Boleyn traitor, p.11
Boleyn Traitor, page 11
They put the board carrying the king on a set of trestles, and he is as still as a wreck at the bottom of the sea. We gather round in moving schools like gulping fishes.
‘Step back – give him air,’ Dr Butts commands firmly, but I hear the tremble of fear in his voice.
George is at his side. ‘Should I take off his helmet?’
Dr Butts hesitates and I have a sudden, nightmarish vision that George will lift off the helmet and the head will come off inside it, and George will have beheaded our king.
‘Gently, very gently,’ Dr Butts advises, and he supports the bullish neck with both hands, as George takes a grip on the helmet.
It does not yield. George exchanges one aghast look with the doctor, and then he pulls, and then pulls harder. I imagine the broken bones of the neck parting, and I see my husband grit his teeth, and then the helmet yields and comes away, and the horribly shaved head, round as a bald ball, lolls back, limp as death, in the doctor’s hands. The king’s eyes are closed, his face greenish white like a drowned corpse. Dr Butts feels again for the pulse in the neck, bends again to feel the slight sour breath against his cheek.
‘Shall we take him to his rooms?’ George asks, milk-white with shock himself.
‘Yes, yes.’
Charles Brandon goes ahead, shooing people out of the way, shouting to the yeomen of the guard to fling open the double doors wide to admit the table top. The pages at the head of the board have to go backwards, shuffling their feet and glancing over their shoulders, desperate to be steady. The king’s men walk alongside them, a hand on each shoulder, muttering: ‘Careful, straight now, step in, you’re through the door …’
The huge presence chamber opens off the watching chamber. Nobody is going to try to take the dead weight up the stairs to his private rooms and his bed chamber. The double pairs of big doors are thrown open, to admit the procession like the maw of hell, and the gentlemen of the bedchamber rush in. The doors close on them, and we are left outside in complete silence.
I look at the other ladies-in-waiting. ‘The queen,’ I say apprehensively. ‘We have to tell the queen.’
‘You tell her,’ Gertrude Courtenay says. ‘You go in. We’ll wait outside.’
We go in our formal procession to the queen’s rooms at the rear of the palace, and there are Jane Seymour and Mary Shelton, idling in the presence chamber, gazing out of the window that overlooks the river, seeing nothing, like the fools they are.
‘What’s happening?’ Mary demands. ‘The Duke of Norfolk just came in like a charging bull, threw us out of the privy chamber, and told us to wait out here.’
‘Is he with the queen?’
They nod.
‘His Majesty has had an accident,’ I say shortly. ‘His doctor is with him.’
‘Lord! He didn’t say …’
I’m very sure he didn’t say! He was dashing to get to Anne before anyone else. As her principal lady-in-waiting, I should be at her side, even if I have to interrupt my uncle, a duke.
I look around for her sister, Mary. ‘Come with me?’ I say.
‘Not me,’ she says rudely.
There is no one to help me. I go to the door of her privy chamber, tap on it gently, and go in.
Anne has half-fallen from a chair in a faint, Thomas Howard holding her up by the shoulders. ‘Here,’ he says. ‘Slap her, or something.’
Anne struggles in his grip. ‘Jane! What’s happening?’
‘The king has fallen from his horse …’
She gets to her chair and rounds on her uncle. ‘You said he was dead!’
‘I said he looked as if he was dead,’ he corrects her quickly. ‘You have to understand that this is a moment of extreme importance. If he dies—’
‘You said he was dead!’
‘I did not. Listen, for God’s sake! If he dies, we have to ensure that you are regent. If the child in your belly is a son, then you are queen regent for the next twenty-one years until he’s grown. The sole ruler of England, good as a king.’
Anne looks wildly at me. ‘Is the king dead? Is he dead?’
I shake my head and chafe her icy hands. ‘No, no, the doctor is with him. He’s not speaking; he’s not conscious – but he’s alive. Be calm, Anne.’
‘Get George!’ Her voice is a shriek. She jumps to her feet and sways with faintness.
