The King's Rose (28 page)

“Of course I will, Joan.”

 

THE TRAYS OF FOOD ARRIVE,
and hours later they are taken away in the same state. This is one of the few ways in which I can see that time is still passing, that it does not stand completely still. I watch the sun rise in the window, and then I watch it set, and I sit and hum softly to myself in the blackness. The blackness is particularly dangerous, full of evil, whispering things.

Cranmer and Norfolk came to visit, but I told them nothing. How am I to gauge what to tell them so as not to reveal more than what they already know? Jane went into my privy chamber upon their arrival and she has not been out since.

“What are you doing?” I ask Lisbeth and Dorothy, when I see them removing the knife from my dinner platter and wrapping it in a napkin. They look at each other.

“Tell me—what are you doing? You can eat the dinner yourselves, you know that I will not. But you must answer my question.”

“Norfolk told us to, my queen.” Dorothy dips a quick bow as she says this, but I see that she cannot look me in the eye. “He was afraid you may attempt to harm yourself.”

“Indeed, Norfolk is very concerned about my well-being.”

“
We
are concerned, Your Grace.” Lisbeth reaches her hand out to my arm, but I shrug her away. I return to the window again, because that is where time moves. That is the only place where time still moves.

 

THE SUN HAS SET
,
and my chambers were raided: Joan, Dorothy, Lisbeth, Katherine, Malyn—all of them have been taken in for questioning, to glean what they know about my dalliance with Francis.

In the silence of their departure, weariness threatens to overtake me, pull me under. But when I close my eyes, the screaming gets closer, louder, until it fills my head:
Manox and Dereham, locked within the Tower, stretched upon the rack. What will they do to them? What will they confess? Will Thomas be safe? What about my ladies?

But I already know: my ladies will not need torture. The words will spew out of their mouths without a second thought. They will betray my confidence to save themselves, I am certain. Had they not been thinking solely of their own gain when they requested posts in my chambers? There was nothing I could have done to stop them. Nothing I could have done. Instead it appears that I was reliving my days at Lambeth here at court, with all of my ladies around me and my paramour given a position in my household. I cannot deny the wickedness of this vision. Is this what Henry thinks of me, now? Is this how far I have fallen in his eyes?

The images shift, change: now I see Henry. I’m lying beside him upon his great royal bed, with the sheer golden curtains. Henry is sleeping. I can’t think of Thomas now, or else the king will know: he will see my dreams, he will know all. I hover over the king’s sleeping face in the darkness. His eyes fly open suddenly, and he wakes with a horrifying roar, his eyes livid with fire.

I’ve made a fool of the king on his marriage bed! I hadn’t meant to but I did. He grasps my neck, ready to choke me to death.

A strangled cry in the darkness startles me. I am awake now, completely awake, sitting upon a window seat and fully dressed. I peer into the darkness and fumble forward on trembling legs. A hand grabs my arm. I gasp in fear, but I can’t release myself from the icy grip.

“Be careful! Be careful where you step.”

“Jane? Jane, what is wrong?”

“Be careful where you step, the hole has opened up.” She points a white hand into the shadows before us. “The pit of darkness.”

“Jane, you must talk to me.” I put my hand upon her arm, cautiously. “We must decide what we will tell them—and not tell them. They are going to question you, soon enough.”

“It does not matter what we tell them, fool!” she snaps.

“Watch your words, Jane.”

“Watch my words? I’m watching them. I can see them pouring out of my mouth.” She pants, frantically.

“Then stop pouring them. Watch what you say—say nothing. Answer none of their questions.”

“It is too late, Catherine, for you and for me.” She steps close to me, a slice of cold moonlight from the window lights upon her face. Her eyes are wide, unblinking. “It has been a long time coming for me. Guilt or innocence does not matter. I know more about court than you do, my queen. I’ve seen far more than you’ve seen.”

“What have you seen?”

