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

by Jean Plaidy

  There was one other way, and that was the way he wanted. He wanted it fiercely. While she lived he would continue to think of her enjoyed by and enjoying others; he could never bear that; she had meant too much to him, and still did. But their marriage had been a mistake; he had been completely happy with her before it, and he had never known a moment’s true peace since; and it was all her fault. She could not get a male child, which meant that heaven disapproved of their marriage. He could see no other way out of this but that that charming head should be cut from those elegant shoulders. His eyes glistened at the thought. Love and hatred, he knew, were closely allied. None other shall have her! was his main thought. She shall enjoy no more lovers; she shall laugh at me no more with her paramours! She shall die . . . die . . . die, for she is a black-browed witch, born to destroy men; therefore shall she be destroyed. She was guilty of adultery, and, worse still, incest; he must not forget that.

  Ah, it grieved him that one he had once loved dearly should be too unworthy to live; but so it was . . . so it was. It was his painful duty to see justice done.

  He said to Cranmer: “This is painful to me, Cranmer. I would such work as this had not fallen to my bitter lot!”

  Cranmer was grieved too; he was terrified that this might turn back the King towards Rome. And then what of those who had urged the break? Cranmer imagined he could smell the pungent smell of burning faggots and feel the hot flames creeping up his legs.

  He said that he was hurt and grieved as was His Majesty, for next to the King’s Grace he was most bound unto her of all creatures living. He would ask the King’s permission to pray for her; he had loved her for the love he had supposed her to bear to God and the gospel. He hastened to add that all who loved God must now hate her above all others, for there could never have been one who so slandered the gospel.

  Poor chicken-hearted Cranmer went in fear and trembling for the next few weeks. He could wish his courage was as strong as his beliefs. What if he who had been helped by the Queen, whose duty really lay towards her now, were clapped into the Tower! Those who were high one day, were brought low the next. He thought of a girl he had loved and married in Nuremburg, whither he had gone to study Lutheran doctrines, and whom he had left in Nuremburg because he had been called home to become Archbishop of Canterbury. It had been heartbreaking to leave her behind; she was sweet and clinging; but Henry believed in the celibacy of priests, and what would he have said to a priest who had married a wife? He had left her for Henry; had left a bride for an archbishopric, had sacrificed love for a high place at court. What if he should fall from that high place to a dungeon in the Tower! From the Tower to the stake or the block was a short step indeed.

  Henry found it comforting to talk with Cranmer; Cranmer was eager as he himself to do what was right.

  “If she has done wrong,” said Cranmer, “then Your Grace will punish her through God.”

  “Through God,” said Henry. “Though I trust she may yet prove her innocence. I would say to you, my lord, that I have no desire in the world to marry again unless constrained to do so by my subjects.”

  “Amen!” said Cranmer, and tried not to show by his expression that he must think of Jane Seymour and those reports he had heard that she was already with child.

  Henry patted the Archbishop’s shoulder, called him his good friend; and Cranmer begged that this sad matter should not cause the King to think less of the gospel.

  “I but turn to it more, good Cranmer.”

  Cranmer left happier, and the King was relieved by his visit.

  He called to his son, the young Duke of Richmond, and would have him stand before him that he might embrace him.

  “For I feel tender towards you this night, my son.”

  He was thinking of Anne even as he spoke. How often had she discountenanced him! How often had she disturbed him! And she, laughing at him . . . in the arms of his courtiers . . . Norris . . . Weston. . . . Their faces leaped up in his mind, and were beside Anne’s, laughing at him.

  Fiercely he embraced his son; tears of self-pity came into his eyes and brimmed over onto the boy’s head.

  “Your Majesty is deeply disturbed,” said the young Duke.

  Henry’s voice broke on a sob. He remembered a rumor that when he had thought of going to France and leaving Anne as Regent, she had talked wildly of getting rid of Mary; some had said she meant to poison her.

  He held the boy against his chest.

  “You and your sister Mary ought to thank God for escaping that cursed and venomous whore who tried to poison you both!” he declared.

  Anne was desolate. The weary days were passing. There were with her two women, day and night, whom she hated and knew to be her enemies. These had been sent as her attendants by command of the King. They were a certain Mrs. Cosyns, a spy and a talebearer, and her aunt, Lady Boleyn, who was the wife of her uncle, Sir Edward. This aunt had always been jealous of her niece, right from the time when she was a precocious child considered in the family to be clever. These two, at Cromwell’s instigation, wore her down with their questions as they tried to trap her into admissions; they were sly-faced, ugly women, envious, jealous women who enjoyed their position and were made most gleeful by the distress of the Queen. Every chance remark that fell from her lips was repeated with some distortion to make it incriminating. This was just what Cromwell wanted, and he was therefore pleased with these two women. Those ladies whom she would have liked to have beside her, were not allowed to come to her. She longed to talk with Margaret Lee and Mary Wyatt, with her own sister, Mary, with Madge; but no, she must be followed, no matter where she went, by these two odious females or by Lady Kingston who was as cold as her husband and had little sympathy, having seen too much suffering in her capacity of wife of the Constable of the Tower to have much to spare for one who, before this evil fate had befallen her, had enjoyed in plenty the good things of life.

