by Brandy Purdy
It worked, and Henry decided to be merciful. When Cranmer appeared at the Tower to hear Anne’s last confession, he also came to bargain. If Anne would sign a document annulling her marriage, thus declaring her only child a bastard, Henry would commute the sentences of all five men, including the lowborn Smeaton, to beheading; and the axe, he promised, would be newly sharpened instead of blunted from prior use. As for Anne herself, an expert headsman would come from France to take her head off swiftly with a sword, instead of the more cumbersome axe. As a testament to the great love he had once borne her, Henry was prepared to grant her the easiest and swiftest death of all, but only if she would sign—otherwise, she would be burned on Tower Green and the men dragged through the streets of London to Tyburn, to be hung, cut down while they still lived, and disemboweled and hacked to pieces. The last thing they would see would be their own entrails being thrown into the fire. Only Anne had the power to save them.
So she did it. With tears in her eyes, Anne signed away her daughter’s birthright, annulled her marriage, and declared herself a whore who had never truly been Henry’s wife. The grounds cited were Henry’s liaison with Mary Boleyn, which placed Henry and Anne within the forbidden degree of affinity, and made any marriage between them unlawful without a special dispensation; and a supposed precontract with Harry Percy which, in the law’s eyes, was just as binding as an actual marriage.
“Fancy that,” Anne chuckled wryly as she read the document. “Harry Percy and I have been married all these years and neither of us knew it!”
“Make no mistake, Cranmer,” she said afterwards while the ink was drying, “I do this only for them, to spare George and our friends the greater torment. But I am not the fool Henry Tudor thinks I am. If I refused to sign he would merely create a new law whereby he could have his way. I only pray that someday Elizabeth will understand and forgive me.”
As Cranmer prepared to go—I heard later from the ladies who attended her—she inquired after Henry and was told that he distracted himself with hunting, feasting, and masques, and all manners of merrymaking from the moment he arose until he laid his head upon the pillow at night.
“To quiet a guilty conscience perhaps?” Anne wondered. “He is no fool, my husband, and I am sure he realizes that if I have never been his wife, as the document I have just signed so attests, then I cannot be guilty of adultery—for without marriage there can be no adultery—so to kill me now would be outright murder. I am sure he realizes that, my clever husband.” She spoke with biting sarcasm, and then she smiled, clucked her tongue, and shook her head. “Whatever has become of that conscience that used to disturb him so, and gnaw upon his mind like a dog does upon a bone? Has he found a way to rid himself of that too?” She then gave way to a bout of hysterical laughter of such intensity that the timid Cranmer crossed himself and quickly fled.
31
May 17, 1536—that was the day George died. I stood at the foot of the scaffold, shivering in my widow’s weeds. My stomach churned and twice I had to duck beneath the structure to vomit. My request for a last meeting with George had been denied. He did not want to see me, but I was determined to see him.
Norfolk and Cromwell were also there, with the Duke of Suffolk, as the King’s official witnesses, but I ignored them all and they ignored me.
In the hope of deterring a large crowd, Anne’s paramours were scheduled to die just after dawn, but, for once, Cromwell’s strategy had failed. The people of London had taken these men to heart. To them, they were heroes sentenced to die unjustly, and they were determined to see them off properly with many tears shed and prayers said.
In the Bell Tower, from behind a grate, Thomas Wyatt wept as he looked down upon the sorrowful scene.
Above him, upon the parapets—where the ravens, the black birds of misfortune, perched boldly—stood Anne, surrounded by guards and her female attendants. Meg Lee and Mistress Orchard were weeping volubly, imploring Anne to return inside. But Anne was determined to stay.
“I will not forsake them at the end, as they never forsook me,” she said.
She also had been denied a last meeting with George; it was Henry’s way of punishing them because George had read that paper aloud.
