Between Two Kings (5 page)

But their parents blocked the match. Percy’s parents opposed the marriage because they had in their minds another wife, coming from a family with a higher social standing; Percy’s father even threatened to disinherit his son if he didn’t give up the idea of marrying Anne. Thomas Boleyn planned to make Anne King Henry’s mistress after Mary Boleyn had been discarded.

Soon Wolsey told Henry Percy that the King of England would find a far better match than Anne for the young lord. Shocked and heartbroken, Percy fiercely defended his right to choose a wife for himself and Anne’s suitability for the marriage; he begged the cardinal to intervene with the king to let him marry Anne, but everything was in vain. In the end, Anne had been sent to the Hever Castle, away from the court while Percy retired to his family estate.

To make Anne and Henry’s secret matrimony impossible, Henry Percy was quickly married off to Lady Mary Talbot, the daughter of the Earl of Shrewsbury, in 1525. However, that marriage was doomed to fail as Percy didn’t like Mary Talbot and later even grew to hate her. He loved Anne Boleyn with all his heart, even after his marriage to another woman. Truth be told, his feelings of dislike for his wife were reciprocal, and Mary repented that her father had forced her to marry Percy. Within four years of marriage, the spouses’ relations were irreparably damaged.

When he succeeded his father as the Earl of Northumberland in 1527, Henry Percy had sinful thoughts that only two years had separated his happiness from his utter unhappiness. Had his father died in 1525, it would have been much easier for him to repudiate his marriage to Mary Talbot. After Mary delivered a stillborn child at her father’s home in April 1529, temporary separation followed. However, Percy intended to never live with Mary Talbot in the same house again and, of course, never share a bed with her. He knew that he had committed a great mistake when he had allowed his family to marry him off because his matrimony made both spouses the loneliest and the unhappiest persons in the world.

When Percy learnt that King Henry had fallen in love with Anne and wanted to marry her, he envied the king, suspecting that his sovereign had played a significant role in his separation from Anne. Soon Percy understood that Anne had also fallen for the king, which frightened him, even though he knew about the king’s serious intentions to marry Anne.

Knowing the king’s fickle nature and his lust for new conquests, Henry Percy predicted that Anne wouldn’t be happy with the king, even if she became the Queen of England. The Earl’s misgiving materialized when he learnt about the rumors that King Henry had renewed the tradition of having the infamous and scandalous hunting parties with the Duke of Suffolk and several other entrusted courtiers; those parties were widely believed to be when the extramarital affairs of the king and his friends took place. Later Percy heard that the king planned to divorce Anne because of her inability to bear a son and his desire to replace her with Lady Jane Seymour.

Yet, the Earl of Northumberland couldn’t imagine that the king would go to such measures to get rid of Anne, sanctioning the murder of the anointed queen and his daughter’s mother, as well as four innocent men. At the time of the Boleyns’ downfall, there was gossip floating around the court that Henry Percy had actually secretly married Anne Boleyn and that their marriage had probably been consummated, but there was no evidence of their secret matrimony. The Earl was lucky that he wasn’t suspected in Anne’s alleged extramarital affairs.

Percy returned to the court from his family castle in Northumberland after Anne’s arrest. He skipped George’s trial, attended Anne’s trial and voted guilty; shocked by what he had done, he lost his conscience then. He didn’t come back to his estate and stayed in London, observing Anne’s situation. Around that time, he began to loathe and hate the King of England, thinking that he had to do something to save Anne, the love of his life.

However, the Earl of Northumberland could openly do nothing for Anne’s benefit because if he had undertaken something to clear her name and had spoken in her defense, he would have been immediately imprisoned. Luckily, he was skillful in the art of ambivalence, so that it looked natural when he smiled warmly at the king and praised him in front of the crowd of the courtiers.

Meanwhile, Henry Percy designed the hazardous plan of Anne Boleyn’s salvation on his own. Later Thomas Boleyn joined his cause. Now only their plan could save Anne’s life, and both men prayed that everything would go well.

