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

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Murder Most Royal: The Story of Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard Page 45

by Jean Plaidy


  She was conducted to the crypt of the Archbishop’s residence and awaiting her there were Cranmer, looking troubled but determined to do his duty; Cromwell, looking more sly and ugly than ever; Doctor Sampson, to represent the King; and two doctors, Wotton and Barbour, who, most farcically, were supposed to represent her.

  She had not been there for more than a few moments when she realized their cunning purpose.

  Cranmer’s voice was silky. There was no man who could present a case as he could. His voice almost caressed her, expressing sympathy for her most unhappy state.

  She was under the sentence of death, he said, by beheading . . . or burning.

  Did he mean to stress that last word, or did she imagine this? The way in which he said it made her hot with fear; she felt as though the flames were already scorching her flesh.

  The King’s conscience, went on Cranmer, troubled him sorely. She had been pre-contracted to Northumberland! That, she would understand, would make her marriage with the King illegal.

  She cried: “Northumberland was brought before you. You yourself accepted . . .”

  Cranmer was quiet and calm, so capable of adjusting his opinion, so clever, so intellectual, so impossible to confound.

  The King himself had been indiscreet. Yes, His Majesty was ready to admit it. An association with Anne’s sister. An affinity created.

  Cranmer spread his hands as though to say, Now, you see how it is. You were never really married to the King!

  She could hold her head high in the crypt at Lambeth as she had in that other court where they had condemned her. They would need her acknowledgment of this, would they not? Well, they should never get it.

  Cranmer was pained and sad. He had loved her well, he said.

  She thought, How I hate all hypocrites! Fool I may be but I am no hypocrite. How I hate you, Cranmer! I helped you to your present position. You too, Cromwell. But neither of you would think of helping me! But Cranmer I hate more than Cromwell for Cranmer is a hypocrite, and perhaps I hate this in men because I am married to the most shameless one that ever lived.

  Cranmer was talking in his deep sonorous voice. He had a gift for making suggestions without expressing actual statements. She was thinking, I have my little daughter to consider. She shall never be called bastard.

  Cranmer’s voice went droning on. He was hinting at her release. There was a pleasant convent at Antwerp. What of the young men whose fate she deplored and whose innocence she proclaimed? All the country knew how she esteemed her brother, and he her. Was he to go to the block? What of her daughter? The King would be more inclined to favor a child whose mother had impressed him with her good sense.

  Anne’s mind was working quickly. It was painfully clear. She must make a choice. If her marriage to the King were proved null and void then that was all he need ask for. He could marry Jane Seymour immediately if his marriage with Anne Boleyn had been no marriage at all. The child Jane carried would be born in wedlock. And for this, Anne was offered a convent in Antwerp, the lives of her brother and those innocent men who were to die with him. And if not . . . Once more she was hot with the imaginary fire that licked her limbs. And what would her refusal mean in any case? If the King had decided to disinherit Elizabeth, he would surely do so. He had ever found excuses for what he wished to do.

  She had something to gain and nothing to lose, for if she had not been married to the King, how could she have committed adultery? The affairs of Lady Anne Rochford and the Marchioness of Pembroke could not be called treason to the King.

  Her hopes were soaring. She thought, Oh, George, my darling, I have saved you! You shall not die. Gladly I will throw away my crown to save you!

  Cromwell went back to his master rubbing his ugly hands with pleasure. Once more he had succeeded. The King was free to take a new wife whenever he wished, for he had never been married to Anne Boleyn. She herself had agreed upon it.

  It was over. They had tricked her. At the King’s command she had stood and watched them as they passed by her window on their way to Tower Hill. She had sacrificed her own and her daughter’s rights in vain. Although she was no queen, these men had died. It was not reasonable; it was not logical; it was simply murder.

  She herself had yet another day to live through. Mary Wyatt came to tell her how nobly these men had died, following the example of George, how they had made their speeches, which etiquette demanded, on the scaffold, how they had met their deaths bravely.

  “What of Smeaton?” she asked. She thought of him still as a soft-eyed boy, and she could not believe that he would not tell the truth on the scaffold. Mary was silent and Anne cried out: “Has he not cleared me of the public shame he hath done me!” She surveyed Mary’s silent face in horror. “Alas,” she said at length and in great sorrow, “I fear his soul will suffer from the false witness he hath borne.”

  Her face lightened suddenly.

  “Oh, Mary,” she cried, “It will not be long now. My brother and the rest are now, I doubt not, before the face of the greater King, and I shall follow tomorrow.”

  When Mary left her her sadness returned. She wished they had not given her fresh hope in the Lambeth Crypt. She had resigned herself to death, and then they had promised her she should live, and life was so sweet. She was twenty-nine and beautiful; and though she had thought herself weary of living, when they had given her that peep into a possible future, how eagerly she had grasped at it!

  She thought of her daughter, and trembled. Three is so very young. She would not understand what had happened to her mother. Oh, let them be kind to Elizabeth.

  She asked that Lady Kingston might come to her, and when the woman came she locked the door and with tears running down her cheeks, asked that Lady Kingston would sit in her chair of state.

