“Show her in, Kat, and then leave us.”
Elizabeth’s waiting woman opened the door and, beckoning Lady Matilda Sommerville into the Queen’s bedchamber, removed herself from their presence. The old woman’s painful curtsy was cut short by Elizabeth’s gende hand on her arm.
“Come,” she said. “Won’t you sit down with me, Lady Sommerville?”
As they moved to the window seat the old woman’s eyes fell on the Queen’s silver-topped table where lay a dozen identical embroidered badges — the kind sewn onto the livery of royal servants. She stopped and squinted at them with interest, though she did not dare act so familiarly as to pick one up. Elizabeth, seeing her interest, handed her one of the badges and she brought it up close to her eyes.
The design was a crowned and sceptred white falcon which stood upon a root sprouting white and red roses. The lady smiled.
“‘Tis a proud symbol, is it not, Lady Sommerville?”
“Aye, and you honor your mother’s memory in using her favorite badge, Your Majesty.” She moved to lay the badge down but Elizabeth stayed her hand.
“No, keep it if you wish, as a token to remember us both,” said Elizabeth. “Come, let us sit.”
They sat together in the window seat overlooking the river, a gendewoman of much advanced age and the young Queen.
“I wish you to tell me of my mother’s death, Lady Sommerville.”
The crone sat quiet and still for so long a time staring out at the wherries on the Thames that Elizabeth wondered if she had perhaps not heard the question, or could not answer for the pain of her reply. But finally Lady Sommerville spoke. Her gnarled fingers worried the embroidered badge, her faded eyes seeing again the events of a day many years past.
“The sun was shining so bright and beautiful on that terrible morning. Somehow the Queen, your mother, had found within her poor battered soul a last draught of strength and greatheartedness to see her through to the end. She had us dress her in a simple grey damask gown, low cut about the neck, and we’d put her long hair up inside a linen cap. Though her face was bare of all paint and powder she looked — oh, she looked so beautiful that morning, and so young. And she was smiling, smiling and almost happy. Lord Kingston was unnerved by her demeanor, saying the Queen looked to have much joy and pleasure in death. But I knew ‘twas not true, for she did not wish to leave this world or her young daughter, a lamb among the lions.
“She walked proud onto Tower Green. She did not weep nor faint at the sight of the scaffold and the unruly crowd which fell silent at her approach. Even the French headsman from St. Omer was so awed by her pure beauty and calm acceptance of this fate, that he seemed to shrink and waver in his deadly resolve.
“She stepped up the stairs to the platform which had been lowered since her brother and friends’ executions, on the King’s orders, so fewer citizens could see the death. She looked about confused, for she saw no block. But the executioner — as she handed him the fee for his services — kindly explained that his skill was such that he did not need one. He urged her then to say her piece, so she turned to the gathered crowd and did not flinch from their blood-hungry stares.
“Her voice was strong and unwavering as she said her fare-thee-wells and bid the people pray for her. And then she did as all those who die thusly do, to protect the ones they love — she lied to mightily praise the King her husband, saying that a gender or more merciful prince there never was.
“Then she knelt, arranging her skirts ever so carefully over her feet and ankles, and tied a blindfold over those lovely, lovely black eyes. The headsman, still wishing to ease her final fear and pain, conceived a clever ruse. Concealed beneath the straw was his sword which he took up in his hands and walked away from her toward the scaffold steps calling loudly, ‘Bring me the sword!’ In that instant when your mother turned her bandaged eyes toward his voice he wheeled and struck the head from her neck in one bold sweep. The ploy worked. She never knew the blade was coming.”
Lady Sommerville stopped, overcome with as much sadness and horror, it seemed to Elizabeth, as the moment of her mother’s death.
“As custom dictates, the executioner removed the blindfold from her eyes and held the bloody head aloft for the crowd to see. They cheered, Your Majesty, but if truth be told their hearts were not behind it and few came to dip a rag in her blood as a ghoulish souvenir. She had died so boldly, and their King seemed, just then, litde more than a royal murderer of women. Contrary to rumor, the Queen’s lips did never move after her head was struck off her body. I can say honesdy that she felt no pain and died fully in that instant.”
