It had been Philippa’s voice.
Edward. “My little Pippa. Be reasonable.”
Elisabeth. “But you missed.” Laughing. “Throw another cup, silly girl. You’ll miss again.”
Ysabel. “But you’ll let me stay, won’t you Eddie dearest? I shall be no trouble, I promise.”
Edward. “No, no, all my beloved ladies, I promise to settle you all in comfort. But not here. What more can you ask?”
Ruth. “Plenty more, you greedy arrogant moron. And see here, I can aim far better than Pippa.” And another crash. Edward’s grunt followed by Elisabeth’s cry of pain.
Penelope. “I have no quarrel with these arrangements. A little cottage somewhere and a full purse so I don’t have to walk the streets.”
Ruth. “You deserve to walk the streets. Where’s your pride?”
Up the rest of the stairs, Jemima walked softly into the shadows and crept to the door of the bedchamber that Alba had been using. She heard the quiet sobbing from within, raised her knuckles to knock on the door, and then changed her mind, deciding that she should not interrupt a woman in such piteous misery.
Avoiding the growing clamour from the large solar, Jemima left the house by the back door.
It was later in the day, with the first hesitant rumour of twilight descending, that Jemima faced her father again. Elisabeth had retired before supper was served, and only Edward remained in the room. Jemima said, “She cried, Papa. She always thought she was your first and greatest love. She was bitterly upset.”
“Come here,” Edward said.
Jemima shook her head. “Why?”
“Come here.” Edward took his daughter’s hand and led her to the cushioned settle below the wide window and its shadowed gaze down to the river. “I see no reason to explain my choices, my sweet dove. But,” and his smile froze, “I have loved none of these women, you know. Not Alba, nor even my pretty young Lizzie. It’s the sea I love, and battling the winds, the Spanish and the danger. But a man can’t bed the ocean, and I’ve no desire to live alone.”
Jemima hung her head. “I suppose I know that.”
“Loved your mother, perhaps. A little. You, my precious, a great deal. But the others – not a jot.”
“So why not Alba now? Because Elisabeth is younger and prettier?”
“True enough.” Edward drew her closer. “But there’s another reason. And you can tell your handsome Richard this, a gift of knowledge in return for what that young man has done for me.”
“The treasure? Richard has more of his own. Knowledge too. I think he knows everything.”
Edward patted her hand. “One thing he doesn’t know, my sweet. And I reckon he’d like to know too. Those bodies, poor mites, in the attic. Reckon he’d like to know how they got there.”
“He thinks,” Jemima answered very softly, “that perhaps it was his father.”
“As it happens, not at all.” Edward leaned back against the hard wooden frame of the settle, clasped his hands over the swell of his stomach, sighed with melodrama, and lowered his voice.
It was some time later that Jemima left her childhood home and returned to Richard. He was waiting for her. There was a good deal he wished to tell her, but there was also a great deal that she needed to tell him. Their travel arrangements were slightly delayed by both developments, but because they planned on a small entourage with few servants and guards and no guide since Richard knew the road to Wiltshire without requiring help at every milestone, the delay was a small one.
Richard had already sought an audience with Cromwell, and they had talked briefly, in private. It was understood that his majesty was otherwise engaged.
“My apologies,” Cromwell had spoken quietly, “for the arrest and accusations. I knew you innocent , sir, but justice must travel its route with care in uncertain times.”
“I know exactly what happened,” Richard had replied. “And I understand the motives. Should you ever face a similar situation, Master Cromwell, no doubt you will understand more yourself.”
“Anything is possible.” Cromwell looked down at his papers and the blotted ink puddles.
But Richard had obtained the permission he required to leave court and retire to Wiltshire. Only a small possibility, Cromwell had explained, would remain, since his majesty might, at any time, recall him to Westminster. Cromwell could not ensure otherwise.
“I simply hope for peace to love the woman I am about to marry,” Richard had nodded, “without threat or danger. And with his majesty close by, both threat and danger are inherent.”
