Shadow of Persephone

by G Lawrence

  Joan shook her head. “Cliffs of stone crumble into the sea when waves crash against them time and time again. You think strong women cannot be made weak? That the mightiest cannot be worn down?”

  That was what I did think. It seemed I was a fool. My aunt had gone to the Queen for aid. Anne was powerful enough to help her.

  “She will not be able to separate officially from him,” Joan said with authority. “To bring about divorce, a woman must prove unnecessary cruelty as well as a charge like sodomy or bestiality. Beatings alone will not justify a divorce and no one cares about adultery when men commit it. But the Queen might be able to do something.” She stuck her chin in the air. “And if she does, I shall shout down any who call her wicked, for if she helps a woman in need she is good.”

  Joan almost made me weep with gratitude that day.

  *

  “The King has taken to double-checking everything Cromwell sends,” said my aunt when she returned. She had been victorious. The Queen was to help her leave her husband. He would get money to replace his wife. “They are in Parliament together, but the King trusts him completely no more. A bill to dissolve small religious houses is about to pass, but many whisper lands are already being handed out to nobles. Some say the King is as corrupt as the monasteries.”

  “Never has a king used his power to dissolve so many religious houses and profit from their destruction,” said Agnes. “This brings fear to my heart.”

  “And to the Queen. She wants the money used for good, and trusts not the nobles. She is with the King again, and they are close. The Courtenays are spreading rumours that the King will seek a new wife, one of the daughters of François, but Cromwell dampened gossip at court.” Katherine sighed. “But at the same time, Cromwell says he never supported the King’s second marriage. He plays all sides.”

  “Then he will lose allies,” said my grandmother.

  “He thinks Spain will be his friend, and England’s. The Emperor is willing, but only on condition that Lady Mary is restored to the succession as heir presumptive. The King will not agree to that.”

  “And what of this Seymour whore?” asked my grandmother.

  “I honestly know not what the King sees in her,” admitted my aunt. “She is pale, colourless, hardly speaks and has no wit. I am amazed he saw her at all, for she wilts like a dead flower at the edge of court. But she has tricks.”

  My aunt said that whilst the Queen had been recovering at Greenwich, the King had sent Jane Seymour a present; a purse full of sovereigns and a letter. “Jane kissed the letter, and returned it unopened. She took to her knees and told the messenger to repeat her words to the King.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She begged the King to consider she was a gentlewoman of good and honourable parents, without reproach, and had no greater riches in this world than her honour. She said if he wished to make her a present, she would he would do so when God enabled her to make a good marriage.”

  Agnes narrowed her eyes. “That is almost exactly what the Queen said when he asked her to be his mistress.”

  “A fact noted by everyone but the King, apparently,” said my aunt. “Jane wants to be his chief mistress, and the Queen’s enemies are grooming her, telling her what to say. They still hope the King will turn back to Rome and to his daughter. Mistress Seymour will be their tool to achieve this.”

  “What is the Queen doing?”

  “Preparing to fight. She orders new clothes to make the best of herself and flirts with other men, to show His Majesty she is still desirable. She talks of her time in the court of Burgundy, to demonstrate she can be friends with Spain. The King is impressed with her.”

  Then, in April, there was word the Queen was fighting not only Jane Seymour, but Cromwell, and possibly her husband too.

  On the 2nd of April, her almoner preached a blistering sermon against the dissolution of the monasteries. He accused the King and his advisors of pursuing personal gain over morals, said the attack on the clergy had gone too far, and people who would sway the King to believe this was necessary were working for greed, avarice and lust for gold.

  “Is she mad?” asked my grandmother of no one. “To attack the King himself…”

  But it appeared my cousin was not insane, for although her almoner was hauled before the Council, the King released him without punishment. The King, it seemed, was listening to his wife about the monasteries. This brought hope to the Church. Archbishops, bishops and abbots all flocked to my cousin, begging for her protection. From its enemy, Anne had become the knight of the Church. Many people could not quite believe it.

  We then had news that on Easter Monday Ambassador Chapuys, who had refused to speak to Anne since she became Queen, had not only spoken to her, but bowed and recognised her as Queen!

  “Truly, my cousin is the most powerful woman in the world,” I said to Kat. “All she wants is hers. I wish I was as clever as her.”

  “They say Cromwell is in disgrace. He took too much on himself and the King became angry. Cromwell left court.”

  He was back soon, but people said he was afraid of the Queen. The King he was careful around too, for his leg was bad. It was said there was an ulcer on the King’s leg that would not heal, and His Majesty was in pain a great deal of the time. When in pain, our King was unpredictable. But people said it was the Queen Cromwell feared most. People spoke of how Anne had brought down Wolsey, and said Cromwell would follow. Her new support for the Church had made a few people waver in their ill opinions about her. Cromwell was clearly the one to blame for the attack on the monasteries.

