Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn (48 page)

Anne was thankful to rest there for a minute or two, comforted by the warm impulsive love of friendship in which, of late, she had found herself to be so rich. “What will they do with me afterwards?” she asked in a broken voice, as the hammering went on.

For Margaret’s sake, Arabella was trying to silence her. “That, darling Nan, will be our grief,” she reminded her.

To pass the heavy time, and so that she might no longer harass them with her secret thoughts, Anne went to her writing table. Humming softly to keep her teeth from chattering, she pulled a sheet of paper into position and took up a pen with that one-handed gesture so familiar to those who watched her. Because it did not seem worth-while to sit down, she remained standing, absently stroking the goose-quill feathers against her pale cheek while she collected her thoughts. Setting herself a test of courage. For if George could be so master of his mind as to write verse on the brink of death—why, so would she.

Firmly, her quill began to move.

“Defiled is my name, full sore,

Through cruel spite and false report,

That I may say for evermore

Farewell to joy, adieu comfort.”

“Do you write a last bequest, that I may see to it for you, Madame?” asked Lady Kingston, touched by the divorced and crownless prisoner’s true repentance, and anxious to be of service.

“Why, no, I thank you. I write verses to pass the time,” answered Anne, trying to achieve something of her brother’s nonchalance.

But a tear splashed down onto the paper as her pen moved on afresh.

“Oh, Death, rock me asleep,

Bring on my quiet rest,

Let pass my guiltless ghost

Out of my careful breast.”

“What kind of verse can you write at such a time, Nan?” whispered Arabella, coming to peep over her shoulder.

“A lullaby, dear ‘Bella.”

“Her last thoughts for her baby daughter,” murmured Lady Boleyn, raising sanctimonious eyes to Heaven.

“No, for myself!” Anne corrected her crisply. And hearing the tramp of approaching feet, she turned sharply, leaving the half-finished lines there for all to see; to see and to puzzle over as they would probably puzzle over the whole enigma of her life.

She knew that the end was come. That there was no longer any hope of the last-minute reprieve for which, in her weaker moments, she had prayed. How often had she seen a death warrant lying on Henry’s table! With his own hand, he must have signed hers. Through the open doorway she could see Kingston bringing a priest and a posse of official-looking people. Before going to meet them she stood for a moment or two watching the sands filter through the slender waist of the hourglass on her table. “Strange that I should have been striving to pass the time, who have so little time to spare,” she thought, almost dispassionately.

The executioner had arrived at last. It would not be long now, they assured her. But first he and his assistant must eat. How strange, thought Anne again, that they
could
eat! But of course, they had ridden hard; and it was a trade to them like any other. They would be ready by noon, Kingston said. Ready to put her out of life.

Someone brought her a glass of hot spiced wine; but she set it aside, untasted. Suppose in their new concern for her they had mixed in it some poppy seeds or bryony to drug her senses? No, she would go clear-headed to her death suffering all to the uttermost rather than fail to proclaim, by word and behaviour, the innocence upon which rested her own fair name and the honour of her friends. She would look her best and go proudly.

With that quiet authority which she could assume at times, Margaret Wyatt turned them all from the room. For this last half hour they would be alone; Arabella, herself, and Nan.

“Make me more beautiful than ever,” ordered Anne, making them laugh shakily, because it was what she had always been wont to say before any special occasion in the past. So they dressed her in her favourite black damask which parted in front to show a rich crimson kirtle. As carefully as if she were going to a masque or a tournament they brushed out her long, dark hair. Only now they dressed it higher and caught it up from the whiteness of her neck beneath a jewelled coif. If the pins slipped now and then from their trembling fingers, or they dropped a comb, all three of them pretended not to be aware of it; and there was no one there to see. Only from time to time one or other of them would give voice to some little half-finished sentence, making it sound as casual as she could.

“If it had not happened that you wanted to get into the Cardinal’s house that day, I might never have served you.”

“You must marry and be very happy, ‘Bella.”

“I shall go straight home to Allington and tell Thomas how brave you were.”