George was led out first. He wore somber and unadorned black velvet with the collar of his pure white shirt unlaced and open wide to bare his neck. Behind him, Norris and Brereton followed, similarly clad in stark black and white with their necks exposed. Next came Francis Weston, and the crowd gasped in astonishment, then began to applaud as he smiled and waved back at them.
Flamboyant to the last, Weston was clad from head to toe in startling, vivid scarlet, spangled with ruby brilliants like the drops of his blood that would so soon be spilled. Unlike the others, he wore a wide-brimmed red hat with a jaunty plume, gloves, and a velvet cloak.
“Aye”—he nodded to the crowd—“I am dressed for travel, for what is death but the greatest journey?”
Weston’s age-bent mother broke from the crowd and tried to force her way to him, but was held back by the guards. “My lamb, led to the slaughter!” she sobbed, stretching out her arms to him.
“Nay, Mother, be not so dramatic; you’ll steal my scene!” he chided fondly, winking and blowing her a kiss.
Last of all came poor Mark Smeaton, his broken body slung limply between two guards, with his mangled hands draped over their shoulders, and his bare, broken toes, sticking through his ruined black hose, dragging in the dirt. His clothes, the same black-bordered gray silk doublet he had worn to his ill-fated dinner with Cromwell, hung from him in filthy blood-, urine-, and shit-stained tatters.
“Wyatt!” Suddenly Brereton spun round and shouted up at Wyatt’s window in the Bell Tower. “Weep not for us, man, but write! Write!” he repeated urgently. “Make us immortal; let us live forever in a poem! Only you can do it for us!”
As George neared the scaffold, I thrust myself into his path. He made to step around me, but I would not let him. I started to speak, but he stopped me.
“I will not hear you, Jane.”
“George…Please! I am so sorry! I did not know…I did not mean…”
George folded his arms across his chest, arched an eyebrow skeptically, and stared straight at me witheringly.
I quailed beneath his scorn and lowered my eyes in shame, and quickly stepped aside. Though there was much I wanted to say, I knew there was nothing I could say that would justify what I had done, and no apology, no matter how heartfelt, could make things right. My husband was about to die and the fault was mine in part.
“I…” Tears rolled down my face, and my lips trembled as he started to mount the scaffold.
But I could not leave things as they were. I ran after him and caught his sleeve.
“I love you, George!” I cried plaintively. I had to say it one last time!
George pulled free of me and continued up the thirteen steps.
“Have courage, George!” I called after him.
George paused at the top of the steps, then turned to stare down at me.
“No, Jane, you have courage, for you have far greater need of it than I do! You have to go on living, while I have only to die. And someday, Jane, you too will die, and then you will have to answer to God for what you have done. He—in this case, she—who sows the whirlwind must expect to reap the storm. Good-bye, Jane.”
He turned his back on me, squared his shoulders, and went to meet his fate.
As he removed his black velvet doublet he paused and stood for a long moment, squinting and staring up at the faraway figure atop the Bell Tower. He raised his hand and she did the same, and they stood for a long moment looking at each other as if they could bridge the distance and touch palms. At last he turned away and paid the executioner his fee.
“I forgive you for what you are about to do,” he said as he pressed the gold coin into the big calloused hand.
Moving to stand beside the block, George turned to address the crowd.
“I am co
me hither to die and not to preach a sermon. Trust in God and not in the flatteries of the court and the vanities of the world. Had I done so, I think I would still be alive as you are now. Good people, I entreat you all to pray for me, and now I submit to the law that has condemned me.” He knelt before the wooden block. Once more, he turned to face the crowd. “I do love my sister!” he said proudly, defiantly; then, almost as an afterthought, he added, insolent and grudgingly, just before he laid his head down, “God save the King!”
I moved alongside the scaffold. I wanted to be close to him in his final moments. I hoped in vain that he would look at me, or speak to me, one last time.
I could not bear to watch as the axe came down, and squeezed my eyes shut tight. With a horrendous thud it fell, cutting through skin and bone, making such a sickening sound; and I felt the warm wetness of George’s blood splash onto my face.
