by Fatal Throne- The Wives of Henry VIII Tell All (retail) (epub)
I fall to my knees before the Bishop. I kiss the hem of his robe, sobbing so hard that I almost make myself sick. Lady Nan can bear it no longer. She rushes to my side as the Bishop and his man finally leave.
* * *
—
Lady Nan talks to everyone she knows, coming back to my rooms with shreds and scraps of whispers. The first day after the Bishop’s visit, she learns that the Privy Council has issued a new law making it a treasonous crime for a consort not to tell the King about prior relationships.
“But there was no such law when I married the King! How can they do so?”
I rage against the unfairness, but in truth I’m not angry—I’m afraid. Someone wants to make very sure that I’m found guilty of a crime. It has to be the Duke’s enemies: the Reformists, who want England to have its own church, not one led by the Pope. If they can topple me, the Duke and the rest of the family and the religious conservatives will come crashing down with me.
I realize then that in a way, it’s not really about me. It’s about men wanting to be as close to the King as they can, men wanting power. To them, I’m like a piece on a game board, to be moved as it suits them.
It makes me feel helpless—and furious at the unfairness. All this has come about because I danced at the King’s wedding to Anna of Cleves….
Nan learns more the next day. “John Lascelles is a Reformist,” she says.
Small comfort that I guessed correctly.
Lady Nan goes on. “If the Bishop comes to question you again, you must claim mistakenness. That you were indeed contracted to marry Dereham.”
“But it’s not true!”
“Listen, Your Grace. Believe it if you can, the Bishop was trying to help you find your way out. If a marriage contract existed, then your marriage to the King was not legal. If it was not legal, then you were never married to him. If you were never married to him, then there was no crime committed to the marriage.”
I’m so confused I can hardly think. I thought that a prior marriage would count against me, but Lady Nan is saying the opposite! Now I’m worried that I may have lost my chance.
“Lady Nan, we must get the Bishop to come back! I’ll do as you say, I’ll confess to a prior marriage, if only he’ll let me speak to the King.”
I know this about my Henry: He can be swayed if spoken to in just the right way. I’ll beg his forgiveness and swear my love—he loves me, I know he does, and if I can see him and talk to him and…and make him laugh, this will all be just a dreadful mistake.
“…with a prior marriage, you would no more be Queen, but nor would you be a—a criminal.”
Lost in my thoughts, I haven’t heard all of what Nan is saying.
“Not Queen?” I shake my head violently. “But that would be a terrible disgrace! Not just for me, but for my family. The scandal—”
She grips my hands. Her expression is more than serious—she looks terrified.
“Your Grace,” she says urgently, “you must understand the nature of the charges against you. It is not a question of scandal—it’s a matter of saving yourself.”
Saving myself?
I stare, my mouth open in shock. Surely she doesn’t mean—it’s not possible—
During the endless, sleepless hours of the past few nights, I imagined being cast out of Henry’s life. I imagined having to return to Chesworth House, stripped of my lands and holdings, first humiliated and then shunned by everyone at court. I imagined the same for all the Howards, and how they would hate me forever, for failing them.
But never once did I imagine what Lady Nan is implying now: that my fate is to be the same as that of my cousin Anne Boleyn.
I start shaking from head to toe, my teeth chattering so wildly that I nearly bite through my tongue. My knees give way, and Nan catches me as I fall.
* * *
—
My head aches constantly. I eat little and sleep less. The news worsens each day: The King has left Hampton Court without a word, without even a message of farewell.
On hearing this, I tear at my clothes, howling, and my ladies must force me to take a sleeping powder.
Almost every member of the Howard clan has been imprisoned, including the Duke himself. Only the Dowager was spared: When the guards went to take her, they found her abed, ill from agitation, and left her there out of sympathy for her advanced age.
Then I learn that Thomas Culpeper has been arrested. Francis Dereham named him, while being tortured a second time.
If Francis knew, then others did. Probably many others: Far easier to ask who didn’t know than who did. How could I ever have been so clodpated, to imagine the affair a secret?
I send Lady Nan to Whitehall. She spends two days there finding out what she can.
“What news?” I demand on her return. She has come to my privy chamber; most mornings now, I don’t seem to have the strength to even get dressed. “Did you see my King?”
“Only in passing, Your Grace.”
“Tell me.”
Nan hesitates. “He—he does not look well, Queen Catherine.”
“Ill, do you mean? Is it his leg?”
“No. I do not mean sickness. His face, his bearing…he looks most downcast, Your Grace. Even heartbroken.” A pause. “It is said that he raged first, when told of the—the latest charges.”
The latest charges: my affair with Thomas.
“He swore he would kill you both himself, and demanded a sword. But then he broke down and wept, and the Council were all chagrined.”
I want to tear out my heart. I’ve cuckolded the King. Not only that, but with his favourite courtier—a stab to his back and then a cruel and terrible twist of the knife.
But it was a crime of recklessness, not treason; I’ve betrayed the man, not the throne. I will be sentenced to die as a traitor, when in truth I’m only a fool.
