Bring Up the Bodies (51 page)

On paper it is done. The records of the trials are his, to carry to the Rolls House, to keep or destroy or mislay, but the bodies of the dead men are a dirty, urgent problem. The corpses must be put in a cart and brought within the Tower walls: he can see them, a heap of entangled bodies without heads, heaped promiscuously as if on a bed, or as if, like corpses in war, they have already been buried and dug up. Within the fortress they are stripped of their clothes, which are the perquisite of the headsman and his assistants, and left in their shirts. There is a graveyard huddled to the walls of St Peter ad Vincula, and the commoners will be buried there, with Rochford to go alone beneath the floor of the chapel. But now the dead are without the badges of their ranks there is some confusion. One of the burial party said, fetch the queen, she knows their body parts; but others, Richard says, cried shame on him. He says, gaolers see too much, they soon lose their sense of what is fitting. ‘I saw Wyatt looking down from a grate in the Bell Tower,' Richard says. ‘He signed to me and I wanted to give him hope, but I did not know how to signal that.'

He will be released, he says. But perhaps not until Anne is dead.

The hours to that event seem long. Richard hugs him; says, ‘If she had reigned longer she would have given us to the dogs to eat.'

‘If we had let her reign longer, we would have deserved it.'

 

At Lambeth, the two proctors for the queen had been present: as the king's substitutes, Dr Bedyll and Dr Tregonwell, and Richard Sampson as his counsel. And himself, Thomas Cromwell: and the Lord Chancellor, and other councillors, including the Duke of Suffolk, whose own marital affairs have been so entangled that he has learned a certain amount of canon law, swallowing it like a child taking medicine; today Brandon had sat making faces and shifting in his chair, while the priests and lawyers sifted the circumstances. They had talked over Harry Percy, and agreed he was no use to them. ‘I cannot think why you did not get his cooperation, Cromwell,' the duke says. Reluctantly they had talked over Mary Boleyn, and agreed she would have to furnish the impediment; though the king was as culpable as anyone, for he knew, surely, he could not be contracted to Anne if he had slept with her sister? I suppose the point was not entirely obvious, Cranmer says gently. There was affinity, that is clear, but he had a dispensation from the Pope, which he thought held good at the time. He did not know that, in so grave a matter, the Pope cannot dispense; that point was settled later.

It is all most unsatisfactory. The duke says suddenly, ‘Well, you all know she is a witch. And if she witched him into marriage…'

‘I don't think the king means that,' he says: he, Cromwell.

‘Oh, he does,' says the duke. ‘I thought that was what we had come here to discuss. If she witched him into marriage it was null, is my understanding.' The duke sits back, his arms folded.

The proctors look at each other. Sampson looks at Cranmer. No one looks at the duke. Eventually Cranmer says, ‘We don't have to make it public. We can issue the decree but keep the grounds secret.'

A release of breath. He says, ‘I suppose it is some consolation, that we need not be laughed at in public.'

The Lord Chancellor says, ‘The truth is so rare and precious that sometimes it must be kept under lock and key.'

The Duke of Suffolk speeds to his barge, crying out that at last he is free of the Boleyns.

 

The end of the king's first marriage was protracted, public and discussed throughout Europe, not only in the councils of princes but in the market square. The end of his second, if decency prevailed, would be swift, private, unspoken and obscure. Yet it is necessary to have it witnessed by the city and by men of rank. The Tower is a town. It is an armoury, a palace, a mint. Workmen of all sorts, officials come and go. But it can be policed, and foreigners evacuated. He sets Kingston to do this. Anne, he is sorry to learn, has mistaken the day of her death, rising at 2 a.m. to pray on the morning of 18 May, sending for her almoner and for Cranmer to come to her at dawn so she can purge herself of her sins. No one seems to have told her that Kingston comes without fail at dawn on the morning of an execution, to warn the dying person to be ready. She is not familiar with the protocol, and why would she be? Kingston says, see it from my point of view: five deaths in one day, and to be ready for a queen of England the next? How can she die, when the appropriate officials from the city are not here? The carpenters are still making her scaffold on Tower Green, though thankfully she cannot hear the knocking from the royal lodging.

Still, the constable is sorry for her misapprehension; especially since her mistake ran on, late into the morning. The situation is a great strain on both himself and his wife. Instead of being glad of another dawn, he reports, Anne had cried, and said she was sorry not to die that day: she wished she were past her pain. She knew about the French executioner and, ‘I told her,' Kingston says, ‘it shall be no pain, it is so subtle.' But once again, Kingston says, she closed her fingers around her throat. She had taken the Eucharist, declaring on the body of God her innocence.

