The Deception of Consequences

by Barbara Gaskell Denvil

  Richard Wolfdon, his majesty’s long-time companion and trusted advisor, was not called for. The king spoke at great length with Thomas Cromwell, or went hunting out in the fresh forest breezes where the scent of threat, death and the hot blood of the slaughter brought him peace of mind.

  No man except Thomas Cromwell heard when the king, striding the small private courtyard, hissed, “I have waited long enough, Thomas. It must be now.”

  Nor did any man except his highness hear when Cromwell replied, “Majesty, it is done. Tomorrow I move. Within one week it will be over.”

  On the morning of Sunday, the last day of April immediately after Mass, the terrified Mark Smeaten, a musician in the queen’s household, was arrested and taken by Cromwell for long questioning.

  Cromwell smiled, offering him wine, and sympathy. Smeaton had believed it his secret alone, but now he admitted his love for the queen. An adoration, he said, soft and shy, which lay heavy in his throat and kept him awake at night.

  And was, Cromwell asked with casual friendship, this yearning toll reciprocated in any manner. Smeaton bit his lip. That was absurd, as if her majesty would ever look at someone as lowly as himself. As if she would ever have noticed his doleful gaze, or the flush of passion when he played the lute for her, and in passing, she complimented him. The queen had once, he related, patted his cheek. He had not cared to wash that cheek for many days afterwards.

  Ashamed, frightened, and sad, Smeaton expected dismissal from court. A whipping, perhaps. The king had ordered terrible punishments in the past, with men thrown to boiling water, or limbs cut. But these were retaliations for criminals, and Mark Smeaton had done nothing so wicked except adore his queen. On the following day he was dragged to the Tower, where he was thrown to the dungeons.

  At some distance, his majesty was enjoying the celebrations of May Day, with the may pole set up in the square of every village and township. Denying rumour and ignoring the whispers, and still blissfully unaware of the piteous screams in the depths of the Tower, and unable to hear the black terror reeking through the palace corridors, the people danced around the maypole, sang of springtime, love and kisses beneath the trees, listened to the pretty playing of fiddle, lute and drum, and hoped for a good harvest and bright weather to come.

  A joust was held at Greenwich where a hundred coloured pennants flew in the spring bluster, and the lances rang, flashing silver reflections of steel in sunshine.

  Henry clapped, laughing, enjoying the spectacle, until a message was brought and abruptly the mood changed. The king left within a flurry of orders, and signalled to a small group of his friends to accompany him. They rode together from the field, heading back towards the palace.

  “Ride by me,” the king ordered his friend and body-servant, one Henry Norris. “I have something of importance to say. And to ask.”

  At the rising of the sun on the following morning, Henry Norris was taken to the Tower.

  It was later that same day that her majesty’s brother George, Lord Rochford was arrested. The shudder echoed through the palace timbers like a storm that might never end, but might destroy everything within its path.

  Then as a conclusion to the desperation and disbelief, the troop of crimson liveried guards tramped the shadowed galleries and stood at the entrance to her majesty’s private chambers, demanding the presence of the queen herself. She was taken then into custody, arrested in the name of the king for the most awful crime of high treason, and immediately escorted upriver by royal barge to the Tower.

  The great doors closed and all the spring warmth and the bright daylight blinked out.

  Over the three subsequent days arrest followed arrest. William Brereton, Richard Page, Francis Weston, Thomas Wyatt and Francis Bryan were accused of treasonable and adulterous co-habitation with her majesty, and were taken forcibly to the cells.

  Thomas Wyatt, through his father’s trusted friendship with the king, was questioned only briefly. Cromwellad frowned. “That man’s father was ransomed by the late King Henry. After his coronation, he sent to the Scottish king and paid from the royal coffers to ensure Wyatt’srelease. I cannot order the execution of the son while the father still lives.”

  Francis Bryan and Richard Page were also considered irrelevant to proceedings since proving their guilt involved unnecessary complications. They were permitted their freedom.

  The assaults were swift, efficient and public. After a long, arduously painstaking and secretive preparation, the results were sudden. Where rumour had blown in the breeze with no more definition than the whisper, now the clang of the locked door was thunderous.

