Job came to mind again… “The Lord giveth and the Lord hath taken away…” All those riches…given, and then taken away. His family left only with what they had managed to spirit away. It would be enough, he had made certain of that, and Gregory, his son, was protected through his marriage to Jane Seymour’s sister, another of his clever ploys to ensure his family’s survival should he ever fall from favor. Even Henry would not kill without just cause an uncle of the heir to the throne, even if the relationship was by marriage. At least, he hoped not.
And it was ironic indeed that the law that he had so cleverly enacted to allow both the Exeters and the Countess of Salisbury to be accused, attainted and imprisoned without trial, was the very same law that was being used on him. He had submitted that law to the king as a votive offering, a gift of his wit and cunning, only to be snared in his own trap. So cleverly, they had all stood by smiling, allowing him to weave his own noose. While he had so diligently been pushing forward the tenets of the Reformed Faith, egged on by the king who wanted the riches from the dissolution of the monasteries, others had been hard at work on the Six Articles, undoing all that he did even as he did it. And he had been too blinded by ambition, power, self-approbation, to see that he was walking into an ambush.
The handwriting had indeed been on the wall, written as plain as day, and he, in his pride and arrogance, had failed to see it. He should have seen it clearly when Archbishop Cranmer had so ostentatiously given up his wife, or seemed to have done, to support the reaffirmation of the celibacy of the English clergy; he should have seen it when Wriothesley saw which way the wind was blowing and fell on his sword where the embarrassment of the Cleves marriage was concerned. He had missed the signals when the king had created him Lord Great Chamberlain even after it became apparent that Henry abhorred his new bride, the bride that he, Cromwell, had been instrumental in bringing to England. Now he knew that it had all been a blind to put him off his guard, to give him a false sense of security, whilst he worked to extricate the king from the very marriage that he had worked so hard to effect.
For that is what he had done, good servant that he was. For whatever else he was or was not, he was a master at his craft, the law. He had taken the grounds that the king had flung at the council and crafted them into a masterpiece of irrefutable evidence to support the king’s annulment from Anne of Cleves. A proven pre-contract, compulsion against his will, and non-consummation; any one of these could have been used to annul the marriage, but the three taken together, and presented so eloquently, could not be denied. No sooner had the bill been formally presented to Parliament, than his arrest and attainder had followed it.
The scene in the council chamber had been horrific, a nightmare, a manifestation of his worst fears. He had just settled into his seat when Norfolk arose, announced his arrest, and ripped his chain of office from about his neck. His terrified mind was still trying to absorb what was happening when he felt a tugging at his leg. It was the earl of Southampton, yanking off the garter that had been bestowed upon him when he was made a Knight of the Garter. The shock had almost been too much for him; he had very little recollection of being hustled from the council chamber to the water steps and placed on a boat to the Tower.
And so here he lay, but he tried not to lie still for too long at a time. Just then, the tell-tale scuffling of a rat come to investigate as to whether he was still alive sounded near his ear. Without warning, he thrust out his arm; the squeak and thud against the wall told him that he had found his quarry.
Richmond Palace, July 1540
As he sat watching the erstwhile queen, searching her features for any hint of what she was thinking, the Duke of Norfolk recalled a similar scene, many years ago at Greenwich Palace, when the Privy Council had come to tell a queen that she was queen no more. Katharine of Aragon had met each thrust with a more than worthy parry; Norfolk had almost found himself admiring her at times, despite himself. Queen Katharine had, he could admit it now, been a clever, brave, courageous adversary. She had raised the ability to say “no” and mean it to the same art form that his niece, Anne Boleyn, had done, in her own refusals to give in and become the king’s mistress.
Women! He thought. His own wife was quite a piece of work; he would gladly have murdered her if he thought he could get away with it. But it seemed that only kings could murder their wives with impunity. He sincerely hoped, for her own sake, that Anne of Cleves was going to be more cooperative than either of the king’s first two wives in the effort to get rid of her.
