Shaking the Throne

by Caroline Angus Baker

‘Sadly, Stephen, I have learned far more about Queen Anne’s relations with Henry than I ever wished to know.’

  ‘So, you know she was no virgin when you constructed a false marriage for Henry.’

  Cromwell turned back to Gardiner and looked him up and down. They were turning into old men, as much as Cromwell wished to deny it; they had come to prosperity so late in life. ‘My queen sits upon the throne. The details no longer matter.’

  ‘Perchance just you and I are the winners; we have no dalliances to complicate our endeavours and are the only men in the royal circles who can claim so.’

  Gardiner was probably the only man at court without women hidden in cupboards. The bishop was probably the only celibate clergyman. Cromwell too was known as a man without a companion; his love for Nicòla would be hidden forever.

  Finally, Cromwell’s guards had arrived with horses to take him and Nicòla to Whitehall. Gone were the days of being able to move freely around London; everyone knew it was Thomas Cromwell who took away Katherine in favour of Queen Anne.

  Cromwell watched Nicòla fold a pile of letters into a bag before she mounted her horse. ‘Anything pleasing?’ he muttered as they set off for the palace, less than a mile away. Still, being up on a horse and surrounded by Cromwell’s men felt necessary now.

  ‘No,’ Nicòla sighed. She appeared uncomfortable in her saddle. ‘How is Bishop Gardiner?’

  ‘Stephen Gardiner is as boring as the human skull that Bishop Fisher keeps on his dining table at Lambeth Marsh,’ Cromwell crowed and several of the guards laughed around him. ‘Who was the woman you spoke to just now?’

  ‘She is new to London. Comes from Hever Castle where Lady Mary Boleyn is visiting her children. Lady Mary still does not wish to return to her sister’s court but is having financial trouble.’

  ‘Then why not live as a lady-in-waiting to her sister? Lady Mary has been gone from the court for a year; she would be happier here. They provide for her children at Hever Castle.’

  ‘There is a mystery in the Lady Mary, Master.’ Nicòla gestured to the guard beside her. He pulled out coins to throw to children as they rode by.

  ‘I am sure, whatever it may be with Lady Mary, that we shall pay for it at some stage,’ Cromwell grumbled.

  ‘George Boleyn wants to go with his sister, the Queen, to France next July when Henry meets King Francis again,’ Nicòla continued.

  ‘Good, then perchance we can stay home.’

  ‘There he is,’ called a loud voice and Cromwell glanced slightly to his left. A man stood in the doorway to a house, filthy hands and messed grey hair. ‘Thomas Cromwell thinks himself all high and mighty now he is close to the King himself. Where is the real queen, our Katherine?’

  Cromwell did not look at the man but heard him stumble as a guard shoved him without even leaving his horse. Cromwell’s queen ruled the people of England now, and none of them liked it.

  A few drops of rain appeared; tiny pats landed on Cromwell’s black calf-leather gloves. The sky had darkened over all of England.

  F

  Chapter 3 – November 1533

  nothyng seduces liketh the powyr of lyes

  St. Paul’s Cathedral, London

  ‘To call herself The Holy Maid is to slander God’s love. She is nothing more than a vain whore, so heinous, so monstrous, so malicious that those loyal to God’s grace dare not speak her name!’

  Nicòla shivered slightly in the crowd, despite being pressed warmly between Cromwell and Cranmer. Such was the crowd she stood between the tall men, flanked by guards, all squashed among the onlookers. In the square before St. Paul’s Cathedral, many Londoners heard the words of John Salcot, a Benedictine monk. The crowd gathered in a circle around St. Paul’s Cross, an open-air pulpit. A small lead roof sheltered the monk on the stone steps from rain, but not those on the hastily made scaffold beside him. Every moment Salcot took a breath, the crowd filled his pause with jeers and hisses to denounce the guilty.

  Elizabeth Barton, The Holy Maid of Kent herself, stood hunched on the scaffold, wearing nothing more than a dirty black shift. Her feet bare, her toes bled onto the wood beneath her, grazed after being dragged before all. They tied her hands behind her back as tight as Cromwell had requested. Beside her stood Edward Bocking, the monk of Christ Church Priory who had encouraged all the nun’s predictions. He too wore nothing but black, dark as the bruises to his face and arms, also tied tightly behind his back. Beside him stood Richard Risby, the Guardian of the Observant Friary of Richmond, another man convinced that Barton heard God’s voice, could see the future of England. These men and others had made money off Barton for years, by charging people to hear Barton talk of her visions. Now that Barton had “seen” the place in hell where King Henry would go, she needed to be discredited.