• Elizabeth placed her long graceful fingers over the old woman’s bony hand and held it there comfortingly, though she could not bear to meet the lady’s eyes.
“The other waiting women and myself wrapped her body and her head in a winding cloth. Henry had not seen fit to provide her with a coffin, so we placed both parts in an arrow box, and several men carried it to the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula just off Tower Green. There she was laid beneath the choir, and there she remains till today.”
The two women sat quietly for a time, listening to the shouts of boatmen on the river. Finally Elizabeth spoke.
“Did you read the diary, Lady Sommerville?”
“Aye. I read every word of it, Majesty. All but the last, which was written for your eyes only.”
Elizabeth smiled.
“As you have given me a gift: most priceless, I wish with all my heart to give you one of equal value. So please, tell me how I can reward your faithfulness.”
The crone thought only for a moment, as though she had known such an offer would be made. “I have a granddaughter, Your Majesty. A sweet child of seventeen. She has never been to court and as she much enjoys the country life, has no ambition to come.” The old lady paused again to form her words carefully.
“She loves a young man, the son of a local artisan who himself is apprenticed to his father’s trade. He is likewise devoted to her. As custom demands, my son and his wife have made plans to marry their daughter to a toothless old widower to enrich their own estate.” She gazed imploringly at the Queen. “It will break the child’s heart, Your Majesty, into a hundred thousand pieces.”
Lady Sommerville’s eyes filled so suddenly with tears that she was herself taken by surprise. Elizabeth pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve and offered it to the woman, who gratefully dabbed her eyes.
“Forgive me,” she implored.
“There is nothing to forgive, good lady. I have heard your request … and I grant it. I will see that your son and his wife are generously recompensed for the sacrifice of allowing their daughter to marry whom she wishes.”
“Oh, Your Majesty!” Lady Sommerville murmured, overcome.
Elizabeth’s eyes found her mother’s diary where it lay on her bed. “Consider it a gift from … my mother Queen Anne.”
“She was a great woman, Majesty. As misunderstood as could be. But you should be most proud to have the Boleyn blood rushing in your veins.”
Elizabeth helped Lady Sommerville to her feet and saw her to the door.
“You do me a great honor with such an audience as this, Your Majesty.”
Elizabeth regarded the woman’s world-weary eyes.
“It is you who have done me the honor, good lady. You have returned to me a treasure I had no idea I had lost. And a love I had forgotten I owned.”
As Lady Sommerville rose from her curtsy she found herself engulfed in an embrace the warmth of which her old body had never known from man or mother.
“God bless you, child. We are lucky in England to have you for our Queen.”
When the door closed behind the woman Elizabeth moved to her bed and reached for the diary. She held the claret leather volume to her breast and closing her eyes, tried with all her mind’s power to find within her memory the image of her mother’s face, but nothing came.
“Kat,” she called, and instandy her companion was at her
service. “Call for my barge. I’m going downriver this afternoon.”
“As you wish, Majesty. What shall I say is your destination?” “My destination? The Tower of London.”
Devoid of fanfare the royal barge floated downriver in silent grandeur. The afternoon sky was crowded with rolling black thun-derheads pierced by brilliant beams of golden sunlight which set the illuminated portions of the river afire. Elizabeth sat on the upper deck quite alone, for she had instructed all her ladies to stay behind, sending Kat into a righteous blather.
“‘Tis not fit behavior for a Queen,” she’d scolded, “to go off unattended by her lords and ladies. And the Tower. What business have you at the Tower on such short notice, I ask you?”
“My own,” Elizabeth had answered mildly, quite unperturbed by Kat’s unrelenting bossiness. “My own.”
As she watched the sun play upon the waters and between the clouds Elizabeth felt a great calm descend upon her soul. She suddenly felt more well and strong and whole than she had in all of her life. There was urgent business that needed attending. Business that none of her councillors — not even William Cecil — could possibly conclude.