  Lady Kingston herself was moved in face of such distress.

  “It is my duty to stand in the presence of the Queen, Madam,” she said.

  “That title is gone,” was the answer. “I am a condemned person, and, I have no estate left me in this life, but for the clearing of my conscience, I pray you sit down.”

  She began to weep, and her talk was incoherent, and humbly she fell upon her knees and begged that Lady Kingston would go to Mary, the daughter of Katharine, and kneel before her and beg that she would forgive Anne Boleyn for the wrong she had done her.

  “For, my Lady Kingston,” she said, “till this be accomplished, my conscience cannot be quiet.”

  After that she was more at peace and did not need to thrust the thought of her daughter from her mind.

  The news was brought to her that her death should not take place at the appointed hour; there had been a postponement. She had been most gay, and to learn that she was to have a few more hours on Earth was a disappointment to her.

  “Mr. Kingston,” she said, “I hear I shall not die afore noon, and I am very sorry therefore, for I thought to be dead by this time and past my pain.”

  “The pain will be little,” he told her gently, “it is so subtle.”

  She answered; “I have heard say the executioner is very good, and I have a little neck.”

  She embraced it with her hands and laughed; and when her laughter had subsided, a great peace came to her. She had another day to live and she had heard that the King wished the hour of her execution to be kept secret, and that it was not to take place on Tower Hill where any idle spectator might see her die, but on the enclosed green; for the King feared the reactions of the people.

  The evening passed; she was gay and melancholy in turns; she joked about her end. “I shall be easily nicknamed—‘Queen Anne . . . sans tete.’”

  She occupied herself in writing her own dirge.

  “Oh death, rock me asleep,

  Bring on my quiet rest,

  Let pass my very guiltless ghost

  Out of my careful breast.

  Ring out the doleful knell

  Let its sound my death tell;

  For I must die,

 
There is no remedy,

  For now I die . . .”

  She dressed herself with such care that it might have been a state banquet to which she was going instead of to the scaffold. Her robe of gray damask was trimmed with fur and low cut; beneath this showed a kirtle of crimson. Her headdress was trimmed with pearls. She had never looked more beautiful; her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brilliant, and all the misery and fear of the last weeks seemed to have been lifted from her face.

  Attended by four ladies, among them her beloved Mary Wyatt, with much dignity and grace she walked to the green before the church of St. Peter ad Vincula. Slowly and calmly she ascended the steps to that platform which was strewn with straw; and she could smile because there were so few people to witness her last moments, smile because the hour and place of her execution had had to be kept secret from the people.

  Among those who had gathered about the scaffold she saw the Dukes of Suffolk and Richmond, but she could feel no enmity towards these two now. She saw Thomas Cromwell, whose eldest son was now married to Jane Seymour’s sister. Ah, thought Anne, when my head has rolled into the sawdust, he will feel an impediment lifted and his relationship to the King almost an accomplished fact.

  She called to her one whom she knew to be of the King’s privy chamber, and said she would send a message by him to the King.

  “Commend me to His Majesty,” she said, “and tell him that he hath ever been constant in his career of advancing me; from a private gentlewoman, he made me a marchioness, from a marchioness a queen, and now he hath left no higher degree of honor, he gives my innocency the crown of martyrdom.”

  The messenger trembled for she was a woman about to die, and how could he dare carry such a message to the King!

  Then she would, after the etiquette of the scaffold, make her dying speech.

  “Good Christian people,” she said, “I am come hither to die, according to law, for by the law I am judged to die, and therefore I will speak nothing against it . . .”

  Her ladies were so overcome with weeping that she, hearing their sobs, was deeply moved.

  “I come hither to accuse no man,” she continued, “nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused, as I know full well that aught that I say in my defense doth not appertain to you . . .”

  When she spoke of the King, her words were choked. Cromwell moved nearer to the scaffold. This was the moment he and the King had most feared. But with death so near she cared nothing for revenge. All the bitterness had gone out of her. Cromwell would arrange the words she spoke, not only as they should best please the King, but also that they should mislead the public into thinking she had died justly. The people must be told that at the end she had only praise for the King, that she spoke of him as a merciful prince and a gentle sovereign lord.

  Her voice cleared and she went on: “If any person will meddle with my cause I require them to judge the best. Thus I take my leave of the world and of you, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.”

  It was time for her now to lay her head upon the block and there was not one of her attendants whose hands were steady enough to remove her headdress; they could only turn from her in blind misery. She smiled and did this herself; then she spoke to each of them gently, bidding them not to grieve and thanking them for their services to her. Mary she took aside and to her gave a little book of devotions as a parting gift and whispered into her ear a message of good cheer that she might give it to her brother in the Tower.

  Then she was ready. She laid her head upon the block. Her lips were murmuring her own verses.

  “Farewell my pleasures past,

  Welcome my present pain,

  I feel my torments so increase

  That life cannot remain.

  Sound now the passing bell,

  Rung is my doleful knell,

  For its sound my death doth tell.

  Death doth draw nigh,

  Sound the knell dolefully,

  For now I die.”