“Tell him, rather, dear Margot, that having had you with me all these years has been a little like keeping something of him.”

All too soon the escort came for them. For a hasty moment Anne clung desperately to each friend in turn. Their cheeks were cold and wet; but because she had yet a drama to play out in the sight of men, Anne herself could not afford to weep. At the last moment she picked up a little book of devotions which her stepmother had given her long ago when life had been a string of happy days. It was so small that she could encircle it with her hand. It would be something of Jocunda to take with her.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me,”
she read, because the golden covers fell apart at that familiar page. But she could not really see the words. Her eyes were too blind with unshed tears.

“Do not grieve for me,” she managed to say, as the door opened and Henry’s creatures came for her. “George and the rest are now, I doubt not, before the face of a
true
King, and before long I shall follow.”

At thought of them a strange peace possessed her. A lifting of all fear. She felt their goodly company about her, as though they tarried for her, and was sustained by a great longing to join them. Lifting the pearled crimson kirtle a little, she almost ran down the stairs, humming a snatch of song, for all the world as though she were hurrying out to meet them in the garden at Hever.

Suffering had softened all her hard haughtiness. Never had she looked more beautiful, with her proud head held high, nervous strain painting colour on her cheeks, and her great dark eyes glistening with emotion. Men and women, stepping aside to make way for her to pass, could not take their eyes from her face. For the first time, perhaps, some of them understood how their King had been bewitched.

“It has been my lot to see many people executed, but never one went more gaily!” marvelled Kingston, waiting to conduct her out through the Palace gate to the little green behind the Keep.

But once out in the noon sunshine, Anne’s composure began to break. At sight of the scaffold she stopped abruptly, drawing a breath which seemed to stab her side.

There were no vast crowds. Only a group of well-dressed persons around the finished scaffold, and the Lord Mayor and sheriffs in their scarlet robes, standing at a little distance. And, raised above them on the straw-strewn platform of the scaffold, the two most important protagonists of all—except herself. A tall man with a little pointed beard and a shock-headed youth. The executioner and his assistant.

So the scene was all set, much as she had pictured it; with the grim white walls of the Keep rising up on one side, and on the other the sad little church of St. Peter-ad-Vincula, where the men-at-arms and grooms and jailors worshipped. All just as she had steeled herself to face it.

But to die on a May morning, while one was yet comparatively young! While the gilly flowers were drenched with sweetness, and happy hawking parties went galloping across gorse-gold heaths, and the sap of love and laughter still rose in one’s blood. To give up all warm, human loves and the comfort of familiar, earthly things. To moulder in some warm dark grave. At thirty-three a woman wanted a man’s love, and children—laughter, gowns, and gaiety—not a Heavenly crown. But of what avail to think of such things now, when one was already shriven and prepared for death?

After that first recoiling, Anne forced her reluctant limbs to walk on. The way was so terribly short. No time to gather daisies now! She had only to walk a few short steps across the green and mount those four shallow wooden steps. And then life’s journey would be done.

Sir William Kingston went up first so as to give her his hand. With a swift, imprudent movement his wife, at the scaffold’s foot, bent unobtrusively to kiss her flowing sleeve. Margaret and Arabella followed up the steps.

Once upon the scaffold, Anne was able to look down upon the lines of upturned faces. She heard their involuntary gasp, and knew that, though she was no longer a Queen, she could still stir the hearts of men. Until the moment when they struck off her head she would be able to bemuse theirs with her strange, fatal beauty. The knowledge warmed her, giving exonerating reason for all that she had ever done. For everything which had happened since that day when Simonette had called into the stillness of the garden, “Nan, Nan, it is your turn to come to Court,” Cromwell, she supposed, was the one man present unmoved by feminine appeal. Norfolk’s absence was attributable, she hoped, to his disgrace. But surely there was one of Jane Seymour’s brothers? With just enough decency left to try to hide his splendid height behind a line of steel-helmeted halberdiers. Suffolk stood immediately below her, with his chance resemblance to the King and his determination to have a front place; and by his side her Howard cousin’s bridegroom, Harry Fitzroy. Probably it was the first execution young Fitzroy had ever witnessed in his pampered life. In spite of all his swagger and finery, he looked greenly nervous. Anne hoped that he would vomit and disgrace his manhood. But, alas, she would not be there to see!