Anne sat in her usual place in the solar, the implements of her sewing ranged about her. Some people rode hard when they were agitated; Anne sewed. But now she had carefully folded her work and laid it aside. She sat with an expressionless face, her clumsy-looking hands with their stumpy fingers folded in her lap. Norfolk wondered how such ungainly hands could wield a tiny needle so expertly.
The only persons present in the room who were not on the Privy Council were Count Overstein, of the Cleves delegation, and Anne herself. It had been decided that the Bishop of London, Edmund Bonner, a most unsympathetic character, should be the one to break the news to Anne that her marriage had been annulled and that she was queen no longer. He started to speak, directing his words straight at Anne, and as he did so, Count Overstein began to translate the bishop’s words into Dutch.
Anne, still expressionless, raised her hand and said, “Pleesse, my English iss much improvedt. I thank you, Count, but I am haffing no need of…vat is vort? Transslate.”
Bishop Bonner shifted uneasily in his seat. “We wish, Madam, that there is to be no misunderstanding of what I am about to say.”
Anne tilted her chin upwards and said, “Bishop, der roadts are very dry, vee haff hadt no rain, yah? Newss from London reachess me viss some regularity. I am knowink vy you haff come to here.”
Suffolk quaked; was she going to be difficult? What would they say to the king if she were?
Sir William started to speak, but Anne cut him short.
And then suddenly she smiled. “I vill to make dis eassy for you, yah? Der kink vishes no marriage, yah? I haff mijn dower landts, but dat iss not enough to keep a voman viss no hussbandt. Vat elsse is der kink willing to giff to me, so dat he may make new qveen of der Howardt?”
Norfolk regarded her incredulously. He was not more astonished than Balaam had been when his ass had turned and spoken to him on the road to Kirjath. Someone had warned her of what was coming; she was prepared. And she knew about Katherine!
Norfolk stood up and looking down on her he said, “In addition to the dower lands settled on you as queen, Your Highness, which you may keep, you are to have Richmond Palace, as well as lands and a manor at Bletchingly.”
Anne nodded, her face expressionless. “Yah. Goot. Vat else?”
Suffolk saw a ray of light. “Four thousand pounds a year, Your Highness.”
“Dat is vell. Andt?” Anne sat with her hands folded in her lap and her lips pursed as if she were considering the offer.
“Christ on the Cross, woman, is that not enough?” shouted Bishop Bonner. He was a willing celibate and had no patience with women; that was why the king had chosen him to lead the delegation to the queen to break the news.
Anne seemed to consider. “Enough to giff up der place of qveen? Enough to make all right dat der kink shame me to mijn broeder and mijn moeder, und all off Cleves?”
Norfolk, whose back had been turned, swung around and said, “Hever Castle.” The Boleyns were all dead; the property had reverted to the Howard’s vast holdings. Anything to get this woman to sign the annulment and have done, anything to hurry the moment when his niece would take this woman’s place as queen of England.
Anne considered. “Yah, dat iss goot. Yah.”
“And,” said Suffolk, “you will write to your brother, the duke, to inform him of the decision to dissolve the marriage and that you have agreed to it willingly.” Henry had insisted on this; he did not want the annulment to cause a war.
Anne smiled, but inside she seethed. Thank God that Mary had gotten to her first! Her rage spent, she now simply toyed with this room full of desperate men. She now knew the details of the catastrophe that was the king’s first divorce from the Spanish princess. She knew that it was more than her life was worth to refuse the king. Anything less than complete submission would result in a Pyrrhic victory. But she couldn’t help having just a little bit of fun, and in the meantime getting everything she could for all her trouble.
“Yah, I do dat,” she said.
The men seemed to sense that a corner had been turned; she was going to agree to everything without a fight. For the price of a few castles and a few thousand pounds, the king would be free. And they would be able to go back and tell him that there would be no delay.
“And vat am I to be, if not der qveen?” asked Anne with arched brows. “Haff I to…vat iss vort…return to Cleves?”