  With the Queen’s triumph over Cromwell in mind, my grandmother spoke to me. “You may join her house in a year or so. Thirteen is a good age for a maid of honour, but you will need to be better skilled, so I have had a thought.”

  I waited to see what this thought was.

  “Your voice is pleasing, and you have some skill at music,” she went on. “You may not excel at reading, or numbers, but if we hone your natural talents, what you lack will go unnoticed. I have decided to engage tutors to instruct you in musical arts. That way, when you go to court, you will shine.”

  I must have looked pleased, for she touched my cheek gently. “And your dancing is lovely. If we can get you to court and make the most of your skills, you will marry well.”

  It was not often she praised me, and I lapped it up.

  But a few months later, my dreams of court were gone. And they were not all that was taken from me.

  *

  I think now, looking back, some curse fell upon the women of the Howards at that time. I knew it not, but my cousin was in more trouble than anyone, especially her, imagined and that time was also when I gained new music teachers.

  The first, Master Barnes, was much like my other tutors; old, strict and less interested in teaching than he was with discipline. He also had, as I quickly learned, a habit of falling into slumber when certain pieces were played.

  The second was Master Henry Manox. He was a cousin of Ned’s, and the son of a neighbour, George Manox of Gifford’s Hall, which was close to my grandmother’s estate of Tendring, so he was known to the household. He had been recommended as he had great skill in music. Manox, like so many other young men of my grandmother’s house, was neither gentleman nor commoner, but floated somewhere in between.

  Manox was friends with Ned and Robert Damport, but was older than many in our house at thirty-six years of age. Being twelve, I thought him quite an old man, but he was kinder than Master Barnes, and when the old man fell asleep Manox would look at me and smile, as though it were a jest between us. Also, when Barnes was asleep Manox would praise me more.

  His voice, low and soft, spilled words of admiration, and I was pleased but surprised. My grandmother’s praise usually came with a barb, like a rose whose thorn you see not until your finger bleeds. When first he started to praise me, I waited for the sting. When none came I was frankly grateful. In truth it was a little hard to be
lieve a compliment without criticism attached, but after a few lessons I found my feet eager to reach the room in which I sang, played and danced, for there Manox would be waiting, and he, unlike every other adult, thought I was worth something.

  *

  I felt, rather than heard it; the beat of thrushes’ wings as they soared into the sky; a whisper, creeping, slinking behind me. There was news from court. Something was going on, but no one knew what. Whatever it was, it was not good. It was May, springtime, but felt as though winter had returned.

  “The Queen has been arrested,” my grandmother said quietly when I responded to her message one day. She took my arm, guiding me to a corner of her room. “It will all be dismissed, for it is nonsense, but you should know, for as a Howard, this bodes ill for all of us.”

  It did indeed. Within a day, the Queen was in the Tower of London, then seven men were arrested, charged with being her lovers. One of them was her own brother, Lord Rochford.

  As I listened in stunned silence, others lapped up gossip with glee. Even those who had supported Anne found the rumours exciting. Plenty more, who hated her for deposing Queen Katherine, said she was guilty. Was it not proved by the way she was with men? All that flirting and dancing… the way she had drawn the King to her? Those were whore’s tricks. Of course it was true.

  It was said she had plotted to kill the King, and the men had promised to help her. Everyone whispered, casting looks my way. Some seemed sympathetic, others judgemental.

  “The Queen must be innocent,” I wailed to Kat. “She did not even surrender to the King for seven years. Why would she take all these men to her bed, and how? Surely someone would have seen something.”

  Kat’s eyes said it all. If we could sneak men into our chambers, why could the Queen not do the same?

  “Some say she was desperate for a son, and the King was unable,” she said.

  “She would not risk so much.”

  “People who are desperate risk all, Catherine.” She held up her hands as my face darkened. “I am not saying I believe these tales, but King believes them.”

  “He would not send her away. He loves her.”

  “Where love dies, hatred is born,” said Kat.

  There was a trial not ten days later. My cousin was found guilty and condemned to die; either to burn to death upon a stake, or be beheaded.

  Lord Rochford, Anne’s brother, died on the scaffold two days before her, along with Henry Norris, Mark Smeaton, Francis Weston and William Brereton, a man who had once supported my aunt, Katherine in Wales.

  And one cold, bright morning in May, Anne’s head was taken by the sword.

  Some said the swordsman had been sent for before her trial.

  With Anne’s death, it was as though the Howards too had been beheaded. Our powerful kinswoman was dead and disgraced. Norfolk still had power, for he had abandoned Anne and had been on the jury that had condemned her. But for the rest of us, there was dread. All Howards held their breath, fearful the axe would fall.

  On the same day she died, Anne’s marriage to the King was declared null and void. Now she, like Katherine, had never been wed to the King. Yet her title of Queen had not been taken. Kat told me it was not dependent on being married to the King, as it had been granted by an Act of Parliament.

  “At least she died a queen,” said my friend.

  I nodded, but I felt numb.

