Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard

by Jean Plaidy

  As he lay beside her, she entwined her fingers in his.

  “Henry,” she said.

  He grunted.

  Words trembled on her lips. What if she asked to have the baby in! No, that would be unwise; she could not make conditions now. She must tread carefully; she was only the King’s wife now. The Queen of England lacked the power of Anne Rochford and the Marchioness of Pembroke; but the Queen had all the cunning of those ladies, and she would laugh yet in the faces of her enemies who prophesied her destruction.

  “Henry, now that we have a child, would it not be well to declare Mary illegitimate? We know well that she is, but it has never been so stated.”

  He considered this. He was feeling a little hurt with Mary, who had applauded and supported her mother ever since the divorce had been thought of. Mary was an obstinate girl, an unloving daughter who had dared to flout her father, the King.

  “By God!” he said. “I’ve been too lenient with that girl!”

  “Indeed you have! And did I not always tell you so; you must announce her illegitimacy at once, and every man of note in the country must agree to it.”

  “If they do not,” growled Henry, “’twill be the worse for them!”

  She kissed his cheek; she had been foolish to worry. She still had the power to manage him.

  He said: “We must go cautiously. I fear the people will not like it. They have made a martyr of Katharine, and of Mary too.”

  She did not attach over-much importance to the will of the people. They had shouted: “We’ll have no Nan Bullen!” And here she was, on the throne in spite of them. The people gathered together and grumbled; sometimes they made disturbances; sometimes they marched together with flaming torches in their hands. . . . Still, they should not pay too much attention to the people.

  “Mary is a stupid, wayward girl,” said Anne. And as the King nodded in agreement, she added: “She should be compelled to act as maid to Elizabeth. She should be made to understand who is the true Princess!”

  Then she threw herself into his arms, laughing immoderately. He was pleased with her; he was sure that ere long they would have a healthy boy.

  Sir Thomas More’s daughter, Margaret Roper, was full of fear, for peace had been slowly filched from her home. April was such a pleasant month at Chelsea; in the garden of her father’s house, where she had spent her happy childhood and continued to live with her husband Will Roper, the trees were blossoming; the water of the Thames lapped gently about the privy stairs; and how often had Margaret sat on the wooden seat with her father, listening to his reading to her and her brother and sisters, or watching him as he discoursed most wittily with his good friend Erasmus. Change had crept into the house like a winter fog, and Margaret’s heart was filled with a hatred alien to it; the hatred was for one whom she thought of as a brown girl, a girl with a sixth nail on her left hand and a disfiguring mark on her throat, a girl who had bewitched the King, who had cut off England from the Pope, and who had placed Margaret’s father in mortal danger.

  When Anne Boleyn had gone to court from Hever Castle, the first shadow had been cast over the Chelsea house. Her father would reprove her for her hatred, but Margaret could not subdue it. She was no saint, she reasoned. She had talked of Anne Boleyn most bitterly to her sisters, Elizabeth and Cecily; and now, sitting in the garden watching the river, calm today, bringing with it the mingled smells of tar and seaweed and rotting wood and fish, with the willow trees abudding and drooping sadly over it, she felt fear in the very air. When her adopted sister, Mercy, came running out to sit with her awhile, she had started violently and begun to tremble, fearing Mercy had brought news of some disaster. When her stepsister, Alice, appeared beside her, she felt her knees shake, though Alice had merely come to ask if Margaret would care to help her feed the peacocks.

  Margaret recalled this house a few years back; she remembered seeing her father in the heart of his family, reading to them in long summer evenings out of doors, saying prayers in the house; and so often with a joke on his lips. Her father was the center of his household; they all moved round him; were he removed, what then of the More family? ’Twould be like Earth without the sun, thought Margaret. She remembered writing letters to him when he was away from home on an embassy. He had been proud of her, showing her letters to the great scholar, Reginald Pole, who had complimented him on possessing such a daughter. He had told her this, for he knew well when a compliment might be passed to do the object good, and not to foster pride. He was a saint. And what so often was the end of saints? They became martyrs. Margaret wept softly, controlledly, for she dared not show the others she had wept; it would displease her father. Why must she now recall the memories of her childhood and all those sunny days in which her father moved, the center of her life, the best loved one? Fear made her do it; fear of what was coming swiftly towards him. What was waiting for this adored father, tomorrow or the next day, or the next? Gloom had settled in the house; it was in the eyes of her stepmother, usually not eager to entertain it, usually eager to push it away; but it had come too close to be pushed away. Her sisters . . . were they over-gay? Their husbands laughed a little louder than was their wont; and in the garden, or from the windows of the house, their eyes would go to the river as though they were watching, watching for a barge that might come from Westminster or the Tower, and stop at the privy steps of Sir Thomas More’s garden.

  Her father was the calmest of the household; though often he would look at them all sadly and eagerly, as though he would remember the details of each face that he might recall them after he would be unable to see them. A great calm had settled upon him of late, as though he had grappled with a problem and found the solution. He was a great man, a good man; and yet he was full of fun. One would have expected a saint to be a little melancholy, not fond of partaking of pleasure nor seeing those about him doing so. He was not like that; he loved to laugh, to see his children laugh; he was full of kindly wit. Oh, there was never such a one as Father! sighed Margaret.