November 1536, the Palace of Whitehall, London, England

The gaming court in the autumn and the winter for royal tennis or 
jeu de paume
, as the French called the game, was a large indoor hall inside the Palace of Whitehall. A long row of wooden benches followed along one of the walls of the room.

King Henry was playing with Charles Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, his closest friend and Lord President of the Council. There were many courtiers around and numerous perfumed ladies to cheer the king and his rival on. Both the king and his opponent wore black puffed trunk hose over silk stockings and white muslin shirts loosened so they could move during the game.

“Bravo, Your Majesty!” Edward Seymour cried out from the sidelines.

“Your Majesty, you are playing better than ever,” Thomas Seymour said.

King Henry smiled with a bright, thin-lipped smile. “Charles, I have won today,” he stated.

Charles Brandon smiled. “Your Majesty, the game was brilliant.”

King Henry went over to Lady Jane Seymour, took her hands in his own and kissed each of them. He looked at her from top to toe, enchanted by her fragile, delicate beauty and pale, fair complexion. Jane was so serene, so demure, so pliable, and so dear in her light blue gown with silver embroidery on the tight bodice. He liked to hear her voice that was like a silver bell, porcelain and refreshing. She was able to awake in Henry a deep tenderness and a desire to defend her and keep her safe, whereas his aversion and hatred for Anne Boleyn were only growing with every day passing.

“Jane, I have won only because you were here, so close to me. Your attendance was a good omen for this match with Charles,” King Henry said, looking at her face.

Jane smiled with a modest, almost chaste smile. “Congratulations on your great victory, Your Majesty. It was a splendid game today,” she murmured humbly.

Henry kissed her hand again. “My sweetheart, your presence is always like a true blessing for me. You once saved my life when you gave me that small silver strap of cloth before the jousting incident during the tournament. When I was thrown from the horse and hit the ground, the last thing I remembered was your face. As I opened my eyes and realized that I had been on the verge of death, I knew that only your favors, which I wore on the joust, saved me from the grave.”

“Your Majesty is very kind to me,” Jane responded, with her eyes locked on the ground.

Edward and Thomas Seymour were watching the king and Jane, their lips curved in smug smiles, happy with the results of their plan to make Jane the beloved jewel of the king’s heart. Their faces then turned bitter as they saw Thomas Cromwell approaching the group. Cromwell bestowed on them an insipid smile and walked forward, away from them, to the king.

Cromwell stopped and bowed to the king. “My most humble pardon, Your Majesty, for disturbing you from your games,” he began.

Henry raised his brows in expectation. “What is it, Master Cromwell?”

Cromwell sighed. “I bring fresh news about Lady Anne Boleyn to you,” he said.

Henry’s eyes darkened; his body was all in a tremble as black fury slashed through him. He kissed Jane’s hand and excused himself, signaling Cromwell to follow him. Henry and Cromwell quickly left the gaming court and, without any other words, marched down the hallway of the palace right to the presence chamber.

As they finally reached the destination and entered the room, Henry stood rooted in the center of the room, his gaze piercing Cromwell. For some time, they only looked at each other, Henry in anticipation and Cromwell trying to guess how to tell the king about the event. Both of them knew what Cromwell had come to the king. Henry silently wondered how Anne Boleyn was doing and whether she was still pregnant.

King Henry held Cromwell’s gaze for a long, long time. Then he glanced away. “What are you going to tell me about the harlot, Master Cromwell?” he asked in irritation. In the past months, he’d had terrible mood swings and sudden rage outbursts.

“Lady Anne gave birth to a son yesterday,” Cromwell said in an inert, emotionless voice.

A sullen, deadening silence followed. Only their breathing breached the quiet in the room.

King Henry sighed heavily. He was numb and speechless. He turned around and came to the window, staring outside, at the naked crowns of the trees. Although his mind was tired, his brain was working very hard. Why did Anne give birth to a son now? Why hadn’t it happened earlier? Then he swiftly put those thoughts aside as he recalled how Anne had betrayed him with all the executed men. That newborn child wasn’t his; it was the bastard child of two traitors, probably even fathered by George Boleyn.

