Dear Heart, How Like You This (46 page)
During that visit, when my father recounted to me all that had gone on in court that day, he also told me that I no longer had anything to fear regarding being summoned to court as one of the accused. Cromwell had made the point of coming up to my father after my cousin’s trials to tell him that the King had no misgivings about my innocence, and that my relations with the Queen had always been beyond reproach.
How little they really knew!
I looked at my father when he was telling me all this, and realised what a weight he had carried on his shoulders during his previous visits. My father struck me now as a man suddenly made free of all fears.
But, on this day, I was in no state to rejoice with him the promise of my eventual release. Anne and George were condemned to die—and to die very, very soon. That is all that I could think of. In sooth, I wished my father to be gone from me so I could better despair in peace. Through my mind ran deep, dark melancholy.
Oh death! Come to me, grim dancer. I but need to reach out my hand, to join my dance with yours. Oh, if only I was free, to join my dance with yours.
I think now that my father knew my mood, and desired somehow to console me. He stayed by me as long as he could, telling me of this and that, paying no mind that I was attending little to his words. One thing he did say penetrated my sluggish consciousness. My father spoke of how public feeling was now swinging to Anne’s favour. The ordinary people were not unaware that their King was seriously wooing another lady. Indeed, every night since Anne’s arrest, the King’s barge was seen rowing down to where this lady resided, and noises of merriment and music were clearly heard until the early hours of the morning. The trials had been such a sham, and so utterly contrived, that the feelings of most people—even some people who were once Anne’s steadfast enemies—were now running high for Anne and against the King.
Perhaps, I thought, this might force the King, who cared much for his subjects’ regard of him, to find another solution, other than the death of an innocent woman and innocent men, for the dissolvement of his marriage. Perhaps, he might decide to banish all those now condemned to die from his kingdom. Perhaps, I began to lose my mind with dreams and hopes.
Days sped by, and all was readied for the executions.
Oh death rock me asleep,
Bring me 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…
Defiled is my name full sore
Through cruel spite and false report,
That I may say for evermore,
Farewell to joy, adieu comfort.
For wrongfully you judge of me
Unto my fame a mortal wound,
Say what ye list, it may not be,
Ye seek for that shall not be found.
—Anne Boleyn
“The bell tower showed me such sight
That in my head sticks day and night;
There did I learn out of a grate,
For all valour, glory or might,
That yet circa Regna tonat.”
The nineteenth day of May, 1536, is a date forever scarred upon my memory; for this was the day that I watched them murder Anna from my prison window. For days past I had watched the carpenters build the high scaffold (the noise of its erection forbade sleep for all who resided in the Tower) and knew that it was meant for my beloved.
Already, two days before, I had watched in horror as they killed my friends Henry Norris, Francis Weston and Will Brereton. How I had cursed at first the fact that my cell’s window overlooked the place where they were to be executed. There I could not escape my feeling of obligation, being honour bound to watch every second of their executions; so to be witness to their martyrdoms and good deaths.
Then the day before his sister’s death, George, my greatest life-long friend and kinsman, was slain before my very eyes, our good and gentle King allowing him the mercy of a quick death by beheading rather than being hanged, drawn and quartered.
I will write now what my cousin said to the crowd before he died:
“Trust in God
,
and not in the vanities of the world; for if I had so done I think I would not have found myself here before you condemned to die.”
Dear George! Now are you forever gone from my earthly life. Now I must wait for my own death before I can walk by your side again.
My dear friends and cousin all went bravely to their deaths. But, as each of their lives came to a savage abrupt end, I felt my own youth spill out of me as the blood spilled out of their severed necks, and I knew now that I would never, ever again feel young. And with each death, I felt myself approach, again and again and again, a little closer to my own.
I had heard that Anna’s execution was set for the ninth hour of the morning, but that time had come and gone with the scaffold still not finished. Then at the eleventh hour, all was suddenly quiet in the courtyard underneath my window, and I knew that the final preparations were underway for my dark Lady’s doom.
As the Tower bell struck twelve, the invited witnesses (imagine how I felt when I saw that one of the witnesses was none other than the Duke of Suffolk—I suppose he came to gloat at this inglorious end to Anna’s life) gathered around to watch Anna’s last earthly moments. Struggling to find a good vantage point, I was unable to see her until she had climbed up the steps to the high platform.
When Anna reached the top I saw her stand perfectly still, looking upwards to the sky. It was a lovely spring day, this nineteenth day of May: blue skies, though with a scattering of white clouds streaked in one part of the heavens. I tried to follow the direction where Anna was looking and I believe I saw what she saw. In the sky those scattered clouds had a strange appearance, making me think of a staircase. The more my eyes took in this illusion formed by the clouds on this day, the more I could not escape the sensation of being drawn deeper and deeper into the vivid blue sky.