Mother.
The Queen’s unceremonious arrival at the Tower wharf had taken the yeomen at the Traitor’s Gate entirely by surprise. They scrambled to their feet and snapped to attention, straightening their helmets and mumbling formal greetings as Elizabeth debarked from her barge and passed under the raised portcullis into Tower Green. As she strode alone through the huge courtyard the bald Constable scurried to meet her, still brushing bits of dinner off his black bib.
“Your Majesty, what an honor! Oh, but we were not expecting … how can I serve you?… careful where you step. You can see that we’re replacing this walk, Majesty, and it wouldn’t do if you were to slip and fall. Would you care to take my arm?”
“I can see well where not to step, Lord Harrington, though I thank you for the offer of your arm. My wish is to be left to myself. In fact I would be grateful if you would clear the Green of all workmen and guards. I want to be quite alone.”
“Alone, Your Majesty?”
Her stern expression was all that was needed to confirm the order. He rushed away shaking his head and so upset by the Queen’s unusual command that a toe stuck between two of the flagstone slabs and the man tripped, only righting himself of an embarrassing fall at the last moment. Elizabeth smiled as she saw the masons and the carpenters scatter, watched the yeomen guarding several tower doors and gates learn they were for the moment dismissed from their posts by order of Her Majesty and disappear.
Finally she was alone in the ancient castle yard, the massive walls of the White Tower soaring high above her head. She gazed up at the battlement between the Bell and Beauchamp Towers where she’d taken exercise during her own incarceration. Remembered the dank stairwell and her clandestine meeting with Robin. Remembered how the horror of dungeons with their hideous implements of torture had kept her awake at night, worrying that she might fall victim to the racks and presses, teeth crushers and thumbscrews. The Tower was a place where, once imprisoned, a person could die of fear alone at the thought of his grisly demise. And now she owned it, had no fear of the place … or the ghosts of those that had lost their lives here.
Elizabeth approached the doors of the King’s Hall and threw them open. She stood in the cavernous and echoing chamber under the great arched ceiling imagining the noisy crush of humanity assembled for her mother’s trial. The thump, thump, thump of the Duke of Norfolk’s staff on the wooden floor to call the proceedings to order, the scarlet gowns of the Queen’s twenty-six peers, and the stink of their fear lest they choose wrongly and incur the King’s wrath upon their own heads.
Mother.
She imagined Anne the Queen having mustered the reserves of her courage standing before that court, answering its false and heinous accusations with elegant defiance. Hearing her enemies as well as her once friends proclaim her guilty of treason, adultery and incest. “Condemned by her peers of a great lie.”
And yet, thought Elizabeth, her mother had been no saint. By some reckoning her hands had been stained with blood. She’d been reckless and more bold than an Englishwoman had ever dared to be. From her youngest days she’d been willful to a fault, possessed of a wild tongue and temper. She’d been a woman ruled by passion, ruled by ambition … but unwilling to be ruled by men.
How odd is the blood, mused Elizabeth. I did never know my mother, had no way to learn from her, yet I mirror her character in so many ways.
So many ways … and yet not all. Anne, it occurred to her, had been consistently inspired by anger and revenge. Wolsey. Katherine. Mary. Norfolk. But it had grown and festered, and the evil had eventually turned back upon Anne herself. It was one quality of her mother’s, Elizabeth decided, that she would do well to never emulate.
When the Queen emerged from the King’s Hall the scattered sun had been completely obliterated by dark clouds and Tower Green was a study in gloom. Though no scaffold was now erected on the lawn Elizabeth strolled to the place where it once had stood, where her mother’s lifeblood had stained the May grass. She wondered at how Anne could have come to this place to die so igno-miniously. The two men in a woman’s life are her father and her husband, thought Elizabeth. Anne’s father had, with a breathtaking ruthlessness, used his daughter to his own advantage, and abandoned her when she could no longer serve him.
