by Deryn Lake
‘I don’t believe him to be innocent — I know he is.’
‘In that case,’ answered Sir Richard, ‘I am determined to save him.’
‘If anything can in the face of the curse of Sutton,’ Anne said bleakly.
The next few hours passed at speed with Sir Richard’s messengers going to and forth from Court and there being no sense at all of remoteness from the building up of events as on the day after the arrest of Francis and Brereton, Thomas Wyatt and Sir Richard Page were added to the prisoners.
But on the following morning the failing spirits of those who dwelt at Sutton Place, realizing for the first time the enormity of the task that lay ahead, were revived by the diamond-adorned figure of Sir John Rogers hastening his black stallion into the courtyard as if the host of hell was behind him. And in sober contrast to his dazzling entrance, the sedate horses — hooves raised in neat trotting precision — of Margaret and Walter Dennys and their servants were heard clipping next day through the Gate-House sweep.
Within two days the situation had grown blacker. The news came through that Thomas Wyatt and Sir Richard Page were not to stand trial, that charges against them had been dropped. And within a few hours of that message another arrived that brought silence to Sutton Place so grave was the nature of its content. The indictments had been made public and Anne Boleyn was accused of repeated incest with her brother George, Viscount Rochford, and repeated adultery with Henry Norris, William Brereton, Mark Smeaton and Francis.
‘And conspiracy?’ said Sir Richard.
‘Conspiracy with all five to bring about the killing of the King.’
‘Christ’s life and body,’ said John Rogers, ‘what devil’s spawn dreamed up such monstrous falsehoods? Murder and incest! God help us we are at the mercy of demons incarnate.’
And during that night when none of them slept and Giles’s wild spirit keened its despair into the blackness the last of the riders came to the mansion with the document they had all been waiting to receive. The date for the trial was out, Friday, May 12 at Westminster Hall. Now there was no further time to lose and the family did not return to their beds but spent the rest of the night in preparation so that by noon of the next day Rose Weston, sidesaddled on her chestnut mare, and Lady Weston, in a curtained litter, set out for London and for the final enterprise. Sir Richard, Sir John and Sir Walter rode with them as far as the village of Chelsea — where the Westons had once had a home up-river from that of Thomas More — and there they parted company and went their separate ways, each one’s heart full to a greater or lesser degree with that tragic mixture of hope and despair from which life itself is made up.
*
On the most significant morning of his life, the day when, as principal royal commissioner he must sit at the trial of four Englishmen accused of adultery with the Queen, Norfolk overslept and was woken shouting ‘What? What?’ and staring stupidly at his servant. Only on the previous evening had he been informed what he must do the next day and then by his own special request.
‘I will not, I cannot act without specific orders from the King,’ he had said to William Paulet who had shrugged his shoulders and shaken his head when asked what was afoot. But his worried message had merely brought instructions direct from the arch manipulator Thomas Cromwell. He was to sit in judgement the following morning. Even as he dressed he had caught himself in his habit of sighing. The whole future of the monarchy lay in the balance for, whatever the verdict today, it would willy-nilly reflect that of Anne Boleyn. If the four were found guilty then so must she, and then Henry would be free — a widower — to marry his chinless Jane Seymour and probably beget a new breed of princes to wrest power from the embittered Princess Mary and her half-sister Elizabeth.
‘Oh God,’ said Norfolk as he mounted his horse and headed it towards Westminster Hall, ‘I wish it were a year from now. I wish I lived in lighter times. I wish — I wish I had been born to a lesser degree.’
The building, when he arrived, was already packed with people — the commissioners, the judges, most of the Court and others of rank and influence who had been able to buy their way in. Taking his seat Thomas Howard looked around and was shocked beyond measure to see Lady Weston and Rose, both dressed in starkest black, sitting amongst those who had come to listen. The presence of the two women was disturbing enough but for them to be the wife and mother of one of the guilty men ... He paused in his thoughts. Why had he used that word? But then he knew, of course, that the accused must be guilty even before he had heard a word of evidence, even before he had actually listened to the full loathsome detail of the indictments. Nothing so terrible, so monumental could be false. And then he had one frightening, shivering moment of doubt. He stood again on the steps of Greenwich Watergate with Zachary in the rose-bright dawn and remembered the words that had passed between them; remembered how he had walked away to summon his niece to the Tower. All he had believed had been summoned up in that gesture — and he must believe again now. Otherwise he must rise up and leave this Hall in the sight of his fellow peers and — indirectly — his monarch.