  ‘This man, this Bocking character,’ Salcot continued in his high tone, desperate to get his voice out over the crowd, ‘has continued to lie to us, to speak against our gracious king! Bocking uses his whore, dressed in the robes of a nun, to speak out against our king’s lawful and spiritual matrimony with Queen Anne! Bocking shares words of our king’s death, the traitor…’

  Salcot paused as the crowd hissed and yelled at the threesome on the scaffold. They threw objects Nicòla could not quite see. One, perchance a stone, hit Barton in the face and Nicòla saw tears spring from the woman’s blackened eyes.

  ‘The problem remains that neither Barton nor any of her “confessors” have committed a treasonous act,’ Cranmer murmured as he clasped his hands over his purple robes. ‘We can punish treasonous words, but that may only enhance the maid’s followers.’

  ‘Life would be far simpler if we could just behead the lot,’ Cromwell muttered. ‘I feel Barton is close to confessing that she is a liar, that all this is part of her imagination.’

  ‘We need to denounce them all though, not just the girl. She is a tool used to make money from fake conversations with God. They are stirring up sentiments about Anne, and not good ones!’

  ‘Why not simply change the law?’ Nicòla said, her head held high, her lips barely moving. While the crowd again listened to the monk, all three of them knew they were not liked by the audience. Nicòla dared not raise her voice.

  ‘Tis the souls of the faithful I worry for,’ Cranmer replied, he too stood straight, an aura of arrogance about him. ‘But the laws of England cannot control the thoughts and words of every man.’

  Nicòla glanced just slightly up to Cromwell and he shared a crooked half-smile of confidence. ‘We could try,’ he muttered.

  ‘If it were treason to speak ill, everybody in England would be without a head,’ Cranmer continued, his eyes still fixed on the traitors.

  ‘We need to change the rules of what high treason is,’ Nicòla replied, her voice barely reaching the men’s ears over the cheers of the crowd. ‘If you can get attainted for high treason for speaking ill of the King in public, then we can prosecute Barton and her villains without trial.’

  ‘And give Barton the honour of being the first woman to have her head on a spike on London Bridge,’ Cromwell smiled.

  ‘Does your spy in the Marquess of Exeter’s household have enough news to know that Barton is foretelling the King’s death to his cousins?’ Cranmer continued.

  ‘More than enough evidence. But we can write false evidence,’ Cromwell shrugged.

  ‘Was it you who wrote the words of Salcot hither today?’ Cranmer asked.

  ‘I wrote the words today,’ Nicòla replied.

  ‘It seems each of you write in an eloquent prose,’ Cranmer congratulated her. ‘You speak as one mind.’

  Salcot gestured for the crowd to be quiet again. ‘We must now know The Holy Maid of Kent as The Mad Maid Kent!’ he cried, to the laughter of the crowd. ‘How else could we describe a woman who fornicates as she does? She has monks and bishops into her rooms, with her on her back, uttering God’s words as she lets man after man take her in full sight of each other! These men, desperate to gain carnal
relations with a nun, have sold their souls to the devil just to get their hands on the sinful parts of a woman!’

  The crowd continued to hiss at the three on the scaffold, their backs facing one another so the crowd could see their beaten faces from every direction. Nicòla glanced along the edge of the front row of onlookers, to see a young girl staring at Barton as they shamed her with false allegations.

  ‘How much longer shall this take?’ Nicòla asked Cromwell.

  ‘It looks set to rain much of the day,’ Cromwell mused with a quick look at the darkening sky. ‘We shall leave them hither to freeze awhile before they take them back to the Tower.’

  ‘Let the people see the heretics,’ Cranmer added. ‘We will not tolerate this; all must live in a new England with no prophesying.’