I have to hold her from running out to find him. ‘Anne, be still! He’s with the king – all his closest men are with him. He’s in his presence chamber; they brought him in. He fell, and his horse fell on him. But he was in full armour; he might just be faint …’
She pants and claps her hand to her belly. For a moment, nobody says anything. Then she breathes deeply; her colour comes back. She blinks; she recovers herself. I see her assembling her wits, straightening her back, calculating her advantage.
‘There,’ I say soothingly. ‘There, there,’ meaningless words while I watch the hypothetical syllogism work its magic on the two of them: if, if, then … If the king dies today, if Anne gives birth to a boy, if the Spanish party are weaker than the Howards, then there is a Howard regency for a Tudor-Howard baby king!
Anne turns to her uncle, who is standing beside the cold fireplace, looking down into the cold grate, waiting for her to become the skilled politician he knows that she is. She takes a shuddering breath. ‘Regent,’ she prompts him.
He nods. ‘Understand this: the king’s own sister Margaret was queen regent of Scotland when her husband died, leaving her with a young son. Queen regent until the boy was crowned. She’s not the only one. Queen Margaret of Anjou was queen regent for her young son when her husband lost his wits. It’s been done before. It’s the right thing. You could do it. With my support, you could take the title. With my support, you could declare yourself regent and seize the power of a king. You would rule as a king with parliament and the privy council – we’d call it a regent council – until your son is twenty-one years old. Together, we could bring it off.’ He looks at her, his dark eyes narrow with suspicion. ‘Mind, neither of us could do it alone.’
‘A Howard regency,’ she says.
He nods. There is a long silence. ‘We’d have to work together,’ he specifies. ‘No tricks.’
‘We’d have to get rid of Lady Mary at once,’ she says. ‘Before anyone suggests her as the heir and queen …’
He nods. ‘Marry her off… Or …’
‘Send her to Spain?’ I suggest quietly.
‘No. I want rid of her forever,’ she repeats. ‘Permanently.’
He understands her before I do. He nods.
‘I must go to him.’ She takes two steps to the door, but she sways slightly, and I take her cold hand.
‘Sit down, Anne. Let me see if—’
‘No, let her go,’ the duke orders me. ‘She has to be seen, taking control, managing everything. I will take her.’ He puts out his arm, and Anne understands exactly how they are to appear: the pregnant queen and her uncle, the duke, who will protect her and the unborn legitimate royal heir. Nobody can stand against the two of them. If the king is dead, her baby is his only legitimate heir, and Thomas Howard, with his own private army, will make her queen regent. The baby in her belly is the next king, and Anne and her uncle will rule in his name until he takes the throne. This is the very script of Howard dreams.
Thomas Howard smiles one of his rare, sweet smiles at me. ‘Quite so,’ he says politely. He prompts Anne: ‘Queenly. Undeniable.’
Anne puts her hand on his arm and stands tall as I go ahead of them and throw open the door to the presence chamber, where the ladies break off their panic-stricken gossip and sink into deep curtseys as the Boleyn queen and the Howard duke go by.
THE KING LIES like a dead man. They undress him and put him into his bed, and he makes no sound. He is alive, breathing and warm, but he hears nothing and sees nothing. There are a few who say this is the same curse that struck an earlier king Henry, who slept for more than a year and woke up to find his country at war and his throne lost.
‘Not at all,’ Thomas Howard says. ‘The country is not divided. No one’s claiming the throne. We are as one.’
Thomas Cromwell, waiting outside the king’s presence chamber for news like the rest of us, exchanges one brief glance with me. Of course, there are other claimants; there are always other claimants. There is Lady Mary: now called a bastard but known as a royal princess and the true heir to all the Papists in the country and everyone abroad. There is the only legitimate child: the Princess Elizabeth, only two years old and a girl at that. If you count acknowledged bastards, there is Henry Fitzroy, betrothed to Mary Howard. Other claimants would be the endless royal cousins and nephews from the Plantagenets, the former royal family: the Courtenays, the Poles, the Lisles and their children.
