Anne Boleyn: A Novel (43 page)

She had made him cruel to Catherine too; though oddly, he had less regret for her than for Sir Thomas More...Catherine had deserved her fate.

Women, he thought viciously, women, women, always women in the way. Women offering him what he partly wanted and somehow hated; women hanging onto his arm, dragging at him with cries and claims. Wives and mistresses; jealous and petty and totally inferior. Yet they held the secret of life; only a woman could give him what he wanted more than anything else in the world; the son to follow him. However much he hated women, he raged inwardly, he had to have one to achieve his purpose.

But not one like her, not a fierce, strong, passionate woman, who dared to judge him and pass that judgment in words. No woman should be like her! No ordinary woman was, he muttered; she had bewitched him. How often he had told her that, making a compliment out of his own servitude...how often he had made a horrible truth into a pretty speech...Bewitched. Goaded to bloodshed and cruelty, brought by her influence to the frame of mind where he had even threatened the life of his own daughter Mary. He sighed, and the tension in him eased.

He had an affection for Mary; there was less need to deny it now, to others or himself. Mary was his daughter; she didn’t come within the category of the rest...Jane Seymour praised her to him, showing a courage he admired, because in his heart he wanted a wife who would make peace between them. One thing was certain; he’d have the marriage annulled and bastardize her brat. Jane’s boy should have no rivals.

Jane had gone to Sir Nicholas Carew’s house as soon as Anne had been arrested. There she waited with her usual patience, until the thing was done...And it would be done. They would find her guilty, Norfolk, Suffolk and the rest; even Northumberland, who had once loved her many years ago. She would pay for the enemies she had made in the heyday of her pride, when she stood helpless in front of them, with her life in their hands.

She would die. He said the sentence aloud to himself. She would die and he would be free of her forever. Free of the thought of her —free of her scorching wit, her subtle scent, her empty grace...Free with brutal finality. Never until that moment had he appreciated the subtlety of death, the tremendous power vested in his right hand when it traced his signature. The power to wipe out an enemy, to destroy a memory...to send an unwanted image out of the sight of all men forever. To send her into oblivion, and with her, everything she represented.

He need never bear with anyone again, he thought calmly; he need never to endure an uncomfortable situation or tolerate an enemy; he need never be balked of anything he wanted. He could do to anyone what he was going to do to Anne, his wife. The precedent was set. When a Queen died, no man was safe...

And he would blot her out of his mind, now, before the thing was done. She would be already dead, as far as his actions were concerned.

He would go down to Hampton Court and take Jane with him, and he would enjoy himself like any eager bridegroom.

The Queen left her prison for the first time in a fortnight when she crossed Tower Green to go to the great hall to stand her trial.

It was a lovely day, and Anne walked slowly, preceded by Kingston, with her hated attendants on each side, and the small escort of yeomen. The air was warm, and birds were twittering in the trees. They had brought the clothes she asked for, and some of her jewels, and she had chosen her dress as carefully as if she were going to a State occasion. She knew it angered them when she dressed in black; dead-black satin, with trimmings of royal ermine, and a rich headdress of diamonds and pearls.

She was prejudged, for they had told her that the others accused with her had been found guilty and condemned. Only her brother and herself were left. And at last, by the mercy of the God she had invoked so desperately, her courage had returned.

For days she had been calm, almost indifferent. The women probed and threatened in vain for they had no weapons left after they told her that George was taken too. Even when they told her what he was charged with, she only paled and turned away in sick contempt. It was all over; the tears and trembling and hysterics, the battle she had fought for ten long years was lost and at the same time, won. If the King hoped she’d plead for mercy in front of his judges, he was going to be disappointed.

After the bright sunshine outside, she blinked in the dim light of the hall and nearly stumbled on the steps; Kingston caught her arm and steadied her.

She smiled at him. The hall was packed with people; they were crowded behind barriers, and the smell told her they were ordinary citizens of London, come to see their Queen condemned to death, and their King’s action vindicated. The smile remained on her pale lips. He had arranged everything very cleverly, but he might regret that audience before the day was done.

