In the Shadow of the Crown (32 page)

“How can this be?” I asked.

“With the King,” she said, still hovering between laughter and tears, “they do anything he wishes. I was his queen and now he has made me his sister. How can that be? you ask me. It can be because he says it is so.”

“And you…you are safe.”

She gripped my hands, and I knew how great her fear had been.

“I am no longer the King's wife,” she said soberly. “And that is something to be very happy about. Ah, I must be careful. They would call that treason. But you will not betray me, dear Mary.”

“Be calm, Anne,” I said. “You have been so wonderfully calm till now.”

“It is the relief,” she replied. “I did not know how much I wanted to live. Think of it! I am free. I do not have to try to please him. I wear what I like. I am myself. I am his sister. He is no longer my husband. Can you imagine what that is like?”

“Yes,” I told her. “I believe I can.”

“That poor woman… think of her…in her prison in the Tower, waiting for the summons… waiting for death… she was Anne…as I am. I know what it is like.”

“I understand, too.”

“Then you rejoice with me.”

“I rejoice,” I told her.

“I am to have a residence of my own and £3,000 a year. Think of that.”

“And he has agreed to this?”

“Yes…yes…to be rid of me. If only he knew how I longed for him to be rid of me. Three thousand a year to live my own life. Oh, I am drunk on happiness. He is no longer my husband. There is a condition. I am not to leave England.” She laughed loudly. “Well if I tell you the truth, my dear Mary, it is that I do not want to leave England.”

“Shall you be content to stay here always?”

“I think so.”

“He does not want you to go out of England for fear you marry some foreign prince who will say you are Queen of England and have a right to the throne.”

She laughed again. “I am happy here. I have my little family … my sweet Elizabeth and you, dear Mary. To be a mother to you, Elizabeth and the little boy… that is to me greater happiness than to be a queen.”

I never saw a woman so content to be rid of a husband as Anne of Cleves was. My father was at first delighted by her mild acceptance of her state, but later he began to feel a little piqued at her enjoyment of her new role. How-ever,
by this time he was so enamored of Catharine Howard that he could not give much thought to Anne of Cleves.

The alliance with the German princes was at an end; and that meant that there was no question of a betrothal to Philip of Bavaria.

THE YEAR 1540 was a terrible one for death. My father was filled with rage against those who defied him. He was probably worried now and then about the enormity of what he had done; it was not only that he had denied the Pope's supremacy and set himself up in his place in England; he had suppressed the monasteries and taken their wealth. His rule became more despotic and those about him obeyed without question, anticipated his desires and did everything possible to avoid offending him. But it was different with the people; and when those men who called themselves holy had the effrontery to deny him and to suggest that he was not the head of his own country's Church, his rage overflowed.

He wanted vengeance and would have it. Respected men were submitted to humiliating and barbarous torture on the scaffold, men who, the people knew, had led blameless lives, like Robert Barnes the divine and Thomas Abell, were submitted to this horrible death with many others.

I thought of these things and shuddered. My father had indeed changed. Where was the merry monarch now? He was irritable, and the pain in his leg sometimes sent him into maddened rages.

When I heard that Dr. Featherstone had been treated in the same manner, I was deeply distressed and I was glad that my mother was not alive, for she would have been very distressed if she knew what was happening to her old chaplain. He had taught me when I was a child, and I could well remember his quiet kindliness and his pleasure when I learned my lessons. I could not bear to think of such a man being submitted to that torture. And all because he had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy. How I admired those brave men, and how I deplored the fact that it was my father who murdered them.

People were burned at the stake in such numbers that in the streets of London one could not escape from the smell of martyrs' flesh and the sight of martyrs' bodies hanging in chains to feed the carrion crows.

Rebellion was at the heart of it. My father had broken with Rome but that did not mean he was no longer a Catholic. The old religion remained; the only difference was that he was head of the Church instead of the Pope. He wanted no Lutheran doctrines introduced into England. People must watch their steps … particularly those in vulnerable positions. I was one of those.