The Bishop of Winchester, an ardent Catholic, but not so ardent that he wasn’t willing to bend to a point to keep his head, replied, “You shall stay in England if that is your wish, Your Highness. Your lands and castles are here, of course, and your income will be more than adequate. You shall be the known henceforth as the king’s dear sister, and from this day forward, you shall take precedence over all the ladies of the court, barring the new queen and the king’s daughters.”
Anne swung her gaze onto Stephen Gardiner. “Yah,” she said. “All dat iss goot. Giff me paper, I vill sign. Und write letter to mijn broeder.”
The relief in the room was tangible; Sir William, who had stood by watching as each person spoke, his head going back and forth as if he were watching a tennis match, scrambled to produce the Bill of Annulment. He handed Anne a quill, the inkpot shaking in his hands.
There was not a sound in the room but the quill scratching and squeaking across the parchment. The men unconsciously gathered around and peered over Anne’s shoulder. She had signed herself Anne of Cleves. Not Queen of England. They had won.
But so had she.
The Tower of London, July 1540
It was a hot, dry day of yellow sunshine, so brilliant that Cromwell could scarcely bear to look out through his slitted eyes. His head swam and he could barely walk; his hands were fettered and offered no counterbalance to his lurching gait. He was trying to walk, but his legs felt as if they were boneless. Nausea swept over him in relentless waves.
As his eyes adjusted to more light than he had seen in almost two months, he shook his head and blinked like a mole. He just could not fully open his eyes. From what little he could see, the crowd was sparse. He knew a brief moment of disappointment. He had been worried that he might shame himself before multitudes on the day of, at the moment of, his death. But the fewer people who were there to witness his demise, the less the worry of that, he supposed…
Very little information reached him in the Tower, but since he had spent so much of his time recently just being still and listening, not talking, not even seeing, his hearing had become very sharp indeed. He had overheard two guards discussing court gossip while they diced before his cell. It seemed that the king had chosen the day of his, Cromwell’s, death as his wedding day. He wondered if others found that as macabre as he did. He had always suspected that the king was slightly unbalanced; Jane’s death had sent him over the edge of some sort of precipice from which there was no return. It was possible that at the moment his own head left his shoulders, the king would be slipping the wedding ring onto Katherine Howard’s finger. He shuddered. But at least the king’s royal wedding meant that almost the entire court was at Oatlands for the affair, so there would be only a few smug faces to witness his demise.
The usual crowd of thrill seekers was there, poor people who had no excitement in their lives, and for whom an execution offered a day out. He could only thank the merciful God that he was being allowed to die as a gentleman, even though he was a gentleman made and not a gentleman born. Otherwise, it would have been the ignominious ride to Tyburn strapped to a hurdle, for hanging, drawing and quartering. Another shudder racked his wasted frame. Instead of being half hung, then cut down while he was still alive, ripped open, and made to watch as his entrails were drawn out and wound upon a wooden stake, and then these and his privy member, which would be cut off before his very eyes, baked upon a fire, his last conscious moment would be only that when he placed his head upon the block. Only God knew how many people he had been responsible for sending to their untimely deaths; now he was about to join their number. But it would be painless, he would feel nothing; he would simply be alive one moment and dead the next.
Or it could have been burning. He had been accused of both treason and heresy. The penalty for commoners for treason was to be hung, drawn, and quartered; the penalty for heresy, noble or churl, was being burnt alive. Now, that he could not have borne. He had once held his little finger in a candle flame to see how long he could keep it there before withdrawing it. The pain had been unbearable. To imagine one’s entire body engulfed in flames, and being unable to escape…he began to tremble uncontrollably at the thought.
He approached the scaffold and climbed the stairs as if he were in a dream. He was better able to see about him now; the sky was as blue as a harebell without a wisp of cloud. Perhaps God had cursed the land with a drought, for all the evil things being done. He supposed some thought that he was evil; he had brought down, practically single-handedly, the English monastic system. And the king had stood behind him all the time, stuffing his pockets with the proceeds. He himself had benefitted, as had many, many others. But better that than see the peoples’ substance robbed of them by a greedy church of Rome. He believed that with his whole heart, and even facing death, he could not relent of that belief.