Which surely she would not do, Kingston says, if she were guilty?

She laments the men who are gone.

She makes jokes, saying that she will be known hereafter as Anne the Headless, Anne sans Tête.

 

He says to his son, ‘If you come with me to witness this, it will be almost the hardest thing you ever do. If you can go through it with a steady countenance, it will be remarked on and it will be much in your favour.'

Gregory just looks at him. He says, ‘A woman, I cannot.'

‘I will be beside you to show you that you can. You need not look. When the soul passes, we kneel, and we drop our eyes, and pray.'

The scaffold has been set up in an open place, where once they used to hold tournaments. A guard of two hundred yeomen is assembling, drawing up to lead the procession. Yesterday's bungling, the confusion over the date, the delays, the misinformation: none of that must be repeated. He is there early, when they are putting the sawdust down, leaving his son back in Kingston's lodgings, with the others who are collecting: the sheriffs, aldermen, London's officers and dignitaries. He stands himself on the steps of the scaffold, testing them to see if they take his weight; one of the sawdust men says to him, it's sound, sir, we have all run up and down, but I suppose you want to check it yourself. When he looks up the executioner is already there, talking to Christophe. The young man is well-dressed, an allowance having been made him for a gentleman's apparel, so that he will not be easy to pick out from the other officials; this is done to save alarm to the queen, and if the clothes are spoiled, at least he is not out of pocket himself. He walks up to the executioner. ‘How will you do this?'

‘I shall surprise her, sir.' Switching into English, the young man indicates his feet. He is wearing soft shoes, such as one might wear indoors. ‘She never sees the sword. I have put it there, in the straw. I shall distract her. She will not see from where I come.'

‘But you will show me.'

The man shrugs. ‘If you like. Are you Cremuel? They told me you are in charge of everything. In fact they joke to me, saying, if you faint because she is so ugly, there is one who will pick up the sword, his name is Cremuel and he is such a man, he can chop the head off the Hydra, which I do not understand what it is. But they say it is a lizard or serpent, and for each head that is chopped two more will grow.'

‘Not in this case,' he says. Once the Boleyns are done, they are done.

The weapon is heavy, needing a two-handed grip. It is almost four foot in length: two inches broad, round at the tip, a double edge. ‘One practises, like this,' the man says. He whirls like a dancer on the spot, his arms held high, his fists together as if he were gripping the sword. ‘Every day one must handle the weapon, if only to go through the motions. One may be called at any time. We do not kill so many in Calais, but one goes to other towns.'

‘It is a good trade,' Christophe says. He wants to handle the sword, but he, Cromwell, does not want to let go of it yet.

The man says, ‘They tell me I may speak French to her and she will understand me.'

‘Yes, do so.'

‘But she will kneel, she must be informed of this. There is no block, as you see. She must kneel upright and not move. If she is steady, it will be done in a moment. If not, she will be cut to pieces.'

He hands back the weapon. ‘I can answer for her.'

The man says, ‘Between one beat of the heart and the next it is done. She knows nothing. She is in eternity.'

They walk away. Christophe says, ‘Master, he has said to me, tell the women that she should wrap her skirts about her feet when she kneels, in case she falls bad and shows off to the world what so many fine gentlemen have already seen.'

He does not reprove the boy for his coarseness. He is crude but correct. And when the moment comes, it will prove, the women do it anyway. They must have discussed it among themselves.

 

Francis Bryan has appeared beside him, steaming inside a leather jerkin. ‘Well, Francis?'

‘I am charged that as soon as her head is off I ride with the news to the king and Mistress Jane.'

‘Why?' he says coldly. ‘Do they think the headsman might in some way fail?'

It is almost nine o'clock. ‘Did you eat any breakfast?' Francis says.

‘I always eat my breakfast.' But he wonders if the king did. ‘Henry has hardly spoken of her,' Francis Bryan says. ‘Only to say he cannot see how the whole thing occurred. When he looks back on the last ten years, he cannot understand himself.'

They are silent. Francis says, ‘Look, they are coming.'