Henry prohibited himself remembering anything else about Anne. Yet, it was an unusual, uncomfortable feeling for him that at last Anne had given birth to a son, but the boy wasn’t his child. For whatever reason, it was beyond anger and beyond pain to think that Anne had had a child with another man. He persuaded himself that he had all those feelings because Anne had stabbed him in his heart with her vile, insidious betrayal. Henry believed that only his Jane, with her sweetness and kindness, and time would heal the wounds of his heart.

Henry blinked, trying to push away a fit of anger and the image of Anne’s face from his mind. He needed to focus on the meeting with Cromwell. He turned to face his chief-minister, his gaze hard, but with some contradictory emotions playing in his aquamarine eyes.

“How is Lady Anne feeling?” Henry inquired unexpectedly even to himself.

Cromwell sighed. He had already noticed that Henry seemed to be in a moody state of mind. “Your Majesty, she is doing well, although the labor was rather difficult and she lost some blood.” He didn’t say that she had lost much blood. The king didn’t need to know that Anne almost died bringing her child into the world.

The king closed his eyes for a moment. “Will she recover from childbirth?”

Cromwell gave a curt nod. “Yes.”

Able to read the king’s emotions at a glance, Cromwell realized that Henry was hesitating, thinking about Anne’s fate and her punishment. Cromwell had known the news about the birth of the boy would put the king out of countenance. Henry was hesitating, and the chief minister was afraid that the king might have decided to spare Anne’s life, preferring an alternative option, like sending her to a nunnery instead of executing her. He couldn’t allow Anne Boleyn to live.

Cromwell knew that the king was furious at the stage when the slandering rumors about Anne Boleyn’s behavior began to spread. Cromwell still remembered Henry’s rage when the king had heard about the allegations brought against Anne because if the queen was guilty of such vile crimes, she not only placed the line of royal succession in jeopardy with her adultery but by becoming pregnant to one of her lovers she could put a bastard child into a royal cradle.

Cromwell also knew that Henry had been more than shocked with the results of the investigation that discovered and proved Anne’s infidelity to the king. Cromwell was not a fool and saw that the king had been heartbroken when he received the news that the investigation had found solid evidence of Anne’s guilt. The minister was clever enough to understand that Henry could have never imagined that his own entrusted and powerful councilors, mainly Cromwell himself, might have taken advantage of the situation and fabricated numerous charges against the queen, granting the king a free path to a new, undisputed marriage with another woman he loved.

Cromwell convinced Henry that the investigation had been made scrupulously and that all the trials of the presumed traitors had been completely fair. If the king had known that all the evidence against Anne and the accused men had been faked, he would have been horrified, not willing to acknowledge that he had wanted to use that chance to get rid of Anne and be free so as to marry another woman. Cromwell understood that Henry would have blamed his advisors and the entire world instead of himself, making others the recipients of his wrath, if he had known the truth.

Cromwell himself engineered the downfall of Anne Boleyn, whose brother and friends had been murdered by the king. The twenty-six noblemen, the members of the jury, tried Anne and found her guilty because they needed to please the King of England, even if they had to sentence an innocent, anointed queen and several other people to death. All the judges had to vote guilty as they were afraid of acting otherwise, fearful they might have been accused of being Anne’s lovers and that they might have displeased their sovereign.

Therefore, the court, presided over by Anne’s own uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, in his capacity of lord steward, unanimously declared Anne Boleyn and others guilty of all the charges. Knowing that Anne was found guilty and completely shocked with the thought that Anne had slept with her lovers in the royal bed, where the king himself lay with his wife, Henry signed all the death warrants without any hesitation. It was what Cromwell and others needed to get rid of Anne. The chief minister still feared that if Henry had realized that Anne Boleyn had been falsely accused and that other men had been unjustly condemned and executed, he would have probably ordered to release her from the Tower.

Cromwell couldn’t let Anne Boleyn live. She was his sworn enemy, and he had to get rid of her. The king needed to marry, and, thus, Anne had to die. In addition, too much blood had been spilled due to the king’s desire to set Anne aside and be free, and there was no way back. If Anne were pardoned and taken back by the king as his queen, much blood would be spilled in revenge of the murder of George Boleyn and other innocent people.