The twenty-six peers chosen to try her sat in two rows on the dais; the Duke of Norfolk was in the middle of them, wearing his robe as Lord High Steward of England, balancing a quill pen in his fingers. Suffolk was close beside him in the front rank. And there, surely that was Henry Percy...A hush had fallen; one of the yeomen stationed in the body of the hall moved his pike, and the haft clanked on the stone floor. They had built a low platform in front of the dais, and there she saw her brother standing between two guards.

At the bottom step, she paused, and for a moment they looked at each other. He was white from his imprisonment, but he held himself as proudly as ever, one hand on his hip, his handsome face set in a defiant sneer. They had not tortured him or questioned him; he had admitted nothing. Nor had Norreys, Brereton, nor Weston, as everyone knew now. But that had not saved them. They were all in the Tower, awaiting execution.

For a long moment brother and sister looked at each other, close enough to reach out, but separated by the line of yeomen.

“My brave Nan,” he said huskily, and his face twisted suddenly.

“God bless you, my brother...”

Then they had moved her up onto the platform, and placed a chair for her to sit in.

“You know the charges of which you are accused,” the Duke of Norfolk said.

“I would like to hear them. There may be some I’m not aware of; they’ve increased in number since I was first arrested, I believe.”

He was unprepared for that, or for the firmness of her voice. He glanced up quickly, and frowned when she met his eye. He knew that look; she was going to fight back. Much good would it do her...

“You are charged with adultery with the prisoners Smeaton, Weston, Brereton, Norreys and your own brother George Rochford. You are charged with conspiring the King’s death, with speaking disrespectfully and disloyally about his person, and with planning to marry one of your lovers after His Grace had come to harm. Those prosecuting may put their case.”

The King’s prosecutors rose to read the list of accusations. For the first time Anne saw that one of them was Thomas Cromwell. She sat very still and listened, memorizing the dates given. She noticed the Lord Mayor of London and representatives of the powerful City Guilds sitting in special seats. The voices droned on, taking it in turn. Cromwell read the most serious charges, his back half turned toward her. She had given herself to the three gentlemen and the bastard lute player on numerous occasions since October 1533 till April, when she was arrested. She had discussed the King’s death, telling Norreys that he hoped for dead men’s shoes...The phrase returned to her, torn out of context, twisted from her babblings in the Tower, when her sanity was wavering...dead men’s shoes.

She had made fun of the King with her brother, decrying his literary and musical talents, his dress...she had hoped to place a bastard on the throne of England, indulging in vile relations with the said brother for that purpose, having kept him in her room for more than an hour, while she was known to be in bed...

The case was proved, Cromwell stated flatly. The criminal Smeaton had confessed, though the others had persisted in their denial of the truth, but all had been found guilty on the evidence given. The same verdict must be given against the Queen.

Cromwell bowed to the judges and sat down, his back turned to Anne. Norfolk looked up. It was difficult to judge the reaction of the crowd; almost too many crimes had been alleged, and the foulest, concerning Rochford, sounded miserably flimsy when put into words. He didn’t want to ask the question, but he had to, for form’s sake.

“What have you to say to these things, Madame? Do you admit your guilt?”

She stood up, one hand resting on the arm of the chair, and looked from the peers to the Lord Mayor, and then around the people, packed tight to the walls.

“Before God, I deny every word. You ask me if I have anything to say, my Uncle. Very well, you shall hear my defense.”

She paused; the hall was completely quiet, the attention of every man and woman in it was riveted on that upright figure, in deep black, standing alone on the platform.

“I am accused of adultery with Mark Smeaton. I lack words to express my contempt of such a charge. To all who know me, and they sit there in judgment, I say this: Am I a woman who’d degrade herself with a base-born servant, a woman without pride or dignity?...How often have I been criticized for too much pride, rather than too little, for seeking to rise above my station rather than sink below it? No, my lords, and you, good people. Pity the wretch who dishonored himself and me because he wasn’t man enough to bear the torture. But look on me, and don’t believe him! I am an English gentlewoman born, not a Princess of France!”