The solemn procession, through Coldharbour Gate: the city first, aldermen and officials, then the guard. In the midst of them the queen with her women. She wears a gown of dark damask and a short cape of ermine, a gable hood; it is the occasion, one supposes, to hide the face as much as possible, to guard the expression. That ermine cape, does he not know it? It was wrapped around Katherine, he thinks, when I saw it last. These furs, then, are Anne's final spoils. Three years ago when she went to be crowned, she walked on a blue cloth that stretched the length of the abbey – so heavy with child that the onlookers held their breath for her; and now she must make shift over the rough ground, picking her way in her little lady's shoes, with her body hollow and light and just as many hands around her, ready to retrieve her from any stumble and deliver her safely to death. Once or twice the queen falters, and the whole procession must slow; but she has not stumbled, she is turning and looking behind her. Cranmer had said, ‘I do not know why, but she thinks there is still hope.' The ladies have veiled themselves, even Lady Kingston; they do not want their future lives to be associated with this morning's work, they do not want their husbands or their suitors to look at them and think of death.

Gregory has slipped into place beside him. His son is trembling and he can feel it. He puts out a gloved hand and rests it on his arm. The Duke of Richmond acknowledges him; he stands in prominent view, with his father-in-law Norfolk. Surrey, the duke's son, is whispering to his father, but Norfolk gazes straight ahead. How has the house of Howard come to this?

When the women strip the queen of her cape she is a tiny figure, a bundle of bones. She does not look like a powerful enemy of England, but looks can deceive. If she could have brought Katherine to this same place, she would have. If her sway had continued, the child Mary might have stood here; and he himself of course, pulling off his coat and waiting for the coarse English axe. He says to his son, ‘It will be but a moment now.' Anne has given alms out as she walks, and the velvet bag is empty now; she slips her hand inside it and turns it inside out, a prudent housewife's gesture, checking to see that nothing is thrown away.

One of the women stretches out a hand for the purse. Anne passes it without looking at her, then moves to the edge of the scaffold. She hesitates, looks over the heads of the crowd, then begins to speak. The crowd as one sways forward, but can only shuffle by inches towards her, every man with his head lifted, staring. The queen's voice is very low, her words barely heard, her sentiments the usual ones on the occasion: ‘…pray for the king, for he is a good, gentle, amiable and virtuous prince…' One must say these things, as even now the king's messenger might come…

She pauses…But no, she has finished. There is nothing more to say and not more than a few moments left of this world. She takes in a breath. Her face expresses bewilderment.
Amen
, she says,
amen
. Her head goes down. Then she seems to draw herself together, to control the tremor that has seized her entire body from head to foot.

One of the veiled women moves to her side and speaks to her. Anne's arm shakes as she raises it to lift off her hood. It comes easily, no fumbling; he thinks, it cannot have been pinned. Her hair is gathered in a silk net at the nape of her neck and she shakes it out, gathers up the strands, raising her hands above her head, coiling it; she holds it with one hand, and one of the women gives her a linen cap. She pulls it on. You would not think it would hold her hair, but it does; she must have rehearsed with it. But now she looks about as if for direction. She lifts the cap half off her head, puts it back. She does not know what to do, he sees she does not know if she should tie the cap's string beneath her chin – whether it will hold without fastening or whether she has time to make a knot and how many heartbeats she has left in the world. The executioner steps out and he can see – he is very close – Anne's eyes focus on him. The Frenchman bobs to his knees to ask pardon. It is a formality and his knees barely graze the straw. He has motioned Anne to kneel, and as she does so he steps away, as if he does not want contact even with her clothes. At arm's length, he holds out a folded cloth to one of the women, and raises a hand to his eyes to show her what he means. He hopes it is Lady Kingston who takes the blindfold; whoever it is, she is adept, but a small sound comes from Anne as her world darkens. Her lips move in prayer. The Frenchman waves the women back. They retreat; they kneel, one of them almost sinks to the ground and is propped up by the others; despite the veils one can see their hands, their helpless bare hands, as they draw their own skirts about them, as if they were making themselves small, making themselves safe. The queen is alone now, as alone as she has ever been in her life. She says, Christ have mercy, Jesus have mercy, Christ receive my soul. She raises one arm, again her fingers go to the coif, and he thinks, put your arm down, for God's sake put your arm down, and he could not will it more if – the executioner calls out sharply, ‘Get me the sword.' The blinded head whips around. The man is behind Anne, she is misdirected, she does not sense him. There is a groan, one single sound from the whole crowd. Then a silence, and into that silence, a sharp sigh or a sound like a whistle through a keyhole: the body exsanguinates, and its flat little presence becomes a puddle of gore.