  Further north, as gossip meandered and drifted without conviction, there travelled either ignorance and puzzled confusion. But in the south and around the great city of London, the initial silence of utter disbelief was closely followed by uproar.

  The king’s whore, muttered the wherrymen, the sellers in the markets, and the good folk at prayer in St. Paul’s, was a whore indeed and had bedded every good looking man in her household, not to mention seducing half those in the king’s own apartments. Shaking their heads, for adulterous treason was the most colourful story since the royal divorce, the respectable citizens spoke quietly, imagining the destiny of infinite hellfire for those who had the temerity to lay naked with the queen. And those who tittered, saying how this proved the king himself inadequate, too fat and too bad tempered for a good rollicking and could therefore not satisfy his lady, did so even more quietly. There were murmurings of incest, being the most heinous of sins. Preferring one’s own brother, they sniggered, showed what a failure his majesty must be in bed. But others called the queen a witch, and thought the blame all hers.

  “Some got let off,” rumour mumbled. “Wyatt, Page and Bryan got away with it, whatever it was. And they say Richard Wolfdon, the old earl’s grandson – he were arrested.”

  “But they let him off before they took the rest. Too clever, they reckon, to be caught shagging the king’s whore.”

  “Got a whore of his own, I hear.”

  “So do I. Plump and pretty mine is. Bit it don’t mean I done treason, nor wicked deeds. Just a bit o’ romping with the wench, and no marriage neither.”

  “Daft sod. As if the queen would look at you!”

  And so where there had long been gossip behind closed doors and whispers behind misted windows, now it was the clamorous shudder of all England. The sharp whistle of warning screeched from city to river to country lane and then faded into silent fear. Folk locked their doors at night, nightmare crept into every shadow and the clank of liveried guards marching the main roads sent the good citizens running.

  Mark Smeaton had never seen the rack before they chained him to it. The cell was large and condensation smeared the unplastered stone with a sheen of reflections from the torches. The flames blazed and danced with the depths of shadow, black and scarlet, across the damp. The dungeon chamber smelled rank, of terror, agony and death.

  Three guards stood over him as his wrists were chained to the upper roller, and his ankles to the lower. He was already crying as they began to turn the lever, and the wooden poles began to roll.

  “You will confess,” chanted the low voice. “Then the pain will cease. Confess your wickedness with the queen, and you will be saved.”

  “I love her,” croaked the boy. “But she never loved me. It is a lie and God knows the truth.”

  And the rollers cranked, wrenching at Smeaton’s hips, ankles, elbows and knees. He closed his eyes as the flare of the torches reminded him of the threat of hell. He sobbed, and could not speak. The handles turned again.

  When he could scream no longer, and when the soft voice that haunted him from the darkness promised him that his legs were about to burst asunder, then he confessed. He screamed of his guilt, and swore to things he had never done, but had sometimes imagined. And when the chains were taken from his wrists and ankles, and he was hauled from the wooden slats and permitted to rise, his body collapsed beneath
him and he fell to the stone floor, begging the good Lord for forgiveness for what he had been forced to say.

  On Friday the twelfth day of May, Mark Smeaton, Francis Weston, William Brereton and Henry Norris were tried for adulterous treason and of conspiring to cause the death of his majesty. Their guilt was never in question. They were sentenced to death.

  And now rumour no longer bustled through the passages nor through the city’s lanes. Gossip no longer dared to whisper. The silence of dread echoed through the streets and only those on their knees in church dared to raise their voices.

  Only his majesty dared. In his privy chamber, the body servants stood in noiseless groups. Across the room and beyond hearing, Cromwell bowed, saying, “Your grace, it is done. And as your majesty knows – ”

  Henry turned, staring a warning. “I know nothing of this, Thomas. Remember that.”

