Anne Boleyn: A Novel (44 page)

It was a croak, and he dropped the pen when his turn came to sign the declaration.

The Duke of Norfolk’s voice echoed through the silent hall.

“You are found guilty of the charges laid against you. According to the law I hereby sentence you to suffer death. You shall be burned alive or beheaded, at the pleasure of our Sovereign Lord the King.”

Lady Boleyn made a move toward her from the back of the platform, thinking she might falter, but Anne stopped her with a gesture.

“I welcome death, whatever form it takes.” Her voice was clear and steady.

“I have only one regret; that four innocent men, loyal to their King, are to die through me, and only one request; that I be allowed a little time to make my soul.”

She turned then and descended the short steps from the platform to the ground. Not once had she ever looked at Thomas Cromwell. She stopped, searching for George, hoping for one last word before they passed out of sight of each other forever. But he had been moved to the other side of the platform, to avoid a second meeting. She would not see him before he took his place before the judges. The throng of people parted as she passed between her guards, walking through them with her head up and her eyes fixed ahead. As she went by in her disgrace, some of the citizens who’d spat and jeered at her on her way up the Thames to her imprisonment in the Tower took off their caps and bowed.

George, Viscount Rochford, died on the scaffold on May seventeenth and with him perished the three noblemen and the humble musician who had loved his sister. They died well, even Smeaton, who had been kept in chains in a dungeon because of his low birth.

George died when he might have escaped, thanks to his defense and the change in public sympathy; he was about to be acquitted when Cromwell handed him a paper with his wife’s accusation that Anne had said the King was impotent and asked for a plain answer, forbidding the contents to be read aloud. The charge had been withheld from Anne’s trial for fear that she might reveal the nature of it and expose Henry to doubt and ridicule.

At the top of his voice, Anne’s brother read the charge touching the King’s impotence and failure to have children, to an audience of two thousand of the King’s subjects. Anne was to die, and he gladly took the one revenge upon her murderer he could, knowing his own life was forfeit when he did so.

He was beheaded within sight of her window, on Tower Green, but the window was tight shut, and no one heard her screams when her jailers told her what was happening and suggested that she might be made to watch..., She clung to the bedpost, shaking with violent hysterics, and Kingston ordered her tormenters away. Harsh and prejudiced though he was, he balked at that last savagery. By nightfall the scaffold was taken down, and all through the morning and day of May eighteenth she heard the sound of hammering as a new one was erected, a low one, invisible from outside the Tower, for public feeling was running high in her favor, and Cromwell thought it unwise to let the common people see her die.

On her last night on earth she slept deeply, worn out in mind and body, her shattered nerves at peace. She had received the Sacrament, and the courage which had sustained her through her trial returned, as all hope and grief subsided before approaching death.

She had wakened at dawn on the nineteenth and dressed in a robe of gray damask, with a crimson petticoat, and elegant red shoes, and dressed her hair high on her head, leaving the delicate neck bare. Then she turned to the women who had guarded her night and day, who had seen her wild with terror and distress like a trapped animal, and ordered them out of the room. And though Cranmer had pronounced her marriage to the King invalid and stripped her of titles, they looked at her uneasily, curtsied and went out.

She was kneeling by the window, staring unseeing at the lightening sky over the gray Tower rooftops; her hands were clasped in prayer but she was done with praying. Her peace was made with God, and the one thing which troubled her most had been put right as far as it was possible.

It was strange how the thought of Mary Tudor tormented her. Of all the mistakes and sins of her short life, she regretted her treatment of Mary most, seeing that pale face under the old-fashioned headdress and hearing the harsh, strained voice defending her mother’s rights through choking tears...She had never known such love from her own child. There had not been time. She had sent a message to her stepdaughter, asking her forgiveness, but she would never know if it were granted, or the message even conveyed.

Now, in the last hour that remained to her, she knelt in the attitude of prayer, with a line from Wyatt’s old love poem running through her head:

“
Noli me tangere

For Caesar’s I am”

He had escaped; he had not paid for what had happened in the past, like those others who were not even guilty. The words written to her in that fine summer of their love would live, but the love had quickly died. Almost as quickly as that other love...

“Caesar’s I am”

Henry had written verse to her too; he had written letters such as few women had inspired, offering his heart, his services, his life...offering his throne. He had loved her for seven years, and tired in seven months. He had hunted the sweet hart of Hever and caught her, and at eight o’clock that morning, the pursuit would end with a kill, as all hunts did. She suddenly began to tremble; she clenched her hands and struggled for control, her lips moving in a desperate plea for courage, that when they told him, he should hear she had died bravely...

Slowly the spasm passed. He was at Hampton Court, waiting for her to die before he married Jane, and he was very merry while he waited. The time was passed with hunting parties, and balls and masques in the evening; he was gay and active, with that cold woman by his side, meek and unobtrusive, with her eyes cast down. When she heard that he was never idle or alone, she smiled, puzzling her enemies, who hoped to hurt her. Never alone, never alone with his thoughts and his memories, laying the ghost of their past at Hampton with the fierce callousness she knew so well. Let him make merry now, and in the years to come. Let him deface the lovers’ knot with their initials on the walls of the palace, and give her rooms to her rival. He would never be free of her; he would hear her voice in every song and her touch when a lute was played; her laughter would mock him in the mirth of others, and her step echo down the corridors they trod together, her black eyes would watch him from the shadows, and stare out of his daughter Elizabeth’s face. And he would find her in his bed, no matter whom he put there...

His love was dead, but he would never be free, and she knew it at that moment; he would never escape her as she had never escaped him; for good or evil, Fate had joined them, and the sword of the headsman from Calais wouldn’t sever that bond...

“For Caesar’s I am.”

She said the words aloud, and as they died away she heard the sound of footsteps and the opening of the door in the next room.

The sun was up, and it was a lovely cloudless morning. For a moment she waited, savoring one last extension of her time before they came. When the door opened she had risen.

Kingston addressed her.

“Madame, the time has come.”

A slow flush rose in her cheeks, and the beauty tears and agony had ravaged lighted her face for the last time.

“Thank you, Master Kingston. I am ready. And may God receive my soul.”