“I know it,” Cromwell had replied. “I wish you well, Master Wolfdon. But do not sink into complacency. Life is never – tedious.”
Richard had sighed, and left.
Just two days later they were able to travel south towards the great Wolfdon estate, accompanied by Nurse Katherine and a small cluster of maids and some other of the more personal servants from the Thripp household.
The sun shone. The huge blue sky of Wiltshire welcomed them.
Chapter Forty-Six
She had been told to expect it the day before.
“Madam, it will be at nine of the clock. Courage, my lady. We will be at your side.”
But it was delayed. The executioner, they told her, had not yet arrived in England. “He is coming from France at great cost, madam. His majesty the king has arranged this already some time past. It is a proof of his care and kindness, that he ensures a quick and painless death.”
The queen stared back at Mistress Coffyn, her eyes wide. “You think him kind? To arrange my death for crimes he knows full well I have not committed? And if an executioner has been called from France and was expected today, then such a man was employed and must have begun his journey to our shores before even my trial was called. Clearly Henry arranged my fate, and ordered my death before even I knew the accusation. A jury found me guilty on his instruction, if the executioner was already on his way.”
“Madam, the expert swordsman will assuredly be a kinder manner in which to meet your end.”
Anne looked away. “Kinder than any longer sharing my husband’s bed.”
It was to Cranmer that she whispered her last confession. She did not cry but there were tears in Cranmer’s eyes.
He bent his head. “Your majesty, I absolve you of all sin. Our merciful Lord knows your heart.”
She was kneeling but looked up. “You call me majesty, sir. But it is you who have announced my marriage void. I am no longer queen. I die a commoner.” Her confession had been brief. She swore as to her innocence of the crimes attributed to her. “I have always been a loyal and faithful wife to my husband the king,” she whispered. “I have sinned many times in my life, but never have I plotted his majesty’s death, nor wished for it. I have never been disloyal and have committed none of the crimes nor indiscretions of which I am now accused. Pray God forgive me, and those who have conspired against me.”
“Will I be buried in hallowed ground?” she whispered. “Or in the unmarked grave of a felon?”
“Madam, I do not know. But you have been shriven and the Lord God knows you innocent.”
Anne sat alone when she could, closed her eyes and saw the shadows of hopelessness. She slept little and walked much, fearing every moment that faced her, but would not admit her fear to others. The royal apartments were spacious and hung with luxury, arras and tapestries to keep out the draughts, cushions to increase the comfort, and heavy swinging curtains to surround the beds in private dream. But she felt ice down her back and shivered, frozen by threat and menace which crept beneath the doors like knives. Her dreams, when exhaustion dragged her into unwilling sleep, were dark and ugly.
The woman who watched her most closely was the one she disliked the most, but there were others she could talk with. “Poor Henry. Poor George.” Anne laughed without humour. “I told my very stupid and greatly beloved brother that Henry fails to arouse me, and I struggle to keep him up. He has neither talent nor vigour in bed. Tr
ue of course, but a foolish and dangerous thing to say about the king. What even greater foolishness to repeat the words. But my brother could not resist, and told others. That, I am certain, is why incest was included in the accusations, and poor George will die for it. The fault was mine. Another reason why I am here.”
“Be grateful, madam, that his majesty ordered your death in the French style, offering less pain and more dignity.”
Anne turned, glaring. “In such a way he thinks to declare himself a man of chivalry. He does not think of me at all. It is not my pain which concerns him, but his own reputation.”
On the morning of Friday, May 19th, dawn shuffled like a thief through the clouds and a light silvery drizzle collected along the spiders’ webs and glittered London’s cobbles. Anne stood very still as her ladies dressed her, her eyes closed. She had chosen the clothes herself some days previously and the grey damask echoed the heavy grey sky through the windows. Her crimson kirtle was silk to her toes, but over her skirts she was warm wrapped in a thick cloak, ermine trimmed, and a hood, her hair pinned back beneath. She did not shiver.