Suddenly I was swept back twenty years or more, to an unexpected shower on glorious spring day, when a little girl danced in the rain and then talked gaily of her death, imagining her journey to Heaven.
“You know, Tommy, when I die I will go up a staircase just like that,” she had said, “and maybe when all earthly breath has gone out from me, God will let me become a small part of the air all around us.”
Anne’s words from our childhoods pounded in my ears with the increasing roar of my heart. Did my girl remember that day too? I believe with all my heart and soul that Anna did, as she halted on the scaffold on this last day of her life and looked up at the sky where a cloudly staircase became visible in the firmament.
But actions on the stage below me broke into my memories, for her attendants (one of them my own sister Margaret) now moved forward to take off Anna’s dark-grey damask cloak, revealing beneath it an under-dress of deep crimson. The Swordsman from Calais, dressed all in black, with his face hidden from Anna by the black mask upon his face, came to kneel at her feet. I heard him speak in French these words: “Madame, I crave your Majesty’s pardon for I am ordered to do my duty.”
I could barely make out Anna’s reply, though it sounded to me like the usual, customary one of “‘willingly.’”
I saw her then give to the executioner his fee to ensure herself of a swift, clean death.
Anna turned and looked behind her, her eyes frantically searching the walls of the prison. And with that physic connection that had always bound us to one another, I knew that what she so desperately sought was a face she knew so well: my face. My heart stood still in my chest, and I prayed to God to please let her eyes find what she so franticly sought, to let her eyes find mine. But God chose to not answer my prayer, for Anna found me not.
Anna moved, appearing to me as a vision of bright loveliness (in sooth, I had never seen her look so serenely beautiful) towards the rails to make her final address. Initially her voice was soft, the only sign of her nervousness, but, none the less, I could still hear her words.
“Good Christian people—I am come hither to die, for according to the law, and by law, I am judged to die, and therefore will speak nothing against it. I come hither to accuse no man, nor speak anything of that whereof I am accused and condemned to die. But I prayed God to save the King, and send him long to reign over you—for a gentler nor merciful prince there was never; and to me he was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord. And if any person will meddle with my cause, I require them to judge the best. And thus I take my leave of the world, and of you all, and I heartily desire you all to pray for me.”
It struck me, as I struggled to hear every word of her speech, that there could be few women who would be intelligent and strong minded enough to be able to say, without actually saying anything, how harshly the King had dealt with her.
Her ladies, all of them crying hard by this stage, now returned to her. One passed to her a white linen cap, which Anna slowly and solemnly took from her. She stood there for a few seconds seemingly caressing the linen as if she wanted to capture, for one last, lingering moment, the simple sense of touch. Anna then came back to the present moment with a visible start and turned around, giving Margaret her scarf and a small, gold-bound prayer book—a prayer book, I discovered later, Anna had left for me to keep as remembrance of her (as if I would ever need anything to remind me of my dark Lady).
Anna next removed from her head a pearl encrusted coif, showing briefly that her hair had been tightly plaited around her head, replacing the coif with the simpler white cap.
My sister now came behind Anne to tie the scarf around her eyes. Blinded, Anna put out both arms in front of her, as if trying to gain sense of her bearings. Anna looked so frail and helpless that my already aching, bleeding heart began to break beyond hope of ever being made whole again.
The executioner now moved towards her and spoke:
“
Madame, I beg you now to kneel, and say your prayers.
”
Guided by Margaret to the block, my Anna knelt and, characteristically, fussed nervously with her dress around her feet.
Suddenly her back straightened and Anna raised both her hands to the sky, saying: “To Jesus Christ I commit my soul! Oh, Lord, have mercy on me. To Christ I commend my soul. Jesus, receive my soul!”
At the finish of the prayer, Anna lowered her arms and gripped her hands tightly on either side of the block. I saw the Headsman mutter something to his assistant, with the result that the assistant quickly passed to him his sword, which had been hidden from Anna’s eyes behind a bale of straw placed on the platform.
Before I knew it, the wind carried to my ears the sound of a hiss as the blade cut through the air. And I watched, with a sense of deep disbelief, as the sword caused Anna’s head to fall off her shoulders, and saw it bounce and roll on the ground. Anna’s body was now but a vessel gushing forth a fountain of blood.
I could watch no more. In sooth, I had watched too much. I felt like my guts had been savagely wretched from out my body. I collapsed and was violently sick on the floor of my prison chamber.