  He was fifty-six years of age now, and since he had given up the chancellorship he had looked every year of it. As a boy he had been taken into the household of Cardinal Morton who was then Archbishop of Canterbury; from thence he had gone to Oxford, become a lawyer, gone into Parliament, had lectured on the subject of theology, and was soon recognized as a brilliant young man. There was in him the stuff of the martyr; at one time he had come very near to becoming a monk, but he decided to marry. “Did you ever regret that decision, Father?” Margaret once asked, and he laughed and pretended to consider; and she had been filled with happiness to know he did not. That was well, for if ever a man was meant to be a father, that man was Sir Thomas More. There was never such a family as ours, thought Margaret. We were happy . . . happy . . . before Anne Boleyn went to court. Wolsey had admired Sir Thomas, had made use of him; the King had met him, taken a liking to him, sought his help in denouncing the doctrines of Luther. Thus, when Wolsey was discarded, it was on this man that the King’s choice fell. “More shall be Chancellor. More shall have the Great Seal of England,” said the King. “For rarely liked I a man better!” And so he achieved that high office; but he was never meant to go to court. Had he not remarked that he would serve God first, the Prince second? He would ever say that which would lead to trouble, because honesty was second nature to him. He was a saint; please God he need never show the world that he could be a martyr too! Margaret had been frightened when he became Chancellor, knowing his views on the divorce.

  “Anne Boleyn will never be Queen,” she had said often enough to her husband, Will. “How can she be, when the Pope will not sanction the divorce?”

  “Indeed,” had answered Will, “you speak truth, Meg. How can that be! A man who has one wife may not marry another.”

  She had been afraid for Will then, for he was interested in the new faith and would read of it secretly, being unsure in his mind; she trembled, for she could not have borne that her beloved father and her dear husband s
hould not be in agreement on these matters. She had discussed Martin Luther and his doctrines with her father, for he was ever ready to talk with her on any serious subject, holding that though she was a woman she had the power to think and reason.

  “Father,” she had said, “there have been times when I have heard you discourse against the ways of Rome.”

  “That I have done, Meg. But this is how I see it, daughter. Rome’s ways are not always good, but I hold the things we value most in life may best be held to under Rome.”

  She had not dared to tell him of Will’s flirting with the new faith. She did not understand it fully. She supposed that Will, being young, would prefer to try the new, and her father, being not so young, must like the old ways best. She had thought it a great tragedy when she discovered this tendency in Will; but what was that, compared with this which threatened!

  The giving up of the Great Seal had been like the first clap of thunder that heralds an unexpected storm on a fine summer’s day. After that there was quiet, until that April day a year ago, when three bishops came to the house one morning to bring twenty pounds for his dress, that he might attend the coronation of her who was set up as Queen, and who could never be accepted as Queen in this household. He had refused that invitation. She shivered at the memory. A few days later that refusal brought forth its results; he was charged with bribery and corruption. A ridiculous charge against the most honest man in England; but nothing was too ridiculous to bring against one so prominent who failed to do honor to Anne Boleyn. And recently there had come a further and more alarming charge; a mad nun of Kent, named Elizabeth Barton, had been shocking Anne’s supporters and heartening those of Katharine with her lurid prophecies of the evil fates which would await the King and Anne, should they continue in their ungodly ways. The rightful Queen, declared the nun, was Katharine. She had seen visions; she went into trances and then gave voice to prophecies which she declared were put into her mouth by the Holy Ghost. As she had been in touch with Queen Katherine and the Emperor Charles, she was considered dangerous, but on her arrest and examination in the Star Chamber she had confessed she was an imposter. And Sir Thomas More was accused of having instigated this woman to pretend the future had been revealed to her, that she might frighten the King into taking back Katharine and abandoning Anne.

  Margaret remembered how they had sat about the table, pretending to eat, pretending it would be well, telling each other that the innocence of the guiltless was their best defence. He had been taken before the Council; he had been questioned by the new Archbishop, by His Grace of Norfolk—whom she feared for his cold eyes and his hard, cruel mouth—before Thomas Cromwell, whose thick hands looked as though they would not hesitate to turn on one slow to answer his questions; his fish-like eyes held no warmth, only cunning. But he was clever as well as good, this most loved father; he had outwitted them, for his wit was sharper than theirs; and she had heard that there was none equal to him apart from Cranmer, and on this occasion Cranmer was on the wrong side, so right must prevail. They had dismissed him in exasperation, for they could not trip him; and it was his arguments, she was sure, that had dumbfounded them, not theirs him.

  Will had traveled down with him, and told her about this afterwards. Will had said that he knew all must be well, and rejoiced to see him so merry.

  Her father had replied that truly he was merry, and would Will know why? He had taken the first step and the first step was the hardest. He had gone so far with those lords that without great shame he could never turn back.

  This then had been the cause of his merriment. The step was taken down that path which he believed to be the right one; but what a path, where danger lurked at every turn! And what was at the end of it? That had happened a year ago, and now he had come far along that path; and this gloom which hung over them now—did it mean that he was nearing its end?

