Jean Plaidy - [Queens of England 04]

by The Lady in the Tower

  I was told roughly to get out of the barge. I did so. I suddenly felt the need for prayer. I sank to my knees and prayed aloud. “Oh Lord God, help me. Thou knowest I am guiltless of that whereof I am accused.”

  Sir William Kingston, the Lieutenant of the Tower, came out to receive me.

  “Master Kingston,” I said, “do I go to a dungeon?”

  “No, Madam,” he answered kindly. “To your lodging where you lay at your coronation.”

  The irony of the situation came upon me afresh. Was it only three years ago? I thought of myself sitting proudly in my barge with my device of the white falcon and the red and white roses of York and Lancaster. I was then pregnant…never dreaming that I should not have boys. I laughed wildly and there were tears on my cheeks.

  “Wherefore am I here, Master Kingston?” I asked.

  He did not reply but there was compassion in his face, and that brought me a shred of comfort.

  As I was taken to my chamber, I heard the clock striking five, and each stroke was like a funeral knell.

  Norfolk with his company came with me into the chamber and, having seen me installed there, were ready to depart.

  “I am innocent,” I said to them again. “I entreat you to beseech the King to be a good lord unto me.”

  They bowed and left and I was alone with Kingston, who pitied me, I think.

  “Do you know why I am here?” I asked again.

  “Nay,” he replied.

  “When did you last see the King?”

  “I have not seen him since I saw him in the tiltyard.”

  “Where is Lord Rochford?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “He was in the tiltyard also.”

  A terrible fear came to me. I said to myself more than to him: “Oh, where is my sweet brother?”

  “I saw him last at York Place.”

  I covered my face with my hands.

  “I hear say that I shall be accused with three men, and I can say no more than…nay. Oh Norris, hast thou accused me? Thou art in the Tower and thou and I shall die together.” I thought of my stepmother; her grief would be terrible. I murmured, “Oh, my mother, thou wilt die of sorrow. Master Kingston, do you think I shall die without justice?”

  “Oh, Madam, the poorest subject of the King has that,” he said.

  That set me laughing wildly. I could not shut out of my mind memories of that large face with the hard little eyes and the cruelest mouth in the world.

  I threw myself onto my bed and laughed and wept until I was exhausted.

  I had lost count of the days. I did not know how I lived through them. They were determined to discountenance me, to rob me of comfort.

  If only they would let me have my friends about me, that would have helped me. Was it too much to ask? If I could only talk with Mary Wyatt, Margaret Lee, Madge or my sister Mary—that would have helped me through the dismal days. They had given me those who hated me. They sent my aunt, Lady Boleyn, wife of my father’s brother Edward, who had always been jealous of me, and although in days past she had been afraid to speak against me, I had always been aware of her venom. Perhaps they chose her because they knew she hated me. And she brought with her a certain Mrs. Cosyns—a spy if ever there was one. Those two were certain, I was sure, that I was guilty of all of which I was accused.

  They tried to trap me into saying something which they could report against me. They were there all the time; they never left me. They slept on pallets at the foot of my bed. Sometimes I would wake from a nightmare shouting. They were alert, listening, noting everything that I said, attaching great importance to anything that might be used against me.

  They treated me with a studied lack of respect. I was not the Queen now, they were telling me.

  Sometimes they would pretend to be sympathetic and try to get me to confide in them. They asked questions and they phrased them in a way designed to trap me.

  “Oh, you were ever so beautiful in the Court. You were the brightest star. Everyone seemed commonplace beside you. It was small wonder that all those men were in love with you.”

  The stupid women! Did they not understand that I saw through their probing?

  “Norris was said to be courting Madge Shelton, but he came to see you. You were the one. It was obvious…”

  “And Weston…he loved you better than he loved his wife. Well, it was understandable.”

  I turned from them. I could live through these days only by ignoring them.

  My moods changed. There were times when I just wanted to die and have done with the wearisome business of living; at others my anger overcame my sorrow.

  I wanted to live and take my revenge on those people who had plotted against me and brought me to where I was.

  It was a great joy to me when I was allowed to have two more ladies to be with me, and that these two should be my cousin Madge and my dear friend Mary Wyatt.

  Lady Boleyn and Mrs. Cosyns were still there, but that was more bearable now that I had my friends as well.

  Mary was very worried about her brother. He had not been arrested as everyone expected him to be, for he had been known as a great friend of mine and he had never hidden his love for me. Many of his poems had been written for me.

  I would contrive to be alone with Mary so that we could talk, and she comforted me a great deal.

  “It is only Smeaton who has lied about you,” she told me, “and that was under torture. Cromwell tortured him at the dinner table. His bullies put a rope around the poor creature’s head and they tightened it so that he was fainting with the pain; then they made him say how you had favored him, given him fine clothes and a ring because he was your lover. He withstood the agony for a long time. Then they took him to the Tower and racked him most piteously. It was only then that he broke down and lied.”