Cromwell lost his head on the very day my father married Catharine
Howard; that changed him for a while. How he doted on the child…she was little more. They looked incongruous side by side—this ageing man with the purple complexion and the bloodshot eyes, fleshy and irascible, biting his lips till the blood came when the fistula in his leg pained him. And she … that dainty little creature with her wide-eyed innocence which seemed somehow knowledgeable, with her curls springing and feet dancing, a child in her teens… and yet not a child, a creature of overwhelming allure for an ageing, disappointed man.

But he was disappointed no longer; he was rejuvenated; he had regained something of his old physical energy: he was dotingly, besottedly in love.

I felt sickened by it. I remembered his treatment of my mother and Anne of Cleves; to those two worthy women he had behaved with the utmost cruelty, and yet, here he was, like a young lover, unable to take his eyes from this pretty, frivolous little creature whose doe's eyes had secrets behind them.

A horrifying incident happened that year. I shall never forget my feelings when I heard. Susan, whom, happily, I had been able to keep with me, came to me one day. I guessed she had something terrible to tell me and was hesitating as to whether it would be better to do so or keep me in the dark.

I prevailed on her to tell me. I think I knew beforehand whom it must concern because she looked so tragic.

“My lady,” she said when I insisted, “you must prepare yourself for a shock.” She looked at me with great compassion.

I stared at her, and then my lips formed the words, “The…Countess… what of the Countess?”

She was silent. I tried to calm myself.

She said, “It had to come. It is a wonder it did not come before.”

“Tell me,” I begged.

“She is dead…is she not?” “She had been suffering all these months in the Tower. She was wretched there. It is best for her. Cold, miserable, lacking comfort. Heartbroken… grieving for her sons…”

“If only I could have gone to her.”

Susan shook her head. “There was nothing you could have done.”

“Only pray for her,” I said.

“And that you did.”

“I always mentioned her in my prayers. Why… why? What had she done? She was innocent of treason.”

“That insurrection of Sir John Neville… such things upset the King.”

“I know. He wants the people to love him.”

“Love must be earned,” said Susan quietly.

I went on, “But there have been so many deaths…so much slaughter… fearful, dreadful deaths. And the Countess… what had she done?”

“She was a Plantagenet…”

I covered my face with my hands as though to shut out the sight of her. I could see her clearly, walking out of her cell to East Smithfield Green, which is just within the Tower precincts.

“She was very brave, I know,” I said.

“She did not die easily,” Susan told me.

“I would I had been with her.”

“You would never have borne it.”

“And she died with great courage. She… who had done no harm to any. She who had had the misfortune to be born royal.”

“Hush,” said Susan. “People listen at times like this.”

“Times like these, Susan. Terrible … wicked times. Did she mention me?”

“She was thinking of you at the end. You were as a daughter to her.”

“She wanted me to be her daughter in truth…through Reginald.”

“Hush, my lady,” said Susan again, glancing over her shoulder.

I wanted to cry out: I care not. Let them take me. Let them try
me
for treason. They have come near enough to it before now.

“She did mention you. She asked all those watching to pray for the King and Queen, Prince Edward … and she wanted her god-daughter, the Princess Mary, to be specially commended.”

“So she was thinking of me right to the end.”

“You can be sure of it.”

“How did my dear Countess die?”

Susan was silent.

“Please tell me,” I begged. “I want to hear of it from you. I shall learn of it later.”

“The block was too low, and the executioner was unaccustomed to wielding the axe.”

“Oh … no!”

“Do not grieve. It is over now, but several blows were needed before the final one.”

“Oh, my beloved Countess. She was my second mother, the one who shared my sorrows and my little triumphs during those early years. Always she had been there, comforting me, wise and kind…”

I could not bear the thought of her dear body being slaughtered by a man who did not know how to wield an axe.