  But news filtered through to Anne. Her brother had been arrested. On what charge? Incest! Oh, but this was grotesque! How could they say such things! It was a joke; George would laugh; they could not hurt George. What had George done to deserve this? “For myself,” she cried, “I have been foolish and careless and over-fond of flattery. I have been vain and stupid. . . . But oh, my sweet brother, what have you ever done but help me! I would die a thousand deaths rather than you should suffer so through me.”

  The sly women nodded, carefully going over what she had said. By eliminating a word here, a sentence there, they could give a very good account of themselves to Thomas Cromwell.

  “Wyatt here!” she exclaimed. “Here in the Tower?” And she wept for Wyatt, calling him Dear Thomas, and was over-wrought, recalling the happy days of childhood.

  “Norris is here. Norris accused me. . . . Oh, I cannot believe it of Norris. . . . Oh, I cannot! He would never betray me.”

  She could not believe that Norris would betray her! Then, argued Cromwell, if she cannot believe he would betray her, is not that an admission that there is something to betray?

  When she was tired, they would pretend to soothe her, laying wily traps.

  “What of the unhappy gentlemen in the Tower?” she wanted to know. “Will any make their beds?”

  “No, I’ll warrant you; they’ll have none to make their beds!”

  She showed great solicitude for the comfort of her paramours, they reported.

  “Ballads will be made about me,” she said, smiling suddenly. “None can do that better than Wyatt.”

  She spoke with great admiration and feeling of Thomas Wyatt, they then told Cromwell.

  She wept bitterly for her baby. “What will become of her? Who will care for her now? I feel death close to me, because I know of her whom the King would set up in my place, but how can he set up a new queen when he has a queen already living? And what of my baby? She is not yet three. It is so very young, is it not? Could I not see her? Oh, plead for me please! Have you never thought how a mother might long for a last glimpse of her da
ughter! No, no. Bring her not to me. What would she think to see me thus! I should weep over her and frighten her, since the thought of her frightens me, for she is so very young to be left alone in a cruel world. . . . Say not that I wish to see my baby.”

  Her eyes were round with fear. They would be so clever at thinking up fresh mental torture for her to bear. Not that though! Not Elizabeth!

  “She will be playing in her nursery now. What will become of her? After all, is she not the King’s daughter?”

  Then she began to laugh shrilly, and her laughter ended in violent weeping. For she thought, They will call her bastard now perhaps . . . and this is a judgment on me for my unkindness to Katharine’s daughter Mary. Oh, Katharine, forgive me. I knew not then what it meant to have a daughter. And what if the King . . .

  But she could not think; she dared not. Oh, but she knew him, cold and relentless and calculating, and having need to rid himself of her. Already she was accused with five men, and one of them her own, and so innocently loved, brother. What if he said Elizabeth were not his child? What will he care for her, hating her mother? And if he married Jane Seymour . . . if she is Queen, will she be kind to my baby daughter . . . as I was to Mary? Jesus, forgive me. I was wicked. I was wrong . . . and now this is my punishment. It will happen to me as it happened to Katharine, and there will be none to care for my daughter, as there was none to care for Mary.

  Such thoughts must set her weeping; then remembering that when she had become Henry’s Queen she had chosen as her device “Happiest of Women,” she laughed bitterly and long.

  “How she weeps! How she laughs!” whispered the women. “How unstable she is . . . hysterical and afraid! Does not her behavior tend to show her guilt?”

  She talked a good deal; she did not sleep; she lay staring into the darkness, thinking back over the past, trying to peer into the future. Despair enveloped her. The King is cruel and cold; he can always find a righteous answer when he wishes to do some particularly cruel deed. I am lost. There is naught can save me now! Hope came to her. But he loved me once; once there was nothing he would not do for me. Even to the last I could amuse him, and I tried hard enough. . . . I could delight him more than any an I gave myself up to it. He does this but to try me. He will come to me soon; all will be well.

  But no! I am here in the Tower and they say evil things of me. My friends are here. George, my darling, my sweet brother, the only one I could truly trust in the whole world. And they know that! That is why they have sent you here, George; that is why they imprison you; so that I shall have none to help me now.

  She asked for writing materials. She would write; she would try to forget his cruel eyes; she would try to forget him as he was now and remember him as he used to be when he had said the name of Anne Boleyn was the sweetest music to his ears.

  The words flowed impulsively from her pen.

  “Your Grace’s displeasure and my imprisonment are things so strange unto me, that what to write or what to excuse, I am altogether ignorant. . . .”