So perished my husband, the love of my life, the man who was everything to me. Now he would never love me or come back to me. I had failed at the only thing that had ever really mattered to me—my husband had never loved me, and when his life ended so did all hope for me.
As the executioner bent to retrieve the head I moved away. I could not bear to see it held aloft by its hair while the executioner intoned the customary words: “So perish all the King’s enemies!” No one cheered this gruesome sight; the people watched it all in stony silence.
Atop the Bell Tower I saw Anne crumple. Her attendants rushed to bend over her. After a few moments they raised her to her feet and tried to lead her away. But she would not go; instead she braced herself against the parapet and forced herself to watch the rest.
Norris died next. Bravely mounting the scaffold after George’s corpse had been removed, he stood for a moment, pale and gulping, staring down at the blood-sodden straw. Then, courage triumphing over fear, he turned to address the crowd.
“I know the Queen to be innocent of the charges laid against her, and I would rather die a thousand deaths than speak falsely and ruin an innocent person. God save the King. I hope you will all pray for him, and for me as well.”
He removed a ring from his finger and pressed it into the executioner’s palm, then knelt, grimacing at the feel of my husband’s tepid blood seeping through his hose, and laid his head upon the block.
With a whoosh and a thud the axe descended and the chivalrous Henry Norris was gone.
The executioner picked up the head, held it aloft, and spoke the traditional words; then the corpse was removed, stripped, and dumped unceremoniously into a crude wooden coffin to await entombment beneath the floor of the Tower’s chapel—St. Peter ad Vincula.
Again there was no applause. The people respected these men too much to celebrate their deaths.
Will Brereton boldly climbed the scaffold steps and went straight to the executioner, paid him in gold, and forgave him, then moved quickly to kneel before the block.
“Have you nothing to say?” the Duke of Norfolk asked incredulously. It was a rare thing indeed for a condemned man to forgo his final speech.
Brereton paused thoughtfully. “Good people, judge ye best whether I deserve this!” he said simply, and laid his head down.
Again the axe fell and another head was held aloft.
With typical dash and daring, Francis Weston came next. A young woman in the crowd tossed a single red rose to him and he caught it deftly, held it to his nose, and blissfully inhaled its perfume. At the top of the steps he casually removed his gloves, then doffed his wide-brimmed scarlet hat and sent it flying, spinning out over the crowd. Hundreds of hands reached for it, fighting for this most precious of souvenirs.
With a flourish, he swung the red velvet cloak from around his shoulders and fastidiously spread it over the bloody straw so he need not soil the knees of his fine red silk hose when he knelt.
Watching him, the executioner frowned; the clothing of the dead were his perquisite, and when the nobility died he often made a nice profit.
Noting his expression, Weston exclaimed, “Oh, cheer up, man, there’s plenty left for you! Look at all these rubies!” He indicated his gem-spangled doublet. “A sensible fellow like you can live well for years on these, unlike me; if I were to go on living they’d be lost in a dice game within an hour!” With a winning smile, he plucked from his ear a dangling ruby drop as big as a walnut and tucked it into the executioner’s hand.
“Now, friend, do quickly what you have to do! But hold a moment, if you will; I must speak to these fine people who have come to see me die!”
With arms spread wide as if to embrace them, he turned to face his enthralled audience. Smiling, he placed a hand upon his heart and bowed low as they sighed in adoration.
“Verily, my heart breaks that I must take my leave of you all, but I must rejoin my friends who have so bravely gone before me. I had thought to live in abomination twenty or thirty years yet, and then in my old age to make amends; I never thought I would come to this.” With a grand sweep of his hand he indicated the block. “And so, good people, I bid you all a fond farewell and entreat you all to pray for me! God save the Queen!” He turned and waved up at Anne. “And the King too!” he added tartly.
With another bow he spun gracefully around, dropped to his knees, and laid his head upon the block. So died the flamboyant Francis Weston.