If I could see the King, and tell him this, and beg his mercy!
* * *
—
The Bishop comes again. Lady Nan heard that he was moved by my emotion during our first meeting, but when I begin crying this time, it is no deliberate act. I can hardly speak for gasping as I try to tell him that I was mistaken—that I was indeed married to Francis Dereham.
If he pitied me before, there is no sign of it now. I should have known better than to hope: He has survived decades at court by means of unswerving loyalty to the King. My tears mean less than nothing to him, compared to Henry’s desires.
He says that Thomas Culpeper has confessed everything, even to declaring that he would marry me once the King was dead. Under the law, this is treason: Just wishing the King dead is considered a crime equal to the act itself.
Joan Bulmer and Kate Tilney and Lady Rochford have been arrested and admitted their roles in aiding my relations with Thomas. Their confessions and his are all the evidence required. I will not stand trial. The Privy Council will seek a Bill of Attainder with Parliament—a pronouncement of my guilt without the necessity of a trial.
“You will be taken to the convent at Syon to await the passing of the bill,” the Bishop says.
He has prepared for me a full and frank confession, which pronounces all my crimes against King and country. It states that I duped the King into a false marriage, and then conspired with others who wished for his death. I haven’t done any of those things, but the Bishop swears to me that signing the confession is my only chance at mercy.
I sign in a fog of numbness. I can’t feel the quill in my hand, and when I’m done, I can’t even read my own name.
The Bishop’s departure is followed almost immediately by the arrival of Lord Thomas Seymour.
“Jewels, furs, dresses, and hoods,” he says coldly to my ladies.
He has come to confiscate all my queenly things.
It took just six months for H
is Majesty to make me his Queen.
It has taken only six days for him to unmake me.
DECEMBER 1541–JANUARY 1542
Now it is I myself, my body, to be taken away, to the convent at Syon. My body alone, for my soul wanders lost and alone in a land of terror, and I can’t do a thing for it. As I leave Hampton, I’m escorted through the great hall, past the wooden screen at its entrance. I catch a glimpse of one of its carvings: an “A” and an “H” entwined in a lovers’ knot. All those carvings were ordered removed after my cousin Anne’s death, but this one was missed.
As I look at it; the “A” seems to twist and writhe and transform, snakelike, into a “C.”
* * *
—
At Syon I’m given three rooms. Lady Nan is allowed to stay with me, along with three other attendants and a staff of servants. I have a fire at all times, and am given ample blankets and cloaks, a few even of fur. I am still being accorded at least some of the respect due to a Queen.
My days here are mostly quiet. I cry a lot. My ladies often cry with me. What a miserable sight we are.
The hours are so very empty, with nothing to distract me except for the occasional word that reaches us from court. Lady Nan wonders if there might be some sympathy for me, because of the sudden change of the law, and the Bill of Attainder, and because I’m so young. But I know she says this only to comfort me, for unlike Queen Katharine or Queen Anne or even Anna of Cleves, I have no champion at court. My uncle the Duke made too many enemies: There’s no one to plead for mercy for me.
Lady Rochford, imprisoned in the Tower, has gone mad. The law used to say that no insane person could be put to death. So that law, too, has been changed to the reverse, and she’s been sentenced to die. How convenient to be able to change the law whenever you feel like it.
One day I ask Lady Nan for news from court, as I do nearly every day.
“None, Your Grace.”
But she answers too quickly, and doesn’t look at me.
Then I remember the date. It is the tenth of December: the day that Francis and Thomas are to be executed. As a gentleman, Thomas will be allowed a merciful death by beheading. But Francis, a commoner, faces being hanged, drawn, and quartered.
I wake in the night screaming. I was dreaming of his agony, and of my own horror in knowing my affection to be a vile, poisonous thing: They are both dead because I loved them—Francis, because I did not know any better; Thomas, because I should have.
FEBRUARY 1542
I am no longer Queen Consort. The title has been taken from me by the Privy Council and Parliament. Still, my ladies dress me as a Queen, in black velvet. I want to leave Syon as a good Queen would, with sober dignity.
But when the guards come to take me to the Tower, something inside me shatters into pieces so sharp that I feel my insides bleeding. I shriek in pain, and struggle and flail and kick and fight with more strength than I knew I had. Finally they are forced to pick me up by my arms and legs and carry me down to the boat. I wish I could laugh at what a ludicrous sight it must be.
The boat is not an open barge, but covered, so no one will see me as it travels up the Thames. The Lord Privy Seal and some members of the Council ride in a boat in front of mine, with Lord Brandon and his soldiers behind.
My ladies comfort me as best they can, and I am calmer now for their sakes. After some time, the boat heaves and shudders, and I realize that we’re passing under a bridge.
London Bridge.
I close my eyes, and swallow, and swallow again to keep from retching.
The spikes of London Bridge hold the impaled heads of executed prisoners. The bloodied heads of Thomas and Francis are there now.
I hear Francis’s words in my head, telling me not to look back. I can’t see outside, but I close my eyes anyway. Tears trickle out from under my eyelids, hot on my cheeks, stone cold by the time they reach my chin.