The Tower Constable Sir William Kingston led her up the steps of the scaffold which had been built, black draped, outside the soaring whitewashed walls of the Keep’s western side. Anne stood on the raised platform, looking down at those waiting for her death. The king was not present and nor had she expected him but Anne recognised many faces, and stared back into the small crowd. It was Cromwell’s gaze she held.
Her speech had been written two days previously and she spoke briefly, laying no blame nor accusations. Neither the anger nor fear she felt were spoken aloud. Pride remained. The light drizzle had cleared an hour previously but the clouds hid the sun and the lowering grey frowned as her ladies helped her remove her cloak. Anne removed her own hood, tucking the windblown tendrils of her hair into a cap and turned to the executioner who stood silently behind her on the scaffold. She handed him the purse she had brought for the purpose. He bowed, accepted the purse and in French, asked her forgiveness for what he was about to do. She smiled, and answered him in his own tongue, then turning back to the crowd, knelt, whispering, “May the Lord have mercy on my soul.”
The soft black silk of the blindfold was tied around her eyes. Anne inhaled deeply and raised her head although she could no longer see. The silence echoed and she did not feel the immediate slice of the sword blade, sudden and strong, which ended her life.
The spray of blood swept in a high circle, catching the first glimmer of sunshine through the clouds. The executioner stood back. He did not lift the head from its tumble in the straw. Anne’s hair had been loosened by the fall, but the blindfold remained in place, hiding her final expression.
Her ladies were crying. The small cheek of their mistress lay in the soaked straw, the mouth a little open and blood stained. The slim body sprawled on the dais, weeping blood from the open veins of the neck. The legs, hidden beneath the scarlet silk kirtle, were bent so that the woman appeared to be serenely asleep, until looking up from her tiny waist, it could be seen that the delicate body was viciously headless.
The first queen of England ever to be executed was not given a royal funeral.
It was more than a mile west to the green sloping gardens of the Strand, a road of palaces and grand houses where the country’s powerful and titled lived in quiet splendour, bishops and archbishops, dukes, earls and barons, the home of the wealthy. Many had been amongst the crowd witnessing the death of their queen. Sir Walter Hutton and his son Peter had attended, as commanded. Sir Walter had gazed in cold disgust at the cruelty and had left quickly, striding from the Tower and into the long road winding beside the river.
“hardly cruel,” Peter said. “It was quick. Executions by axe can take several strokes and some minutes. Painful. Call that cruel. This was quick enough. What was wrong with it? I found it interesting.”
Sir Walter regarded his son with impatience, said nothing and watched the tide rise over the banks of the Thames, avoiding his son’s question.
It was Socrates who saw Alba first, before she was found by anyone else. Out on the hunt and flying swiftly south from Holborn to the riverbanks, the owl saw the limp body below, swinging a little beneath the birch tree in the night’s cold wind, the moonlight turning the white tattered clothes to silver. Socrates smelled fresh meat, but flew without pausing on across the river to search for smaller prey, rats, mice and voles hiding in the hedgerows and in Southwark’s dark winding lanes.
It started to drizzle. More silver spangles in the moonlight. Socrates turned, soaring north once more and heading home, the small black rat tight clasped in his talons.
Edward Thripp had not attended the execution and was simply glad it was not his own. He slept late, his mistress Elisabeth coiled soft in his arms. The handful of servants had gathered in the kitchens for bread, cheese and gossip, taking advantage of their master’s attention being firmly fixed elsewhere. It was not until the following day that someone thumped down the pebbled path towards the river and discovered what had previously happened there under a glowing and chilly sky.
Her feet were bare, and her ankles stained in yellowing streaks where her bladder had voided on the point of her passing. Her arms hung loose at her sides and her hands curled a little, as though the pale fingers were grasping for something they could no longer reach. The white gossamer hems of her gown were a little tattered by the wind whistling up the river, and the drizzle had dampened the bodice, where the white silk now clung to her breasts, outlining their collapse. Her hair hung loose, now in a mass of windswept tangles, which hid the sad solitary depression of her face. But her mouth hung a little open and the wisps of her hair still clung to her lips.
