Threads: The Reincarnation of Anne Boleyn (38 page)

And so I laughed for minutes or perhaps
hours, then through the entire day or a lifetime–I knew not
which–quite mad, having completely lost my grip on my mind, falling
down a well more terrifying than the one that leads to Hell. Or,
perhaps it was the same one, for I lived in Hell while I outwardly
laughed. I had no control over myself while the laughs convulsed
me. It was hysteria that went to incalculable lengths beyond my
normal tantrums and dangled me over a chasm where even God would
not venture to save me.

There was no God amid the laughter. There was
no hope, and I had no mind. I had only an icy, gripping,
all-encompassing terror and a total loss of self-control.

“So this is what it means to be insane,” I
thought at one point, overseeing myself from a distance. “It
hurts.”

But there was nowhere to run to escape it. It
followed me.

With great effort, I struggled to regain my
mind and escape the fear. And then, shaken, I felt my self-control
return, and I was calmer. I slept.

When I awoke, I had a greater fear than
death. It was that death would not come soon enough to spare me a
return to madness.

Periodically the laughter did threaten me,
and with it returned my struggle against lunacy. In the end, I
would win, and would be able to stand at my trial, then walk with a
degree of solemn dignity through the crowd to face my executioner.
It would be a triumph of stubborn willfulness, that I could shake
the madness long enough to die.

The treason commission convened in late
April. I stood before the jurists, most stone-faced and hardened
against me, spoke the truth, and was called a liar.

I learned from the commission that I had
indulged in lascivious acts for years, cavorted with my own brother
as if I were his wife (and perhaps with my sister as well) and had
arrogantly made my poor husband a hapless cuckold such as had never
before been seen in England or beyond.

I heard it said that Mark Smeaton, a young
man from the music room, confessed to being my lover. It was known
by all that he confessed under torture; no one cared about the
reason he confessed. He would die for it.

My brother George would die for it as well.
And others . . . others of us would die. We would die, you know.
All of us.

We would die.

Henry had not even waited for the trial to
disband my household and dismiss my servants. He knew before any
verdict was reached that I would have no further need of them.

So, there was never a hope of fair sentencing
or release. Each judge, 26 in all, had a task to do, and it was to
please the king and see that I was sentenced to die. Each
participant’s task was to make the accusations seem plausible
before those judges by drawing in young men who were handsome
enough to be convincing temptation for a lecherous queen. Their
task was to loosely link persons to the story who were inconvenient
to the king in some way, or expendable, and to condemn them to
death.

But having arranged for all that, Henry’s job
was still not complete. Even in this, even when there was clearly
no need for further harm, he chose to twist the knife. Included
among the judges was Hal, forced to join their number as both a
judge and a witness.

Hal sat among the other judges hearing me
speak but not hearing, jaundiced and ill, trapped and tortured,
avoiding my eyes, mostly staring at his hands and not looking up at
all.

Very few of these judges and trial
participants warred within themselves about the injustice. Most who
did felt powerless to stop it, or were too cowardly or uninterested
to protest on behalf of anyone at all, much less someone such as
me, whom they did not much like. Their feelings, so prejudiced
against me, in fact, were all the justification they needed to
forego justice.

Still there was a very small brave handful of
men who, infuriated, spoke up about the manner in which the trial
was being conducted, but these were silenced.

King Henry’s justice moved onward as his whim
and will decreed.

Lord Henry Percy was called to testify about
his association with the whore, Anne Boleyn, then was released to
take his place again within the jury.

Sir Thomas Wyatt was imprisoned for his false
confessions and bragging, still loving me, yet still earning from
me only feelings of contempt. He sat in his cell and wrote poetry
for me until his family’s bribes freed him. Only now do I grieve
for him, and for my own unkindness.

Interviews and questioning continued until
Henry and his team had accumulated stories enough to sentence
everyone who needed to die for His Majesty’s convenience.

At the announcement of the verdict my
childhood nurse, who had come to support me, rose up and screamed.
Hal collapsed and had to be carried from the courtroom. He died not
so very long afterward.

I held my head high and pretended I had been
acquitted. I would not give them the satisfaction of seeing me
crumple. I would walk out as a queen, and as mother to a queen. For
the moment, I still had that.

I was returned to my prison to await my
death. These lodgings were far better than I deserved, considering
the others accused were locked in small tower cells because of me.
My concern was mostly for them, for they were not deserving of the
punishment, as I was. After all, it was
I
who had loved a
married man (I harkened back to that large sin to explain my
circumstances). I prayed for God to take the others to His bosom,
prayed they would forgive me, and prepared for the passing of my
own soul into either darkness or light, I knew not which.

The house was large and I had freedom of
movement within it, although I was followed everywhere by people I
viewed as shadows and ghosts. None of these was a friend–quite the
opposite–and all of them wished me dead. I wandered the rooms,
watched coldly by all in attendance. I was more fearful than I had
ever been in my life and spent my days in prayer and preparation
for my death. I wrote a letter to Henry. I played my lute. I wrote
a poem about death that my chaplain later turned into a song. I
stayed in my bed, and stared up at a window or wept. My melancholy
was so deep that even sunlight, on days when I was allowed access
to the grounds, could not penetrate my grim hopelessness.

At times I was allowed friendly visitors.
These were so welcome and such a relief that I developed high
spirits and made light of my situation. I called myself “Queen
Lackhead” or “Anna Sans Tête”, then laughed despite—or perhaps
because of—their stares of consternation, shock, and horror.
Afterwards, when they left, I sank quietly away into fear, despair
and loneliness.

My family stayed away, intent upon making my
father’s cold words sound sincere, fearful that Henry would
imprison and behead them along with George if they stepped into the
light to side with me.

