I sat beside him.
“I am sorry that you have been worried, father. But I am not sorry, nor will I ever be sorry, for my words to Suffolk! But tell me, I beg of you, father, what is happening at court?”
My father looked at me and gave a brief smile his eyes shared not.
“You are a very fortunate man, Tom. I cannot help feeling so very grateful that you are liked by most people—even if only for your poetry. More importantly, Tom, you are liked by our Master Cromwell. If you were not, my son, then you too could have been one of those ill-fated men facing charges of committing adultery with the Queen. Cromwell has already written to me a letter assuring me that he will do everything in his power to save your skin. I wrote back to him only yesterday, thanking him and pledging to him our family’s eternal support.”
I deeply sighed, and rubbed my forehead with my hand. My head so ached with all the thoughts passing through it.
“’Tis all so completely mad, father… Mad! Mad! Mad! And that they accuse Anne and George…”
“Aye, I know, Thomas. But they were helped with that madness, my son. George is a good man; liked and respected by many people. I have always been proud to count him as one of our kin. It is a shame that the one person who should be closest to him hates him so much that she now contrives for his death.”
“Who do you mean, Father?” I asked him, though I was beginning to have firm suspicions of whom he referred to.
“That vixen who calls herself his wife. She was the one to give the Privy Council the basis for that vile slander.”
“Jane,” I said sighing. “I never realised that Jane could be capable of such wickedness.”
“Aye, that she is, Tom. I cannot think of a better way to describe the hussy. Aye, Tom, Jane is a very wicked woman, and poor George is in the Tower because of that woman’s wickedness,” my father responded with a grimace of disgust.
“Who else have they charged, father? I know of only George, but the good Duke gloated that there were to be others.” I put my hand on his arm. “Please tell me, father, who else have they accused?”
My father looked at me with very bleak eyes, as if he was deeply afeared of what my reaction would be. At length he said: “Young Francis Weston, Brereton and Henry Norris. All good and gallant men. May the good God have mercy on them all!”
I sat there stunned and sick. All these men were my good friends, and had been so for many, many long years. They were all Anne’s good friends too—men who had stayed loyal to her when others would not. Yea, often we had been together in Anne’s chambers, either making music or talking of new books just read. Certainly the talk with Anne sometimes took on an edge of flirtation, but all in innocence. All in innocence! By God’s holy word, I swear to you that these men thought only to comfort Anne, not to bed with her. One name that my father mentioned shocked me more than all the others.
“I am finding all this so hard to comprehend, father, so very, very hard. Most of all, I cannot believe that they have accused Henry Norris. He has been with the King since they were both young lads. If the King had one true friend in the entire world, I always believed it to be Henry Norris.”
“Aye,” my father said with a deep sigh. “Such is the danger of being loyal to a King such as ours. Every moment, even when you think you are safe, there is a chance that our Master will turn on you, and make you into a scapegoat for his own ends. Even if you believed yourself to be his friend! His father was a better man, and I loved him and supported him unfailingly in the days even when he was not my King… Tom, I cannot help recalling what Sir Thomas More said of this second Tudor, this son of the King I so loved. Sir Thomas said that if his head would give our King a new Castle in France, then off his shoulders it would roll. ’Tis strange and tragic, Tom, that More’s head rolled to make Anne Queen in truth. Now I am afraid that the King craves a new wife, and other heads need to roll before he can gain this new desire.”
My heart stopped still in my chest, and I felt my eyes fill with tears. I had tried so hard these last few days to avoid facing what the end would be. Now I could avoid it no more.
“There is nothing to be done to save them?” I hoarsely asked him, struggling to control all my emotions of despair and feelings of hopelessness.
My father bowed his head over his hands, as if praying for guidance. He then turned to me.
“Thomas, all that can be done will be done. I know Weston’s family hopes to offer to pay a ransom for his life. He is such a godly man that the King may heed their cries for mercy. I have spoken to no man who believes for a moment that these accusations are anything but what they are: a pack of falsehoods to rid the King of Anne. The King is good at believing what he would to make his conscience rest easier. I have heard him say that he would not be surprised to find that Anne had betrayed him with a hundred men. As if a Queen, completely surrounded by the court, could hide that sort of behaviour… Yea, our King Henry is good at seeing only what he would.”
“Have you heard anything about Anne and George, father? I have heard so many conflicting things from the guards that it is hard to know what lies to separate from truth.”
“Yea. In this place that I can well believe. You can rest easy about Anne and George for the moment, Tom. They are well, and are more comfortably placed than you, my son. But I take comfort from the fact that you are here, in this dismal cell. Placed here, I do truly believe, gives you more chance of escaping the foul wind that blows up above. You know that Anne has even been given the same rooms which she used when she had her coronation?”
“Yea, the guards here have told me that is where Anne now abides. But, that foul wind you spoke of just before, Father, do you not realise any foul wind that blows at George and Anne also blows at me too? Oh, my good sire, I have no desire to escape whatever destiny has in store for them. I swear to you, I want to share with them whatever lies ahead.”