Alba hung from the old birch tree, cocooned by spring leaf and nestled amongst the stretch of branches. She had used a shipwright’s rope, rather frayed. It had strangled her slowly after she had kicked away the stool where she had perched in order to loop the rope around a branch, then thrusting her slim neck into the tight-tied noose. It was not a conventional knot, but had held, even when she had kicked and struggled and cried out, half smothered, for help. It had been the pain that had made her change her mind. Choking and gurgling, struggling for breath and unable to find any, Alba had kicked for release with almost as much bitter desperation as had first decided her to end her life.
But there had been no one to see and no one to hear her and after a long hour of increasing panic, death had finally taken her.
As Queen Anne, so had Alba dressed with great care, but no one had helped her, and being quite alone had seemed to prolong the hours and increase the sadness. Without any ermine lined cloak, she had shivered, bare foot in the damp grass with the river’s cold wind down her back. But she had wished to appear serenely glamorous when found, so she had accepted the freeze and wore white silk beneath floating white netting and gossamer kirtle. The white swan.
Yet now the slim white neck was bruised blue with dark twists where the rope had clasped her flesh, her legs were striped in urine and excrement and her feet were muddied. Her eyes bulged, blood stained, and her mouth hung open like a dead chicken. Alba would have cried to see herself so distorted but she would never cry again.
Had she known that it would be more than a day before she would be found, she would have been more saddened. But it made little difference. It was the desperate loneliness she could not again face, and the bitter taste of yet another rejection. After the hope, and the company, and the possibilities reawakened, returning to the nothingness had not seemed possible. Death itself had almost rejected her too, but in the end it had accepted her and she had died in the garden of the house where she had once, briefly, many years gone, been happy.
Elisabeth cried when the gardener discovered Alba’s corpse and carried it into the hall, spreading the twisted body on the dining table.
“Not there,” Edward said, wrinkling his nose. “Supper will be served soon.”
“Then where, sir?”
“The stables,” Edward said. “Then call the doctor. Or the priest. Or someone.”
“Was it because of me?” Elisabeth whispered. “Because I will live here with you, and she was cast out? All over again!”
Edward shook his head as the body, cradled first and then hoisted over the gardener’s shoulders, was carried outside. “Perhaps.” He sat, a little heavily, at the now empty table. “More because of something the wretched woman once did. Or I should say – three times did. And reckoned I’d tell.”
Elisabeth frowned. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she accused him.
“Just as well, my sweet,” said Edward.
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Margery Smith, daughter of a cooper, thrown from her parents’ house when she became pregnant after being raped by her uncle. She lost the infant, collapsing in a dark alley one evening. Papa found her. She was sobbing and clutching her belly, her legs streaked in blood, poor thing. Papa took her home. He was a younger man then, and a little kinder, and wanted to help the girl. He put her to work in the kitchens, but of course after a while she ended up in his bed. He was living with Alba at the time, and I was just a little thing, thinking Alba was my mother, and not understanding what went on in the house.”
Richard stood beside the empty hearth, his elbow to the mantel, watching Jemima’s animation. He spoke softly. “I had guessed, my love. Although I could not be sure, and my list contained three possibilities, Alba’s name was at the head of the list.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“You loved her. You didn’t need to know.”
“I know now. Papa told me everything. Alba caught Margery in bed with Papa, and dragged her off. Of course, Papa never saw Margery again but he didn’t realise that Alba had strangled her.”
“The second victim, I believe,” nodded Richard, “was the daughter of the chef, who worked for the Bishop of Anglesey at a house four or five to the left in The Strand. I understand her name was Mary Fordham. She disappeared some ten years past. And the story, I believe, was similar to Margery Smith’s.”
The Deception of Consequences Page 46