  When I came into the maidens’ chamber, girls stumbled to a halt in conversation, and I knew they had been talking of Anne and her ‘lovers’. Some no doubt found her fall satisfying, for there are always those who adore scandal, no matter how false, and more who like to see the mighty fall, out of jealousy.

  But amidst rumours that this was all done for Anne’s sins, there were others. The King wanted her no more, some whispered. She was barren. He had tired of her wild ways, her pride, her outspokenness and her strength. He had sent her into death, so he might marry another.

  Ten days later, he did. Engaged to Jane Seymour the day after my cousin died, he married her ten days later.

  England had a new Queen.

  My cousin was to be forgotten.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chesworth House

  Spring - Summer 1536

  A certain silence fell after the death of my cousin. A strange silence, for it was deafening. No one talked of Anne Boleyn. My grandmother no more spoke of her granddaughter. Anne was gone. We had no link to her. She had never been a Howard, but a Boleyn. She was to be forgotten.

  Yet imagine. Imagine waking one morning to find no sun in the heavens, or looking upon the night skies to find no moon. Not just for one day or night, but all that would come ever after. How can everything… become nothing?

  Anne Boleyn had been all we had talked of for years. She was the word on all lips, thought in all minds. Forgotten? How, when she had been everywhere, in everything?

  Everywhere I turned, I seemed to see her. She was in the slipping shadow of dusk, the grey light of each dawn. She was a shade always just at the corner of the eye, a scent barely caught on the breeze. To the tongues of man she had become memory, no more spoken of or acknowledged, yet to me she became a part of all things. A whisper on the wind, the softness of early summer rain… the ghostly moonlight as it slipped over murmuring trees.

  When I heard the skies creak before rain fell, I felt her. As I drifted in that realm between sleep and waking, I was beside her. She had always felt a part of my life, yet I did not know her. We were bonded strangers, joined yet apart. It was not something I could explain, but I felt it.

  It is strange to mourn a person you never met, and do not remember, other than as a face formed in metal on a disc. There is a hole in your life that never was filled, a gap forms which never bore anything solid. You are not permitted grief, for you did not know the person. Kat found it strange I should be so low, that I cried when no one could see me, and told me so. I hid my grief.

  But later, I told myself that poor people cry when their King dies, and they never knew him. You do not have to meet for someone to make an impact on your life. At times, when alone, I took out the medal and held it in my hands. She stared up from the disc, the motto The Moost Happi blazing over her head. All I could hope was that she was happy now, in Heaven.

  I heard of her last words, and in them I found the proof I sought. She spoke not of her innocence, but had not admitted guilt, either. That made me think she was not guilty, but knew she had to protect her daughter. Anne had said that if any meddled with her cause, she asked them to judge the best.

  I would. Even if I was the only one, I would uphold her last request.

  She had been, to me, at first an icon of worship, then an image of hated perfection I would never achieve. At times, I had loved her and at others I had resented her existence. Now she was gone, I knew not what to feel.

  She had always stood somewhere between reality and fiction, in the gap where dreams dwelt, in the shadows where I kept my fears. Unreality was where Anne Boleyn had been born in my heart. Unreality was where she continued, a ghost, in my soul.

  One thing I did know. If she could fall, could fail, then I who was so much less than she, had no chance to become anything.

  *

  Spare days after my cousin’s execution, I was told my father was sick. There was something wrong with his waters, my grandmother told me. I simply nodded and made my curtsey.

  All I had thought secure slipped from under me. My cousin was gone, destroyed, my father was sick. The future I had thought certain was disappearing like breath on a winter’s morn, white smoke in blue-tinged air.

  I saw the shadow. Something slinking and dark, carrying fears and woes, racing upon me.

  When a few weeks later, my uncle Thomas Howard, younger brother of Norfolk, was sent to the Tower on charges of attempting to wed Margaret Douglas, niece of the King, I lost my grandmother too, not to death but distraction. Norfolk fell under suspicion, for the King thought he might be trying to get his bro
ther closer to the throne. Howards all were terrified again. The King passed a law which said no man was allowed to meddle with a royal woman on pain of death, and this was applied to Thomas even though it had not been law at the time of his wooing Margaret. My grandmother became obsessed with aiding her son, and the little time she had for me died a sudden death.

  I became adrift, floating between worlds.

  My only comfort was music. My lessons had not stopped even though a future at court now seemed unlikely. When I played, sorrows did not go, but they did not touch me as keenly. I set them free as my fingers danced upon strings and keys, let them loose of bonds in my heart when I sang. I was with my sorrows, but not within them; able to express grief, confusion, the feeling of being lost, without becoming mired in hollow darkness.

  I poured myself into music, I flowed into dance. People noted I had become more skilled and praised Manox, but it was not he who set this loose in me. It was Death. For when He touched my shoulder that year, I felt no more a child. I knew what it was to lose, to die… and in knowing that, became aware of the preciousness of this frail life.