  Mercy was running out to the garden now.

  “Meg!” she called. “Meg!” And Margaret dared not turn to look at her, so strong was her fear, so numbing the suspense.

  Mercy’s pleasant face was hot with running.

  “Dinner, Meg! Of what are you thinking . . . dreaming here? We are all waiting for you. Father sent to call you. . . .”

  She thought she had never heard more beautiful words than those, and their beauty was in their sweet normality. “Father sent to call you.” She went with Mercy into the house.

  They sat round the large table, her stepmother Alice, Cecily and her husband Giles, Elizabeth and her husband, John and his wife, Mercy and Clement, Margaret and Will. And there at the head of the table he sat, his face more serene than any, as though he were unaware of the dark patches of sorrow that hung about his house. He was laughing, pretending to chide her for daydreaming, giving her a lecture on the evils of unpunctuality which was spattered with fun; and she laughed with the rest, but not daring to meet his eyes for fear he should see the tears there. He knew why she would not look at him, for they were closer than any in the household, and though he loved well his family, it was his daughter Meg who was closest to his heart. So the others laughed, for he was a sorcerer where laughter was concerned, conjuring it up out of nowhere, but not for her; she was too close to the magician, she knew his tricks, she saw the sleight of hand; she knew the merry eyes watched the window, listened for a sign.

  It came with a loud knocking on the outer door.

  Gillian, their little maid, came running in, her mouth open. There was one outside who must see Sir Thomas.

  Sir Thomas arose, but the man was already in the room. He carried the scroll in his hands. He bowed most courteously. His face was sad, as though he did not greatly love his mission, which was a command that Sir Thomas must appear next day before the Commissioners in order to take the Oath of Supremacy.

  There was silence round the table; Margaret stared at the dish before her, at the worn wood of the table which she remembered so well, since she had sat at this particular place for as long as she could recall. She wished the birds would not sing so loudly, showing they did not know this was a day of doom; she wished the sun would not shine so hotly on her neck for it made her feel she would be sick. She wanted perfect clarity of mind to remember forever each detail of that well loved face.

  Her stepmother had turned deathly pale; she looked as if she would faint. The whole family might have been petrified; they did not move; they sat and waited.

  Margaret looked at her father; his eyes had begun to twinkle. No, no! she thought. Not now! I cannot bear that you should turn this into a joke. Not even for them. Not now!

  But he was smiling at her, imploring her. Margaret! You and I, we understand. We have to help one another.

  Then she arose from the table and went to the messenger, and looking closely at his face, she said: “Why . . . Dick Halliwell! Mother . . . Everybody . . . ’Tis only Dick!”

  And they fell upon her father, chiding him, telling him he went too far with his jokes. And there he was, laughing among them, believing that it is well not to look at unhappiness until it is close upon you, having often said that once you have passed it, every day lends distance between it and yourself.

  Margaret went to her nursery where she stayed with her small daughter, finding solace in the charm of the child and thinking of the child’s future when she would have children of her own, so that she might not think of this day and the days that would immediately follow it.

  Later, hearing voices beneath her window, she looked out and saw her father walking below with the Duke of Norfolk who, she guessed, had come to have a word with him about the morrow. Margaret, her hand on her heart, as though she feared those below would hear its wild beating, listened to their voices which were wafted up to her.

  “’Tis perilous striving with princes,” said His Grace. “I could wish you as a friend to incline to the King’s pleasure. “

  Then she heard her father’s voice, and it seemed to her that it held little of sorrow. “There will be only this difference
between Your Grace and me, that I shall die today and you tomorrow.”

  That night, she could not sleep. Death seemed already to be hovering over the house. She recalled what she had heard of those committed to the Tower; she thought of that gloomy prison and compared it with this happy home. He would say: “All these years of happiness have I had; I should be grateful to have known them, not sorrowful that because I have loved them well, I now must grieve the more to lose them.”

  She wept bitter tears, and took her child in her arms, seeking comfort from that small body. But there was no comfort for Margaret Roper. Death hung over the house, waiting to snatch its best loved member.

  He left next day. She watched him go down the privy steps with Will, his head held high; already he looked a saint. He did not cast a look behind him; he would have them all believe that soon he would be returning to them.

  Catherine Howard was in the orchard, looking through the trees at the river. She was plumper than she had been almost a year ago when she had first met Francis Derham at the coronation. Now she deplored the state of her clothes, longed for rich materials, for ribands and flowers to adorn her hair.

  She was not yet thirteen years old and looked seventeen—a plump, ripe, seventeen; she was very pretty, very gay, fond of laughter; in love with Francis.

  Life was beautiful, she thought, and promised to be more so. Francis was husband to her, she wife to him. One day—and that not far distant—they would be so in earnest.

  As she stood gazing at the river, a pair of hands were placed over her eyes; she gave a little cry of pleasure, assured this was Francis. Often he came to her, and they met here in the orchards, for he was still of her uncle’s house.

  “Guess who!” said the loved and familiar voice.