The Queen's Governess

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE QUEEN ELIZABETH I MYSTERY SERIES

 

 

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Copyright © 2010 by Karen Harper

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Published simultaneously in Canada

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Harper, Karen (Karen S.)
The queen’s governess / Karen Harper.
p. cm.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18462-2

1. Astley, Katherine, d. 1565—Fiction. 2. Elizabeth I, Queen of England,
1533-1603—Fiction. 3. Governesses—England—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3558.A624792Q
813’.54—dc22

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

THE TOWER OF LONDON

 

 

 

 

 

 

I
could not fathom they were going to kill the queen. Nor could I bear to witness Anne Boleyn’s beheading. Still, I stepped off the barge on the choppy Thames and, with the other observers, entered the Tower through the water gate. I felt sick to my stomach and my very soul.

The spring sun and soft river breeze deserted us as we entered the Tower. All seemed dark and airless within the tall stone walls. We were shown our place at the back of the small, elite crowd. Thank the Lord, I did not have to stand close to the wooden scaffold that had been built for this dread deed. I had vowed to myself I would keep my eyes shut, and, standing back here, no one would know. Yet I stared straight ahead, taking it all in.

For, despite my distance of some twenty feet from it, the straw-strewn scaffold with its wooden stairs going up seemed to loom above me. How would Anne, brazen and foolish but innocent Anne, stripped now of her title, her power, her daughter and husband, manage to get herself through this horror? She had always professed to be a woman of strong faith, so perhaps that would sustain her.

I yearned to bolt from the premises. I nearly lost my hard-won control. Tears blurred my vision, but I blinked them back.

The crowd hushed as the former queen came out into the sun, led by the Tower constable Sir William Kingston, with four ladies following. At least she had company at the end. Anne’s almoner was with her; they both held prayer books. Her eyes up and straight ahead, her lips moved in silent prayer. I thought I read the words on them: “
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .”

Before she reached the scaffold, others mounted it as if to greet her: the Lord Mayor of London, who had arranged her fine coronation flotilla but three years ago this very month, and several sheriffs in their scarlet robes. Then, too, the black-hooded French swordsman and his assistant, who had come from France. Anne’s head jerked when she saw her executioner.

The woman who had been Queen of England hesitated but a moment at the bottom of the steps, then mounted. She wore a robe of black damask, cut low and trimmed with fur, and a crimson kirtle, the color of martyr’s blood, I thought. She had gathered her luxuriant dark hair into a net but over it wore the style of headdress she had made fashionable, a half-moon shape trimmed with pearls.

I saw no paper in her hand, nor did she look down as her clear voice rang out words she had obviously memorized: “Good Christian people, I am come hither to die according to law, therefore I will speak nothing against it. I am come hither to accuse no man, nor to speak anything of that whereof I am accused.”

I knew such contrition was part of her agreement with the king’s henchman Cromwell. It was also the price she had to pay for having me here today. I could hardly bear it. Yet, for her, I stood straight, staring at her. Betrayed and abandoned, if she could face this, I could too.

“I come here,” Anne went on with a glance and a nod directly at me, though others might think it was but to emphasize her words, “only to die, and thus to yield myself humbly unto the will of my lord the king.”

Damn the king
, I vowed, however treasonous that mere thought. Men, not even the great Henry Tudor, had a right to cast off and execute a woman he had pursued and lusted for, had bred a child on, the little Elizabeth I knew and loved so well. The terrible charges against Anne had been trumped up, yet I dared not say so. I wanted to scream out my anger, to leap upon the scaffold and save her—but I stood silent as a stone, struck with awe and dread. But then, since no one stood behind me, I dared to lift my hand to hold up the tiny treasure she had entrusted to me. Perhaps she could not see it; perhaps she would think I was waving farewell to her, but I did it anyway, then pulled my hand back down.

“I pray God to save the king,” she went on with another nod, which I prayed meant she had seen my gesture, “and send him long to reign over you, for a gentler or more merciful prince was there never. To me he was ever a good and gentle sovereign lord.”

Shuffling feet nearby, nervous shifting in the crowd. A smothered snort. I was not the only one who knew this was a public sham and shame. No doubt, she said all that to protect her daughter’s future, the slim possibility that, if the king had no legitimate son and Catholic Mary was not fully reinstated, Elizabeth could be returned to the line of succession—for the poor three-year-old was declared a bastard now. I swore silently I would ever serve Elizabeth well and protect her as best I could from such tyrannical rule by men. At least Anne Boleyn was going to a better place.

Again, I longed to close my eyes, but I could not. When had the terrible things I had borne in my life been halted or helped one whit by cowering or fleeing?

Anne spoke briefly to her ladies, and they removed her cape. She gave a necklace, earrings, a ring and her prayer book away to them, while I fingered the secret gift she had given me. She gave the swordsman a coin and, as was tradition, asked him to make his work quick and forgave him for what he was bound to do.

She knelt and rearranged her skirts. She even helped one of her trembling ladies to adjust a bandage tied over her eyes. Huddled off to the side, her women began to cry, but, beyond that, utter silence but the screech of a seagull flying free over the Thames. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out jerkily, as if I would fall to panting like a dog.

To bare her neck, Anne held her head erect as if she still wore St. Edward’s crown as she had in the Abbey on her coronation day. Then came her hurried, repeated words, “O Lord God, have pity on my soul, O Lord God, have pity on my soul . . .”

I wondered if, in her last frenzied moments, she was picturing her little Elizabeth. I sucked in a sharp sob of regret that the child would never really remember her mother. At least I had known mine before she died—slain as surely as this so someone else might have her husband. That cast me back to my mother’s death, vile and violent, too. . . .

“O Lord God, have pity on my soul, O Lord God, have pity on my—”

The swordsman lifted a long silver sword from the straw and struck in one swift swing. The crowd gave a common gasp, and someone screamed. As Anne’s slender body fell, spouting blood, the executioner held up her head with the lips still moving. Horror-struck, I imagined that, at the very end, she had meant to shout, “O Lord God, have pity on my daughter!”

NEAR DARTINGTON, DEVON

 

 

 

 

 

 

G
od have mercy on her soul. She’s gone,” my father told the two of us. “Dear Lord God, have pity on her soul.”

“Mother. Mother! Please, please wake up! Please come back!” I screamed again and again, throwing river water on her face, until my father shook me hard by the shoulders.