* * *
—
My stay in the Tower will be a short one. I make arrangements to leave what remains of my wardrobe to my faithful attendants. I wish I had something else to give them, rather than clothes full of grief and bitterness. Only a few short days ago, I was Queen of All England….
The warden comes to tell me what will happen in two days. He describes the yard, and the platform, and the wooden block.
“Might I see it?” I ask.
He looks at me in puzzlement. “See what, madam?”
Madam. Not “Your Highness.” Don’t think I don’t notice.
“The block,” I say. “Could it be brought to me?”
His confusion changes to astonishment. “You wish to have the block here?”
No one has ever asked this before, despite the countless numbers of condemned prisoners who’ve been held in the Tower. The next day, two soldiers lug the solid, weighty block up the stairs. They put it on the floor in the middle of the room. I ask them to leave me for a few moments.
As I walk around it, I realize that I was wrong at Hampton Court. My fate is not to be quite the same as Anne Boleyn’s. Her death was by sword. Mine will be by axe. She didn’t put her head on this block—I’ll be the first Queen ever to do that.
I remember how distressed I was leaving Syon, and I’m absolutely determined that it won’t happen again. There will be people watching, and how I comport myself will be my last act on this earth.
I picture the yard and the platform in the chill clouded dawn. I imagine myself there. I practise approaching the block and kneeling. Gracefully, regally, for I was indeed once a Queen—a Queen truly beloved by her King.
One-two, one-two, step and kneel…
* * *
—
What would I do, if I could have a day or even an hour of my life again? I think about this a lot, and decide on three things.
I would make my King laugh, and hear him call me his rose.
I would forgive someone his or her sins, whether against me or against those I love.
I would dance.
I am so alone.
Teeming crowds fill the apartments of my palaces. They all plot against me. The women laugh, the men scheme. Those I do not hate, I still can’t trust.
I may smile, sitting in state, but only to conceal my sorrows and to keep watch over ministers who wish me dead. I feel no joy. I, King of the English, suffer more than any other man on this island.
Curse her to Hell. I will not say her name. The Church teaches the ingenuity of devils. Where she lies now in their fiery realm, headless and screaming, may they find torments for her severed flesh as fine and keen as the pleasures she offered her lovers. Rods heated in flame. Screws dripping with blood. Hooks to rend.
This is all that can give me pleasure when my own body is wracked by its pains. My head aches like an awl hammered into my temple and eye. My legs shred themselves like the stigmata of the saints—wounds that arise from nowhere and pierce with pain. The royal blood runs freely, but not at my bidding. Ancient injuries twinge. I cannot stand or sit or lie down without suffering. The only thing that soothes me is the hope that in Hell, the same is happening to her.
I need aid to move. Once I was a shining prince; now I am stranded in a body bloated like an island kingdom, hot with distempers and assaulted by its own corruption.
I am alone, all alone in this world, and surrounded by the unsteady sea.
THE ENDLESS MAZE OF DEATH
Summer 1546
It is the hand of the Lord that can and will bring me out of the endless maze of death.
—Kateryn Parr, The Lamentation of a Sinner, 1547
No one can help me now.
I stand before this gleaming wooden door, unsure what fate awaits me on the other side. My husband will be there, of course, magnificent and massive. And my enemies, so eager to be rid of me, may be there, too.
> They’d love to dispatch me to the Tower. At the least, they want to silence me. They prefer their women to be as still as the lavish portraits on display in the palace gallery. The last thing they want is for me to speak.
I should have seen this coming. I should have remembered that in this kingdom, Queens are dispensable, discarded as easily as a maid dumps slops from a chamber pot onto a London street.
My breath catches in my throat; my palms feel cold and damp with sweat. I wipe them on my light pink kirtle. My sister and my friend have left. I listen until I can no longer hear the rustle of their skirts or the echoes of their careful footfalls.
I am alone.
* * *
—
Suddenly, the air stirs. I shiver, though I’m sure it’s no more than the usual draught in these halls. Or is it?
For, somehow, I sense their presence—those dead wives, my fellow Queens. I have long imagined them, wandering together. In my imagination they are lost in a maze—an endless maze of death. Perhaps my desperation has brought them to me now.
There are four: first, Katharine of Aragon, loyal and desperate, followed by crafty Anne Boleyn, who so enticed Henry with her charms. Henry as he was then, vibrant and forceful, before he became swollen with fat, his wounded leg oozing sour, stinking pus.
Next comes plain Jane Seymour, prim and virginal on her wedding night, the perfect bride, full of love or perhaps just pretending—I cannot know. And finally, the fifth wife: lusty, foolhardy Catherine Howard. (There is no Anna of Cleves, of course. She lives still, and wouldn’t lift a finger to help me even if she could.)
We have all been in Henry’s magnificent bed. We have felt not just the imposing presence of the man, but the sense of being engulfed by the grandeur of the bedchamber itself—red-and-gold murals, spectacular paintings. It is hard not to be awed by such power.