Anne’s husband. There was no doubt that Henry had loved her. But she had been trapped by that love, like a hind pursued by hounds. There had been no way out for her but the chase. Henry had wanted her past all reason, past all caring. When a King desires a woman there is no answer but Yes, Sire. Unless like Anne, she mounts a great challenge. She had proven Henry’s most elusive quarry, leading him headlong through dark and dangerous landscapes, making his blood boil for her capture. Still she escaped him, year after year till he was half mad with the pursuit and his failures. But Anne, it need be remembered, was yet the hunted. Prey. With nothing to do but flee or surrender to his love which, as she had always known in her soul, was death.
Elizabeth reflected upon her mother’s husband. The man described in her diary as “Beast” was Elizabeth’s own father.
I loved, nay adored my father, thought the Queen. He was my master, my King, my God before God. And now from my mother I learn he was a monster. Oh, ‘tis a hard bone to swallow.
He had been cruel and outrageously unjust, but Elizabeth knew that all in her that was Henry she could not dismiss. She had learned perhaps the most important principle of her queenship from him. That whilst she might be kind and generous, seek peace for her kingdom and harmony amongst her men, she must at all times rule absolutely or lose the throne that had been so hard won.
Elizabeth shivered, for the gloom was deepening round her. She made her way across the Green to the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula and pulled open the heavy, creaking doors. Built in the ancient Norman style, it was small and unadorned. With only a few candles illuminating the nave and sharp incense thickening the air, it was a dark and melancholy place. She knelt briefly under the crucifix at the altar, but did not linger, for what she sought was the choir. The inlaid marble floor showed no indication of what lay under it — the earthly remains of her own mother, murdered at her father’s hand. Without warning Elizabeth was overcome with the ache of a longing so powerful it rocked her on her feet. Her mother who had held her, had loved her, had died because Elizabeth had been born a girl, lay all but forgotten beneath her feet, a headless pile of bones.
In the silence Elizabeth strained to hear Anne crying out from her grave. A message, a lesson, a warning. But nothing came to her except a desperate ache in her heart for Robin Dudley. Her dearest friend, bringer of the sweetest sensations, sharer of her boldest fantasies. She could no longer trust him. She could trust no man. If her mother’s voice could ever make itself heard Elizabeth was certain it would say, Never relinquish control to any man. Then a strange
idea began to take shape in her mind. The one man who had natural cause to rule her — her father — was dead. Why on earth should she marry now… or ever? Willingly surrender the awesome power of the crown to a husband? Would that not make her a great fool?
She stopped suddenly. Am I entirely mad? she thought. What folly am I planning? A monarch who schemes to remain childless and end the greatest dynasty ever to rule England?
She remembered how when she was young she had proudly announced to Robin that she would never marry. He had laughed, told her she was a silly girl. That she was a princess born, and bound to wed. Twenty years had passed. Now she was queen and here she stood contemplating that promise. Had she known even then in her child’s heart that love, for a woman, was to be feared?
“Will I never marry?” Elizabeth said aloud, the words echoing in the marble chapel. Never marry? Never bear sons? Never birth a daughter? Hot tears sprang unexpectedly to Elizabeth’s eyes. To never have a daughter, who would speak kindly of her, cherish the tokens of her life — a ring, a book, an initialed handkerchief. But no, she forced such sentimentality from her thoughts. What need had she of children? She would be rich with subjects who loved and adored her, who would long remember her glorious reign.
Then like a miracle, the dark of the chapel was pierced by a single renegade sunbeam which streamed in through the clerestory window. Elizabeth was riveted to its startling brilliance and suddenly … There! It had been transformed into the blinding light streaming in through the Hatfield nursery windows. There! She smelled the rich scent of spice and musk. There! She heard the gay laugh, the lilting French lullaby. And then in a ghostly vision emerging from the light into clear and brilliant focus were a pair of eyes — alive, deeply black and bewitching. Yes, yes, they were her mother’s eyes! Teasing coquette’s eyes that could drive a man mad with wanting, a dark sea where his soul could drown. Arrogant flashing eyes where lived a keen intelligence that defied despair. Ever hopeful eyes that sought passion where none could finally be found.
The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn Page 30