Realizing that he was frowning deeply he looked up and caught the eye of Thomas Boleyn, Earl of Wiltshire. Norfolk was sickened. All the Tudor Court ran with the victim and hunted with the pack — it was part of life’s survival — but this was beyond the limit of human dignity. That the man could sit there and listen to the filth that must necessarily be spoken of his daughter was bad enough. But to set himself up in judgement of her alleged lovers was too great a blow at paternal feeling. Despite the awesome occasion, despite his position in the hierarchy Norfolk found himself sneering and running his eyes over his upstart brother-in-law in a manner that could have no false interpretation. He mouthed the word ‘Hypocrite’ and looked away.
The time had come for the swearing in of the jury. King’s men; all twelve of them His Grace’s Knights brave and true. Norfolk felt another prickle of unease followed by a tension shared by every person present, for the sound of the crowd outside the Hall — part of the background, not consciously listened to — had suddenly stilled. And faint but sure was the noise of marching feet. The accused were being walked through the streets from the Tower to Westminster. Coughing into his hand to mask his feelings Howard heard the end of the oath taking.
The Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Audley’s voice rang out loudly. ‘Bring up the prisoners.’ And with Sir William Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower beside them, there they were. Such silly, human things went through Norfolk’s mind; that loyal Henry Norris hadn’t shaved well, that Smeaton — always so bright and full of song — had lost a great deal of weight, that Francis Weston had buttoned his doublet on the wrong fastenings, that Brereton was really quite short.
He watched their faces during the reading of the indictments, saw the shared look of disbelief, and wondered how this could equate with guilt? But the answer was quite simply really. She had done it all — sidling and seducing and procuring. He could see her in his mind; those exciting dark eyes promising so much, that sensuous mouth curving into a secret smile. She was the biggest bitch, the biggest whore in the land. That was the real truth. She would have sent his son to death and now she had ruined the lives of four honourable men.
Though he was not a juror he found himself in total agreement with the verdict — guilty on all counts. Without wanting to, he glanced across at the two ladies as sentence — hanging by the neck, disembowelling and quartering while still alive — was passed. Anne Weston sat staring in front of her as if she had died where she sat but Rose ... Rose was looking at Francis and he at her as if that look would never end.
Norfolk would never know, could never know, what passed between them in that final gaze. Everything they had ever shared. Memories — their first childhood meeting in the Great Hall of Sutton Place, their innocent love, the boy and girl decreed for each other but bonded by feelings never dreamed of. Passion — the lust and desire, the virgin and the courtier, the pain and beauty of consumma
tion and the loss of two unborn children. Betrayal — the longing for Margaret Shelton, the flirtatious glances at Henry Knyvett and the absences and inevitable returns. Fidelity — the true love of mind for mind, heart for heart, and the utter totality of pure affection.
All these things and more were exchanged in the last look they ever gave to each other. For they both knew that this was indeed the moment of farewell, that there was no hope, that the way which they had trodden together so joyfully was about to be brutally forced asunder. He shook his head very slightly to show her that he had not been guilty of the terrible things she had just heard, and she gave a tiny nod in return to show that she understood. And then they smiled and continued to smile until he had vanished from her sight and she stood alone, frozen and white, while part of her died with despair.
A touch at her elbow made her look down and she saw that her mother-in-law had turned into an old lady who needed helping up. And even while she struggled with a woman whose legs seemed suddenly useless the Duke of Norfolk — rather strained-looking — was at her side and assisting Lady Weston to her feet saying, ‘Come, come. Come, come.’
‘Lord Duke,’ said Rose.