When the executioner held his head high by its unruly red locks, his young wife let loose a bloodcurdling scream and fell down in a dead faint.
Lastly, Mark Smeaton was carried up the scaffold steps.
“Masters all,” he sobbed, “please pray for me—I deserve this death!”
He had no coin with which to pay the executioner, and for this he sobbed an apology; his ruined clothes would have to suffice, as he had nothing of value.
His eyes so swollen he could hardly see, he groped blindly for the block and laid his head down.
The axe fell with an angry thud and the executioner snatched up the head and shouted, “So perish all the King’s enemies!” before he let it fall contemptuously into the blood-soaked straw, leaving it for his assistants to deal with.
Smeaton died last because he was the only one to proclaim his guilt, and Cromwell hoped this would stick in people’s minds. But it did not; the people saw Smeaton as a lowly coward, equally deserving of pity and contempt. It might make a good story—the Queen and her lute player—but everyone knew it was not true.
Afterwards, I walked around the scaffold to stand beside the five coffins. I knelt beside George’s and eased off the lid. I would see him, I would kiss him one last time!
Gently, tenderly, as if it were a baby, I lifted his severed head and cradled it against my breast. I stared down into the dull, death-glazed brown eyes, then bowed my head and pressed a long, deep kiss onto the half-parted lips. My tears fell like rain onto his handsome face and I stroked his black beard and smoothed his hair. It was matted with blood, and my hand came away red-stained and sticky.
I felt such a strange, drowsy, almost dizzy bewilderment, as if I were wandering lost in some terrible dream—a nightmare from which I would wake any moment, screaming.
I heard a man clear his throat and looked up to see Master Kingston standing before me, and beside him his stern-faced wife, staring down at me with hard eyes. As the jailor’s wife she had much experience in dealing with deranged females and, alarmed by my behavior, her husband had summoned her.
I did not realize then that I had been kneeling there, crooning to and rocking my husband’s head, for half an hour.
Gently, I laid George’s head in my lap and held out my bloodstained hands to show the Kingstons.
“George’s blood is on my hands!”
Lady Kingston nodded grimly. “Yes, it is.”
Her sad-eyed husband, who had seen so much of death, torture, and madness, also agreed.
Master Kingston beckoned a servant and bade him “see to my Lord Rochford’s remains,” and my beloved’s head was lifted from my lap even as I protested and r
eached out my hands for it.
The Kingstons grabbed my arms and pulled me to my feet. But I fought them off. I must kiss George one last time! I ran back to clasp his head against my breast again, and caress that beautiful, beloved honey skin, now tinged with the gray of death, and press my lips to his.
I screamed and wept when it was wrenched roughly away from me. The Kingstons began to drag me firmly away, back to my barge, even as I dug my heels into the dirt and screamed my beloved’s name.
As the oars dipped into the dirty, stinking river water, I sat there staring down at my bloodstained hands and knew they could never truly be washed clean. Every time I looked at my hands I would see it there, and so would many others whenever they looked at me. No woman would ever embrace such a treacherous female as a friend, fearing I would one day use her secrets and confidences against her. And no man would ever again take me to wife, for fear that I might someday bear false witness against him and send him to the block.
Cromwell had lied again; I would not be regarded as a heroine by everyone who hated Anne Boleyn. Even her enemies would revile my treachery.
At some point I began to scream—I cannot recall if it was while I was still upon the river or back inside the palace. I only know I started, but for the life of me, I cannot remember when I stopped.
32
By the morning of May 19 I had recovered my wits enough to attend Anne’s execution. Indeed, nothing in this world could keep me from being right there beside the scaffold to watch her die.
When she stepped out of the Tower and raised her face to the sun for the last time, she was wearing a long, ermine-trimmed white satin robe that flowed out gracefully behind her. With each step a blood red satin skirt peeped through its folds. And coiled like a sleek black snake speared with diamond-tipped pins, her hair was pinned high to bare the nape of her neck.