“Or haven’t seen, more like.” She laughs at this, a thin, wheezing laugh that sends a chill through my bones. “I haven’t seen many things I’ve said I’ve seen. You must understand this about court, Catherine: if they want to do away with you, they will find some way to do it. They will find any way to do it, it does not matter if it’s true or not.” A slight smile sharpens the corners of her mouth. “Just like we did to your cousin Queen Anne.”

“What do you mean,
what we did,
Jane? What did you do?”

“I did what they wanted me to do. I played an important service to the king. He was tired of her—he was sick at the sight of her. But how to be rid of her, really rid of her noxious presence? They said she was a witch, and in some ways it was true, mark me!”

She shakes my arm viciously at this, pushing her face close to mine.

“But there had to be more than that, there had to be much more. So I told them about her couplings with courtiers, a lowly court musician—even her own brother.”

“Your husband.”

“Yes! My husband, my darling husband, already sick at the sight of me, from the moment we were wed.”

I see fire in her eyes, now, a dark flame smoldering there. Her look burns me.

“So I said that I saw them together, in her high royal bed. A travesty against God. You can see many things, if you want to see them, if it is convenient to see them.”

“Then it was all a lie?”

“They wanted to be rid of her, and so did I. And her rotten brother along with her! So I helped them. I helped them using Anne’s own words against her—and then I added my own, for good measure.” She laughs again: a startling, guttural sound.

“Who are they, Jane? The king wanted to be rid of Anne, but who else?”

“The king; the king and more than the king. All the rest of them—the Boleyns, the Howards.”

She laughs at the shock upon my face, her mouth wide open.

“There was no enchantment, no witchcraft, Catherine. Anne was just a girl—a girl they propped up on the throne, just as they did with you. But she was common, brutal, challenging. The king tired of her. And when the king tired of her, her family had little use for her anymore.”

I remember now, suddenly: that night in the midst of Anne’s trial. The cloaked figure at the duchess’s chamber door. The dark cloak and white hands—a woman’s hands. And then Jane testified, and soon after Anne’s fate was sealed.

“You met with the duchess, before Anne’s trial,” I tell her.

“Of course I did,” she says. “The duchess is rather brilliant at lying—but I’m sure you know that now. I met with all manner of Boleyns and Howards. We had to get our stories straight. We had to get our lies lined up, in order. The king wanted to be rid of her, Catherine, and we were helping him. There was no saving her, so we decided we might as well help him get rid of her as quickly as possible, and save ourselves.”

She laughs, but the laughter falters, as if stuck in her throat. She swallows. “And now my time has come.”

“What are you saying? Jane!” Her gaze wanders from me, suddenly, as if gazing at some other horror standing in the room beside me. Jane’s own ghosts have found her, here. I shake her rudely to wake her from her reverie.

“And now our time has come. They will not need to lie, Catherine. We did this to ourselves.”

“You told me that I would be safe—that you would keep my secret. I was in danger, Jane. You told me it was the only thing that I could do.”

“You could have been safe, you could have been. But now they’ve found a means to be rid of you—Cranmer, the Privy Council, the rest of them, they’ve all wanted to be rid of you, before you bear a child. Not the king, this time, but the power that surrounds him. They’ve found a means to be rid of you, and it will be enough. More than enough. But they didn’t have to make up anything, did they, Catherine? They only needed to find out the truth.”

She stares at me, her dark eyes wide and unblinking; but her gaze seems distant, as though she is staring straight through me.

“Be careful where you step, Catherine.”

She points toward the floor in the center of the dark room.

“The blackness is there: madness, death. It’s opened up. Be careful not to step into it. If it swallows you, there is no coming back again.”

She releases my arm and sinks back into the shadows, muttering to herself. I stand here numbly, dumbly. I think that my whole world has changed: the witch wasn’t a witch, after all.
Anne was just a girl
—a girl not unlike me.

But the king wanted to be rid of her. The king doesn’t want to be rid of me, I am sure of it. Just this month, this very month, he gave thanks for me, his loving wife. The others may want to be rid of me, but not Henry, my Henry. He is a king—his power must be greater than any they can muster, in the end.