‘Yes, my dear? Yes, yes?’
And he was patting her hand and sighing and shaking his head like a gossip at a fair.
‘Will you help me?’
A look of caution entered the heavy-lidded eyes.
‘If it is possible to do so, my dear.’
‘I want to see His Grace. You must gain me an audience with the King.’
‘But it would do no good. You would only distress yourself.’
‘Every man has the right of appeal, sir. Is that not so?’
‘Certainly.’
‘Then let me appeal on behalf of my husband. Where’s the harm? I can only be shown from the building.’
Norfolk hesitated and then quite distinctly, as close as if he had been standing beside him, Zachary whispered in his ear. ‘Do it. Help her.’ The illusion was so strong that the Duke glanced round.
‘What is it?’
‘I thought I heard something. Very well, I’ll do what I can. But he’s at Hampton Court. ’Tis a fair way.’
‘Not by water. May we journey with you?’
The Duke considered. The court had risen for though the hearing of Anne Boleyn and her brother still awaited they must, by the law of the land, be judged by their fellow nobles and there were simply not enough present at this sitting. So the trial of the Queen had been postponed until Monday and Howard was bound, in all truth, to report immediately to the King.
‘The postponement — coincidence or tactic?’ he thought. ‘I cannot summon the peers until tomorrow and then they will have a whole day to think about the findings against her lovers. If it is contrived it is shrewd.’
But Rose Weston was looking at him with a ghastly face, forcing him to concentrate his attention on her and say, ‘Yes. We will go now. But be prepared for the worst. His Grace’s temper is choleric.’
‘There is nothing to lose,’ she said.
But despite their apparent calm the silence of the two women unnerved him as his great barge rowed through the beautiful reaches of the Thames past the quiet dreaming villages of Chelsea and Richmond and the grazing land beyond, to where the most magnificent of palaces — once the property of the long dead Cardinal Wolsey — stood in the distance. It was then that Rose finally broke the uneasy stillness.
‘God will thank you for this, Lord Duke,’ she said. ‘Though it may avail us nothing, you will at least have tried.’
But his effort was in vain for though he knew that the interview would be brutal even he was not quite prepared for what actually happened. Anne Weston, who had not spoken at all since leaving Westminster, suddenly cried, ‘Let him live,’ prostrating herself at the feet of the King who sat lolling in the chair of state eating a sweetmeat.
With a face like a death’s head — the bitter black of mourning in cruel contrast to her ashen skin — Rose too knelt before Henry, her hands clasped as supplicant’s, whispering in a tone that the Duke found vaguely menacing.
‘Sire, I have come to plead for the life of my husband — Sir Francis Weston. He is not guilty as charged because he is incapable of such a monstrous act.’
‘That finishes her only hope,’ thought Norfolk. ‘She should have said anything but that. Henry will have no doubt thrown on his jury.’
‘Your Grace, if you will pardon him the Weston family will give up everything of which they stand possessed in the world — one hundred thousand crowns, the manor of Sutton, my manors at Kendal and Moresby, all the houses thereon including Sutton Place, all the lands belonging thereto. We will go penniless if you will sign his reprieve.’
Just for a second the Duke saw Henry was tempted. She was offering him a fortune in return for the stroke of a pen — and it would still leave him three guilty men, with the trial of the Queen’s brother yet to come. But then he saw that little mouth — slightly obscene, folded in as it was amongst the fat and the beard fuzz — grow hard. Greedy the King might be but stupid not at all. One dubious verdict could throw the whole of these trials of state into disrepute. A look of irritation, partly because just for a minute he had considered the idea, crossed the once handsome features now lost in a sea of blubber. Then testily Henry dragged himself to his feet staring down at Lady Weston as if she were something from the dung heap.
‘Let him hang,’ he said. ‘Let him hang.’
And stepping over her as if she were a footstool he stalked from the room shouting, ‘I’ll see you at once, sir,’ in the general direction of Norfolk.
‘God help us,’ said Rose. ‘Will he change his mind?’