‘Do they think she will be regent?’ Thomas Cromwell asks me, so quietly that I can hardly hear him as he steps up behind me.
‘Yes,’ I say shortly.
‘Were they planning for his death?’
That would be treason. ‘Of course, they’re thinking what the king would want …’
Master Cromwell nods and works his way around the room to where Thomas Howard waits at the door to the privy chamber, Anne leaning on his arm. The two men confer rapidly and quietly; Anne listens in silence. Then the door to the king’s presence chamber opens, and Anne goes in alone.
I see from the corner of my eye Henry Courtenay speaking quickly and quietly to one of his men, who bows and leaves the room. We are not the only ones thinking of Lady Mary as her father lies dying.
WE ALL WAIT for an hour, incapable of going away, hardly daring to speak, though outside, the common people whisper and the tournament flags are stirring in the breeze off the river and the horses standing in their heavy saddles. Finally, Dr Butts comes out; the doors close behind him.
‘I am pleased to tell you that His Majesty has recovered his senses,’ he said. ‘God has saved him; he is unhurt. God save the king!’
‘God save the king!’ we sigh – it is almost a groan – and then Anne comes out, white as a ghost and bares her teeth in a joyless smile.
‘The king will rest in his bedchamber,’ Dr Butts announces. ‘I will stay with him.’
He turns back to the king’s bedroom door, and the guards let him in.
Anne beckons me. ‘Help me,’ she says shortly.
She leans on me as we walk back to the queen’s side, and I put her into her chair in her privy chamber. Her ladies straggle in behind us. No one wants to sew. Everyone wants to describe their own shock, what they saw, what they felt; but one look at Anne’s pale face discourages them.
‘You can all go and pray,’ she rules. ‘My sisters, Mary and Jane, will help me to bed. The rest of you change your gowns and go and pray for the king’s health and thanksgiving for his recovery. Dine in my presence chamber, not in hall. No music. No dancing.’
WE ALL DECLARE that we have witnessed a miracle. A miracle! The king survived a fall that would have killed a normal man. But he jumped up unhurt. We tell ourselves this every day; we give thanks for his health in chapel four times a day. But though he is miraculously saved, he does not reappear. We hear that the old wound on his leg has opened up. He is in an agony of pain; he cannot get up for days. Anne, in her quiet rooms, is as pale as when she thought he would die. There are no more services of thanksgiving for the death of Katherine of Aragon, and the king does not send for Anne.
At last, he comes out of his private rooms, his shaven head printed with the bruise from his helmet, like a dark-blue mask that he can never lift off. He limps with the pain of his leg, which has worsened, and he looks oddly furtive – like a man hiding a terrible secret. He has learned his own mortality. Riding in the joust against young men to celebrate his first wife’s death, he thought himself immortal. Now, he learns that he, too, can die, in a moment, alone as she was, cold as she was, with a great weight crushing the breath out of him.
‘You have to be a very great scholar to be able to imagine death,’ my father remarks, visiting me in my beautifully furnished Rochford rooms.
I am alone; George is keeping Anne company. These days, they sit for hours in silence, as if they, too, have suddenly thought that the king is mortal, and we have no future but the baby in Anne’s belly.
‘It’s almost impossible for a man to imagine his death, except as a tragedy for others,’ my father thinks aloud. ‘How can a mind imagine its own absence? It’s a paradox. And a king – who spends his life enforcing his will and embodying his desires – how can he imagine that will and those desires are no longer present? The absence of that will? How imagine a world without his orders?’ Thoughtfully, my father opens his missal and scribbles a little note to himself on the fly leaf.
‘He’s always disliked the colour black,’ I volunteer.
‘He’s always dreaded the thought of death,’ my father agrees. ‘But he will have to think of it now.’
‘He has named it a treason to even speak of it.’
‘We can be silent, but how can we not think of it? And Sir Thomas More was executed for unspoken thoughts.’