  She wrote hastily, hope coming back to her as her pen moved swiftly along.

  “Never a prince had wife more loyal in all duty, and in all true affection, than you have ever found in Anne Boleyn—with which name and place I could willingly have contented myself if God and your Grace’s pleasure had so been pleased. Neither did I at any time so far forget myself in my exaltation, or received queenship, but that I always looked for such alteration as I now found; for the ground of my preferment being on no surer foundation than your Grace’s fancy, the least alteration was fit and sufficient (I knew) to draw that fancy to some other subject.”

  She paused. Was she over-bold? She felt death close to her and cared not.

  “You have chosen me from low estate to be your Queen and companion, far beyond my desert or desire; if then you found me worthy of such honor, good your Grace, let not any light fancy or bad counsel of my enemies, withdraw your princely favor from me, neither let that stain—that unworthy stain—of a disloyal heart towards your good Grace, ever cast so foul a blot on me and on the infant Princess your daughter Elizabeth.

  “Try me, good King, but let me have a lawful trial and let not my sworn enemies sit as my accusers and as my judges; yea, let me receive an open trial, for my truth shall fear no open shames; then shall you see either my innocency cleared, your suspicions and conscience satisfied, the ignominy and slander of the world stopped, or my guilt openly declared. So that whatever God and you may determine of, your Grace may be freed from an open censure, and mine offence being so lawfully proved, your Grace may be at liberty, both before God and man, not only to execute worthy punishment on me, as an unfaithful wife, but to follow your affection already settled on that party, for whose sake I am now as I am; whose name I could, some good while since, have pointed unto; your Grace being not ignorant of my suspicion therein.”

  Her cheeks burned with anger as her pen flew on.

  “But if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death, but an infamous slander, must bring you the joying of your desired happiness, then, I desire of God that he will pardon your great sin herein, and, likewise, my enemies, the instruments thereof, and that He will not call you to a strait account of your unprincely and cruel usage of me, at his general judgment seat, where both you and myself must shortly appear; and in whose just judgment I doubt not (whatsoever the world may think of me) mine innocency shall be openly known, and sufficiently cleared.”

  She laid down her pen, a bitter smile about her lips. That would touch him as she knew so well how to touch him, and as she, among all those around him, alone had the courage to touch him. She was reckless of herself, and though she may have been foolish and vain she clung to her magnificent courage. If he ever read those words with their reference to the judgment of God he would tremble in his shoes, and no matter how he might present them to his conscience, they would disturb him to the end of his days. He would think of them when he lay with Jane Seymour; and she exulted in that power over him which she would wield from the grave. She was sure that he intended to murder her; in cold blood he planned this, as any commoner might plan to put away a wife of whom he had tired, by beating her to death or stabbing her with a knife or throwing her body into the dark river. She was terrified, experiencing all the alarm of a woman who knows herself to be followed in the dark by a footpad with murder in his heart. Such women, who were warned of an impending fate, might call for help; but there was none who could come to her aid, for her murderer would be the mightiest man in England whose anger none could curb, for whose crimes the archbishops themselves would find a righteous excuse.

  She began to cry in very fear, and her thoughts went from her own troubles to those of the men who would be required to shed their blood with her, and she blamed herself, for was it not her love of flattery that had led them to express their feelings too openly? Was it not her desire to show the King that though he might prefer others, there were always men to prefer her, which had brought about this tragedy?

  She took up her pen once more.

  “My last and only request shall be, that myself may only bear the burden of your Grace’s displeasure, and that it may not touch the innocent souls of those poor gentlemen, who, as I understand, are likewise in strait imprisonment for my sake.

  “If ever I have found favor in your sight—if ever the name of Anne Boleyn have been pleasing in your ears—then let me obtain this request; and so I will leave to trouble your Grace any further: with mine earnest prayer to the Trinity to have your Grace in his good keeping, and to direct you in all your actions.

  “From my doleful prison in the Tower, the 6th of May.

  —Anne Boleyn.”

  She felt better after having written that letter; she would keep the writing materials with her that she might write now and then. She was wretched though, wondering how her letter would reach the King. She pictured its falling into Cromwell’s hands, which was likely, for he had his spies all about her, and
it could hardly be hoped that the letter would find its way through them to the King. If by good luck it did, he could not be unmoved by her words, she felt sure. He who had once upbraided her for not writing frequently enough, surely would read this last letter.

  But she was afraid, sensing her doom, knowing her husband too well, knowing how he was placed, how he must find a way to marry Jane Seymour and appease his conscience; and thinking on these matters, hope, which had come to her through the writing of the letter, was swallowed up once more in deepest despondency.

  Smeaton lay in his cell. He was no longer a beautiful boy; his dark curls were tangled and matted with blood and sweat; his delicate features were swollen with pain and grief. It seemed to him that there were but two emotions in the world—that of suffering pain and that of having no pain. One was agony; the other bliss.