The reference to the King’s great-grandmother and the Welsh clerk of the wardrobe drew a gasp.

“Stop her,” Suffolk snapped under his breath. “Broken in spirit, was she...wait till I lay hands on Master Cromwell...”

“As for the others,” Anne’s voice rang out clearly. “I hear that they maintained the truth, as I shall. My accusers mention dates. They say I betrayed the King in October, 1533. That was the year of my marriage, the year of my daughter Elizabeth’s birth. You must remember that birth, my Lords, for many of you were present at it. It was not an easy travail...it nearly cost my life. Yet I am supposed to have recovered my health so quickly that within one month I went lusting after one of the King’s gentlemen! My traducers should have been more careful when they made the time October...And again in December, when I was three months gone with child...the child I knew my life and future depended on safely bringing to bed. I lost that child, as all of you know...God help me, that’s why I stand here now...but not through betraying the King its father...virtue apart, only a madwoman would have taken such a risk!”

“You forget your own admissions,” Norfolk cut in quickly. “You forget the confessions made to those who guarded you! And the reports of those in your household who saw these abominations!”

“Servants,” she said scornfully. “Always servants...scullions and chamberwomen, ready to lie from fear or greed. Couldn’t you find any other to bear false witness for you? My confessions in the Tower! Ah, God forgive those who took advantage of my agony, and my fear, to twist my words for their own purpose. My fear, my Lords and people! I don’t deny it; for which of you women standing here today, would not have been afraid, if you’d been lying there, where I was, alone except for spies and enemies, trembling for my friends and those I loved! I was afraid, and I babbled through my tears, as prisoners do. You’ve taken a word here and a phrase there and turned the meaning round, putting things into my mouth which never came out of it! I deny what is charged against me. I deny it as a Queen and a woman, before the God who judges us all.”

“Do you deny the testament of your own sister-in-law. Lady Rochford, when she accuses you of the foulest crime known to mankind?”

That was her old enemy, Lord Exeter.

She faced him directly, and for the first time, the tears came into her eyes, and her voice quivered.

“I did not know she was responsible for that. May God forgive her; I tremble for her soul. And for yours, because you don’t believe it, even as you ask that question. It is the foulest crime known to mankind, and it’s laid to my brother’s charge and mine. Those of you who hate me, and would believe any vileness of me, believe what you wish concerning the rest; but think of my brother as you know him, and you must refute this. You do refute it, in your hearts...”

“She’s gone a good way to saving him, at least,” the Duke of Norfolk said under his breath. At that moment he felt a curious pride in her; she was doomed and he hated her and had been anxious to bring that doom about, but he saw her then as a Howard, as part of his own proud, ancient line, nobler than any King of England, and was glad that she had acquitted herself well.

“You’ve made your defense, Madame,” he said. “And you’ve had a fair hearing.”

It was a pity that such a large crowd had heard Anne already; the Duke could tell by the changed atmosphere in the hall that she, who had always been so hated by the common people, had gained a lot of sympathy. Cromwell and the King had insisted on making the trial public, sure of popular support for the unprecedented thing they were about to do. That was a mistake. She had aroused sympathy among her judges too; Norfolk could see that. Many were looking uncomfortable and whispering among themselves; only Suffolk and Exeter and Lord Dacre preserved their hostility intact.

“The evidence against you has been heard, your defense has been weighed. I call now upon my fellow judges to record their verdict.”

For a moment uncle and niece looked at each other.

“For myself, I find you guilty on all counts.”

She stood very still, her face unchanging as, one after the other, the judges echoed Norfolk’s words. She saw Northumberland hesitating when his turn came; he was staring at her, terribly pale, his features working. She would never know what he was thinking, whether he remembered their long dead love, the kisses and vows and hopes exchanged between them so many years ago, in that moment when he had to send her to her death.

“Guilty.”