  “Poor Mark,” I said. “He is a tender boy… little more than a child. Always so gentle. He told me once that when beggars came to his father’s door he wept for them; and when he came across a man hanging on a gibbet which others were looking at, he ran away, for he could not face violence of any kind. He loved beauty… And to come to this…”

  “It was only at the end that he lied,” insisted Mary. “It was only when those wicked men tortured him beyond endurance. The others would not give way. There is not one, Anne, who has spoken against you… only poor Mark, and that under torture.”

  “They know it is false.”

  “They know … but they are determined to believe it.”

  “Mary, what will become of me?”

  She shook her head. Her tears unnerved me more than the brutal treatment of Norfolk had been able to, or the spying of my aunt and her familiar.

  “Why is George in the Tower?”

  Mary shook her head.

  “And my father?”

  “He has not been arrested.”

  We could not go on talking because my jailers—those two hateful women—would not leave us alone for long.

  The nights seemed endless. I would lie staring into the darkness.

  He would be rid of me so that he could marry Jane Seymour, just as once he had wished to be rid of Katharine that he might marry me. Silly little Jane Seymour. How long did she think she would last? He would cast off wives as he did a garment he was tired of.

  There were two counts on which I had thought he might be rid of me. One was of course his relationship with my sister Mary which would have made a close bond between us. He had thought of this before for there had been a time when he had sent to Rome for a dispensation. He would not have had to send to the Pope for that now. Obliging Cranmer would have done what was necessary. But he did not wish to stir up old scandals from which he would not emerge too well. I had dismissed Mary as a possible method. There was one other—my pre-contract with Northumberland. That I had thought was very possible. It could be said that I had been pre-contracted to Henry Percy and therefore my marriage to the King was no true one.

  That would have been the most likely me
thod if it had not been raised before and he had most definitely quashed it. Then he had wanted me passionately—now he wanted to be rid of me with equal passion.

  I would not have believed he would have considered… death.

  And yet why should he not? That would have been Katharine’s fate but for her royal relations. I had no such assets. My relations held the power they did through me… and some from Mary, too, of course.

  So, if it was not to be Mary or Northumberland, there was only one alternative.

  I had sometimes wondered how people felt when Death looked them in the face. Sir Thomas More? Fisher? Those monks who had refused to take the Oath of Supremacy? “She will spurn our heads off like footballs, but ‘twill not be long ere her head will dance the like dance.” More had said that. He was prophetic.

  He had known the King as well as I knew him. He knew that mean, selfish nature, that determination to have his way, that ruthless destruction of all those who stood to prevent it. He knew of the conscience which worried Henry when he wished to be worried. It was worrying him now. He had been bewitched by a sorceress; he had discarded his first wife—he could safely regard her with affection now as there was no fear of having to take her back—and all because he had been the victim of a witch…as any man might be through no fault of his own. But God had opened his eyes now. He saw the way clear ahead. God had put Jane Sey-mour in his path to tell him that, if he escaped from the spell which had been put upon him and married this gentle, simple girl, Heaven would smile. He would have a succession of boys. God was showing him the way, and, as once before, God’s instrument was Cromwell, who had prised the truth from the boy musician, and now it was known that the Queen had sinned against him with those whom he had called his friends.

  I could well imagine how he would prepare his defense with God. What amazed me was that he thought he could deceive the Almighty as he thought he did his courtiers. They had to feign belief; God did not.

  When I arose, I wrote him a letter, signing myself “The Lady in the Tower.”

  “… if you have already determined of me, and that not only my death but an infamous slander must bring you to the joy of your desired happiness, then I desire of God that He will pardon your great sin…”

  How I laughed. I could imagine his pallor as he read that. I hoped it would make him shiver. I hoped I would see that despised conscience of his on a course independent of its owner’s control.

  How did he think of me? I was sure he thought of me often. Did he think of the garden at Hever; that night when I had come to him in my black satin nightdress; of my coronation?

  Or did he think of me as “The Lady in the Tower?”

  It was 10 May—only eight days after I had been arrested. It seemed like years.

  The Grand Jury at Westminster had issued an indictment against “Lady Anne, Queen of England, George Boleyn, Viscount Rochford, Sir Henry Norris, Groom of the Stole, and Sir Francis Weston and William Brereton, Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber, and Mark Smeaton, a performer on musical instruments, a person of low degree, promoted on account of his skill to be a Groom of the Chamber.”

  George and I were to be tried on the 16th of May; the others on the 12th.

  I waited for the verdict…I knew that Henry wanted to be rid of me, but surely he must have some compassion for his friends. He must know they were innocent. Or was he so determined to be rid of me that he would take any life which helped him to achieve that end?

  The result of that trial was horrifying, although it was what I had expected. They had tried hard to make them all admit their guilt. None of them would, except Mark. In spite of the fact that he had lied to save himself and to destroy me, I could forgive him. I knew of his delicacy, his weakness. I could imagine how he had collapsed under extreme torture. His body had been broken and his mind distracted and when they told him that, if he signed a confession he would be free, the boy signed. Poor foolish Mark! He had bartered his honor, his pride, for the hope of saving his life. He was not wise enough to know that he would never have been allowed to live; he had perjured his soul for nothing. He was condemned to be hanged. What a sad end for a young man who had music in his soul and because of it believed that he had escaped from poverty to a pleasant life—when all he had escaped to was Death.