I frown. ‘You didn’t say. He was accused of thinking treason?’
‘Yes, they argued that he would have spoken in good faith – silence meant treason.’
‘Surely, that makes no sense?’
‘It made sense to the Boleyns who ordered the trial,’ my father says, smiling.
‘It was terribly sad.’
‘Any fool can feel sad – look at Master Somer the fool, who is grave now that the king has forgotten how to laugh. I must ask him if he can imagine not being? Perhaps a fool – who has so little will but so much imagination – can imagine his death.’
THE QUEEN IS buried with the scant honour of a dowager princess in faraway Peterborough Cathedral and not as a queen in Westminster Abbey. We pretend she was never married to King Henry, never a wife and queen of twenty-four years, never bore him child after child, never raised a beautiful princess. Her burial is done with respect and ceremony, but none of us attend. Nobody of any importance attends.
Even those who genuinely grieve for her as their dear friend are banned. Charles Brandon’s new young wife, Catherine, and his daughter, Eleanor, are allowed to go as a favour to him. Spies go to watch, of course. My uncle Thomas Howard sends his daughter-in-law Frances, and Anne sends her friend Elizabeth Somerset to tell her who was there and to eavesdrop on the few mourners who dared to follow the coffin.
The death of the old queen should signal Anne’s complete victory, but we cannot celebrate. Katherine’s death makes Anne’s great lie completely true: she said that the king’s marriage was invalid and he had no wife but her – and now he does. She said there was only one queen – and now there is. She said the king had no legitimate child but Elizabeth – the other two are bastards – and now everyone in the country has sworn this is true. Anne’s wildest claims become fact; reality itself surrenders to her. But though she is in the ascendant, Anne feels more uncertain than ever. She has the place of queen but not the favour of the king. He keeps to his rooms, his face still marked, the wound on his leg still open. Anne has won everything but it feels strangely like defeat.
SINCE WE ARE all agreed that the king was never Katherine of Aragon’s husband, her few remaining treasures left behind at Baynard’s Castle when she was exiled from court, are inherited by her daughter, Lady Mary. The king has no right to anything – except that he wants them, and claims them as her widower. Anne orders the old queen to be buried as a sister-in-law; but picks over her goods as her heiress.
Elizabeth Somerset, Jane Seymour, and I take the queen’s barge with Anne upriver from Greenwich to Baynard’s Castle like pretty buzzards circling a dead hare. Elizabeth Somerset is pregnant like Anne, and there is much talk of aches and pains and cravings for strange foods as we row inland on the flat tide. Jane, who is more insistently virginal every day, and I, a childless wife, sit stiffly in the prow and try not to hear these secrets.
They whisper that the midwife can bring on a slow birth by caressing the mother into pleasure until she dies away, and Elizabeth says: ‘Not just a midwife – anyone could do it, I suppose? In case of need?’ And Anne mouths: ‘Mark Smeaton?’ and Elizabeth says: ‘How great is your need?’ And they go off into gales of laughter.
Jane looks as if she is about to faint from excess of modesty, and I speak loudly to her about the likelihood of rain.
At the old castle, there is little value in the goods left behind by the old queen, but Anne picks out a horn cup with a cover, a chest covered in crimson velvet, a set of wooden trenchers, and an ivory chess set for the king. Jane finds a modest little box for her small pieces of jewellery, and Elizabeth chooses a table inlaid with dark wood for her rooms.
I take nothing. Our private rooms in the palaces are richly furnished; George and I pride ourselves on buying anything we want, and our home, the palace at Beaulieu, was furnished by the king himself before he gave it to us. I don’t need the poor queen’s little scraps of things: the king will give them at Christmas to people he dislikes.
Anne has a happy morning of triumph, disdainfully turning over tapestries, declaring them old-fashioned and hopelessly Spanish, opening chests and dropping the lids with a bang. But as she is bending over a box of books, she suddenly says: ‘No, oh no.’