  Nicòla glanced at the young girl again, silent as her mother hissed at the group elevated before her. A change in fortune, and it could be Nicòla getting ridiculed for whoring, for lying and deception, and worse. Such was the frailty of human affairs.

  ~~~

  Rain it did. But Nicòla, changed into new clothes, always black, always with the best furs to stay warm, walked with speed towards the cell where Elizabeth Barton stayed in the Tower. If Nicòla slowed her pace, she would simply turn and run, so speed aided her nerves. Cromwell and Cranmer were soon to follow, but first, Nicòla was to speak to Barton.

  A guard opened the wooden door which creaked on old hinges. The smell of the room hit Nicòla, more so than the dank hallway and long-unwashed guard. No light came from the tiny window, up so high it was almost in the roof; but a candle flickered in the corner, set on the damp stone floor.

  Elizabeth Barton sat curled in a ball in the dark corner, hay on the floor about her. She pulled her legs up under her shift. Nothing but her eyes moved as she looked at Nicòla while the door closed behind her. Barton, with her freshly shaved head, had a trail of blood past her left ear, her skin bruised and dirty. Unlike Nicòla’s time in the Tower, Barton’s would never end.

  ‘They send the smallest man to hurt me,’ Barton mumbled, not moving from her spot. ‘Is this so their dark souls can feel less burdened when God forces them to answer for their choices?’

  Nicòla looked at Barton’s hands, broken fingers balled together, shivering in the cold. She brought her own gloved hands together. ‘It is your soul we worry for, Sister Elizabeth,’ Nicòla replied. ‘Perchance you are an innocent woman, cruelly used by the men in your priory. If you tell the truth and say God never spoke to you, that Mary Magdalene never wrote to you, that you never saw the King’s death in a dream, mayhap you can be spared.’

  ‘I see God,’ Barton replied, her high-pitched voice sounding close to tears. ‘They all believed when I spoke lovingly of our king, and they tolerated me when I spoke against the annulment of the Queen. Only now, when I see the truth, that the new queen will show our king to hell, do you punish me?’

  ‘I care none for motives, Sister Elizabeth,’ Nicòla sighed. ‘I wish this to be over.’

  ‘You are foreign,’ Barton replied.

  ‘What is this to me?’

  ‘When I speak of the evil foreigner at court, Mr. Cromwell gets most frightened.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I told Mr. Cromwell that an evil foreigner lived at court and was hiding in plain sight, ready to destroy the will of God. Mr. Cromwell beats me every time he enters my room, but always more when I tell him of the foreigner.’

  Nicòla swallowed hard; Cromwell had said nothing. ‘You speak of a direct threat to our king, so naturally, Master Cromwella would be most upset.’

  ‘No,’ Barton almost whispered, her voice so weak. ‘It scares Cromwell that an evil woman shall end him.’

  ‘Perchance you, Sister Elizabeth, are the evil foreigner, a stranger, a commoner, looking to be part of a world in which she does not belong.’

  ‘At first, I believed the evil foreigner to be the false queen, the whore Anne. She speaks with a touch of French in her voice. She is no noble in the court of a king. But no, the foreigner has sunset-coloured hair.’

  Nicòla knew her black hat covered her hair, trimmed short and tucked away.

  ‘Are you to beat me again?’ Barton mumbled.

  Nicòla had no chance to reply; behind her, the door unlocked, and she turned to find Cromwell and Cranmer both there, also dry and changed, warm for interrogation in the Tower. Just the sight of them made Nicòla sigh with relief. In the dank cell, lit by one flickering candle, one could easily feel forgotten.

  All stood silently as the guard brought in a solitary chair before locking the door. Cromwell looked from Barton to the seat. She did not even blink.

  Nicòla strode over and grabbed Barton by the collar of her shift. The fabric soaked Nicòla’s glove, with rain or blood, she could not be sure. The beaten and starved Barton fell easily into the chair with Nicòla’s shove, hunched forward in the seat before Cromwell and Cranmer.

  ‘All the world shall know of your shame,’ Cromwell said, his voice deep and grating, a sound he only made when under threat, like a trapped wolf.

  ‘The world shall know of yours,’ Barton muttered.

  Cromwell lashed out so suddenly even Nicòla jumped away. He slapped Barton with the back of his hand and her whole body moved with the blow. Fresh blood appeared on her lip as Nicòla grabbed Barton by the shoulders, so she stayed on the chair.