All through the years I had not seen her I had promised myself that we should meet one day.

The realization that we never should again on Earth filled me with great sorrow and a dreadful foreboding. How close to death we all were.

MY FATHER WAS in a merry mood those days. He was delighted with his fifth wife. He watched her every movement, and he did not like her to be out of his sight. He took a great delight in her merry chatter. I thought she was rather silly.

When I remembered my father's turning from my mother, from Anne of Cleves, even from Anne Boleyn, I marvelled. All of them were endowed with qualities which this silly little girl completely lacked. Yet it was on her that his doting eyes turned again and again.

Queen of England she might be, but I could not treat her with respect. To me she was just a frivolous girl. It could only have been her youth which appealed to him. He was fifty and she was about seventeen; and he was desperately trying to share in the radiant youth which was hers.

I was five years older than she was. I wonder now why it was that I disliked her so much. She was mild enough, and I daresay if I had shown some affection she would have returned it. She was stupid; her education had been neglected, although she was the daughter of Sir Edmund Howard, a younger son of the Duke of Norfolk. He had been the hero of Flodden Field but his services to his country had never been recognized and consequently he was desperately poor. There were ten children and it was a strain on his resources to care for such a large family and he was constantly trying to elude his creditors. He was, therefore, glad to send young Catharine off to her grandmother to be brought up in that rather disreputable household—which was what set her on the road to disaster.

But that was to come. At this time, there she was… the uneducated little girl who had suddenly found herself the King's petted consort, his little Queen.

It was not that she gave herself airs. She certainly did not. She was just overwhelmed by all that had happened to her. She behaved like a child but she was quite experienced in certain ways of the world, as was to be revealed. I realized—only, I must admit, later, when I knew something of her past— that she was a girl of lusty sexual appetites and even if her good sense—of which she had very little—had warned her that she must not act in a certain way, she would have been unable to resist doing so.

I suppose she was just the girl to appeal to the jaded senses of an ageing man who had been bitterly disillusioned in his hopes of a beautiful bride.

I was surprised that she was aware of my dislike. I should have thought she was not intelligent enough to sense it. It was not a habit of hers to complain, but she did about my attitude to her, so she must have felt it deeply.

My father was annoyed that I had offended his little darling.

He said of me, “It is those women about her. She has too many of those whispering cronies. There is too much chatter in those apartments…too much brooding on this and that and rights and wrongs. She shall be taught a lesson.”

The lesson was to rob me of two of my women.

I was angry. I was fond of the women about me, and ours was a very happy household. I needed all the friends I could get. Fortunately Susan remained with some others of my closest comrades, but I did miss those two who were sent away.

I was about to protest when Chapuys came to see me.

“You must patch up this quarrel with the Queen,” he said.

“That stupid little creature!”

He laughed. “She pleases the King.” He gave a little smirk. “They say he has never been so pleased since he set eyes on the girl's cousin all those years ago. There must be a similarity to Anne Boleyn there.”

“Anne Boleyn was a clever woman,” I said. “This one is a fool.”

“None the less, one must beware of fools if they have power.”

“This one has power?”

“Through her devoted lover, of course. You are not entirely out of favor with the Court. Don't forget. You are next… after Edward.”

“Edward is so young.”

Chapuys looked at me slyly. “Who can say?” he murmured. “However, there must be no further estrangement between you and your father, and there will be if you continue to offend the Queen.”

“I did not think to offend her.”

“Yet you have shown disrespect for her in some way.”

“She is so silly.”

“Silly to you, but delectable to His Majesty, and it is His Majesty who has the power over us, remember. Find some means of making up the quarrel. The breach between you must not widen.”

I saw his point. There was always sound thinking behind Chapuys' words.

It was not difficult. When I was next in her presence, I admired her gown. She flashed her smile at me. She was really very pretty, and she had been so unused to having beautiful clothes that she was childishly delighted with her wardrobe. I admired her beautiful curls.