My father looked at me with very frightened eyes, and put his arm tightly around my shoulders.
“Son! Son! Son! I understand how you feel and I admire your loyalty to your cousins, but what of your close family? I am an old, sick man with only one son. Is it too much to ask…Tom, your mother, God keep her blessed soul, is long dead. She is the only woman I ever loved. You and your sister are all I have left of her. It would destroy me, Thomas, to see you go to your death like this. And what of your own son? You must realise young Tom idolises you. Fifteen is an age when boys begin to steer themselves in the direction manhood will take them. Can you not imagine what it would do to him if his father goes to a bloody, traitor’s death? I am having enough trouble as it is keeping the boy calm; knowing that you are placed here has made Tommy want to storm the Tower walls all by himself. If you cannot think of me, Tom, think hard about your son. He needs a father more than a grandsire.”
I stayed silent for a long moment, pulled this way and that way. At length, I inhaled a deep breath and said: “I have spent my whole life thinking of others, father … I suppose ’tis too late to change a habit of a lifetime.”
My father put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me gently. My father was the best of men, and I, even despite everything that was rapidly collapsing around me, could only be thankful that we had grown closer over the years.
“Good lad, I am glad you see sense. There will be blood spilled enough before the month of May comes to a close, without your own blood adding to the flow. Just keep yourself low and I will get you out of here as soon as I can.
“Tom, I must go. The guard has been more than generous with the time allotted me. I have given them coin to care well for your needs, so things should be soon improved in here for the better. I have also taken the liberty of going to your London lodgings and gathering up some of your clothes and belongings. I believe you will find all that you need to keep up with your scribblings.”
My father got off the bed and went back to the door, grabbing the bag and bringing it to me.
“Thank you, father. I must look and
smell like something out of a cess-pit.”
My father grunted out a harsh laugh.
“You do at that. You do at that, my dear son. Did you know that your sister attends the Queen?”
“Margaret’s here too? Oh, what happy news, father, that someone of our blood supports Anne in this dreadful time.”
“Aye. I thought that news would make you smile.”
We embraced again, and he departed, saying as he went that he would be back as soon as he could. When I was alone I opened up the bag; inside were several changes of clothes, books, writing tools and the unfinished work that I had meant as a present for Anne.
I took it out of the bag and looked at it. So near completion. Would Anne ever get to see it now? I wondered if it was possible to finish it here and send it to her somehow. I picked out some writing tools, ink and paper and settled myself back on the bed to try to make an end to what I had begun only days ago. And this is what I wrote:
My sweet, alas, forget me not,
That am your own full sure possessed;
And for my own part, as well yet wot,
I cannot swerve from my behest.
Since that my life lieth in your lot,
At this my poor and just behest
Forget me not.
Yet wot how sure that I am tried,
My meaning clean, devoid of blot.
Yours is the proof: ye have me tried
And in me, sweet, ye found no spot.
If all my wealth and health is the good,
That of my life doth knit the knot,
Forget me not.
For yours I am and will be still
Although daily you see me not.
Seek for to save that ye may spill
Since of my life ye hold the shot.
Then grant me this for my goodwill,
Which is but the right, as God it wot:
Forget me not.
Consider how I am your thrall
To serve you both in cold and hot.
My fault’s for thinking naught at all,
In prison strong though I should rot.
Then in your ears let pity fall
And, lest I perish in your lot,
Forget me not.
So it was finished.
I did not think it was the greatest of my poems. I was not entirely sure if Anne would or could understand all that I meant to say in it. I was not even certain I could find a safe means of sending the poem to her. But to be just able to send this message to her—to let her know, for perhaps the last time, that my faith in her and love for her would be forever steadfast. One last message to her. One last message to my dark Lady. One last message to my love.
Oh, God, surely there must be a way of escape for her. The King is a man. Surely he is not so completely devoid of pity. Only in January, she was carrying his child in her body. Surely the King must now realise that the miscarriage and deformed babe was no fault of hers, rather something which was utterly tragic to them both. The Duke of Norfolk had said she had miscarried of her saviour. Alright then, perhaps if the boy had been born alive and whole, he would have been the saviour of their disintegrating marriage, but a woman who is beset by such a dreadful tragedy does not deserve to lose her life because of it. There must be a way of escape. There must be! And with that thought in my mind, I tried my best to sleep.
I soon realised that there was to be no escape. The first trials took place at Westminster Hall on the twelfth of May. These were the trials of Smeaton, Weston, Norris and Brereton. Of all these men, only Smeaton admitted to having had intercourse with the Queen. I could not help to feel but great pity for Mark. He was a young man of twenty-three, greatly gifted, whose gifts had led him high, and now so low. I knew, again from my guards, that since the day he was first imprisoned in the Tower, he had been denied the simple solaces naturally given to us who were better born. Indeed, I had been told that he was kept in irons. I suppose to ensure that his spirits remained broken.