Not that relenting would have done any good. His pleas for mercy had gone unheeded by the king, who needed a scapegoat for the Cleves debacle. The king had wanted a wife; Cromwell had found him one. Unfortunately, she had smelled of sausage instead of heather, and for this he was to die. A titter escaped his lips. He quickly raised his fettered hands to his mouth to stifle any further laughter. It would not do to go to his death laughing hysterically at the irony of it all. It was odd, though, how he had been afraid, up until this moment, of crying; now he knew it was laughter that he must fear. He wanted to die bravely, lest the people think him a coward.
It should be easy…he had his words ready, and he hoped to address the crowd, such as they were, in a strong, clear voice. He would say his piece and then all he had to do was kneel, at which time they would cut his hands free, that he may find the chunk of wood on which his blood was to be spilt; and then he would pay the headsman his gold coin and whisper his forgiveness. He would lay his head on the block, close his eyes, commend his soul to God and throw out his arms as the signal that he was ready. And then he would wake to find himself seated at the right hand of God. Because he never for one moment doubted that whatever his sins, God would forgive him and take him into his care.
As he mounted the steps to the platform, he scanned the crowd for a familiar face, but found none. He had left strict instructions that none of his family was to be present at his execution. He wanted to be remembered by them as he had been, not as the wraith that he was now, and the bloody, headless corpse he was soon to become. His eyes clouded and the sea of faces all seemed to blend together. And then a strange thing happened. He caught sight of a woman, tall, very slender, but she was always moving, her gown floating on the wind. She intrigued him; but her face was always half turned away and whenever he thought she would turn her head his eyes failed him and he blinked. When he opened his eyes again, she was gone.
In a daze he addressed the crowd, said all the obligatory things about the goodness of the king, that the law had judged him guilty and so guilty he must be, and he reaffirmed his faith, swearing on his soul that he died in the belief of the resurrection. For what else, in the end, really mattered?
Suddenly it was as if he were no
t on the platform at all; it was as if he were somewhere high above, watching the scene play itself out. It was almost as if this were happening to some other person, not to plain Thomas Cromwell of Putney, the son of the blacksmith. And then he realized that this was true enough; this was happening to the Earl of Essex, a man that he had once pretended to be.
He watched as the earl laid his head on the block. The earl looked out at the crowd from this new vantage point and then he saw her again. This was the very woman that he had subjected to those sneering, smug faces he had so feared seeing as he was about to die; and now it was his turn. Their eyes locked for an instant, but instead of a look of vengeful hatred, she seemed to regard him with an expression of extreme pity.
Tittenhanger, Hertfordshire, August 1540
“Is the bream not to your liking?” asked Mary gently, laying a reassuring hand on the arm of the former Marchioness of Exeter. Lady Gertrude had sat during the entire meal with her chin on her hand, poking at the fish with her knife.
Lady Gertrude regarded the bream, which was lying on a plate in a milky sauce, swimming with lemon wheels and intriguing little circles of yellow butter. The fish had been served whole and seemed to be staring back at her with the same perplexed expression she imagined that she wore these days. She let out a ragged sigh, and her eyes filled with tears.
“I used to dream of such food when I was in the Tower,” she said. “Oh, poor Margaret!” she cried. And with that, she dropped her knife with a clatter and sobbed broken-heartedly into her hands, covering her face. Mary exchanged worried glances with Lady Frances and Lady Kingston.
Lady Gertrude had been taken from her cell in the Tower without explanation on the day of Cromwell’s execution. Her guards had taken pity on the wretched woman, who had been in the Tower since November of 1539, and from time to time gave her news. She knew the day of Cromwell’s beheading and had been terrified that her removal meant that she too was to die that day. She was led out, blinking in much the same manner as Cromwell had done, and was made to stand on a platform that ran the length of the scaffold where the block lay, surrounded by clean straw.
The Baker's Daughter Volume 1 Page 56