  I wanted to see him, to comfort him, to make him look at me and see if then he would persist in his lies. Of course that would not be allowed. Mark would have broken down and told the truth when confronted by me—and they knew it.

  What a sad end for a young man.

  Norris, Weston and Brereton, though urged to confess, stoutly maintained their innocence. Henry had been very attached to Norris, and he sent word to him that if he would confess to adultery with me, he would be granted his life.

  Norris’s reply was that he would rather die a thousand deaths than accuse the Queen of that which he believed, in his conscience, she was innocent.

  Mary Wyatt told me that when the King heard this he was so angry that his great friend had turned away from the hand stretched out to rescue him, he cried out in rage: “Hang him up then. Hang him up.”

  Poor Mary Wyatt was in a state of anxiety. Thomas had remained in the background. He was expecting at any moment to join Norris and the rest in the Tower. His name had not been mentioned in connection with the charge—but it was in everyone’s mind.

  On the 16th George and I were brought to trial, and for this purpose a court had been set up in the great hall of the Tower.

  George was the first to appear. I waited in trepidation, but after the result of the previous trial I was prepared for the worst.

  George defended himself so well that, for a time, those who sat in judgment on him must have feared it was going to be difficult for them to bring in the sentence the King wished for.

  I think even our greatest enemies must have been shocked when Jane Rochford came forward to give evidence against her husband. How she must have hated me! I knew she had loved George passionately, but his indifference to her had turned that love to hatred; and her hatred was especially for me because she knew of the close and loving relationship between my brother and me.

  Her accusation of incest was so ridiculous that she could not in any reasonable way substantiate it…except to say that we were over-affectionate toward each other, and my brother sought every opportunity to be in my company. She had found him in my bedroom on one occasion. I was at the time in bed. He had leaned over the bed and kissed me—which she had seen as he came into the room.

  They must have despised her; but they had not the courage to defy the King. He wanted me vilified as much as possible; and if it could be believed that my brother, as well as those other men, had been my lover, he could then feel completely justified in putting me from him in the most speedy and reliable way. It would ease his conscience considerably if I could be proved worthy of my intended fate; and the King’s conscience must be eased, no matter at what cost. They knew this—and their future depended on the King’s favor.

  So George was found guilty.

  As soon as he left the hall, I was taken there with my ladies in attendance, including Lady Kingston. Sir William conducted me to the bar.

  I surprised myself by my calm. I felt rather as though I were outside this scene looking on. I knew that I should be condemned, because I knew Henry. Had I not been beside him during the years when he wished to rid himself of Katharine? So the outcome was clear. It was a waste of time to have a trial when the verdict was a foregone conclusion.

  I pleaded Not Guilty to the charges and sat down in the chair which had been provided for me.

  I listened to the evidence; the words I was alleged to have spoken. It was all so trivial, so obviously contrived. I answered these charges, which was not difficult because they were all so blatantly false. I could see some of the peers beginning to look uneasy. They believed me. In fact, there was little else they could logically have done.

  From the fifty-three peers of England, twenty-s
ix had been selected. These were the Lord Triers, with the Duke of Norfolk at their head. I was sure that he and my old enemy, the Duke of Suffolk, would make sure that the King had the verdict he required.

  Northumberland, as one of the foremost peers of the country, would most certainly be there. I wondered what it would be like to see him after all these years. I had heard that he had changed a good deal. His disastrous marriage and his unhappy life must have had an effect on him. And now he would be one of those who had come to judge me. How strange it would be to see him there and to think back to those years when he and I had had those stolen moments together, when he came to Court in Wolsey’s entourage and I slipped away from my duties with the Queen to be with him.

  But I did not see him among the peers.

  I said to Kingston: “Is not my lord of Northumberland here?”

  Kingston murmured: “He came… but was taken ill. He has been forced to retire.”

  I smiled. So he could not face it. He could not stand there and condemn me. Dear Henry Percy! What did he think of me now? At least he remembered enough to refuse to sit in judgment on me.

  The coolness which had descended on me—that strange aloofness— was good for me. It enabled me to answer their questions with precision and to give them the answers which they found difficult to refute. They had, no doubt, expected me to be hysterical, which would have made their task much easier, and they were discountenanced to find me there aloof, so very calm.

  Had it been a fair court, they would not have condemned me, though they did not have to have a unanimous vote; all they needed was a majority. All those accused with me—save Mark—had emphatically denied the charges. Could they condemn me on the evidence of a poor, racked boy?

  Norfolk and Suffolk saw that they did.

  Norfolk then pronounced the sentence. I was condemned to be burned or beheaded at the King’s pleasure.

  The numbness remained with me.

  I clasped my hands together and, raising my eyes, I said: “Oh Father, O Creator, Thou who art the way, the life and the truth knowest whether I have deserved this death.”

  I faced my judges. “My lords,” I said, “I will not say that your sentence is unjust, nor presume that my reasons can prevail against your convictions. I am willing to believe that you have sufficient reasons for what you have done, but they must be other than those which have been produced in this court, for I am clear of all the offenses which you have laid at my charge…”