  ‘Sister Elizabeth,’ Cranmer said in a tepid and gentle tone. ‘Your visions are mischievous and filled with sedition and treason.’

  ‘Sir Thomas More did not think so.’

  ‘We shall charge Sir Thomas More with misprision when he recovers from illness, so too Bishop Fisher. They shall be harmed for deliberately keeping your visions a secret.’

  ‘I speak God’s words,’ Barton replied.

  Cromwell struck her again and she began to cry. With one sharp move of his head, Cromwell gestured for Nicòla to move away.

  Cromwell leaned over, his face so close to Barton’s they almost blended together in the darkness of the cell. The Collar of Esses, Cromwell’s chains of office which hung about his shoulders, hung its golden Tudor rose close to Barton’s bloodied face. ‘You are a whore!’ he screamed in her face, she so weak she made no reply. ‘You are a harlot!’

  ‘No,’ she whispered.

  ‘Liar! Vain, deceitful traitor and heretic!’

  The screaming frightened Nicòla, who took a few steps away. She drew close to Cranmer, and he too looked shocked by Cromwell’s anger.

  Cromwell’s angry voice sounded straight from hell. ‘Repeat after me!’ he yelled, each word slow and menacing. ‘You are a whore!’

  Barton sniffed through her tears. ‘I am a whore,’ she whispered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I am a whore,’ she cried.

  ‘You feign visions from your own imagination!’

  ‘My visions are feigned from my imagination.’

  ‘You tell lies to satisfy your accomplices!’

  ‘I lie to satisfy my accomplices.’

  Cromwell shifted his feet slightly, his legs apart to steady himself over the frightened nun. ‘You lie to obtain worldly praise!’

  ‘I lie to obtain worldly praise.’

  ‘Good. Now you have learned how to confess.’ Cromwell lowered his voice now, yet still spat on Barton’s face as he spoke.

  ‘If I die,’ Barton mumbled, ‘I can see your wife in heaven and tell her of your sins.’

  Nicòla’s eyes flashed wide the moment she heard the words. Barton’s confession a moment ago would have saved her from weeks of torture and interrogation, but now she had sealed her own fate.

  Cromwell balled an angry fist and smashed it straight into Barton’s mouth. The chair tipped backward with Barton crumpled atop it, landing with a violent crash. Cromwell stood over the body of the nun and punched her again in the face, two, three, four more times. The intense anger shocked Nicòla as she edged even closer to Cranmer, who appeared frozen in surprise.


  Cromwell forced his boot into Barton’s face, his hand now coated in blood. He kicked her stomach, but her limp body did not respond, merely moved like a dropped sack of flour.

  Cromwell paused and wiped his mouth with his left hand; blood had landed on his face from the woman’s body before him. He glanced up at Nicòla with the angriest glare from his golden eyes; no one could mention his wife or daughters.

  ‘Heavenly Father, in your grace and mercy, offer forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation to all whose faith is in Your Son, Jesus Christ. Lead us from the paths of sin to repentance and humility, trusting in Your Word and promises,’ Cranmer muttered, the cell now filled with silence and fear.

  Cromwell tried to steady his breathing but jumped in surprise when the body at his feet moved, writhed on the dirty stone floor. Barton’s frail body quivered and trembled, her neck arched back as her broken hands shook and contorted like raven’s claws.

  ‘Mayhap this is one the seizures they spoke of,’ Cranmer uttered as he stepped cautiously towards the shaking body.

  Cromwell refused to mutter a word in reply.

  ‘What if she claims to have heard God when she awakens?’ Cranmer wondered with a furrowed brow.

  ‘I have seen this before,’ Nicòla said, at last finding her voice. ‘One of my sisters, Francesca, she did this during the sickness which took her life. Her fever rose and rose, and at the height of her pain, she twisted and shook…’ Her words trailed away as she watched the bloodied body slow its painful twisting.

  ‘What if God has come to this poor child?’ Cranmer asked.

  ‘Blasphemy,’ Nicòla replied as the body rested still once more. ‘Barton is sick in the mind, or sick in the body. Just another woman shaped to the whims of the corrupt churchmen who have used her for their own gain. This woman is a tool, used by all those who wish to hear God’s words, who wish to have control over their lives and God’s rules. She is common and that fuels her following; she feels familiar to the commoners. Why would God seek to come to the vessel of one so plain?’