  Bowing once more, Cromwell lowered his voice, “With permission, your grace, but as we previously discussed – ”

  “There has been no discussion,” roared the king. The gentlemen of his chambers looked up, then shrank back, moving further into the shadows. Cromwell’s ruddy complexion drained all colour. His majesty’s glare was ferocious but he lowered his voice. “Remember this, Thomas, or prepare for your own immediate arrest. I am not party to any conspiracy and know nothing whatsoever of your machinations nor of your claims to have spoken with me. My personal confessor will hear no admissions from me for I have nothing to confess and the great Lord above will know me innocent.” His teeth ground together and he spoke through a tight mouth and a jutting jaw. “Where I have no knowledge, I have no guilt. That wretched female, however, is as guilty as the whore the people call her. She tricked me into thinking I loved her. There is no doubt, therefore, that she deserves what will come.” He paused, staring, then said softly, “And it comes – when?”

  “The trial, your highness, is set for the morrow.”

  “I shall go hunting,” said the king.

  She had stopped crying. The ice had frozen within her body and she felt herself as a stalactite who could not frown, nor sit, nor turn, and who would never smile again. Queen Anne sat on a small chair below the narrow iron barred window of the royal apartments in the Langthorn tower, within the great sweeping stone of the Tower of London. She could not see the river, which had carried her here as she sat very still beneath the awning, knowing that her blood had ceased to flow and that all her senses had frozen beyond the power of any fire to melt. She thought the screams of the men tortured nearby would haunt her, but she barely knew who they were, nor of wives or families left to grieve, who would blame her and curse her whether they understood the truth or not.

  Except for her brother. Poor George. He had loved her as a sister and had never loved his wife. But they had quarrelled, laughed and quarrelled again, been long separated, and finally taken hands in affection. The thought of incest with her brother made Anne nauseas. She knew George would feel as sick as she. She hoped only that he had not been tortured.

  Anne looked up, turning from the window. “Bring me wine. Hippocras, well heated. I am so cold.” Her servants watched her carefully, knowing what she expected, and expecting the same themselves.

  The knuckles of her fingers had knotted as she clasped her hands desperately tight until they hurt. White and frozen, she felt herself already dead. Her majesty stared down into her lap, gazing at the bright fire of the rings she still wore. Whispering the words of endless prayer, yet knowing that it was Henry who claimed the Lord’s ear, and not herself, Anne felt the utter confusion of misery without understanding.

  Across London to the north west where the hill rose beyond the city wall and flattened out into the parish of Holborn, the shadows were slanting wide across the boards.

  “She will be found guilty,” Richard said softly, taking Jemima’s fingers between his own. “She is as innocent as was our Lord the Christ, but that will make no difference now.”

  “You know her.” Jemima turned away, staring across Richard’s shoulder to the empty hearth. Now cleaned of it smoke and ashes. “How can you do nothing? How can you bear it, knowing she is innocent? Or can you be entirely sure?”

  “Only a fool would believe in her guilt.” Richard frowned, taking her shoulders and turning her back to face him. “She is accused of such flagrant indecency including even the grossest incest, yet the queen is never alone night or day, and some of the times given for her adultery date back to when she miscarried her child, and was gravely ill in bed. The answer is simple. The king wants rid of her and after deliberation, finds he cannot legally divorce her nor find reasons for an annulment. There is only slaughter to release him. He does not care for the misery and lies against a woman he once loved. He does not care for the torture and injustice against innocent men. He has given strict orders to Cromwell, and Cromwell will sentence others to death in order to salvage his own life.” Richard turned away. “I might have been one of these unfortunates. I thank luck, and the Lord, for my own salvation.”

  She whispered, “Perhaps the king cares for you.”

  “He once adored the queen. He once cared for Henry Norris, who was his friend.”

  “Yet such a wicked accusation for an innocent woman, my love. Must he accuse her of treason? And of adultery in such a manner?”

  Richard leaned back, his voice bitter. “Only treason will bring his queen to the block. And adultery against the ruling monarch is the most obvious form of treason. Cromwell is efficient.”

  “Oh, Richard,” she gulped, “I am haunted by a vision of the poor wretched queen terrified for her life. What can you do?”