Emma did not come. Probably they would not
admit her, or perhaps she could not travel, for she was nearing the
birth of a child she would name Anne.

My fool was allowed entrance, for whatever
reason, but he wept and this unnerved me and brought me too close
to tears myself, so I sent him away. I watched him slip through the
door at my command, away from me, then walked to the window where I
stared after him as he disappeared down the path, pressing my
fingertips, forehead and nose to the glass.

•
~
۞
~•

Between a man and his wife, there is a basic,
minimum level of trust. Accurately or in error, a woman trusts that
her spouse will do more to keep her alive than to hasten her death,
even if that spouse cannot abide her character.

Even if neither spouse has ever loved, each
is beholden to the other as a result of marriage vows. They each
owe the other the reasonable assurance that murder is neither
planned, nor desired. And if spouses have ever loved one another,
as surely Henry and I loved, their hearts are tied together by a
little thread. Neither spouse can cut that thread without suffering
internal damage, just as neither spouse could kill without inwardly
bleeding to death from the other’s wound.

This, and God’s Commandments, are what keep
endlessly sniping couples from doing each other grave damage. This
is what I trusted. Consequently, I had been very slow to learn the
true nature of Henry’s plan for me.

There were times before my sentencing when I
spoke the words: “I fear the King might kill me” to obtain
someone’s reassurance that he would not. However, I could not
wholly grasp, even as I spoke those words aloud–even as I knelt and
waited to die–that my husband wished me dead and would not halt the
execution.

Over the weeks of my imprisonment, the
understanding came to me but was frequently replaced by other
thoughts. It was a test, I sometimes hoped. “He is trying to prove
me, and once he is certain my heart is true, will come to save me.”
I convinced myself that I needed only to make him understand that I
had not betrayed him. When that happened, he would shudder over
what he had almost done to me, and pray for my forgiveness.

Even at those times when I fully understood
that the charges against me were real and not a dream, and that the
verdict would hold, I never,
ever
doubted that Henry truly
believed I had betrayed him and that he was doing this in anger. I
was able to sustain myself by believing Henry earnestly sought the
truth in my trial, but that my defense was insufficient to persuade
him. Since I never committed the act of adultery, even in thought,
the problem was in the words. I must convince him! I thought. I
must find the right words! When I did, all would be well, or at
least, I would be alive.

I fell back on Basic Marital Trust to sustain
me, and never once thought that Henry might have fabricated the
charges in order to rid himself of me. I sometimes ventured to
experiment with the thought, and then recoiled in horror. It was
more than I was capable of absorbing, and so I rejected it. (Even
here, the full knowledge is only doled out to me in measured doses.
I know, but only from the corner of my eye.)

On occasion, when I was able, I carefully
sorted the facts in my head and painfully considered that Henry was
an evil man who had never loved me. His pursuit of me had, truly,
only been a game designed to amuse him. He could never otherwise
allow me to die. It was only during the last few seconds of my life
that I fully succumbed to this conclusion, and by that time I would
allow the entrance of no other thoughts. I would allow no
forgiveness whatsoever.

While I was struggling with that, I was also
attempting to understand the crime for which I was to die, and for
which I would be known throughout all time: I would forever after
be the queen who had bedded her brother.

I cannot describe the sensation of crawling
horror one feels when accusations of depravity and sexual
misconduct are spread hither and yon about oneself and then are
confirmed by court of law. The embarrassment and shame—and the
certain knowledge that I could say absolutely nothing and be
believed—gave me such heightened anxiety I periodically, truly,
lost my mind.

The thought of dying was nothing compared to
living through this. I wanted no eyes staring. I wanted nothing
more than to hide and be seen by no one again. I wanted great
distance from the shouts and the humiliation; I wanted succor and
safety and warmth again, as I had had from my nurse in infancy.

I wanted to be anyone but myself. I wanted
fervently to be anyone at all, and would willingly have paid any
price.

Had I not once dreamt of being a nun? In my
imagination, I replayed my life in my mind, but the fork in the
road never appeared. There was no rape, and no reason to discard my
dream. There was no reason to marry, and therefore no reason for a
man to find me lacking and abandon me. And so I lived in quiet
solitude and prayer, never once recognized by strangers, nor ever
addressed with scorn or contempt.

In my mind, I also erased the fork in the
road that kept me from Hal Percy. I was now his grateful wife . .
.

•
~
۞
~•

They killed the others, five of them, first.
In preparation for this, they came and fetched me, then installed
me in the Bell Tower overlooking the scaffold, and forced me to
watch. Henry was very clever: In this manner, I might die six
times, instead of only once.

My one hope, that Mark Smeaton would tell the
truth in his final speech and declare that he was never my lover,
died with Mark. He said a few hurried, thoughtless words then let
the lie live on. He allowed me to die without truth.

Throughout the days preceding my execution,
they built my own scaffold outside my window, overlooking pretty
East Smithfield Green. It was there for me to see and ponder, and
the noise of the hammering was there to rob me of all rest during
night or day. As I would die without friends, without family,
without dignity, without justice and without truth, so would I also
die without sleep.

At least I would die by the sword, and not
burned at the stake. Henry took a long while to reach that decision
and, in the end, found a shred of compassion for me. He even
honored my request for a French executioner who used a sword and
not an axe. (Perhaps he did this to impress his virtue upon Jane
Seymour, who was already preparing to wed him. Henry could thus
show her that he was a “kindly” man . . . )

My chaplain sat up with me the entire night
while the hammering and pounding shook the walls.

“My poor lamb,” he said to me as I rested my
cheek upon his knee. He stroked my hair. “My poor, poor lamb.”