  She was waiting now, waiting for that swift stroke, that quick and subtle pain.

  “Oh, Lord God have pity on my soul. Oh, Lord God . . .”

  Her lips were still moving as her head lay on the straw.

  The Dowager Duchess of Norfolk was weeping bitterly as she went about the Lambeth House. Catherine Howard flung herself onto her bed and wept. Over the city of London hung silence. The Queen was dead.

  At Richmond the King waited for the booming of the gun which would announce the end of Anne Boleyn. He waited in anxiety; he was terrified of what she might say to those watching crowds. He knew that the people who had never accepted her as their Queen were now ready to make of her a martyr.

  His horse was restive, longing to be off; but not more so than he. Would he never hear the signal! What were they at, those fools? What if some had planned a rescue! He was hot at the thought. There had been men who loved her dearly and none knew better than he did, how easy it was to do that. She had changed his life when she came into it; what would she do when she went out of it?

  He pictured her last moments; he knew she would show great courage; he knew she would show dignity; he knew she would be beautiful enough to stir up pity in the hearts of all who beheld her. It was well that but few were sure of hour and place.

  Around him were hounds and huntsmen. This night the hunt would end at Wolf Hall whether the stag led them there or not. But the waiting was long, and try as he might he could not forget Anne Boleyn.

  He spoke to his conscience, “Thank God I can now leave Mary without constant fear that she will meet a horrible end. Thank God I discovered the evil ways of this harlot.”

  He had done right, he assured himself. Katharine had suffered through her; Mary had suffered. Thank God he had found out in time! Thank God he had turned his affections on a more worthy object!

  What would the people say when they heard the gun booming from the Tower? What would they say of a man who went to a new bride before the body of his wife was cold?

  Along the river came the dismal booming of the gun. He heard it; his mouth twisted into a line of mingling joy and apprehension.

  “The deed is done!” he cried. “Uncouple the hounds and away!”

  So he rode on, on to Wolf Hall, on to marriage with Jane Seymour.

  No Other Will Than His

  THE DOWAGER DUCHESS of Norfolk was in bed and very sad. A new queen reigned in the place of her granddaughter; a pale-faced creature with scarcely any eyebrows so that she looked forever surprised, a meek, insipid, vapid woman; and to put her on the throne had the King sent beautiful Anne to the block. The Duchess’s dreams were haunted by her granddaughter, and she would awaken out of them sweating and trembling. She had just had such a dream, and thought she had stood among those spectators who had watched Anne submit her lovely head to the Executioner’s sword.

  She began to weep into her bedclothes, seeing again Anne at court, Anne at Lambeth; she remembered promised favors which would never now be hers. She could rail against the King in the privacy her bedchamber offered her. Fat! Coarse! Adulterer! And forty-five! While Anne at twenty-nine had lost her lovely head that that slut Seymour might sit beside him on the throne!

  “Much good will she do him!” murmured the Duchess. “Give the King a son quickly, Mistress Seymour, or your head will not stay on your shoulders more than a year or two, I warrant you! And I’ll be there to see the deed done; I swear it!” She began to chuckle throatily, remembering that she had heard but a week or so after his marriage to Jane had been announced, the King, on meeting two very beautiful young women, had shown himself to be—and even mentioned this fact—sorry that he had not seen them before he married Jane. It had not been so with Anne. She had absorbed his attention, and it was only when she could not produce a son that her enemies had dared to plot against her. “Bound to Serve and Obey.” That was the device chosen by Jane. “You’ll serve, my dear!” muttered the Duchess. “But whether you produce a son or not remains to be seen, and if you
do not, why then you must very meekly obey, by laying your head on the block. You’ll have your enemies just as my sweet Anne did!” The Duchess dried her eyes and set her lips firmly together as she thought of one of the greatest of those enemies, both to Anne and herself, and one with whom she must continually be on her guard—her own stepson and Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk.

  Some of the Duchess’s ladies came in to help her dress. Stupid girls they were. She scolded them, for she thought their hands over-rough as they forced her bulk into clothes too small for it.

  “Katharine Tylney! I declare you scratch me with those nails of yours. I declare you did it apurpose! Take that!”

  Katharine Tylney scowled at the blow. The old Duchess’s temper had been very bad since the execution of the Queen, and the least thing sent it flaring up. Katharine Tylney shrugged her shoulders at Mistress Wilkes and Mistress Baskerville, the two who were also assisting with the Duchess’s toilet. When they were beyond the range of the Duchess’s ears they would curse the old woman, laughing at her obscenity and her ill-temper, laughing because she who was so fat and old and ugly was vain as a young girl, and would have just the right amount of embroidered kirtle showing beneath her skirt, and would deck herself in costly jewels even in the morning.

  The Duchess wheezed and scolded while her thoughts ran on poor Anne and sly Jane and that absurd fancy of the King’s, which had made him change the one for the other; she brooded on the cunning of that low-born brute Cromwell, and the cruelty of Norfolk and Suffolk, until she herself felt as though she were standing almost as near the edge of that active volcano as Anne herself had stood.

 

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