‘No,’ said Howard bluntly. ‘I’m sorry. There’s no hope.’
‘The French Ambassador is going to ...’
‘The French Ambassador can try what he likes but nothing short of a miracle will turn events about. You saw the King’s face.’
‘Then, Lord Duke, I have one final favour to ask.’
Howard shifted from foot to foot. Henry was in a wicked mood and obviously blamed him — Norfolk — for the Westons being at Hampton Court at all. The last thing he should do now was keep his royal master waiting.
‘Madam, I must take my leave — His Grace has urgent matters to discuss.’
‘I will delay you no more only ask if you will give this to Dr Zachary tonight.’
And she took from a pocket in her cloak a sealed letter.
‘But I intend staying here tonight.’
‘Then I beg you not to do so. I would go myself but I don’t know what to do with my mother-in-law.’
Her face suddenly crumpled like a little girl’s and a single tear ran down the side of her nose and hung on the end in a way that, in any other circumstances, would have made him smile.
‘Please,’ she said.
‘Oh, very well. Now be gone. Return to Sutton Place quickly. It will be dark soon.’
‘Tell Dr Zachary I shall await him there.’
Norfolk looked at her very straightly.
‘I don’t think even he can alter what is meant to be.’
She looked at him with eyes like rainbows.
‘But he could try,’ she said.
*
Anne Boleyn sat in a high chair in the Great Hall of the Tower and thought about beginnings and endings. And how, in fact, neither existed for all life went in a circle because the point at which this extraordinary adventure had begun — the love of a girl for a clumsy young man and her desire for revenge on those who had parted them — had just clicked neatly into its final place. For opposite her, amongst that sea of faces which represented the peers of the realm come to try her for her life, was Harry Percy.
All the magic, all the dreams and longing, ending here in this terrible place and he so gaunt of eye and slack of skin, his face the colour of decaying parchment, and unable to even so much as look at her. Was he remembering, as she was, the abandoned kisses
of youth, the smell of blossom wafting through the night, the feel of his arms about her, the nightingale singing ‘Harry loves Anne’? Was he wishing that the circle had swung off on another course and that she would have been waiting at home for him now, the Countess of Northumberland, surrounded by tall boys with their mother’s dark hair and eyes and mild-mannered girls as gentle as their father? Instead of which he — the touchstone of her life — must soon be part of the ritual which would take that life away; the game of love and death which had been pre-determined for them played out to the full — the wheel of fortune come to rest. What had begun with Anne and Harry was ending similarly. Everything was complete ...
She stared impassively at the faces of her enemies. Suffolk with his great flowing beard and mean eye, the Marquis of Exeter hunched like a bird of prey, the Earl of Derby and his two fellow plotters Lords Montague and Sandys who had worked tirelessly to bring her down. But her father not there? Probably afraid of what might be said if he showed the last indelicacy of all and sat in judgement on his own son and daughter. Oh, how power corrupted. He had been so gentle once — long, long ago when he had been nothing but funny old Thomas Boleyn, a Kentish knight with a small and beautiful castle, who had actually dived into the moat to fish out Mary and George. And she who had stood on the drawbridge, the sun warming the top of her head, had never felt more secure than then. Her brother swimming like a puppy to the shore and her sister safe in the arms of the father who could be relied on to save and protect them.
That was probably the cruellest part of all — the joyous childhood romping, the genuine feelings she had for George and he for her, made disgusting. Spoilt by this stinking court’s fevered minds. It was hard to bear — that, and the fact that Harry wouldn’t look at her.
Her uncle of Norfolk was rising to pronounce sentence and they faced each other eye to eye, like two cats finally come to confrontation. He stood in silence for a moment and she thought how sweetly he must be savouring this morsel of time wasting. And she saw that his eyes were wet, that the great Thomas Howard — standing beneath the cloth of state — was crying. For her! Her lips quivered very slightly as he said in an uneven voice, ‘Madam, you are sentenced to be burned —’ he paused momentarily and rustled the papers in his hand, ‘— or beheaded at the pleasure of the King’s Highness.’