My good friends Weston, Norris and Brereton were also found guilty of having had carnal knowledge of Anne. All of them would be executed on the seventeenth of May, five days from their trials. (I find it so hard to keep going on with the recounting of all these memories. But if I did not write this narrative in remembrance and love of them who were murdered from this world, I think I could speak no more.)
Weston’s family’s offer of a ransom of 100,000 marks for his life was ignored. He, too, would be executed. The frantic efforts made by Weston’s family to save his life made many people look askew at the head of the Boleyn family.
Many of the court, who knew him not, expressed their shock and disgust regarding how Thomas Boleyn, now Earl of Wiltshire, could act as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Here was his only son and youngest daughter facing certain death and still he went out hunting with the King. They said Anne’s mother, who had grown closer to her daughter and son in recent years, would no longer speak to him or be in the same room as her husband. I was not surprised when I heard all this. I who knew him, just remembered back to my childhood; when I first began to grow aware that Uncle Boleyn cared for nothing in life but his own advancement.
Anne and George were to be tried on the fifteenth of May, separately, in the confines of the Tower. Their father had offered to take his place as one of their judges, but common decency prevailed and he was told his presence on the bench would not be required. Amongst the seventy-six judges was Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, and the Duke of Suffolk; both men who, for their own personal reasons, intensely disliked Anne, and, thus, wanted to get rid of her. Also amongst the judges was a man who, so many years ago, had loved Anne: Hal Percy, the present Earl of Northumberland.
My father was one of the many spectators at Anne’s and George’s trials. So, through his observant eyes, I have a clear picture of the events as they happened.
Anne, I was told, had taken great care with her appearance on the day of her trial. Indeed, she entered the chambers with her attendants as a Queen, and this was the presence she maintained throughout this most dreadful day. At that moment and during every moment of her trial, there was no trace of the hysteria that had afflicted her much of her adult life, such as when she arrived at the Tower.
The charges that Anna faced were abominable. Saying that out of malice to the King, her husband, she had seduced five men, including her own brother, to her bed.
My father told me the dates would have had old wives counting on their fingers, discovering that five dates given were during the early stages of Anne’s last, doomed pregnancy—a time when most wise wives abstain from intercourse for fear of causing an end to a new pregnancy. Considering how much of Anne’s future had depended on the life and health of that unborn child, I thought to myself that the charges grew more and more absurd with every passing moment. One date given was within two weeks of her having given birth to Elizabeth. No woman in her right mind deliberately sets out to seek lovers at a time when her body is still unhealed from the birth of a child. Anne may have been, through the circumstances of her life and grief and despair, unstable at times, but never was she one who could be described as foolish.
And if this was not a trial for her life, it could easily have been a stage for comedy. Amongst the many absurd accusations that came out during her trial was one claiming that Marc Smeaton hid in a closet, and was brought out by one of Anne’s ladies when the Queen asked for her nightly marmalade. I could not help but laugh when my father told me this. The men who put this case together must have been grabbing at straws when they thought that one up.
Anne maintained her calm composure during the whole of her trial. Yea, she had given Weston and Smeaton gifts of money, and so forth, but never had she given them the gift of her body. And it was the same with the other men accused; they were never, ever, her lovers. George, she said, of course was often in her chamber. But as he was also her brother, Anna went on to say, surely they could converse together without having evil being th
ought of them. Anne strongly refuted the accusation that she had plotted with her alleged lovers the King’s death, or that she had promised herself in marriage to any of them.
Even though all her arguments were clear, and struck most of the people watching as being said by a woman who was completely innocent of the charges laid against her, they held no weight against the sworn evidence presented to the court. Therefore, Anne was found guilty and sentenced by her uncle to be either burnt or beheaded—to be decided at the discretion of our merciful King.
Still Anna remained calm, though she was heard to say quietly to herself: “Oh, God, you know if I have merited this death.”
I feel that Anne had known what to expect ever since the morning of her arrest, perchance even months before, thus the verdict came as no shock to her. But it came as a great shock to one other. Hal Percy, Earl and a grown man for many years—a judge upon this day at this great mockery and sham of a trial. The man who had once gazed at Anna with such complete adoration as her voice blended with his. Aye—Hal, the young man who had loved Anne in a time when all our lives were lived in innocence. The Earl of Northumberland could no longer take one moment more. He collapsed, and was carried out in a dead faint from the room. When my father told me this, I could not help but wonder how Anne felt, as she watched them carry out this utterly broken man, the shattered shell of a man who hid within him a boy whom she had never stopped remembering with tender love. Taken from her life for the last and final time. I can but guess.
As to the feelings of Hal Percy? To condemn to death the woman who once had been the young girl racing her horse with his, across the green meadows of long ago. Laughing with him, singing with him, and just being with him because they were so much in love. Giving him, for such a brief but unforgettable season, joy and happiness… I have a better idea of how he felt. I too have never stopped loving Anna. Oh, Anna. My lovely girl! If only our lives could have been so different! Ah—how my heart tears…
Dear Heart, How Like You This Page 30