 

TIME HAS PASSED, and my ladies have still not returned from questioning. Several meek, lowly maidens tend to my needs as I wait for them to return. But when the guards arrive, they arrive alone.

“Jane Boleyn, Lady Rochford,” they announce as they enter my chamber. We all know what they mean by this. “She is not well,” I say, my voice rough and croaking from my throat. But they pay this no mind. They follow a maid to the privy chamber, where Jane has been staying. The moment the door opens, I hear her scream. The guards lift her in their arms, unperturbed by her wild cries. When she sees me, she begins to scream louder, as if she has seen the devil, himself.

Anything she tells them will be no more than the ravings of a madwoman—how can they glean any truth from that? Or perhaps the truth is not necessary. They will hear what they want to hear.

And what about that truth? Was I really acting out of Henry’s desperation to secure an heir, or my passionate desire to spend a night with Thomas? I relive every scene from the summer progress, unwillingly, until they become jumbled in my memory—nights with the king and nights with Thomas overlapping in a frightening series of images, too fast for me to fully understand. Was I simply desperate to be with him, and used this as my excuse?

It was all for the baby,
I remind myself.
It was all to save my life.
Now, imprisoned in my chambers at Hampton Court, I wonder if this was enough of a pretext for treason.

Cranmer and Norfolk arrive, and call all of the remainder of my household into the main chamber.

“Am I to see the king?” I rush up to Norfolk and ask quietly. He pretends not to have heard me.

“You will be departing today for Syon House, for the remainder of your confinement. You will be permitted to take three ladies with you. You will be under house arrest, but served as queen.”

“With only three ladies to attend to me?”

“Three should be enough.”

I watch, dumbfounded, as he chooses my maids for me: three bland girls whose names I don’t remember from the group of inexperienced ladies who found their way into my household.

“What gowns am I permitted to take?” They glare at me: a foolish, prattling girl to be concerned about such insignificant matters as my wardrobe in the midst of my imprisonment. But there is nothing I can do to stop myself. I watch as the ladies gather my belongings: six gowns, six hoods, all of them in somber colors and simple design, unadorned with any cloth of gold or jewels or elaborate embroidery. All of my jewelry will be left behind here, at Hampton.

I stand with the ladies, inspecting the clothing I’m allowed to take with me. If I don’t inspect this hood closely enough, then I will fall into the great abyss of fear that has opened up before me—just what Jane told me about. I can see it today, even in bright daylight: a black hole in the middle of the stone floor. I carefully step around it whenever necessary, even lifting my gown over the spot so as not to dip it into the blackness. The guards see me do this, but say nothing.

We are taken by barge to Syon House. It was Syon Abbey for years, until Henry reclaimed it during the dissolution and converted it into a residence. I’m given a suite of rooms with a private bedchamber. These rooms lack the rich tapestries, the luxuriant abundance of velvet pillows of my previous residences. It seems that everything in life has been robbed of its sparkle: my own gown is bland, as bland as the three ladies who stand before me in dark, plain gowns, their faces pale and blank as stone.

“This is a suitable place for a nunnery,” I remark upon entering my chamber, “and now I shall dress as a nun, as well. I shall dress as you do.”

The ladies lower their heads, and I laugh at them.

“Perhaps God will come to me, here.” I feel unable to stop laughing. “No, no, that won’t happen. God left here a long time ago. King Henry evicted Him.”

Suddenly I hear the door behind us being shut, and locked. This is not a nunnery, or a queen’s chamber: this is a prison. I must not forget that.

When I turn, I see a pale form staring back at me. I gasp at the sight of the ghost—her face so pale, her eyes so dark. It is Anne Boleyn, staring at me, mocking me in my despair.

I was no witch!
the ghost shrieks. She lifts her arm and points at me, in accusation.
I was no witch! I was only a girl!

“I am only a girl! This can’t happen to me!”

“What’s wrong, Your Grace? What’s the matter?”