From the grievous contemplation of foes and forsworn friends, Anne lifted her eyes to the unpolluted sky, only to see the King’s gunners standing at the ready by the cannon on the wall waiting to proclaim her passing. So that Henry could hear it at Westminster and know that the final price of their furious loving had been paid. And rejoice that he was a widower again. And get on his great horse, no doubt, and ride to his new marriage bed.

But why picture Henry in all his lusty attractiveness? Would to God she had never seen him!

Kingston was at her elbow, reminding that she might speak from the scaffold—that people were expecting her to.

But what was there to say, save to reiterate her innocence of treason, adultery, and incest? And to yield herself humbly to the King’s will, lest more ill befall their child. Standing there, with her own clear voice echoing strangely back to her from the surrounding walls, Anne could not curb her thoughts from going forward into time with Elizabeth. How would the new Queen treat her? “As I treated Mary?” she wondered. Or would gentle Jane be kind, so that the child would learn to love a stepmother, as she herself had done? But whichever way God willed it, Elizabeth would be taught that Nan Boleyn had been a harlot, and would remember no mother save as a thing of shame.

“I pray God to save the King, for to me he was for many years a good and gentle lord,” Anne said steadily, coming to the most difficult words of all. And then, her short speech done, she turned impulsively to Margaret and Arabella. “And to you who have never forsaken me, through good fortune and bad, what can I say—” What could one give in return for a lifetime of devoted friendship? Beyond speech, they looked into each other’s eyes, and Anne pushed Jocunda’s little golden book into Margaret’s hand.

And now, although the noonday sun still shone and the birds sang, there was nothing more left to do. Nothing but kneel down and lay one’s neck upon the block. For the first time Anne allowed herself to look down at the sinister, hollowed out square of wood, well-scrubbed from the last victim’s blood. At sight of it her heart began to race so that it seemed everyone must hear it in the solemn hush. What would they do with her afterwards, she thought hysterically for the hundredth time. With her stiffening body and her gruesome, bleeding head? Would they wait until it was dusk—a summer dusk which she would never see—and throw them into a cart, like those others, to creak mournfully across the courtyard?

Arabella, holding herself from swooning, would have tied a scarf about her mistress’ eyes, but Anne pushed away her shaking hands. Up to the last moment she must see what they were going to do.

In a frenzy of dumb terror her gaze slid round to Kingston who was standing gravely behind her waiting to give the fatal sign. And then to the executioner on her right. Save that he was coatless and wore a narrow velvet mask across his eyes, he might have been one of the spectators. His brown leather jerkin was belted above long, elegant brown hose. There was no sign of a sword. Had he hidden it somewhere in the deep piled straw? Even at such a time Anne’s practised eye noticed that he was handsome in a dark, sinister sort of way. And because he was a Frenchman, and somehow apart from all the pother of her guilt or innocence, almost involuntarily she looked at him through lowered lashes from those enticing, almond shaped eyes of hers. In the way that other women called wanton And because it was a May morning and she was the most desirable woman he had ever seen, his dark, glittering eyes smiled back at her from behind the black velvet. She knew that he wished her well. That he would go back and tell Francis that she had made a good end—that she had been as brave as she was beautiful.

He went down on one knee and asked her pardon for what he must do. Henceforward he was the one man left in her life. All the human help she could expect must come from him. Though she did not even know his name, only they two existed in this tense half world between life and death. It was he who guided her gently to her knees—but it was for her to bend her proud neck to that dreadful hollowing in the block. And that she could not bring herself to do.

She began to fidget at her coif. It would be in the way, she imagined. But both Margaret and Arabella had turned away their faces. She must move it aside herself.