  “Nothing.” He took her more tightly into his embrace, nestling her head on his shoulder. “I might choose to sacrifice my life, but I would still gain nothing, and although I am disgusted at what will soon happen, I do not love the queen enough to give my life for no gain. It is you I love, my sweet. I shall ask the king, once he is calm and satisfied with the slaughter in his name, if I may leave court and retire with my new bride. We will live in my estate in Wiltshire.” He looked down, kissing the tip of her nose. “My advice in the past has rarely influenced the king against his own interests. This time it would mean my certain execution.”

  Jemima hugged him close, kissing the hollow between his collar bones. “Wiltshire, then. And never come back. No king. No queen. No father.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Master Macron opened the door of his small front solar, and the tall man hurried into welcoming candlelight. The astrologer bowed. “Lord Staines, I had almost given up hope. The plans, I trust, are still active?”

  “Hush, sir.” Staines peered around, as though expecting guards. Or ghouls. “The new priest sails in tonight. I have two men waiting at Dover to meet the boat.”

  “Dover!” Lord Staines marched to the small hearth and the flicker of flames scattered there, and rubbed his hands over the warmth. “I sent my own men down there recently on a separate business, and the luck turned against me. Both were killed. I blamed that interfering Richard Wolfdon, and promptly made my own plans to eradicate him.”

  Macron put his head on one side. “I hear that Master Wolfdon was released some days back.”

  “But he remains under suspicion,” nodded Staines, “so will hopefully keep out of my affairs from now on. He’s had the warning. Once a man spends some weeks in the Tower, he should be less ready to risk his life a second time.”

  Macron poured ale, handed a cup to Lord Staines, who refused it. And then drank his own. “This is, I believe, the matter of Edward Thripp, the pirate? Yes, indeed, he is in debt to you, my lord, as I remember. But a dead man rarely pays his debts.”

  Staines sat abruptly, taking up the cup of ale he had previously despised. “They say he has treasure hidden near Dover.”

  “And I,” said Master Macron with some satisfaction, “recently spoke to both one of the old rascal’s principal mistresses, and to his daughter. Both staying as guests at the home of
Richard Wolfdon himself. A coincidence, but from what they told me, I wonder? I can assure you, my lord, that the sea dog is dead and now floats the ocean bed, eaten by fishes no doubt. His wailing women were bemoaning his loss. This new venture will make us more money than you lost in that sinking ship, sir.”

  “It’s the true belief I care for, Macron,” his lordship objected. “This is no scheme for simple enrichment. This is to bring back the true faith, and change England’s sins for virtue once more.”

  The smile was conciliatory, and Macron said gently, “Of course, of course, my lord. How sincere, I’m sure. But should we gain financially along the way, what harm? Spain, on the other hand, is the richest country in the world – and pays well for those who voluntarily open the doors for her entrance. These ventures need funds, and I am not a rich man.”

  “Nor am I, since Thripp took my backing and sank it. Or stole it. If we can bring Catholicism back to our country, and fill our purses at the same time, then I’ll not complain, sir. Now – who goes to Dover?”

  “I have already sent my friends,” Macron told him, setting down his cup. “I expect their return in three days from now. But you must not be seen coming here again. We must arrange a safe meeting place.”

  “Indeed.” Lord Staines frowned, and strode quickly to the door. “Three mornings from now, then. We speak of an eventual Spanish invasion, Spanish funded, and Spanish planned. But our negotiations first go through this priest, arriving tonight. Very well. I shall inform Norfolk.”

  “The duke,” interrupted Macron, “is now more concerned with his niece on trial for her life.”

  “Concerned? No such thing,” Staines smiled. “He cares for no cringing protestant woman, relative or not. He will condemn her himself. He is more interested in the war for Catholicism.”

  Macron bent his head. “I must tell you, my lord, of a matter I have deduced from the stars. This is of great consequence, and you must not yet speak of it to others, sir. But,” and he bent his head further, speaking low, “I am sure that the true church will return to England over the next few years. I cannot tell exactly when, and I fear it may not be soon. But it will come. England will return to the Catholic faith and once again follow his holiness the Pope. We shall be saved.”