless ghost
Out of my careful breast.
The clocks have struck midnight. The new day has come.
Very soon now they will be leading me out to the Green. Before this day is over, my life will be no more.
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ANNE BOLEYN'S CLAIM TO FAME is distinct from that of every other woman in English history. It was for the love of Anne Boleyn that Henry VIII enacted a massive schism in the Catholic Church, renouncing the authority of the Pope and setting himself as the head of the Church of England—a move that shifted religious boundaries permanently. It was for the love of Anne Boleyn that Henry risked international war and domestic turmoil by leaving his wife of twenty years, Katharine of Aragon, which set a precedent for divorce in the English court. It was for the love of Anne Boleyn that Henry struggled bitterly with his advisors for six long years to make their union legitimate. Yet Anne Boleyn paid the ultimate price for Henry's mighty love. Three years after she was married to the king, she was beheaded at his orders. In this extraordinary tale of political treachery and romantic obsession, bestselling author Jean Plaidy spins Anne's story as never before. Weaving together impeccable historical research and an intuitive grasp of Anne's voice, Plaidy conjures courtly life in all its brocaded finery, complete with feasts and balls, deceptions and betrayals, political backstabbing and religious fanaticism. This guide is designed to help direct your reading group's discussion of The Lady in the Tower.
After a childhood spent soaking up the sophistication and romantic intrigue of the fashionable French court, Anne Boleyn returns to her native England, expecting life to calm down considerably. Before long, the dark-eyed, wild-haired beauty finds herself in the court of King Henry VIII with none other than England's monarch fixated on her. Willful, proud, and virtuous, Anne will not play mistress to any man— even a king—who is already married. And so the desperate pursuit begins. Henry is up against his most trusted advisors, his queen, her royal Spanish family, the pontiff in Rome, and an increasingly critical public, as he turns his court upside-down to find a way to possess what he truly desires. And when Anne finally gives in to Henry's onslaught, she finds herself in a deadly game at the intersection of power and desire, where no amount of love or devotion will guarantee her safety. In Anne's unforgetable voice, The Lady in the Tower explores her astonishing career from the confines of the tower where she ekes out her last days, pondering what she could have done differently, and how she might have escaped her world-renowned fate as the first—but not the last—of Henry's wives to be executed.
Questions for Discussion
1 What liturgical reforms does Henry propose when he names himself the head of the church? What exactly makes the people start hating their king so late into his reign? What laws does he pass to handle their hatred? Who is Elizabeth Barton and how is she connected to Henry's public image?
2 While she sits in prison awaiting her sentence, Anne is obsessed with how she could have prevented the whole disaster. She asks herself, “So where did I go wrong? Where was that moment when I could have averted the danger?” How would you answer her questions?
3 What inspires Anne to play her little trick on the king during their first meeting in the garden? “If it had not been for the glint of desire which kept showing itself in the little Tudor eyes I might have been terrified myself,” she explains later. “But instinct told me that would save me. I could go a long way before his wrath would be irreconcilable.” Where has she learned to connect sexual attraction and power? Is this her natural instinct, or has she had an example?
4 Why is Anne so fascinated by Cardinal Wolsey, “the man who was most talked of, whom people most feared and who was said to have the King's ear in all matters?” Whe does she dwell on his humble beginning as a butcher's son? What causes her to pledge eternal revenge on him? Does she get it?
5 Henry is a bundle of contradictions and Anne knows it. She recognizes his on-again, off-again conscience, as well as his “sanctimonious excuses, his mean, hypocritical nature, his passionate desires all cloaked in piety.” And she also knows how his volatile nature panics his subjects: “If he had been a little less intellectual or a little more vain, he would have been more easily undertook, and consequently those about him, who depended on his whims, would have been so much more secure.” When does Anne start softening toward him? Is it his weakness she is attracted to, or his undeniable power? How does she use the tenets of chivalry to manipulate Henry early in their relationship?
6 All in all, what do you make of Anne? Is she a victim or an opportunist? Is she a reliable narrator? Does she change through the course of the story? How? When she says, “It is difficult for a woman of my nature not to be fond of one who shows such care for her,” what nature is she talking about?
7 What does Anne learn during her time in the French court? What impact does Mary Tudor have on her? Marguerite De Valois? King François? How does the French attitude toward adultery in the court differ from that in the English court?
8 W
hat are Queen Katharine's reasons for refusing Henry's proposal that she give up her marriage and go to a nun-nery? What role does the Emperor Charles play in this conflict? How is it resolved?
9 Of her happy days spent with her brother George, Thomas and Mary Wyatt, Norris, Weston, Brereton, “the wits and poets of the court”; Mary makes the rather mysterious statement: “We had talked of life and death, of ambition and achievement; we had come to the conclusion that we were all masters of our fate. The wise knew how to recognize danger before it reached them, to step aside and let it pass by. We were what we made ourselves.” What do you think she means by this?
10 Anne is appalled at her father, who first condemns her sister Mary's licentious behavior and later applauds it when it proves to be financially advantageous to him. She considers herself morally superior to his hypocrisy: “I wanted to escape from the cynical attitude to life where an action was deplored only when it did not bring material advantage.” Does she achieve this escape? How?
11 What events going on in England and on the Continent make the Pope's agents hesitant to cut off Henry from Rome through excommunication? Both Thomas Cranmer and Thomas Cromwell come up with solutions for Henry's marriage quagmire. What are they, and which one works?
12 When Louis is King of France, the French public is dissatisfied; they consider him mean, unadventurous, and dull, because he is frugal, peace loving, and plain. Yet, when François becomes king, the public is dissatisfied again; they find him unruly, vulgar, and unreliable, because he is glittering, extravagant, and amorous. Where else in the story do you see a fickle public? Is Anne directly affected by public opinion? Do you think public opinion carries more or less weight today than it did during the reign of Henry VIII?
13 The more triumphs Anne experiences during her struggle to marry Henry, the more uneasy she feels. Six long years pass between Henry's proposal and their marriage, and the entire period is rife with tension, disappointment, and danger. Why can't she just throw in the towel? By the time she is rejected by Henry, she claims, “It was not as if I loved him.” Do you believe her?